“Most exciting time to be a journalist”, says outgoing Guardian editor

There has been an increasing number of debates concerning the future of newspapers, the future of TV, the future of radio and the future of journalism itself, in the face of drastic change brought by technology and the Internet, but Ian McIntosh, out going editor of the Guardian Unlimited, predicts a bright future for journalism.

The high number of titles fighting in an increasingly competitive market as well as the credit crunch have caused newspapers sales to plunge. The picture appears particularly grim for some regionals. Mr. McIntosh reveals, “ It’s a tough time all around, but regionals are being hardest hit at the moment”.In particular titles such as the Scotsman and Herald are most likely to go down.

Recent year on year figures add some grist to the mill of the pessimists showing a 2.6 per cent decline in over all daily circulation in 2005 compared to the previous year, and a 3.7 per cent decline in Sunday circulation.

What is left out from this picture are the undersung advantages the internet brings to the journalism world.Making worldwide journalism more accessible, bloggers and online freethinkers provide a more rigid fact- checking and thanks to the collaboration between pro and amateur journalists more voices can be part of the conversation. ”The Guardian has never been more read”, says Mr. Mcintosh, with 25 million website visitors weekly.

So what is actually presented to us, is a new era where online and print journalism are no longer rivals, but partners in creating a new and diverse kind of journalism which is not by any means less trustworthy or groundbreaking than the "old one".

Daily Mail Website analysis

The Daily Mail is Uk's second biggest selling newspaper with a readership of 5.5 million of which over 66 percent is ABC1, hence quite attractive to advertisers. Over the years the Mail has established itself as a rabidly conservative newspaper targeted notably to women hence gaining the reputation of a newspaper for ‘Stepford wives’*, as said by British newspapers online. Articles tend to be written in one of two tones, either immoderate praise of the lifestyles of middle-class role models, or (more usually) moral outrage at the ever-increasing wickedness and instability of the modern world. Despite its keen traditionalistic views and disregard towards modernity the Daily Mail has managed to create a web site which is interactive as well as user-friendly and graphically interesting.

Opening the Mail online three items are immediately brought forward: obviously the front page issue which is updated regularly during the day, next to it a show-biz/ celeb slideshow and a sidebar entitled "Femail Today" focusing specifically on issues concerning women, which reveals to be a quite successful strategy, particularly online where, presently, women represent a bigger traffic than men. The reader comments facility, on every article, allows editor in chief Paul Dacre and his colleagues to monitor feedback on stories. The articles in the Mail, due to their provocative angle, tend to foster the readers’ sensibility regarding the issue in the article making this facility extremely relevant to readers and their interaction with the website*stories have up to 300 comments*.

The website tries to target a broader audience than the newspaper by adding or deepening feature sections, such as the sport one. Ultimately it gives a sense of intimacy with the You Mag section, where the readers and their lives are the main topics, as well as the possibility to customize the site by choosing your own 50 top stories. Over all the Mail online is a competitive website which caters very well for its audience and although its traffic is not as much as substantial as other newspaper websites, such as The Guardian online, it significantly overtakes most of the competitors economically speaking due to the impressive handling of the online advertisement.

*Fun fact: British newspapers online have carried that description of the Daily Mail ever since the site first appeared on the Web in 2002. On 4 May 2007 the Mail’s “Femail” section for women carried an article under this headline: “I became a Stepford wife and saved my marriage”. You couldn’t make it up. Let’s face it, with the Mail you don’t have to.