Since the Times swept its website behind a paywall, its content is almost unique amongst UK newspapers in being inaccessible to the general public - only a relative handful of print and online subscribers can now read what appears therein. Clay Shirky says it is now a newsletter. Emily Bell says that it "conceivably has outlived its editorial purpose as a lever of influence." And yet we continue to list it as the UK's primary newspaper of record. I do not believe it should be any longer so regarded, and have knocked up a poll to assess the matter - click here if you'd like to vote.
"Newspaper of record" can mean two things. Formally, it means a publication defined by a government as the entity in which legal notices must be placed. However, it is more commonly used in its informal sense as "any major newspaper that has a large circulation and whose editorial and news-gathering functions are considered professional and typically authoritative." One might quibble that the newspaper is as accessible as ever. It would require a disingenuously antediluvian definition of what a "newspaper" now is to do so.
The informal sense is used as a matter of consensus - in this sense the Times is the UK's paper of record because we all agree it is. I think it time to revise that agreement. If we need a newspaper of record, it should at least be one we can all see. Again, click here if you'd like to vote. I'll post up the results in a week or so and let you know whether there's a new consensus.
I voted no, but then I haven't seen them as the newspaper of record for a while.
That said, and while I agree with the newsletter idea, the size of the audience should not necessarily dent your authority. Hansard does not rely on having a large audience. The fact that The Times is not now publicly available is relevant, but then neither was the Domesday Book.
Interesting that your choices were all print. Could not Facebook or AdWords be the "publication" of record?
Posted by: James MacAonghus | 27 November 2010 at 09:49