Web 'no cure' for problems of papers

NEWSPAPERS' ATTEMPTS to "ape" broadcast media on their websites have been "puny, laughable and idiotic", Gerry O'Regan, editor of the Irish Independent, told an audience in the National Gallery in Dublin last night.

O'Regan was part of a panel, including Irish Timesassistant editor Fintan O'Toole and Guardiancolumnist Roy Greenslade, which discussed the theme "Will Newspapers Survive?"

The phenomenon of online publishing had crept in by stealth and newspapers should not fall into the trap of believing the internet was the solution to declining newspaper sales, O'Regan said.

Much of what was published online was "endless recycled middle of the road dross", not news, he said. "Stuff is getting on the web and on newspaper websites which wouldn't get two paragraphs in print."

Newspapers are in the process of dying, Greenslade said. Their decline had started long before the advent of the internet, which had accelerated that decline. However, he added that no newspaper had yet made money from its website.

The answer to whether newspapers would survive was dependent on the degree of confidence newspapers had in themselves, O'Toole said. So far the response of newspapers to the internet had been a complete loss of confidence, resulting in a decision to cut costs and fill the gaps with "trash, celebrity gossip and advertorial. "If we continue along those lines we will make ourselves entirely redundant, and deservedly so."