Split Future For News?

Could the future of the press industry see online and print platforms offer two distinct types of news?

Mark Skipworth from the Telegraph Media Group believes this is likely to happen as the trend grows for people to consume news via the Internet during the week in short surfing sessions at the office.

According to the executive editor for sport, this then leaves readers with the weekend papers to catch up on the background to stories and the analysis of the week’s events.

Skipworth told attendees to his guest lecture at the University of Central Lancashire that he fully expects the weekend newspapers to keep going in the future.

He said their mix of analysis, background information and exclusives enable people to “sit down and digest it” and asserted that there will “always be a market for that kind of story”.

Skipworth, a former managing editor at the Sunday Times, noted that such “volume of content will never work online”, leaving websites free to concentrate on first, fast news.

During his talk as part of the Harris Lecture series, he also suggested that the future remit for journalists working online will widen out to include recommendation articles as well as news-based content.

For more information about the talk, see the live Twitter feed provided by Journalism.co.uk.