The future of the digital newsroom has already begun. Newspapers are becoming less popular as more people start to use the internet as their main source of information. Newspaper companies are facing a losing battle against the internet for a number of reasons.

Most information on the internet can be found for free online. Secondly the news can be put on the internet as and when it happens, instead of waiting for the next batch of papers to be printed and distributed, usually the following day.

Another key factor that benefits the online newsroom against a newspaper is cost. Not only printing cost but the price of advertising as well. By visiting http://www.marketingminefield.co.uk/print-advertising-costs/ we can see the full extent of the advantage in cost that advertising online has. For a quarter page advert in your local newspaper you will pay around £250, for a full page colour advert in a national newspaper you could pay in excess of £30,000! Compare this to the internet, where a quick google search brings up advertising packages run by BT that cost only £70 a month!

So as more people use the internet as a free source of breaking news stories, the internet becomes a larger market to advertise to, and it costs less to advertise! This means less people will pay newspapers advertising costs, meaning the newspapers lose money from people not buying their papers and also from people not advertising in their papers. Nobody is saying that newspapers will become obsolete instantly, but there are a lot of signs which point towards a time when they are no longer needed.