Our readers based in the UK will need no introduction to the Sunday Sport and Daily Sport.  For those of you from overseas, the papers are very much at the lowest common denominator end of the tabloid market. In its early days, the Sport was known for it's sensationalist headlines such as 

These days it's more focused on the type of content available on its website. 

"A newspaper is a product that is baked fresh each day...the board is encouraged by the recipe we now have is beginning to gain acceptance and credibility in the market."

Time will tell, but I wouldn't be surprised to see the trend continuing and further declines in revenue and circulation this year. 

The problems facing the traditional media are now so widespread that there is a user (or organisation) on Twitter posting regularly reporting the latest news - you can follow the updates at user name 'themediaisdying'.  From these updates today I saw that The Christian Science Monitor's plan to move to publishing on-line only will still result in it shedding 7% of its staff.  John Yemma, the editor of the Monitor explained

"Everybody in the news industry is suffering. Everybody is having to cut costs, and we're no exception. We at least feel some confidence about having made a strategic decision that moves us to a web-first form of journalism that should help us control our costs."

At Metrica, our media monitoring and media evaluation show that the claim that the 'media is dying' is an inaacurate statement, but no one can deny that it is undergoing massive upheaval and change. One area of the media that is continuing to do incredibly well is the computer games industry.  Watch as more companies look to utilise this booming sector with their marketing efforts in the future.

Last week, while at the PRSA International conference, Richard posted on the Christian Science Monitor's decision to publish online only from April 2009.  This is an exciting move within the media industry as there is an increasing amount of evidence that audiences are looking to the internet for their daily news fix.  Paul Hender will be sharing some of that data on Metrica's Measurement Matters in the next couple of days so watch this space.

From an evaluation perspective, Metrica has been helping its clients to adapt to this shift for some time now.  We have been working with them as their PR plans have incorporated online media outlets and social media.  

We would love to know your views on the subject.  Let us know what you think about the CSM's decision.  Is it the beginning of an inevitable trend which will spell the end of blackened fingers, as the good ol' fashioned paper gets phased out?  Or will the big national papers always retain a hard copy?  Does the same hold true for regional papers?  Or will declining ad revenue force the smaller regional publications to rein in costs by going online only? And will the proliferation of web technology and online interaction change the entire way which we find our news?

Sorry, this poll has closed, but you can find the results here. 

“We have the luxury — the opportunity — of making a leap that most newspapers will have to make in the next five years" explained John Yemma, the Christian Science Monitor's editor yesterday while announcing that the paper would end its daily print edition in April 2009. 

At this week's PRSA International conference, the paper was described to me as 'one of the world's best newspapers that nobody reads'.  This could be because of the unique way that it is structured - as the NY Times explains in an excellent article:

"an anomaly in journalism, a nonprofit financed by a church and delivered through the mail. But with seven Pulitzer Prizes and a reputation for thoughtful writing and strong international coverage, it long maintained an outsize influence in the publishing world."

This is the first of the media's big brands to move towards this strategy, and it should be applauded.  With the advent of the internet, blogging platforms and social media, audiences are fragmenting into smaller and smaller special interest groups, creating and consuming only the content that they want.  They want this information in real time. 

This of course is a great advantage of the online strategy.  No more do audiences waking up on the east coast of America turn to printed newspapers only to find that the match report that they wanted to read from LA missed the print deadline.  It's now there in all its glory in the online edition, report, photos, and in all likelihood some video highlights too.  And if it's not in their version of the paper, you can rest assured that one of their friends on Twitter will have told them the score and linked to the best resources for all of the details before the cornflakes are even out of the cupboard.

If your media monitoring and media analysis / evaluation is not currently covering the new electronic and social media, this is the wake up call that it's time for you to reconsider.  The media world is changing, and it's vital that we all change with it.

Finally, if you're keen to know more about Twitter please feel free to connect with me - you'll find me on the site with the username @richardbagnall. I'll look forward to meeting you there.