… has not yet been invented.
Two weeks ago, I heard a very competent presentation about the future of print media in general and daily newspapers in particular on the Sylt Biike. To me, it seems that the future of the daily newspapers is a rather hopeless affair, especially if you consider what I heard there. No matter if you look at the development of sales or the income by advertising, they are on the decline.
I took this as a motivation to think about my personal “dream of a daily”. Here is what it would have to be like:
I would like a classic, rather small size. Bigger than the “modern size“ of those terrible compact papers, but not quite as extensive as the Süddeutsche.
This paper would have to be of outstanding quality. More or less like “Zeit“, better than SZ and FAZ. As few pictures as possibe and no colour. To make up for it, I would want excellent comments.
It would have to be clearly structured and reliable in its build-up. In order to make it easy on the eyes, it would have to have a reasonable font – perhaps Serifen? And high quality print.
A cosmopolitan paper with a natural European-German focus. A critical paper containing ideology-free and non-dogmatic articles. Written by critical journalists who are courageous enough to question what is generally considered self-evident.
But the most important factor for me would be that it is completely free of adverts!
If such a paper came, I would wish to have it available both on paper and in Kindle format.
Perhaps the paper version could be a daily (including Sundays) to be delivered in the morning, whereas an electronic version might well come out both in the morning and in the evening. Or “dynamically flowing“.
And, at least for the electronic version, I would like to see a “very regional“ local sector. Ideally, it would be written by people living there. I am sure the people connected with local networks would be happy to provide the local information.
This is the kind of newspaper I would gladly subscribe to – and I would be quite willing to pay a steep price for it. And perhaps I would even return to collecting it?
To be sure, this newspaper would also not be able to stop the downward spiral of the media printed on paper. But perhaps it could – by its marmgin existance – postpone the end of the newspapers as we know them.
RMD
(Translated by EG)
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