The most prescient new media event of 2008 occurred Oct. 28 when the 100-year-old Christian Science Monitor announced its intention to close its print edition and go 100 percent digital. By April 2009, the only way to read the much beloved Monitor will be at CSMonitor.com. Prophets of the digital future will, no doubt, interpret this news as more evidence of the demise of mainstream media.
But the Christian Science Monitor headline is more nuanced than it first appears. Yes, in 2008, print newspapers began hurtling toward the most public of deaths. But, by early 2009, we will be able to date the beginnings of a viable alternative to print -– the digital platform of the e-reader and the Internet.
2008 will, of course, be remembered as an absolutely horrible year for the traditional newspaper, magazine, and book industries. We’ve seen draconian editorial staff cuts at almost all American newspapers including the grey old lady herself, the august New York Times, which eliminated 100 newsroom jobs over 2008. Other dismal news includes the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press’s discontinuation of home delivery as well, of course, on the ongoing bankruptcy saga of Saul Zell’s Tribune Co., the not-so-proud owner of many American dailies including the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun, and Orlando Sentinel.
And the depressing news isn’t limited just to American newspapers either. The up-market, left-of-center London Independent, for example, not only just carried out a 70-person editorial staff cut, but also announced that it was giving up its offices in London’s fashionable Docklands to share corporate digs with its down-market right-of-center rival, the Daily Mail.
And 2008 was an annus horribilis for magazine and book publishing too. Print and advertising sales of all physical content are down. Thus the year saw significant staff cuts at Conde Nast and Time Warner publications including Time, Portfolio, and Men’s Vogue magazines. And this month has been a particularly grim end of the year for book publishing, with a very significant “reorganization” at the world’s largest publisher, Bertelsmann-owned Random House, and staff cuts at Simon & Schuster, Houghton Mifflin, and many other illustrious New York City houses.
However bad 2008 now seems, 2009 will be worse -- much, much worse -- for the traditional print business. A deep, even catastrophic recession combined with a decreasing public interest in paying for print products will result in 2009 being the year that the print business literally falls off the cliff. Next May, for example, the New York Times Co. has a $400 million debt repayment due. The Tribune Co.’s Los Angeles Times and the Hearst Corp.’s San Francisco Chronicle are likely to follow the Christian Science Monitor and go digital only, leaving California –- the world’s sixth-biggest economy –- without a serious print daily. Books and magazines are likely to share the same fate, with fewer and fewer consumers willing to pay for the inconvenience of physically perishable and bulky product.
And yet 2009 will, ironically, also bring much, much, much better news for a media in the business of selling textual content. The truth is it’s not their newspapers, magazines, and books that are dying, but rather the archaic medium of print. And the good news for both trees and technophiles is that in 2009 paper is finally being replaced by affordable and ergonomically sophisticated digital devices for reading electronic content.
The bulky, murky computer screen has never been an effective platform for reading text. But 2009 will see the release of version 2.0 of Amazon’s iconic Kindle in the U.S., while Europeans can look forward to seeing upgraded versions of Sony’s eReader and iRex Technology’s fabulous iLiad electronic reader. Best of all, 2009 will see the release of Plastic Logic’s revolutionary new eReader, an electronic device thinner than a pad of paper that really might satisfy even the most reactionary of paper-worshipers. Collectively, these devices will finally give the newspaper, magazine, and book publishing industries a plethora of iPod-style vehicles for securely distributing and selling paperless content.
So, yes, the print newspapers, magazines, and books began to die in 2008. But, in 2009, let’s welcome with open arms (and wallets) the e-paper, the e-magazine, and the e-book!
— Andrew Keen, Silicon Valley author, broadcaster, and entrepreneur
There are actually a number of other areas affected by outfits that transition from a paper-based medium to a digital only medium.
1) For newspapers that are going digital, not only does this translate into less staff required to assemble the printed version of the paper, there is less of a need for those who deliver it. (More 13 and 14 year olds on the newspaper delivery unemployment lines...)
2) For books that are going digital, the need for the paper based products to make the book (the pages, the cardboard covers that are concealed with a fabric or some other coating, the glue, and in a few cases, the stitching) means those materials won't be in demand as much...again less of a need, and possibly impacting the ranks that supply it.
3) For companies making the products that support a digital atmosphere, well, things would get a little busier, so those laid off could be picked up here (assuming they have a degree, I guess).
...you get the drift. Any transition from one source to another results in change. What causes the change to be slow or difficult to adapt are the older technologies fighting to stay alive and doing anything in their powers to keep the older technology around. You've seen that in other areas...phone service, for example (in reference to land based lines). Or even better yet, our energy infrastructure when it comes to transitioning off of oil based products to renewable energy sources. (But that's another discussion altogether.)
We have to be willing to change for the better things to come. Some are resistant to change because they like the status quo; the tried and true, but tired, mediums. May I remind those dinosaurs of what happens when one doesn't change...
Print edition shouldnt surprise of their results , They've to come to digital it's most cheap and easier to marketing , sale and distribute to theirs clients , if they dont come earlier into digital their edition will suicide .
It's time to digital , Businessweek has already joined the DIGITAL .
And the publisher of my local paper here in Santa Fe told me that she thought the worst had hit by December..but was wrong. January, always slow, fell off (another) cliff...
Looks like 2009 is following the predictions in this blog - and this is just in my marketplace!
The cost-conscious Baltimore Sun has suspended its weekday home delivery to customers in Frederick, Garrett,Montgomery and Prince George's counties.
The Baltimore Examiner, a free daily newspaper that entered the market to much fanfare when it launched in 2006, will stop printing next month. The last edition will hit newsstands Feb. 15. The Baltimore Examiner’s 90 employees will be laid off.
Following weeks of reports that the Washington Post might kill its 16-page Book World Sunday section, the paper confirmed the action on Wednesday. The book review section, created by the Post in the 1960s and revived two decades later, will migrate to two sections in the paper for a total of 12 pages of coverage.
After years of battling one another for readers and market share, the Washington Post and Baltimore Sun have decided to join forces — sort of. Starting Jan. 1, the newspapers will share stories and photos. The move is another example of how newspapers are trying to streamline costs as more readers move to online sources and revenue dwindles during a downturn.
I remember a couple of months (years?) ago, digital publishers that tried to implement a subscription-based model but that was having issues with Google's spiders.
If you used Google to find it, you could enter without paying but if you went to the website, they asked for your login information. I think the same still happens with the Wall Street Journal.
One category of books that can easily go digital are: College/ University Text Books.
Though not in need of regular updation, these require mass distribution & are heavily used from a period as small as three months (quarterly system) to a full year (annual system) & sometime even more as these are handed out to other students.
* Students would love it as they would not have to carry four books, but just one cool reader. Sharing the annotations would be easier- not requiring photocopies or note taking. I still remember that even though I used a locker at campus, at times I was still carrying my text books from home to campus & back. And it a was quite a loadful!
* Parents would like it as it would be cheaper over the longer run & can be traced if lost (GSM or paging).
* Publishers would love it as it would be easy to mass produce, distribute & enforce the expiry of a license to a time frame say 14 months for a user & thus selling more units. Furthermore they can also sell the reference books & other additional learning resources by making the purchase easy: actively linking the text book content with the resources and devising a simple & easy over-the-internet payment mechanism. This will also allow them to establish a relationship with students & parents, whom they have no direct contact with due to the current form of supply chain. At max this is done by encouraging users to register.
* Most faculty & schools- habitual of seeing paper text books for decades & centuries- would not appreciate it much, until the time when they are compelled by publishers & parents to embrace it.
In most countries- especially in third world- text books are the dominant form of books. So if this goes digital, this can cause a tipping point in favor of digital editions generating mass-adoption of technology.
I predict that by 2029, coke cans will have flexible displays that provide advertisements. Something tells me we'll see that before 2029 however.
I'm wondering if the digital editions will not only accompany print editions, but also allow new entrants(writers) into the publishing arena..governed by merit more so than pr/marketing.
I bet the day will come when a McDonalds Happy Meal will have an ebook reader included in the price of the Happy Meal. Until then, we will have to eek out an online existence using the sony Reader, despite the 300 dollar price tag.
Meanwhile, Happy New Year! Tear out a page from your ereader and send it to me will ya?
I love to read magazines, that is what the bathroom was invented for wasn't it? :) When I am on an airplane, or on a trip, I can finally dig out my year subscriptions of magazines I had intended to read and never got around to reading them, and take them with me.
Now, with all the online magazine versions, I can't easily read a magazine on my laptop with less thatn 3 hours of battery time, which I intend for my movie that the kids want to watch. So that leaves me with getting an e-reader, but alas, they are not in color, and at least the less expensive Sony Reader for $300 won't let me markup the magazine or rip out a page so I can show other people a great idea, I have to remember it or get out a piece of paper to copy it down.
We are in an inbetween stage where we want a reader, but it has to be cheap like a magazine, colorful like a magazine, easily attainable from anywhere like a magazine and read anywhere. Will you find Sony eReaders in the bathroom though? Time will tell.
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