The Business of News in the Age of the Internet

That the Internet has changed the way news is gathered, processed and delivered can no longer be denied. But a question that is increasingly posed is whether news as business is fundamentally threatened as a result, or, as some argue, if print and traditional television as means to deliver news are in a state of terminal decline. Across the world, with some exceptions like India, the steep fall in circulation figures and advertising revenues for print journalism has supported the latter surmise. The decision of Newsweek magazine to stop publishing its print edition after nearly eighty years and to go only digital on a subscription platform as of this year seems to confirm this assessment. The words, after the closure, from Tina Brown, editor-inchief of Newsweek and the online only The Daily Beast, were also a form of corroboration. ‘When I returned to print with Newsweek, it did very quickly begin to feel to me an outmoded medium. While I still had a great romance for it, nonetheless I feel this is not the right medium any more to produce journalism,’ Brown reportedly said. Clearly, the digital revolution\ is fundamentally transforming news as business. So much so that while the old model is breaking down, there is no clear alternative in sight.