Why you can't have your cake and eat it too

We pay for a lot of things in the world. Almost everything in fact. What was the last thing you got for free? I’ve spent five minutes trying to think of the last thing I got for free and all I've come up with is a piece of cake my housemate gave me last week – and to be fair, that's more of a customer loyalty gift as my rent is paying his mortgage!

I can log onto a news website and read stories. That is free, as long as I have a computer and an internet connection. But not probably for long. Three of News International’s publications have already disappeared behind a pay wall – The Times, News of The World and The Sunday Times. The only one still available for free is The Sun, but by the end of this year that too will be a pay-for service.

When News Corp’s boss Rupert Murdoch installed a pay wall on The Times’ website, it cost them 66 per cent of their readers - a dramatic decline, but not as steep as many had forecast. The site had been expected to lose 90% of its traffic. There is something stopping me paying for news online. I am happy to buy a newspaper because I have something tangible to show for it. I can get annoyed at the newsprint in leaves on my fingers and I can feel guilty at the end of the day when I realise I haven’t had a chance to read anything other than client-related stories and the front page. Having worked on a weekly newspaper myself, I also know the amount of work it takes to produce the finished product.

But I don’t like paying for something and having nothing to show for it. So I will continue to buy newspapers, but I won’t pay for the same thing online. I’m not saying I will never pay for online content, but for now I’m not convinced.

When it comes to PR there is nothing like presenting a client with a newspaper clipping – it’s seen as the pinnacle. But why? Maybe it’s the newspaper print. Maybe it’s holding something solid, something that won’t change or disappear. Sure, a new edition will be out tomorrow, but you can keep that old one forever. There is a certain charm and traditionalism about newspapers that people just don’t seem ready to let go of. Will paid-for online content hold that same charm for our Grandchildren? I can’t imagine a world without newspapers, but I guess we will have to wait and see.

But if I want the freshest news from around the world, I’m going to have to face the fact the online news has become a product like a newspaper, in the sense that I will have to pay for it. A newspaper only gets updated daily – at best. I want to read a newspaper, but I want it to be the freshest news. I’ve got a classic case of having cake and wanting to eat it too – but what’s the point of having cake if you can’t eat it?

To check-in or not to check-in?

I 'checked-in' for the first time on Friday night.

People check-in all the time, I know it's not a new thing, but I am one of those people who are avidly against telling the world where I am and who I am with at any set point in time.

I don't know why I'm against it, I don't have any stalker ex-boyfriends who might be trying to hunt me down or anything exciting like that, I just think our lives are already public enough.

I had my friend's iPhone out while we were at a restaurant in Angel, and I checked-in to the Italian restaurant we were at, tagging all the people I was with.

When I arrived home some hours later, all my belongings were still where I left them. Laptop – check. Jewellery – check. Stash of cash kept under my mattress – I wish. Right, so no one had used the knowledge of my being out drinking cocktails and eating pasta to break into my house either. It looks like this check-in thing isn’t such a big deal after all.

But I’m still not a convert. If I start checking in to everywhere I go, what will happen when I want to have a lazy Friday night on the couch? Do I check in to my couch and face the uproar from friends whose invites I have kindly turned down in favour of a much needed night in. Or do I not check in at all and face the “Where are you?” queries from all my followers (Who are watching my every move, right?) So now there’s social pressure to attend the best events in town. Or maybe, people – shock horror - actually just don’t care where I am, who I’m with and what I’m doing. In which case, I won’t take up space in their news feeds by telling them when I’m at the gym, the supermarket, or when I’m on my couch.

A friend of mine has admitted to ‘selective’ check-ins. “I always check-in when I’m at the gym so people can see I’m being really good. But I don’t check-in to Ben and Jerry’s. Ever.” So now we’re life censoring, displaying the best and hiding the worst, making me feel guiltier about my night on the couch while gym bunny over here is slogging it out at the gym – for the sixth time this week.

Not many PR campaigns have tapped into location-based tools yet, but the fact that smart phones are quickly taking over means it’s only a matter of time before there’s a ‘check-in’ element to every event. Before long it will probably be standard.

So is checking-in dangerous? Or is it simply TMI in the social media-frenzied world we live in? Or is it the way forward? In which case ... now, how exactly do I check-in?