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Let's talk newspapers again.

This column was inspired by articles by Edmund Lee and Nicholas Kulish, published in one of the Sunday Business editions of the New Your Times, brought to my attention by Gerry Fichtemann. (Thank you!)

The question the authors were trying to answer was who is going to save the newspapers. They offered some answers, but I was still left with some doubts.

Indeed, the newspaper world, once prestigious and prosperous, is now in a pretty deep crisis. Â鶹´«Ã½s are trying to stay above water in the world of information diarrhea, and I tell you, it's not easy for anyone. On a different scale, we all are trying to keep a foot in both worlds, catering to those fewer and fewer who prefer the print, and those drawing information from the global web. 

The New York Times is exploring the cases of big players of the newspapers world, focusing on the phenomenon of the Wall Street Journal, which unlike many, many others, is still making a lot of money, and other successful and less successful print medias purchased by billionaires. However, small community newspapers are not only going through the same storm but are indeed in the same boat, all trying to survive. 

The first part of this storm is created by the fast-changing information field. It is changing so much, that traditionally slower print media are not only having hard times to catch up, but are also to a point, lost as to which direction they should take to keep their integrity and remain interesting for the readership.

How should the printed news look in the 21st century? Should papers follow social media trends more, quickly echoing everything happening in the virtual community? Or should they mostly ignore the fast come-fast go online buzz, sticking to traditional analytics and deeper reporting?

Papers are criticized for preferring to stand aback from big movements that arise in the virtual world. As phenomenons like #metoo, the social justice movement that rocked the world in the aftermath of George Floyd's death and many others quickly spill into real life, papers already seem far behind in reporting on the trends. Even the fast-changing COVID-19 reality often seemed to be too fast for papers to stay ahead.

Serious papers are traditionally viewed as the source of the most tried-and-true news, while the online media space sometimes reminds me of a tornado. Things often change so quickly, that no print can compete with the online capacities. And while the online presence of the print media, in theory, allows for a more robust coverage, in reality for many publications the offline system of work still dominates, leaving the digital world secondary.

Another part of the storm is the monetary side of journalism. It is a business, but every year it's getting harder and harder for papers to compete with the open, free online info ocean.

According to the mentioned above Lee, many of those publications that bought into the "information wants to be free" idea, learned firsthand that it wasn't the best business strategy. Digital development forced many newspapers to give up on the subscription system and find other sources of income to rely on. If that transition didn't happen fast enough, they folded.

Some gave up on the subscription online but kept it for print. The Wall Street Journal kept the subscription system everywhere and kept making money, however, according to Lee's data, that somewhat paralyzed their development and kept them from innovating further.

Hundreds of papers are folding every year in Canada, the U.S. and elsewhere. Like in any other field there is no one right strategy.

The Mercury became free of charge nine years ago, and as time was going by we've been pushing more and more for establishing and growing our digital presence. While we've been pretty successful in this journey, I often feel that we ended up with two different readerships. They overlap a bit, but in general, it's two different cohorts of people seeking different product from their news source. We appreciate and respect both, but as we are trying to be relevant for both, which would help us stay above water, we often find ourselves trapped between the need to work online-style – jump on every little spark and publish instantly, and the traditions of the offline-format with more in-depth, long reads and wider coverage of the bigger picture. Besides, the interests of those two groups differ.

Papers are doing their best to retain existing readers, and are also striving to attract the new age and social reader groups. If we don't, then like any other business, we collapse. But unlike any other business, it won't be because of lack of demand for the product we deliver. The demand for actual and fact-based information and news is higher than ever before.

So despite the traditional market tendencies, papers close because for many it becomes almost impossible to find the new format, in which what we serve remains relevant to readers, who are used to free information, and we also stay financially profitable.

I still don't have a firm answer as to how I see the very long-term future of the papers, but one thing I know – we are in a transition stage, and what comes next will be different from anything we've seen before.