Digital Media and the Newspaper Industry - are we entitled to free news?

Even though our case study is based mostly on the Emedia platform, there is still an expectation that you make reference to all three platforms in your answer.

The main way to get the print platform in is to show some understanding of how it is trying to survive in the digital age.

The internet provides us with instant, up to date news which can often be interactive and accessed anywhere, and this has been blamed for the steady decline in newspaper and magazine sales.

Newspapers do have online versions, but they can only generate money through advertising as we expect to access news online for free. Is it right to have this expectation? James Murdoch doesn't think so. He said: "It is essential for the future of independent digital journalism that a fair price can be charged for news to people who value it." In 2009 he accused the BBC of giving away news "for free" online. It's not surprising, then, that The Times, one of Murdoch's papers, was the first in the UK to place its content behind a paywall. Now, The Telegraph will follow suit. However, it will be a metered paywall, meaning you can view 20 articles for free before being prompted to subscribe to a digital package.

Read more about it here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2013/mar/26/telegraph-paywall

It looks like this will become common. Rupert Murdoch has said that The Sun will go the same way: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/mar/27/sun-paywall-unavoidable

This comes in the same week that a teenager received £1million of investment in an app which summarises news stories: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20181537 proving that there must be ways to make money from digital news, if you are innovative.

This is a developing trend which you MUST keep an eye on for your digital media case study - it's just one of the ways the print industry is attempting to survive. If other newspapers start to charge for online content, it will be interesting to see how audiences react. Will they start buying the printed version instead? Will they start to accept that news is something you should have to pay for? Or will there simply be too much other news available online for them to care? Can you use some audience theory to evaluate these reactions?