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Print is dead

Communications News, Sept, 2006 by Ken Anderberg

Editors are supposed to be contrarians. My co-workers and friends say I fit the bill. So let's talk about the Web for a while--and the death of print.

The Internet is certainly challenging the traditional print model. More people are going to the Web for information, blogs are becoming a news source (although these are primarily vehicles for opinions and personal experiences, not news) and online ad revenues for news-related sites are increasing. Meanwhile, newspaper circulations are in a steady decline, as are ad revenues, and newsrooms are being gutted of reporters.

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When radio broadcasts first began in the 1920s, people soon began to warn of the death of print. Radio could bring the news to listeners far more quickly than could the local newspaper, although usually that news was simply the reading of yesterday's newspaper. Television was next, and again the talk was of it replacing print.

In fact, these two electronic media spawned a large number of print cousins covering the TV and radio industries. The Internet has had the same effect, with dozens of print publications created to cover the industry.

Publications such as Communications News are not immune from this Web "leakage." We're constantly hearing from advertisers about "Web opportunities" for their marketing efforts, and like others, we are continually enhancing our Web presence. While not as directly challenged by Internet competitors as newspapers, trade publications do recognize that ad revenues are migrating to their online products, often to the detriment of print sales.

That is not a bad trend, only one that needs to be watched and adjusted for. Communications News has a significant number of Web readers, although the number is far less than the print version. Even with an audience of IT professionals that sit at a computer all day, we still have 85,000 subscribers who request the magazine every year.

The problem with the vast majority of online news and other editorial material is that it does not come from the online news providers, or aggregators, such as Google and Yahoo. It comes from the print industry, which has the reporters and editors necessary for ferreting out and vetting the news. Online news outlets that have tried the journalist-on-the-street approach have not succeeded. Publications that have tried to charge for their online content also have not found success.

Meanwhile, the aggregators are realizing the financial benefits of re-purposing the news generated by print, but not sharing the revenue. This business model will change. The new model will find the online aggregators paying the print outlets for content. To do otherwise would mean that print will have fewer resources to generate editorial content, due to lower revenues, and the aggregators will have less content for their sites, as a result.

Stopping the aggregators from re-purposing the editorial of print publications for free should not be a difficult task for the print industry. Why should print be giving away its content to non-subscribers anyway? As it has for the past century, print will survive this latest technology challenge-the Internet. So says the contrarian.

Ken Anderberg

kanderberg@comnews.com

Technology Industry

Print is dead

Communications News, Sept, 2006 by Ken Anderberg

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