Pakistan's news organisations, especially newspapers, need to change their business model of depending on the government of the day for their advertising revenue. This is a business model which should never have been followed to begin with. After all, which other private sector industry depends on government largesse (in the form of advertisements) as the print media does in Pakistan to make itself financially sustainable?

And the answer to that question may help explain why print, like just about everywhere else in the world, is a dying medium, being rapidly replaced by digital and social media. I worked in print media for 20 years in senior editorial positions (at Dawn, The News, and The Express Tribune), and therefore have a fair understanding of how it operates and what its business model has been. That business model is no longer sustainable; in fact, it stopped being sustainable many years ago, resulting in the closure of many newspapers or a rapid curtailment of their operations.

Some newspaper owners may want to continue with the print edition even if it is making a loss because they find value in having a nationally distributed newspaper in terms of using it to gain leverage with the government of the day, to gain favours for their other businesses, or to gain influence with the government for........

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