Media meltdown/summer shutdown

Open a newspaper.

Any one, really. Among the usual stuff, at least one journalist will be covering the global media meltdown – the wave of newspaper closures triggered by classifieds/advertising shifting to the web. Fairfax dispatched a crowd of journos last year, and Glenn Dyer at Crikey says News is about to get rid of a bunch more. Global crises are always good copy. And journos love to cover their own patch.

But come December/January, something funny happens. Just when readers are ready to really sink their teeth into a quality paper, the big papers shut shop. Send the journos on hols, batten down the hatches, send out a thinned down paper packed with syndicated content and fluffy features.

Television used to do this. Fill out the summer (non-ratings) months with repeats and low quality programs. But if you lose your audience, the ratings mean nothing. Filesharing new shows (delayed by the local networks) has given audiences an alternative, and in many cases they’re not going back.

It’s much easier to find the alternative to print online.

For the moment, there are still plenty of benefits to reading the broadsheet. Discovering articles of interest, rather than searching for specific topics, is still better in print (despite the best efforts of Delicious et al). But with print fighting an ultimately losing battle to keep readers in the habit of buying their papers, you’d think they’d change tack.

Old news, I guess, given the papers are back to normal. But this year’s shaping up to be a pivotal one.