- Over the last ten years readers of the newspapers have dropped by 2.25 million.
- The Mirror has lost 750,000 readers in the last ten years, Sunday papers closely follow with a loss of 400,000 readers, and The Sun closely after with a loss of 400,000 readers however in the last year this figure has stayed the same for The Sun which is the only paper which has managed to do this. As readers have dropped advertisers have decided to withdraw many adds from papers and go elsewhere, this has has a dramatic impact on papers as advertisers mainly funded the papers. In fact a staggering 75% of revenue for local papers is from advertisers.
- In the mid 80's Rupert Merdoch revolutionized newspaper production by moveing his offices from the famous Fleet Street in london to brand new digital offices in Wapping. These offices allow digital production. This caused a riot due to other newspapers becoming angry that he had moved away from the heart of the paper production and moved onto using different technology.
- To keep Newspapers alive the companies have had to increase the cover price to make up for loss of sales, to make up the loss in advertisements they have changed to full colour presses to allow them to charge more to the advertisers they do have, and also gave away freebies with there papers. The Mail on Sunday around 2009 joined with McFly to 'give away' the bands new album to all its readers for free. This was achieved by the newspaper paying the band to use its album. This boosted sales among young people, the sales figures went from 2.1 million readers to 2.4 million readers.
- Some companies give away there newspapers for free, such as the Metro paper which is given out to people in places such as train stations on busses etc, this allows the company to get there papers read by people that wouldn't normally buy there paper. Often as the paper is at hand the commuter will read it as there is nothing else to read whilst on a journey. A whopping 45% of the newspaper is made up of adverts mean only 55% is actual news, they have dumbed down the content ! This shows where the paper is getting its income from ( advertisers) and how they manage to give it away free. If commuters are getting the option to have this paper free on the way to work are they likely to spend money purchasing a different paper? This will effect the sales of other papers which do give out a higher percentage of actual news however do not have as much funding to give away for free. During a documentary Janice Streetporter asked several commuters, after being given a free copy of the Metro paper, if they would buy this paper. A very high percentage said no they wouldn't due to the lack news and important information inside the paper.
- The web has allowed people to get access to news from the click of a button, websites such as Sky News, BBC and MSN give away there news stories online for free allowing anyone in the world access to stories whenever they want. This not only means people no longer have to purchase a newspaper but also means that newspaper sales have dramatical dropped and will continue to do so. Many people use a computer in there everyday lives, iPad's, Mobile phones, and other interactive tablets are becoming more internet friendly and have access to the internet. A business man carrying an iPad on a train will have access to the news through the iPad so why purchase the paper ? Many other news companies have attempted to make people pay to get access to there news stories, however with the competition high when up against the free websites it is proving a difficult task.
- More and more news companies are looking at ways to catch there audience as newspapers are begining to fade out. Quite alot have moved to more high tech ways such as using videos and audio that relate to the news stories. One Newspaper floor in particular has placed a 'Video Wall' in the center of the office which allows the workers to view all the latest news stories made up of lots of videos. They have also projected tables showing which story is the most popular to provide healthy competition between news reporters to get the 'best, most read story' and keep it at the top.
- Only one third of reads of the gaurdian are from the UK the rest access there stories online. However will advertisers pay to have there product displayed in a hard copy of a newspaper in a country that carnt access it ? A good example of this is McDonalds, would they have an add showing a burger for 99p when america uses dollars? Online news now uses semantic web (Web 3.0) which allows the website to store cookies into the readers computer which tells the site what they are interested and can also work out what country there are in from the IP address this allows the site to direct adverts to viewers which live in certain parts of the world and have particular interests. This can increase advertisers to advertise with a particular company if they can prove that allot of there readers are from other countries. Such as the Guardian.
