OPEN

A page two piece by Roy Greenslade in the Media Guardian supplement caught my eye this morning (oh, yes – doing the road warrior bit today, so I bought some newsprint to catch the scotch eye crumbs as I drive). Lucky I did, as I can’t find it online… Anyhow, Mr Greenslade was discussing the decline across the board of regional newspaper circulations.

Even the free ones.  That’s right, the regional free newspapers are scaling back their distribution apparently.

Although I can’t find Mr Greenslade’s article online, you can take a look at this blog post which  is the basis of the article…

(Charles Arthur has some harsh words for local editors about why some don’t deserve higher readerships, BTW…)

: : Jeff Jarvis also has an excellent column about the bubble mentality around web 2.0, into which he manages to take a swipe at newspapers too:

And so it struck me that the most long-lasting, most self-delusional
bubble of all was the one that protected monopoly newspapers in America
for the last 50 years, since television did them the favour of killing
their print competitors. They’ve had no idea how to adapt to the
changing marketplace and for years didn’t have to because they still
made lots of money. Now too many of them are trying to squeeze more sap
out of dead trees.