For the second day running, the newsagent at Hertford North train station hasn’t opened, meaning no Guardian and no FT to read on my way to work. With no book packed and a very limited mobile phone signal, I’ve had little choice but to read Metro. I am poorer for this experience.
The deliberately mediocre, appeal-to-all, Metro is no substitute for a paid-for newspaper. Neither is the free-to-all BBC. With a few exceptions, the brilliant World Tonight on Radio 4 for example, BBC News, certainly the flagship television news programmes, lacks depth and originality. It’s because it’s so bland that, unlike my colleague Stephen Waddington, I don’t think we should be worried about the BBC distorting the shape of media industry. The US media industry over the past twelve months has proved itself very capable of folding without the intervention of a state-funded news organisation.
News with analysis and opinion is a product worth paying for, whether in print or online. The big change for the newspaper industry will, I believe, come when Apple launches its tablet computer (heavily rumoured). I’m not an early adopter of technology but I’ll be among the first to buy this. And no longer will I have to put up with my newsagent mysteriously shutting up shop.
