TAKEAWAY: In a recent interview, The New York Times’ Jill Abramson says that she predicts the Times will still be publishing in print 20 years from now. Is she too optimistic?
All the news that’s fit to print, and for decades to come.
That’s a summary of the recent announcement from New York Times executive editor, Jill Abramson, about the future of the world’s newspaper.
Reassuring, indeed.
Abramson does not deal with specifics, except to say that she envisions The Times publishing a print edition “let’s say, 20 years”. She went on to expand on the subject:
“I think that in terms of the future — the next, let’s say, 20 years — I think that we’re going to be publishing digitally, and I think there still is going to be an audience for the print paper. I really do. We have over 800,000 home-delivery subscribers, who have taken the paper for two years or more. It’s a very loyal base of readers. The newspaper is profitable still. And that doesn’t mean that I don’t recognize the reality that our much bigger audience is a digital audience, and that is the audience where our future growth will come from, for sure. But I do think, at least, definitely, for the rest of my career, I’m going to be paying lots of attentions to both digital platforms and the print newspapers.”
Abramson was quick to add that “actually, I am a multiplatform reader. It depends on where and when I am, but I still get immense pleasure out of reading the print newspaper.”
I, too, enjoy a printed newspaper, as do millions of others around the globe, most likely among the 50+ age group.
Will the Times be printed 20 years from now? I hope so, but I think it will, like other newspapers, NOT print Monday through Friday, giving way to a robust weekend edition, which the Times has already had for years. One of my favorite Sunday morning treats is to sit down with the voluminous Times, with the many sections, supplements, and advertising inserts flying out of the bundle as you open your newspaper.
In my view, once one of the major metropolitan dailies discontinues its daily print editions, that will open the gates for other newspapers to follow suit.
Honestly, I believe that Ms. Abramson’s forecast of 20 more years of the Times as a printed edition may be a bit too generous, although I hope she is right. I can envision dramatic changes in frequency of print for the Times and other large metropolitan newspapers in the US and Europe in about five years, and definitely within the next 10.
Time, and those ever increasing multi platform news consumers, will tell.
A lecture about change
For those interested in listening to the lecture I gave last week to welcome journalism students back at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, here is a link:
Embracing and Promoting Change
http://new.livestream.com/cujs/designyourstory