The future may be online, but many will slip through the net...

The future may be online, but many will slip through the net
as circulations plummet, digital seems the only future for newspapers. but supposed 'trends' create a very confused picture there's an awful doubt beginning to infect the media scene as autumn comes. it takes the most commonplace assumption of newspaper life and hangs a great question mark on it. we're constantly told that newspapers as we know them are in a period of transition, moving to become purely digital papers on the web, on tablets, on mobiles, on gadgets as yet uninvented. there is light at the end of a long tunnel of uncertainty, a vital transition. yet suppose, just suppose, that there's not.

readers who read the online runes will recognise some of the doubts involved here: advertisements priced much cheaper than print, because cyberspace is infinite and therefore infinitely available; paywalls that raise useful sums that aren't quite useful enough; tablet efforts such as rupert murdoch's the daily, that begin in a blaze of publicity then disappear behind a veil of silence; phone applications that seem hugely promising until you try charging a regular rate for them.

none of this means there isn't good money to be made on the net. some specialist sheets and smooth operators are doing that already. but your average, all-purpose paper on a standard path to survival? forget it.