Oh, well thank God for the BBC to let us know that some people are now using the Internet instead of buying newspapers to find out what’s happening in the world.
American newspapers have been hit by a decline in traditional advertising as the economy has slowed and some people have turned to the internet for their news.
This insightful analysis comes in the wake of an announcement that the New York Times is set to receive a multi-billion dollar investment from Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim. Wikipedia describes him as an “entrepreneur and philantropist” and one can only suppose that this latest investment of his falls under the latter category.
Despite years of dwindling advertising revenues and circulation, ‘traditional’ media organisations like the New York Times have kept remarkably back from harnessing the revenue opportunities provided by the new web. Largely because of a reluctance to embrace the culture of open content and interaction.
As a start, I would advise Mr. Slim to get the NYT tech people to change their RSS feed settings to enable full article download within feed readers. Contrary to what the eyeball trackers in the advertising departments may think, making me click through to their site will not increase conversions, it will simply make me read my news elsewhere. The Guardian for instance. BBC would do well to consider doing the same thing.
Richard Muscat 
I don’t think “a reluctance to embrace the culture of open content and interaction” is why traditional media sources have had problems with the internet. They need to make money, obviously, without which they couldn’t bring us the news. But they haven’t found a business model that works with the internet yet. They tried making people pay to access their stories, that didn’t work, and online adds don’t equal what they’d be getting for print adds, especially 10 years ago.