Template for the Newspaper of the Future?

Following up on yesterday’s rather pessimistic posting on the morbidity of print media models, this piece from BayNewser about McSweeney’s experimental newspaper project is intriguing, if not a full solution for the challenges at hand.

Chronicles of Demise

In yet another sign of the accelerating death of print media of all sorts, Nielsen Business Media today announced the closure of the 125-year-old magazine of the publishing industry, Editor and Publisher, as well as the venerable book industry periodical Kirkus Reviews. Frankly, as a veteran editorial executive, I don’t think Editor and Publisher has been a very well-executed or particularly forward-looking publication for quite some time (especially compared to Folio: magazine and other newer media industry newsletters and websites). But it is, nevertheless, another marker in the cathartic transformation affecting all media – and especially print media – today.

The simplistic argument about the snowballing death ride of print always falls back on citing the Internet as the cause. This is only partially true. It is less about the Internet per se, than it is about the increased diffusion of advertising dollars across all the various media buying options today. Some of those dollars are, indeed, going to the Internet, but the reality is that less advertising dollars overall are being spread among more outlets. And while Internet advertising is increasing, and print advertising has been falling dramatically, the added digital revenue doesn’t come close to making up even a fraction of the lost print revenue. So those with their tills open for business in both arenas are still losing out, and those trailblazers whose focus is wholly (or even primarily) in the digital realm (whether web, email, mobile, whatever) are squeaking by at best. And for most of those clinging to a solely print-based model, well, the numbers speak (quite loudly) for themselves. That business model is dead and gone for the vast majority of publishers.

Alan Mutter’s recent post in his always perceptive blog, Reflections of a Newsosaur, puts the daunting realities facing the newspaper end of the industry in stark perspective – complete with bar graphs illustrating the decline that started well before the current economic malaise. Mutter sums it up succinctly in noting that the newspaper industry (not exclusively print, but clearly primarily print-dependent) has lost almost half of its annual revenue in just the last four years.

On the brighter side, at least one media company is bullish on print media, or at least one sector of it: The 28-year-old privately held Bloomberg media company has been aggressively making its first forays into the acquisition market, most notably with the recent purchase of

Business Week magazine. Clearly, Bloomberg execs believe in the future profitability of business and financial reporting, so they’re gobbling up the bargains to be had in the current market.

There are plenty of pundits today who contend that the only print businesses that will survive the current sea change are those delivering very specialized business or financial information and those serving small niches of enthusiasts who are passionate about very specific topics. Anyone care to sign up for a charter subscription to Tennis Ball Can Collector’s Illustrated?

I Will Not Cut Corners ...

From This Isn’t Happiness blog

The Problem with Digital Info

As I’ve often said, here and elsewhere, I’m not necessarily a cutting edge early adopter, but I am interested in – and, occasionally, even bedazzled by – new technology. And while I am now intrigued by the development and potential of electronic reading devices – ubiquitously referred to as “eReaders” (because everything is now either “e” or “i” whatever ... maybe I’ll have to start referring to myself as “iBill”) – I’m foregoing the current Betamax versions (Kindle et al) until the manufacturing powers-that-be get it right. That is, until they make it a durable, magazine-thin and flexible, high quality four-color, interactive and wireless device. I give it another three years or so and we’ll be there.

But digital devices aside, a bigger concern to me as a media professional and avid reader in all mediums is the ramifications of the difference between how we consume and comprehend the digital word versus the printed word. Studies by technology-usability expert Jakob Nielsen and others have, not surprisingly, shown that we absorb online information differently than we do printed information. In fact, our comprehension of the information presented digitally is more superficial. “It’s not a deep learning,” Nielsen says.

This is why the demise of the otherwise outdated print publishing industry worries me. Our culture is already dumbing down at a blinding pace. Will it be pure free fall once print consumption is a rarity (or a for-elites-only endeavor)?

TIME magazine recently addressed this issue to a degree in an interesting article looking at how financial institutions are increasingly pushing clients to opt for online statements rather than printed ones. While this is positioned as an admirable “green” initiative, the real motivating factor is the cost savings to the bank or broker ($1 per statement, according to the TIME report). The “cost” to the account holders is that they’re not absorbing the financial information when delivered online to the extent that they did with the printed statements.

However, the TIME article does go on to point out some of the potential advantages of electronic financial statements – so far mostly unrealized, of course. The examples cited highlight the true value proposition of digital information in this era of both ink and bytes. That is, using the web and digital devices in ways that capitalize on their unique attributes, to do what print can’t do, rather than simply employing them as substitutes for more traditional forms of communication. The best of both worlds is out there, if we’re creative and ambitious enough to find it – and then manage to keep it in balance.

From ‘Collateral Gore’ to Bliss on the Cloud?

Once again, New York Times writer David Carr puts the current maelstrom of the news media in meaningful context with the flare of a jedi wordsmith. While I agree with the shards of optimism Carr plucks out of the sky in the last few graphs of his commentary, it seems a bit abrupt after he has spent 1,000 words or so detailing the carnage-strewn landscape of the industry. And while the boundary-busting exuberance and creativity of technologically empowered youth might merit eager anticipation, it is not likely to prove the savior of the substantive media that we’ve been seeing steadily falling by the wayside over the past couple of decades.

I am not a defender of the old order – with its pervasive flawed business models and the celebrity-like living of the Manhattan media elite (a very small portion of the industry, let me assure you!) – but neither am I smitten with visions of a technology-centric means of qualification when it comes to the media I consume.

Call me elitist, but everyman, citizen journalism (whether tweeted, blogged or You Tubed) is not an adequate replacement for dedicated, adequately funded, professional journalists – a welcome and needed complement, yes, but not a substitute. Yet, the print media’s current tactic of cranking out articles with a self-declared value of $20 a piece (as detailed by Carr), is hardly going to yield high-quality content that will attract and engage readers. Maybe it is time to just throw in the towel and bring on the You Tube News Report and Roland Headley’s Tweets from the Trenches. Who needs thoughtful journalism when we have algorithms to wield?

Ahh, but all is not lost, at least not for all of us. The information-haves – those, in the near future, willing and able to pay the steep prices destined to be attached to content that surpasses the Entertainment Weekly standards employed by the rest of the media industry – will still be able to get their fix.

We’re entering and age, it seems, in which we’ll see, to quote Carr, “a new scarcity of quality content for niche audiences that demand more than generic information.” The day is coming when those who want substantive, accurate, reasonably-unbiased news – and are able to pay a premium for it – will be the niche rather than the mass. What that means for the state of our nation, well ... that’s another matter entirely.

Welcome to the niche, my friends.