OK, I’m sorry. I weakened. I didn’t mean to. I had been off them for more than a week and I was doing really, really well. The substitute was working, though it was somehow not the real thing. The kick did not last long enough.
Then I had to go to Coles for food shopping. I somehow knew I would not weaken in Coles, but as I walked past the newsagent’s shop, there they were. I could see them through the window, stacked up in alluring neatness. I didn’t give a damn about the sensationalist, gory pictures.
I just wanted one. Just one, I promised. I couldn’t help myself. I went in.
I reached for them and grabbed them: The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian and The Age. Alas, The Canberra Times was 2500 kilometres away.
I am in Tropical North Queensland. Here, News Ltd has holds an utter monopoly on the printed word in the morning. The Australian is printed in Townsville and Cairns and is distributed throughout Queensland defying the tyranny of distance by reaching the lawn and newsagent before any other daily.
Last time I was here I had it delivered in the absence of anything else, like a desperate nicotine addict settling for low-tar. This time I thought I could not face the daily diet of Page One formulaic headlines: “Rudd (or substitute other Minister) policy on (insert X, Y or Z) fails/costs more or hits (insert battling interest group A, B or C)” — every minor glitch in government beaten up out of all proportion to the offence.
Or business-page headlines: “Howard economic policy saving Australia”. Or inside-page headlines saying: “Leftie looney social policy causes (insert illiteracy, drunkenness, vandalism and so on)” and on the opinion page a token piece of central-casting spin from some Labor Minister too silly to notice they are only there to serve as a token pretence of balance.
No, this holiday I would go cold turkey. No newspapers over breakfast. I would get it all on the net. Of course, it would mean no Sudoku at later in the day, but I would manage. The nicorette of the net would enable me to consume a steady supply of news and comment to allay my craving for information via the printed word.
It would mean no orderly listing of television programs, but I would manage with the electronic TV guide.
It would mean waiting for a click between headline and story. So what, I was saving on the cover price.
But I soon realised that I was not reading as much on line than I did on paper. Maybe I am a Scrooge determined to get full value for money so read more of what I pay for. More likely, though, is the fact that the human eye does not like to look at direct light sources. It causes the brain to wander. Also, on the net you don’t consume a daily package. Rather you click on only a few things of immediate interest and leave it at that.
Old habits die hard. It is worth the dollar or two each day to have the news, comment, and information placed in one neat bundle on the lawn.
There are probably quite a few people like me – addicted to newspapers – to ensure their medium-term survival, but probably not enough to ensure paper delivery indefinitely.
Indeed, the ANZ job figures this week illustrate the point. Twenty years ago virtually all job advertisements were in newspapers. The latest figures were: 10,600 jobs advertised each week in newspapers compared to 138,400 on the internet. Ironically, I got these figures from The Canberra Times website. The picture is the same for cars ads and for-sale ads. The sources of classified revenue (better suited to the net) are drying up.
Circulations are falling as more people use the net for news, despite its drawbacks.
But hope is at hand, that is if the newspaper companies are quick enough and can act in concert without incurring the wrath of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.
The hope comes in the form of the Kindle – Amazon’s latest book reader, released this month in Australia to rave reviews from various book lovers. It, and products like it, could save newspapers because they can deliver in a ways much better than the internet.
The Kindle is not back lit, so it is as readable as paper – perhaps better because you can change the type size and search the text. The screen is about 25 centimetres high. It is designed for books, but a whole newspaper can be delivered wirelessly in about a minute, and in a similar form as newspaper, complete with columns. Readers would get the daily (or perhaps with one afternoon update) experience of having a news package put together for them.
The Kindle costs about $300, but that will inevitably come down.
Better still, readers will pay for newspapers, especially if the newspapers remove themselves from the internet. Eventually the high-cost and time-consuming paper production could be wound down.
When Rupert Murdoch said he was going to make people pay for news I thought that he was dreaming, and a Swinburne University of Technology survey published this week backs that up. More than 50 per cent of people said they would not be prepared to pay, but would go to other free sources. However, if all newspapers went down the Kindle route, as have quite a few US and European newspapers and magazines, they could remove a lot, most or all of their content from the net, so the free-loaders had nowhere to go.
Though I think Murdoch is dreaming, I wish him luck because unless people continue to pay for news, comment and information the fate of independent journalism that holds government, corporations and others accountable is at stake. Also lost would be the daily package that helps keep people informed about their communities in a way that net news does not. As my experiment showed, clicking on a few things of immediate interest is no substitute for the informed citizen’s consumption of a daily newspaper.
Sure, we have the ABC, but it cannot do the full job without the large number of print journalists paid for by the profits of newspapers. And it does not do text very well. Besides a lot of broadcast outlets rely on news initially gathered by newspapers.
Maybe I’m a junkie, but I would prefer a paid-newspaper model on Kindles and like machines than the slow death of accountability journalism.
Moreover, the Kindle model would provide opportunities for competition, particularly in the Murdoch-monopoly states. That might be pleasing to Rudd who should be worried about News Ltd’s total newspaper grip on all states bar NSW, Victoria and the ACT and its attendant influence through the broadcast outlets which regurgitate its offerings.
It would certainly make my news consumption on visits to distant Australian parts more palatable.
CRISPIN HULL
This article was first published in The Canberra Times on 16 January 2010