A new report by researcher Claire Enders says that 200,000 media jobs will go by 2013, half the current total.
The main victims will be staff, particularly sales people, on newspapers and magazines, many of which will cease to exist.
This is rather sad even for those of us who occupy the modish medium of the internet. But, of course, it’s the internet that’s partly to blame as newspapers and magazines fill it with free content but are unable to charge the rates they did for print ads.
Rupert Murdoch has been saying for years that the London newspaper market will come down to just a couple of companies, one being his very own News international of course. The other one, presumably, is Daily Mail publisher Associated Newspapers.
This would be hotly contested at Telegraph towers and also at the Guardian but it’s possible one supposes. It’s certainly possible to envisage a future in which the Telegraph titles and the Guardian and Observer are web titles.
Which makes it doubly intriguing that the two Independent titles are to lodge with Associated.
Associated is not represented at the top end of the market whereas Murdoch is with The Times and the Sunday Times (The Times loses a fortune, the Sunday Times makes some of it back).
Are Associated owner Lord Rothermere and editor in chief Paul Dacre tempted to try to land another one on Rupert, as they have succeeded in doing with London Lite which they pitched against his freebie the london paper (sic), itself aimed at Associated’s paid-for Evening Standard?
Independent boss Ivan Fallon, once editor of the Sunday Times Business News, says that the savings they will make in Kensington (there’s a thing, saving money by moving to Kensington) will secure the Independent’s future.
Well maybe it will. But what if the papers ever decide they want or need to move out?
Looks like Associated is in the driving seat here. Fallon and his ultimate boss Tony O’Reilly might consider doing a deal now while the Indy titles are still believed, erroneously alas, to be worth something.
[Image Attribution: Brij]