新闻集团免费晚报《伦敦报》将停刊

音频下载[点击右键另存为]
Veera Prasad is a student in London, whose part-time job is handing out free evening papers to passers-by.

The same location from last one year.

It helps pay the bills.

I spend my expenses, monthly expenses from this job.

But soon he'll have to look elsewhere for work.

Tomorrow is the bad day in my life. Tomorrow I lose my job. So I'm searching the new job. It's very difficult. At present, this moment, there's no job.

Prasad is employed by thelondonpaper. But the paper's owner, News International, a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's empire, is putting an end to it.

Now this is News International's free evening paper. It's been in circulation for about three years. But as of this weekend, it will be no more. Now it might seem like it’s just a local paper. But what happens to it is indicative of the company's broader strategy.

The company launched London Paper in 2006 to compete with another fact sheet. But it lost 21 million dollars last year. Now News International is changing tack, as it looks for ways to increase revenue, which includes a plan to charge for online services that were formerly free. 

It's consistent with what Rupert Murdoch was saying earlier this year about looking for value in news again. In other words, looking to do a U-turn on the free online newspaper and charging consumers for access to internet news services.

Free newspapers are funded by advertising. And given the economic climate, that's a volatile business.

It's very difficult with the free model where really an essence’s your only income is your advertising, stock marketing type income, because clearly consumers themselves are not paying or purchasing the paper, so pretty sure under severe pressure.

As Prasad nears the end of his shift, thelondonpaper inches closer to the end of its term. Free sheets like this may not become completely obsolete, but Murdoch’s plan’s underlined a changing strategy where the paying for news content is the future.

Leone Lakhani, cnn, London.

Vocabulary:

1.       fact sheet: a piece of paper giving all the most important information about something

2.       change tack: 改变方法或策略