The fusty old Daily Telegraph is changing beyond recognition - with the latest developments being the launch of Click&Carry and a deal with ITN.
Last night it launched its new Click&Carry service - a print out of a selection of stories from the next day's paper plus TV listings and puzzles. The move follows the launch of The Guardian's G24 - a similar service which office workers can print out and takeaway.
It is an interesting reversion of format: with newspapers moving from print to web, this is a move back to paper.
Telegraph pm (as Click&Carry is known) is certainly a more attractive print out than the Guardian offering in the traditional sense. However, it is only available once a day - at 4pm. G24 is updated every 15 minutes throughout the day, is available in a variety of options (Top stories, world, business, sport, media) and is fully automated in its production. As the number of Telegraph subs is whittled down in the move to Victoria, those that are left will find themselves producing yet more and more versions of the same stories (for the web, for Click&Carry, for the daily paper, and finally the Sunday paper). Will this produce more efficient and better publications or just very tired production staff, sick to death of the sight of the same story reformatted yet again.
Will Lewis, the business editor catapulted into the managing director in charge of the Telegraph's future, is exceptionally proud of Click&Carry. But is it worth the effort? The biggest newspaper pdf in the world is El Pais' which is downloaded (and read?) by 20,000 users per day. To put this in context, this is smaller than any single Guardian blog's readership or about a fifitieth of the Telegraph's old style print circulation.
And what about the readers? Most of Britain's major urban conurbations already have evening papers and freesheets to occupy them during train travel. If you are getting in the car why bother with a print out when you can read or watch a real paper or a website or a telly or even, God bless it, teletext when you reach home. In the car you have the radio.
But in the multimedia future that the Telegraph feels it must catch up with within the next fortnight, the ITN deal may have more long-term ramifications. While the announcement held out the prospect of TV programmes being made by ITN featuring Telegraph journalists (and Jeff Randall certainly sees himself as the man to take serious business to the masses), more importantly ITN will produce content for the Telegraph website. This may be a step up from the much-trumpeted (but relatively limited) Times TV which is Reuters footage running on the Times website. Or it might just be a matter of branding: Telegraph TV.
It certainly brings the truly multimedia future ever closer. But the most confusing element of this is what Daily Mail executives must think. Daily Mail & General Trust owns 20% of ITN and yet it is not taking this service itself? Sure it will be a new revenue stream for a DMGT investment, but surely it is help a competitor. Why would the Mail not like to run own-branded ITN footage on its own website?
A decade ago the Mail was ahead of the curve on the TV production front with London cable service Channel One. Unfortunately it was ahead of its time and was abandoned. Maybe they wish they still had it now.
While Lewis may be giving the Barclay Brothers a veneer of the visionary about them, the ITN deal is proof that the sort of investment in a TV production team of their own would be too costly. It is sensible too, given that TV production is a whole new skill. Indeed, there must be questions about whether the level of multi-skilling that the Telegraph already says it wants (newspaper, website, podcasts) will stretch the resources and talents of Telegraph journalists too far. It is rather reminiscent of the BBC drive to multi-skilling about a decade ago under John Birt. it was eventually abandoned because it meant that journalists spent too much time thinking about production and too little dealing with the actual stories.
