There's life in print yet

On Boxing Day, Fraser blogged on whether the iPad and other mobile devices will save British journalism. His view peered into the future, but what about the market today? Fraser points to The Times’ Christmas Day edition, the first of the paper that was available purely in electronic form. Along with Apple and News International’s iPad-only ‘Daily’ newspaper to be launched next year, this represents a landmark achievement that could signal the beginning for the future of journalism. Or it could
represent an industry collectively hurtling towards a brick wall.

Online journalism has now been with us for a decade – but, strikingly, no one has taken the issue of making money from it seriously. The technology has come on leaps and bounds but still there is no business model. This suggests that it may take far longer than anyone has anticipated to find a way to make it work commercially. Look back at how many years it took for the major titles to establish their brands, identities and markets as print papers.