Newstalgia: an aching for things in print

Our household has taken the rather bold move to cancel the tablet subscription to a national Sunday newspaper and return to reading the printed version.  This move is unlikely to affect the NRS PADD newspaper readership trends.  Nevertheless, the print newspaper move was an important one for us and had to be done to avoid stopping reading newspapers altogether.

Our original move to digital reading late last year seemed an obvious one.  We would have the luxury of reading the latest edition without having to leave the bed, let alone go down to the front door or to the local newsagent.  There was also the appeal of guaranteeing that there would be no missing sections or supplements, as well as it having a marginally cheaper cover price.

It took a little bit to get used to navigating around the app, and it was still a slightly unnerving experience not having a sense of the tangible totality of what we were reading.  But I liked it and I liked the visually engaging tablet experience.  But something was just not right.

The reason for our move back to print was not necessarily a nostalgic one, although the literal translation is an ‘aching for things past’.  What was missing was the social experience of reading the Sunday paper, with the sections and supplements spread on the coffee table, together as a couple or a family.  There are parallels here with the family experience afforded by the television set and the radio.  On average, an individual copy of a Sunday newspaper will have 3 readers.

Back in 2011, Ipsos MediaCT conducted some qualitative research on ‘tomorrow’s readers’ and the relationship people have with print newspapers and magazines.  The values such as comfort, convenience and sharing came through strongly among the respondents, as well as screen-escapism: being an antidote to our omnipresent on-screen exposure.  These barriers are slowly lifting as more and more of us have embraced, or at least experienced, tablets and Smartphones.  The latest Ipsos MediaCT Technology Tracker has over half the population with Smartphones.  Furthermore, we know from NRS that 28% of GB adults have accessed newspaper and magazine content digitally in the last month.

Maybe it is just the Carroll household that it is regressing.   This current push and pull between the analogue and digital worlds is affecting all our behaviours, not just those of media brands and advertisers.  Different approaches are essential to facilitate change and we have seen some digital media successes, but there is still something to be said for having a linear schedule of news.  Newstalgia has entered our language as something new that harks back to something old.  Humans are analogue by nature and maybe that is why we ache for things past, and why newspapers (and all media) need to retain their sociability across old and new platforms in order to survive. 

John Carroll is a Senior Director in Ipsos MediaCT (@MediaCarroll)