The Death Of News Print Heralded
By Jim Symcox on Mar 16, 2009 in Advertisers, Newspapers
For those who believe newsprint is going to go on and on providing news and great content for it’s readers read a great post on the death of print by Clay Shirky. His post is a well reasoned and articulate obituary of the increasingly beleaguered newsprint industry.
In the post Clay talks about how chaotic the time before printing took off in the 1500′s and the time after was until the new model of journalism and printing had been worked out.
and how at the time what appeared as little uninteresting changes could in hindsight to be seen as major changing points in history.
Does that mean he thinks that print is going to go out of print?
The short answer is he’s clear that we’re losing news on paper. From that we lose the newspapers themselves as “news” papers.
They may transform into lifestyle news but it seems likely that newspapers need to start looking more closely at how to strategically integrate the Internet into what they do. That is to embrace not just Facebook, blogging and web sites but to include Twitter and new Internet discoveries. Plus find ways of paying for their journalists before the day comes when the printing presses are moved to museums, just as the cotton looms in Manchester were.
Clay believes that the next few decades will change how journalism is used. I don’t believe newsprint as news has that long to go. After all, they are completely unable to compete with Twitter news now.
Once access to Twitter via a mobile, cell phone or devices like Kindle becomes widespread newspapers will wither further. Advertisers will continue to leave and the numbers who will advertise will continue to drop. The papers rates will drop as they become more aggressive on pricing to retain or get new advertisers which means income will drop and with it the ability to continue.
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RobArtisan | Mar 29, 2009 | Reply
Jim,
I don’t think this explains everything at all.
I went to an NUJ meeting on Friday and the reason why local media such as the MEN is losing jobs has a lot to do with publishers trying to maintain 40% profit margins by cutting jobs. Tesco tries for about 10% for comparison.
Guardian Media Group who own the MEN and other local papers is still making a profit. Those profits are being propped up by job cuts which in turn dilute the standards to where most news is just press releases and wire and syndicated news. And the spiral in decline continues.
Have a read of my blog, you might be very surprised
Rob
jimsym | Mar 30, 2009 | Reply
Hi Rob,
I’ve read your blog post but you’ve comments switched off so I couldn’t give you a comment! I’m not surprised that the outlook still seems positive because the USA is ahead of us in takeup of all things web-related. And there the advertisers are leaving their papers in droves. It hasn’t happened to the same extent here. However, that’s not to say it wont. As you note The Guardian newspaper itself is already suffering. I think the other point about profit margins is that Tesco has a huge turnover compared to the MEN. So 10% of 1 billion is a lot more than 40% of 1 million, or whatever turnover attracts the 40%.
Ilja (illie72) | Apr 16, 2009 | Reply
Why did you use my photo without asking for this? It doesn’t say all rights reserved for nothing! Just a little note to ask if it’s ok to use this photo is not to much to ask…