Alamy Discover Newspapers have no budget for pictures

"We have seen some dramatic declines with some of our newspaper customers this quarter,
ranging from 30% to 70% down year on year. I would like to share some thoughts with you
on how we can reverse this trend.

I have spent the past week visiting photo editors and managing editors at several of the
major UK titles to get a better understanding of why this is happening and where they see
their businesses going.

All of the people I met with made the following observations:

- Advertising revenues have fallen dramatically this quarter in most cases
- Print sales have been falling and will continue to do so
- Online versions of newspapers have yet to deliver a revenue stream comparable with that of print
- Most titles have been making redundancies in recent months
- Editorial budgets have been cut
- Further editorial cuts are anticipated

Newspapers are going through a painful transition period that is being exacerbated by the recession. Most of the main titles think they will survive, but it is not yet clear what the right commercial structure for them will be. The only thing that is certain is that difficult choices and further cost reductions lie ahead of them.

Alamy is the only large supplier of imagery not offering a subscription scheme to newspapers and we are being squeezed out of this market by offerings from our largest competitors.
These deals are in addition to, and separate from, newswire subscriptions. In the past we have
managed to keep away from these deals because we represent a lot of material that isn't available
anywhere else. Unfortunately the recession is forcing a change in behaviour at the picture desks
that leaves little opportunity for image providers who don't offer unlimited downloads for a fixed fee. To put this in context, our largest UK newspaper customer has ordered their picture desk to only download images from agencies they have subscription deals with."
James West Alamy CEO