{"id":31409,"date":"2018-02-16T05:45:56","date_gmt":"2018-02-16T10:45:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=31409"},"modified":"2018-02-15T21:04:59","modified_gmt":"2018-02-16T02:04:59","slug":"is-print-journalism-down-to-its-last-10-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2018\/02\/is-print-journalism-down-to-its-last-10-years\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Print Journalism Down to Its Last 10 Years?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Do we need print on paper anymore?\u00a0 After all, we can download books on Kindle, and most of us get our news mainly from the internet.\u00a0 Recently, the executive in charge of the New York Times<\/em> predicted that printed newspapers will be a thing of the past in 10 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe at least 10 years is what we can see in the U.S. for our print products,\u201dsaid\u00a0Times<\/em> CEO Mark Thompson<\/a> to\u00a0 CNBC.\u00a0 \u201cThere may come a point when the economics of [the print paper] no longer make sense for us. . . .Our plan is to go on serving our loyal print subscribers as long as we can. But meanwhile to build up the digital business, so that we have a successful growing company and a successful news operation long after print is gone.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

There is one big problem that needs to be worked out.\u00a0 Readers are indeed abandoning hard-copy, printed newspapers in favor of getting their news on the internet.\u00a0 As a result, newspapers are struggling financially.<\/p>\n

But most of the news that people are getting on the internet still comes from newspapers!<\/p>\n

Google News, the Drudge Report, and other news aggregators link to newspaper stories.\u00a0 And, strangely, newspapers typically have websites that put up those stories and make them available for free.<\/p>\n

Thus the newspaper industry is contributing to its own demise.<\/p>\n

But if those newspapers go out of business, who will cover the news that people get free on the internet?\u00a0 More to the point, who will pay the men and women who write the stories?<\/p>\n

The major newspapers\u2013the New York Times<\/em>, the Washington Post<\/em>, the Wall Street Journal,\u00a0<\/em>and a few others\u2013charge<\/em> for online subscriptions.\u00a0 This is proving very lucrative, which is why Mr. Thompson does not sound too worried about his prediction.\u00a0 According to the CNBC story<\/a>, the Times now has more than a million digital subscribers.<\/p>\n

If newspapers like these can simply migrate their business model to screens instead of newsprint\u2013complete with paid subscriptions\u2013they should have no problem.\u00a0 They can continue to pay their reporters, columnists, critics, and other writers just like before.<\/p>\n

But most online users resist paying for what they get.\u00a0 A foundational motto of the internet culture is \u201cinformation wants to be free.\u201d<\/p>\n

If information, whatever it wants, isn\u2019t free because the companies that produce it have gone out of business, probably more people would pay for subscription sites.<\/p>\n

To be sure, there are a number of free online newspaper and magazines that pay their writers, and these show great promise.\u00a0 These support themselves by advertising.<\/p>\n

That is pretty much how internet sites make money, so perhaps there is room for more and more.\u00a0 Advertising-based news might\u00a0 be a viable business model.\u00a0 Print newspapers also depended on advertising revenue, but that too has drifted to the internet as local companies shift to online advertising.<\/p>\n

I suspect that the big newspapers will survive in the digital form Mr. Thompson is looking forward to, but this will change their character.\u00a0 Instead of being the source for local news, they will become nation-wide platforms.<\/p>\n

And though they are likely to survive, the little newspapers in smaller cities and towns probably won\u2019t.<\/p>\n

The promise of the internet was the decentralization of information, where everyone with a computer could potentially have, in effect, a printing press.\u00a0 Ironically, when it comes to news, we might see a centralizing effect after all.<\/p>\n

Book publishing seems to have mostly solved the financial problems of moving from paper to the screen.\u00a0 A reader can download a book online at not much less than the price of a hard copy.\u00a0 The publisher is making money, while eliminating the expense of paper, printing factories, and a distribution system.<\/p>\n

No doubt the news business will also find a solution, though it will likely involve having to pay subscriptions for the sites we want to use or possibly microcharges of a few pennies for each site we access.<\/p>\n

The new business models may change the internet as we know it.<\/p>\n

Or might print survive after all?\u00a0 Usually, new media don\u2019t replace the old media, but simply add to it.\u00a0 Thus we still have live drama, even though we have movies, and we still have movies even though we have television, and we still have television even though we have Netflix.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Photo, \u201cLittle and Large:\u00a0 Tabloid and Tablet\u201d by Matthew G via Flickr, Creative Commons License<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Do we need print on paper anymore?\u00a0 After all, we can download books on Kindle, and most of us get our news mainly from the internet.\u00a0 Recently, the executive in charge of the New York Times predicted that printed newspapers will be a thing of the past in 10 years. \u201cI believe at least 10 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":31519,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,5684,44],"tags":[1088,1208,4591,2726,6217,3158],"class_list":["post-31409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-media","category-news","category-technology","tag-information-technology","tag-journalism","tag-media-ecology","tag-newspapers","tag-online-news","tag-print-media"],"yoast_head":"\nIs Print Journalism Down to Its Last 10 Years?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The head of the NY Times says print newspapers will cease to exist in 10 years. 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