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Could it happen? Surely not in such a dramatic fashion, but the issue of charging for online content is suddenly at the top of the industry’s agenda, a decade after newspapers began building websites that allowed their readers to look at the day’s news for free without buying the paper. The Independence Day “big bang” is a tongue-in-cheek suggestion from John Morton, … 1 . “I think it would be a fitting day in a nation founded on the principle that a free press is essential to the functioning of government,” he said. An all-at-once move would most likely attract the attentions of the competition authorities, suspicious of collusion. But the point is that the long, slow decline in print edition circulations is now being disastrously compounded by a slump in advertising revenues. Several prominent US papers have already stopped the presses for ever, dozens more are threatened with closure or bankruptcy, … 2 . Something has to give, and soon. An increasing number of desperate industry executives have concluded that squeezing dollars directly from online readers is the only way to make up the shortfall. … 3 . Mr Morton says it will be a “wrench”, but that newspapers now are being “nibbled to death” anyway. “Most newspapers decided early on that they had to offer everything for free on the internet, but that only opened the door to aggregator websites which profit from other people’s journalism. “Although it brought in some advertising, online revenues accounted for only about eight per cent last year and they haven’t grown very robustly. One reason is that online advertising is priced cheaply, … 4 . The way the online model is now, it will never be able to support the journalism that is the lifeblood of what newspapers do.” … 5 . The New York Times Company, owner of the august Manhattan daily nicknamed the Old Gray Lady, was forced on the mercies of Mexico’s richest man, Carlos Slim, who lent it money at a 14 per cent interest rate in order to replace loans coming due this year. The company had already axed the dividend it pays its owners, including the controlling Ochs-Sulzberger dynasty, and mortgaged its headquarters for $225 million this week. “This is a true crisis, and one of the most toxic economic environments in our lifetime,” Mr Morton says. “There is serious retrenchment going on everywhere, and the next phase of this is that many of the weaker papers in two-newspaper markets will succumb, … 6 . Many will become digital-only, or fully digital except for Sundays and maybe Thursdays, but they will stop trying to be seven-day publications.” (Stephen Foley, The Independent ; adapted) 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 A having stalled at just 227,000 paid-up users. 0 E B Sceptics call it suicidal. 1 C because there is so much competition. 2 D and almost all the rest are cutting staff and scaling back their coverage. 3 E Click here to enter your credit card details. 4 F In the next years news organisations will have to make major decisions. 5 G whose Morton Research, Inc in Maryland has analysed the newspaper industry for decades. 6 H Even the biggest papers in the land are suffering. I or at least will metamorphose into something quite different. Multiple choice: Text speak in well-reputed dictionaries Read the text about modern language, then choose the correct answer (A, B, C or D) for questions 1–4. Put a cross ( ✘ ) in the correct box. The first one (0) has been done for you. ✔ 3 Tip • • Before you decide which option is the correct one, read through all the possible answers. • • Options that contain the same words as in certain text passages are likely to be wrong. T They are three letters many of us would rather forget. But while some may say the likes of “OMG” have no place in a civilised language, others beg to differ. Now the acronym looks set to stay after being immortalised 147 Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv