Following what was quite a dramatic resignation last week by Greg Hadfield, the head of the Telegraph Media Group’s digital development group, he has now explained his reasons in a blog for rival title ‘The Guardian.’ For me, reading through this, Hadfield’s blog appears to pose far more questions than it answers. It is indeed apparent that newspapers need to adapt to survive, there is a huge discrepancy now between the level of reach that most titles generate online and the amount of readers that see the printed edition.

Hadfield’s point, to me, seems to be that we need to understand better why people choose to visit newspaper sites, and how much that has to do with the power of the content and the following that individual journalists have. There is also an interesting observation about the extremely hierarchical structure that most newspapers and old media companies have and how this sits uneasily with the developing digital structure.

I am perhaps being uncharitable here, but my feeling is that at least in part the idea of superimposing paywalls for mainstream newspapers is very much akin to trying to go back in time and recreate an environment where sales to individual users make a significant impact on the bottom line. This personally I believe to be unrealistic, and ignores the potential benefits that the newspapers aggregate content will generate.

Part of the problem for me is that online advertising is expected to be response led, and news articles and opinion simply aren’t going generate this. It’s an effort to square the circle, but restricting audiences I don’t believe is going to be the way to do it. This is an example of faulty logic, much as had led the French to suggest a tax on online advertising revenues to support traditional content generation. There is no answer yet, but in newspaper terms this is going to be a story that will run and run.

Rob, MD, One