Saturday, February 13, 2016

Stop the press

Yesterday could well prove to be a hugely significant watershed for print journalism, with the Independent the first of the major papers announcing that it will be stopping producing print copies at the end of next month in response to costs and dwindling sales, and that the focus will now shift solelyt to its online operations. Media commentators appear to agree that this may well herald the end for print journalism in the UK more generally, with other rival publications likely to follow suit.

I'm not a regular purchaser of the Independent or Independent on Sunday by any stretch of the imagination, but it's still disheartening to contemplate the disappearance of one of the two left-leaning broadsheets from newsstands. Many a long return train journey back from a weekend away has been made more pleasant by a great wadge of (by-and-large) quality writing and articles to sift through.

Nevertheless, the website will live on, and will apparently undergo something of a welcome makeover, adopting some of the seriousness of the print edition while (presumably) jettisoning the short snippets whose headlines scream "CHEAP LAZY CLICKBAIT".

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