TAKEAWAY: Why is it that everytime I read one of these gloom and doom reports about the “end of print”, I simply shake my head, think of all the “print” products that we are involved with and say to myself: who is right here?
Of course, print faces challenges, and I am not talking just about newspapers. Magazines, books, anything that is based on the contact of ink and paper is subject to reconsiderations. Internet and digital publishing make constant progress, the technology gets better and easier to use, and nobody refutes the fact that the march of everything digital is NOT going to stop. Quite the contrary.
The latest of the “gloom and doom” reports comes via Alan Canea columnist in the Financial Times (www.ft.com/digitalbusiness).
In a nutshell: Cane reports that :
A report commissioned by the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers in the UK argues that after a period in which it has been uncertain whether pixels would ever replace print, the tipping point has been reached: “Now it is clear that the threat is real,” it concludes, producing as evidence figures showing a significant reduction in demand for paper in the US and Europe.
Unlike other such reports, this one gives us a specific date, 2020, when “digital media look set to replace a significant volume of paper and print as well as reshaping the patterns of demand for that which remains,” it says.
Richard Harris, author of the report, says that newspapers will be most affected by the changes, although he argues: “In my view the problem is advertising, not editorial. It will be very hard to recoup advertising revenues that have been lost. You cannot bury your head in the sand and say ‘This is just short term. It will all come back after the recession is over’. It’s not going to be like that.”
Enough about this report.
I would argue that the problem is NOT just advertising, but also very much editorial. I also believe that most newspapers and magazines will rethink themselves and will survive—-perhaps in formats, styles and content strategies that are quite different from what they have done traditionally. Those eager to survive will combine advertising/marketing/editorial strategies as integral elements for reorganization.
Content will be the key: more local, more analytical, and presented through the various platforms, print being ONE of them, albeit not the most important one.
What the author of the report quoted above does not mention is that newspapers around the world are taking the most introspective look at themselves ever.
This time around, in my experience, the introspection is deep, serious, genuine, and those involved in it see themselves as agents of change.
I am personally involved in half a dozen projects right now. I see this type of optimistic rethinking first hand. While the publishers I am working with embrace the strength and reality of digital publishing, they are also looking at the new role of print.
We have seen it clearly in the relaunch of Handelsblatt in Germany this week. I am not in liberty to reveal the names of about FIVE other companies in key cities of the world, doing the same.
I don’t buy these pessimistic reports. I agree that the times are difficult and present challenges, but not to the extreme of an end to most print products by 2020. Not at all. I sit in the executive rooms of many media houses worldwide. The talk there is of rethinking and regrouping, as it should be, not of packing the printing presses and discontinuing print operations.
My friend and colleague Al Trivino, of News Corp International, writes me enthusiastically about the changes coming up in The Australian, with which he has participated. “This is going to be an interesting change, as we have maintained some of the typographic elements, etc that they have kept over the years, but the editors see it as the most major design change of the past 20 years. This will be the start of changes for which I have great expectations.”
New Zealand Newspapers Gain In Metropolitan Markets
According to MediaTrends Digest
New Zealand Herald readership up by 3,000 (394,000)in Auckland City, Waikato Times up by 8,000 (104,000), Dominion Post up by 5,000 (145,000) in Wellington city, The Press up by 7,000 (223,000), Sunday Star Times up by 6,000 (570,000) & Herald on Sunday up by 13,000 (380,000)
TheMarioBlog post # 414