Media: We are seeing the beginning of the end of print
Posted in On the Media with tags media, online, Seattle on January 9, 2009 by Billy DennisEveryone 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.
