The Future of Print: Is Print Dead?

420878465_b8f22ca247.jpgI’ve already written a bit about electronic books and the notion of a paperless world, but Todd Shultz got me thinking about the topic again in a different light.

If you haven’t noticed already, all mediums are starting to shift towards the internet. People are actually spending more time on the internet than watching TV. (I know I do) The internet is too great a location for advertisers to ignore. I am inclined to believe that print media will suffer a lot in the coming years. Who needs a newspaper when you can go on to CNN.com? Perezhilton.com has all of the tabloid lovers. Anything you can find on the newstands, you can probably find on a blog or a website.

This is pretty much impossible to dispute. Circulation on magazines is way down and book sales have been mostly flat. I guess it makes sense, then, that the question everyone is asking is this: is print dead?

The Difference Between Death and Irrelevance

Erin and I have had lots of conversation about this topic (we both tend to side with the “yes, dying or dead” camp, for what it’s worth) but lately I’ve been thinking about the idea of print as an industry in a whole new light. The battle lines have been drawn as print-versus-technology but that’s not really apt, when you get right down to it. Because consumers aren’t buying the material — the paper, the ink, the glass, the microchips, the whatever — they’re buying the stories.

Products should be defined based on why the user buys or needs them, not based on the physical materials that make up the product. An example: We don’t (or, more accurately, didn’t) buy audio CDs because we liked the shiny colourful back surface or the way it spun in the player. We bought audio CDs because we wanted to hear music.

Painting the battle as print-versus-technology is akin to vinyl-versus-CD or, hell, buying coke in a plastic bottle versus a glass bottle. In either case, the product is the same. Schultz points that out perfectly in his post: the stuff on the internet is the same product as the stuff on the newsstand (or on TV).

No funeral march for ink and paper

The technology isn’t there yet, so we’re still a ways away from the true shift from print to purely tech-based content. But it’s looming, and anyone who claims otherwise is probably burying their head in the sand. And this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Like with any shift, the only people who will be hurt or left behind by the shift are those who refuse to see it coming.

The market still wants the product — they want news and gossip, comedy and drama, fiction and non-fiction, art and pornography — but now it will be beamed to them, through devices that sit on a desk or fit in a hand (some of these devices might look just like paper). And, yes, this draws all sorts of questions about monetizing and content customization and the dynamics of publishing-as-business but the bottom line is simply this: people still want what publishers are selling. You’ll be okay.

What Gen Y should do

One of the most changed dynamics will be the ‘opening up’ of the content creation process. Whereas in the past writing went through a sort of ‘funnel’ through editors, publishers and printers before making it to the public, we’re at a place now where any business can make themselves visible instantly. For most organizations, then, a good, solid, web-savvy writer is going to be nothing short of a weapon. Remember that as you build your skills for your career.

Photo by oskay. Licensed under Creative Commons

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3 Responses to “The Future of Print: Is Print Dead?”

holly hoffman March 31st, 2008 at 4:00 pm

If I didn’t work in the newspaper industry and know what I know because of it, I would totally agree with you. But because I am on this side, I know what the real issue is. It’s not content; it’s how you monetize content.

Print is easy to monetize; we know how to do it already - print ads plus an initial fee (purchase price). The problem with “technology” is that it’s more difficult to monetize. You can use ads with most media, like websites, but we’re still struggling to find revenue models for things like video and mobile content. Increasingly, people are not willing to pay the “initial fee” part of this - where you paid for a CD, you don’t want to pay for a digital download of a song. Where you paid for a newspaper, you don’t want to pay for access to a news site. That’s a big chunk of revenue to be made up.

That’s the real challenge to any of the paper-based media - finding a way to monetize the web and mobile versions in a generation of people who feel entitled to free content.

For my part, I am a product of my generation, and refuse to pay for anything online, save for a few programs that I can’t seem to find pirated versions of. The last vestige will be books, in my mind. I can’t see myself reading a Kindle. Although, it does seem awfully convenient… how easy the young are swayed.

John April 1st, 2008 at 7:50 am

I totally agree with you that online publishing is booming now. Circulations over the internet made huge difference in the publishing industry. I do the frequent research on publishing trends and I observed that most of the people intended to web editions. As a result all of the major publishers are already adopted the new technology and some other publishers are using the services of http://www.pressmart.net for digitization services for print publications.

Matt April 2nd, 2008 at 2:39 pm

John: Thanks for the comment! Pressmart looks interesting.

Holly: Really interesting comment. I think I’m only a couple of years younger than you (1983) and yet I have no issue with paying for online content. Perhaps it’s just a cultural thing. I am probably WAY geekier than you are. It’s a claim to fame.

Monetization is definitely harder with web media, but I don’t think it’s impossible. Has the right balance been struck yet? Not particularly. But I think a lot of that is because the portable technology isn’t there yet. Just as digital music wasn’t something people really wanted to pay for until the iPod (and subsequent mp3 players), we have yet to see the killer device for reading on the go. Do I want to spend $20 a month to view a newspaper’s content on my computer? Not a chance. Would I, thought, to have it beamed through the air and automatically downloaded to my handheld gadget? It’s very likely that I would.

I actually used to work in newspapers too (on the editorial side) — my limited observation was that it didn’t seem like ANYONE was making very much money.

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