'Newspaper prospects in free fall,’ says Guardian editor

(Wordpress)

The ongoing crisis in the newspaper industry has led to many editors predicting that newspapers may be likely be free in the future.

According to the outgoing head of editorial development of the The Guardian, Neil McIntosh, newspapers will probably move to a free model to compete with the world's biggest repository of mostly-free information, the Internet.

Speaking at to students at the University of Westminster yesterday, McIntosh responded to queries about the prospect of the despondent messages associated with the future of newspapers.

"It is a grim time of journalism at the moment,” he said.

“Newspapers have been affected terribly as the UK market is one of the most competitive markets in the world.”

He highlighted the severe decline of both regional and national newspapers, claiming that The Independent in particular, has been “hit hard.”

Circulation of the relaunched Independent fell a further 16 per cent this year, according to official figures released by ABC. It was down 16.29 per cent to 201,019, lowest of any major national British daily newspaper.

McIntosh also stressed that print newspapers have to recognize that online plays a “major role” in how the public consume news today.

“Newspaper organizations shouldn’t insist that innovations need to be revolutions, “ he says.

“Sometimes, the change comes in small steps, so only time will tell if print newspapers will survive.”