Pressing matters

As director of the Newspaper Society one would expect John Mclellan to try to be positive about print-based media (19 September). However choosing the Oldham Evening Chronicle as a demonstration of there still being an appetite for print media shows how the gastric band of the internet is tightening.

With publication going from daily to weekly and employment going from 49 to 4 it is questionable if there is a real future for this publication.

As the publishing director of a newstrade magazine company in the first decade of this century I watched as the internet changed the publishing industry.

On the positive side, broadband allowed me to supervise the production of the magazines from Wester Ross and communicate with staff and contributors around the world. On publication day I could follow point of sale data online. On the negative side it soon became clear the internet was going to dramatically changethemagazineindustry.

Why wait up to six weeks for deliverytoshopsinothercountries when an online version is available around the world on publication day? By the end of that decade our online profit centres were passing the profit from print based sales with their higher production costs.

The internet is revolutionising society. It is opening new sources like social media. Tablets and smartphones are nowreceiversofdatainstantly. Not just the newspapers and magazines but TV is going to change as broadband transmission replaces terrestrial aerials and the almost infinite nature of the internet data streams replace the fixed schedules of existing TV.

The Newspaper Society needs to rethink its purpose since the industry is changing as new methods of information publishing appear.

BRUCE D SKIVINGTON Strath , Gairloch , Wester Ross