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NEWS > BUSINESS > RIOTS IN THAILAND USING UP TOO MUCH NEWSPRINT
RIOTS IN THAILAND USING UP TOO MUCH NEWSPRINT
May 18 2010
Bangkok, Thailand – In recent years there has been massive outrage, debate, and criminal prosecutions over file sharing. With one side arguing copyright violations and the other arguing fair use, the moral and ethical compass has been spinning wildly. Of
course this isn’t the first major debate between content producers and users. The first major rights management issue came with the invention of the printing press which took the job of transcribing text away from the monks who had done it for centuries and automated the process. Of course the printing press changed human culture forever and the protests from those monks now seem quaint.
It wasn’t until the twentieth century however that the printing press really came into its own. The production of newspapers on a massive scale brought information, both domestic and international, to the masses. Information that only a few years before might have been passed by word of mouth or gone completely unreported was all of a sudden in the hands of ordinary people. Now of course that medium is in decline with web reporting consuming most of the readers. That has forced publishers to make deep cuts, firing staff and culling content in order to remain competitive, something particularly difficult when wholly uninteresting events like the rioting in Thailand start to consume the headlines.
“Look, the reality is we would love to report on every news story that comes along but we have to make choices. Sometimes we make those choices based on politics, sometimes on economics, and sometimes just on space considerations. That has become more and more of a reality in the current climate and isn’t likely to change anytime soon,” said a New York-based editor who preferred to remain anonymous. “It isn’t just the personnel, it’s the paper and ink that we have to be aware of. There’s also the challenge with advertisers who prefer to be associated with certain types of stories. The problems in Thailand are news, they just aren’t marketable.”
The conflict in the country, between ‘Red Shirts’ and government forces, has escalated in recent days with scores of people now dead.
“We want to report on these stories but we can’t justify it for very long. The readers
want those stories but that doesn’t mean that we have to deliver it to them. Ultimately we need to make decisions that work for both our readers and for our bottom line, something that is really a hard line to walk, particularly over the last couple of years,” continued the editor. “All we can hope for is that the conflict won’t last for very long. If this thing drags on for weeks we are going to have to make some very hard decisions and upset more than a few people but the reality is we simply don’t have the space to dedicate to something so foreign and unmarketable. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that this thing ends quickly.”
Most experts, including those from the United Nations, fear that the violence in the nation could spiral out of control. The country was also beset by political protests early last year.
“On the web all you need to pay for is bandwidth. One story consumes little to 
nothing and if it does somehow eat up a ton of bandwidth it makes more money. In a newspaper you have a set amount of space and you have to fit everything into that area. You don’t have the option of just creating a new link,” said Scrape TV Business analyst Ken Green. “That means that certain stories simply aren’t going to be covered, unless of course they start using really tiny print. That’s really the only way they are going to be able to have success in the future. They need to make some hard decisions if they want to stay relevant.”
Reports of a proposed ceasefire in the country have thus far brought no calm to the streets of Bangkok.
William Ashford, Business Correspondent
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