I’ve been thinking about the future of newspapers a fair bit over the last few weeks, because we’ve been preparing a panel event on just that topic. It’s involved a range of reading and on-record and off-record conversations with a load of people involved with newspapers — readers, editors, pundits and the man on the Clapham Omnibus.

Newspapers, particularly quality papers, look screwed at first view. Only the Sun and the free-sheets did remotely well in the latest ABCs.

[ABC — the Audit Bureau of Circulation creates readership ‘charts’ for newspapers and magazines. Its sister operation ABCe’s work in the online world, but their cost means they’re only used by a minority of online publications, such as newspapers. While they provide a reliable measure of an individual site’s readership, the lack of competitor data might be perceived as a weakness. National newspapers all subscribe to the ABCe scheme, though.]

While online figures continue to soar for the quality papers, those figures are not, sadly, indicative of revenues. Internet advertising costs less than print advertising, by a long way. In other terms, a drop of 5000 on the printed publication might require a hike upwards of 500,000 readers online to make up the same amount of contribution.

And those online readers aren’t especially useful, sometimes. If you have a UK advertising campaign, then the 75% of your readers who come from outside the UK, in the case of many Nationals’ websites, are not contributing. Their ‘hits’ on those websites aren’t helping to fulfil any advertising deals — they’re simply a ‘hit’ on the paper’s resources. Most advertising agencies don’t have any international briefs, just for UK people, so when they buy a million impressions, they don’t mean any old million, they mean a million UK users.

I talk to digital professionals, and all they use is Google and RSS — they haven’t bought newspapers in years, except when they take a flight or a train ride with no wireless. They’re also the most likely people to bring up points about newspapers’ effect on the environment (short version: v.bad; but maybe not as bad as you think).

All doom and gloom, so far. But then I talk to my step-mother, and she’s not having it. She doesn’t want to read a frickin’ screen. I talk to my sister and she says the same thing. I ask my mum, and it turns out she still gets a daily delivery. Once you look outside this digital world of RSS and Google, the demand for mainstream, normal stuff is actually pretty high. I’m pretty fond of papers myself, and if I, as a digital media person and every member of my family I asked, want newspapers (as newspapers), then surely that means a future.

I like to think about the many predictions that have been made over the years about the death of cinema. Televisions, VHS videos, DVDs, wide-screen televisions and now Blu-Ray have all allegedly spelled the end of the cinema age. Yet, surprise, box-office takings were at an all-time high in 2007.

Media don’t die upon the arrival of a new alternative: they adapt and survive. The arrival of urban freesheets in the past few years is evidence of that in the newspaper space. They may not be the model that we’d necessarily hope for as journalists or news consumers, but they’re certainly evidence of innovation and adaptation. Let’s hope that examples more conducive to quality reporting also bear fruit. The appearance of ShortList this year, offering decent-quality content at a freesheet price may be one indication.

What I hope comes out of our debate on the 28th October is not a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on the future of newspapers, but some ideas about the type and extent of change and adaptation that is likely to be needed to ensure the future existence of quality journalism and, dare I say it, quality newspapers.

Do join us.