THE BIGGEST NEWSPAPER of them all

Participation in the program means newspaper publishers can share in the success of the spectacularly popular social network while setting aside, for the time being at least, the worry that the industry is doomed and the game is up. The papers involved – including in Thailand The Nation’s sister daily, Kom Chad Luek – can post news and feature articles on the interactive program in the knowledge that far more readers will view them than previously considered possible. The presentation is artful and the loading speed remarkable, well in excess of the pace at which the papers’ own websites call up stories.

It is this kind of technological thrust that is helping convince established newspapers like Britain’s Independent to shut down the presses altogether.

 Reader interest in the printed page has been withering since the advent of the Internet, and with it the support of advertisers. The vast majority of people now look to the Web for their daily news and the online media have obliged with feeder sites that grow quicker and more proficient by the week. In these times, the birth of a baby print newspaper, like that of New Day, just unveiled by the Daily Mirror in the UK, is strictly an anomaly.

The norm, rather, is the death of print in countries around the world, as when the Guelph Daily Mercury, one of Canada’s oldest papers, closed its presses last month. We are regularly assured, however, that when one door closes, another one opens. 

The digital era appears ready and willing to take in the “refugees”, as 

 it were. These migrants surely have talent, and the shuttering of printing presses shouldn’t render a newspaper any less dedicated to the noble goals of journalism.

That said, the new “digital-only” world, with print journalists and their more stoic readers yanked out of their comfort zone, is a whole new ball game. 

Many battles lie ahead, let alone challenges, as the rules are rewritten.

Facebook’s “Instant Articles” program is a mobile platform publishers can use as they please, with generous revenue-sharing arrangements in terms of advertising. 

Seen as Facebook’s attempt to counter Google’s lightning-fast story loads, it has spurred Google in turn to get into the news business with an app of its own. 

More than 350 publications are making use of “Instant Articles”, 10 of them in Thailand. If they do well by it, thousands more will likely join, not wishing to miss out on the social network’s instant audience of almost 1.6 billion readers.

This is a far cry from the days when newspaper publishers were loath to share any stories or pictures for free. 

Under threat of extinction, many tried to shield their income, erecting “paywalls” on their websites that limited access to most content to registered subscribers, only to realise they were haemorrhaging readership even faster. Facebook, to the consternation of many of its own users, shares everything. It’s an unusual alliance, but if it can guarantee the newspapers their due revenue as well as quality control, this is progress beyond reasonable argument. 

A newspaper’s earnings are no longer dictated by appearance, |content and distribution alone, but now demand smart use of the Internet, and especially the social networks. Good relations with newsagents on the street have become much less important than gaining the favour of the mobile masses who track current events electronically – and share it far and wide.