So, What is Killing Newspapers?

Stewart Kirkpatrick: After years of careful investigation, I now know what is killing newspapers.

It isn't the credit crunch. It isn't the ad slump. It isn't the internet. No, newspapers are being killed by the Christmas box.

For those of you who are not familiar with this fiendish instrument of torture, the Christmas box is a collection of stories collected in late November for use during the long watches of Yule when there's not much news about. It's a device to stop the news (or sport or features) desk getting their chestnuts roasted on an open fire for not having enough material on the quiet days of the festive season.

And therein lies the bonkers rub.

The philosophy of the Christmas box underpins everything that's wrong with newspapers. Hacks waste their time trying to fill the paper at a time when there/'s nothing interesting to say and nobody in their right mind wants to buy the damn thing.

This highlights how newspapers have lost their way. At some point, they stopped writing what was interesting and instead started filling space between adverts. To fill that space, they started using agency copy that their competitors used as well. News sense got replaced by the uncreative auditing of “make sure we haven't missed anything”. In short, newspapers ceased to be unique and became commoditised products.

So it is that we have a situation where all papers are basically the same, filled with the same low value copy, churned out by demoralised staff in increasingly empty newsrooms. In a last-gasp bid for originality, they will hysterically flam up weak stories in the hope they can be passed off as important.

And for some reason, the readers do not feel compelled to buy this stuff any more.

Call me a 'pinko, commie, fag subversive', but making the product even worse by cutting editorial costs isn't going to rectify the situation.

But there are a number of costs that could easily be shed so that real journalism can be properly funded in these straitened times. I'm thinking here of the useless mouths that inhabit the boardrooms, editorial offices, finance departments and advertising suites

Friends, the future of journalism does not belong to finance directors, ad executives and assistant editors (parentheses). These roles can be outsourced or simply dispensed with altogether (what the hell is the difference between a news editor and an assistant editor (news) anyway?).

I believe that the future of journalism does not lie with newspaper companies but with journalists.

The time is right for journalists to come together in collaborative networks to focus on writing about what they know best, when there is something worthy to write about. They will share costs, rely on outsourced services and use the power of the internet to spread stories, connect with readers and - crucially - make money. If they're smart, they'll continue to use print but in a more inventive, targeted way.

Of course, all this is easy to say. But in the next few months I'll be putting my money where my mouth is and setting up a venture to prove just this concept.

Watch this space.

Stewart Kirkpatrick is a former editor of scotsman.com and content marketing director of w00tonomy.com