Media: We are seeing the beginning of the end of print
Everyone knows that sometime in the future, there will be no newspapers. It’s silly to expect anything else. Delivering news electronically over the Internet is just so, so, so much more efficient and inexpensive. It’s so much quicker. It’s so much more flexible. It’s going to happen.
But as little as a year ago, only a small percentage of people in the news business actually thought the change was imminent. It was sorta like knowing that someday, we’ll all be using flying cars and going on vacation to the the Moon.
In case there are any doubters now, this ought to confirm for disbelievers that we are seeing the beginning of the death of the printing-press business model of news delivery.
The Seattle P-I is being put up for sale, and if after 60 days it has not sold, it will either be turned into a Web-only publication with a greatly reduced staff or discontinued entirely.
“One thing is clear: at the end of the sale process, we do not see ourselves publishing in print,” said Steven Swartz, president of the Hearst Corp.’s newspaper division.
Emphasis mine.
This isn’t some weekly, community newspaper. This is a Pulitzer-Prize-winning paper in a major city. It follows a decision by the Christian Science Monitor to switch to online and print only once a week.
Last year, I offered some tough-love advice for newspapers. People laughed and scoffed. But it’s all happening, sooner than even I thought.
Change is scary.
January 9th, 2009 at 7:37 pm
@ Billy
I think you are dead on with this. Print media will soon die. I picked up an Amazon Kindle a couple of months ago and receive the NY times directly every morning. It costs a near fraction of the usual subscription. I added the WSJ as well. Would add the PJ Star if they made it available. I always enjoy your posts.
January 9th, 2009 at 8:04 pm
I would say that general interest newspapers are dead, but niche papers retain their value in the internet paradigm. more here:
http://metaprinter.com/?p=1419
January 9th, 2009 at 9:12 pm
I’d be willing to wager that the P-I will not go Web-only and will simply cease to exist. This will happen in several of the remaining two-newspaper towns in 2009. The Rocky Mountain News is likely to be first.
The top video on this page http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008609677_webpi09m.html sent chills up my spine. Given the patronizing way the Hearst president blew smoke up the newsroom’s a** in the second half of the video, he’s lucky he didn’t get about 50 shoes thrown at him.
January 10th, 2009 at 4:35 am
So now we use a mostly non-renewable resource (fossil fuel generated electricity) to replace a mostly renewable and recyclable resource (cheap pulp paper) for our shared medium of news delivery.
That seems backwards to me;)
January 10th, 2009 at 5:41 am
Trees have to be cut down, transported and made into paper, which must be trucked to newspapers. Then the presses print the papers, which must be transported to drop-off points. Then carriers and motor route drivers have to take them to individual homes. Every step takes energy, largely from fossil fuels.
January 10th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
Small businesses, particularly those that don’t enjoy having a good high-traffic location and home-based businesses have a great deal to loose when and if they loose or have already lost the services of a local area printed newspaper. Imagine only having web-based ads and needing to reach a large group of local consumers with time-sensitive offers.
I don’t believe print media is ever going away for good. Reducing staff and print frequency is about the only recourse. Many will go out of business before finding the right balance, but some will eventually find solid ground in their bottom line.
The online only “newspaper” is doomed because citizen journalists are taking more and more traffic away from those websites everyday. Good content is worth money, but only as much money as someone is willing to pay and it is getting more difficult than ever to find people willing to pay anything for content delivered online.
If you are a citizen journalist trying to make a living with your online publication, you face the same challenges that any traditional media source website faces when it comes to getting local ad dollars and most of us can’t compete for the national ad dollar. I could write and discuss this topic all day, but there are just a few of my own thoughts and opinions. Once again, great post Billy!
January 10th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
Billy may have posted this link somewhere, but just in case he he didn’t, here’s a Slate story about “how newspapers tried to invent the Web but failed”:
http://www.slate.com/id/2207912/?gt1=38001
I think it’s pretty accurate. You’ll see mention of “videotex” services in the piece. The Journal Star had such an experimental venture for a few years back in the ’80s. It was a subsidiary called Compass Systems. It had two employees and operated out of a small office at News Plaza.
January 10th, 2009 at 9:47 pm
Information wants to be free, but info providers want to be paid. This still hasn’t been settled to anybody’s satisfaction.
There are plenty of niches out there that can be exploited, but none of them will generate enough revenue to pay for things like covering the city council every week.
Only way to make money online for sure is to buy something cheap and sell it for more than it costs you to acquire it.
January 12th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
My household just made the switch from 7-days a week to Sat-Sun only.
It just made financial sense to us.
My wife mostly wants the ads on the weekend.