Yes, I stole the title for this post from the very useful but terribly depressing Twitter moniker of the same name. In the last month it seems that there has been a lot of news (curious if the media is actually dying) about newspapers folding, magazines hanging up their hat and publishers letting their workforce go by the truckload.
Today I ran across yet another article, this time in Fortune online, in which Google CEO Eric Schmidt pimps out how Google can help newspapers by partnering with them for advertising…even so, its still online. He admits that offsetting the paper business model cost is rather challenging.
Over Christmas break when I was at my in-laws, I relished the time-honored morning tradition of newspapers over breakfast, something I only do when we are visiting them. I mentioned to my father-in-law that I wouldn’t be surprised if their local newspaper only has another five or so years before it folds. He was adamant that no, too many people rely on it, etc. And he’s right to some extent — it is a small town and more people are likely to go there for local news rather than the Net. Plus there is a much older generation of people concentrated in that area who may help keep it afloat for awhile. Still, is that enough?
In the article I linked above, Eric Schmidt points out that:
They [newspapers] don’t have a problem of demand for their product, the news. People love the news. They love reading, discussing it, adding to it, annotating it. The Internet has made the news more accessible. There’s a problem with advertising, classifieds and the cost itself of a newspaper: physical printing, delivery and so on. And so the business model gets squeezed.
- Image via Wikipedia
And therein lies the problem that the poor Berkshire Eagle may have in its future. Gone are the days of the paper boy riding his bike up and down the neighborhood streets for a few extra bucks (when go back there, my husband always points out the old paper route and where the mean ladies and dogs used to live). Newspapers are stuck — they can’t raise the prices on newspapers to cover rising costs of paying carriers, paper sources and the like, and advertisers are realizing that they can reach more people for less money if they go online. Even worse, more and more people are migrating to the Internet for all their news. My husband used to be a morning breakfast paper person but about five years ago we cancelled our Globe subscription because it was increasingly going without being read — we were getting all our news online.
It’s not just newspapers, but magazines and books. The effects of the recession on the ad industry hit home for me when I was at the salon last month for a pedicure and all the fashion magazines were thinner than I have ever seen. For the first time, the content in Vogue seemed to be equal to its advertising.
The book publishing industry is thinning out as well, much of it to do with fewer users investing in hardback and paperback books, myself included. I bought a Kindle last summer and was showing it to a few of my novelist friends and while they seemed delighted with the idea, there was great skepticism on what it meant for authors. One of my friends has an agent farming out her book right now and she’s got big reason for concern — because it means that the days of the big book advances are gone. When you can buy a hot new book for $9.99 instead of $25.99 it is bound to change the industry as a whole. That impacts me as well — the three books up my sleeve hoping for a bright future may have to settle for something a little less shiny.
I tend to agree with Schmidt, however. There will ALWAYS be readers. In fact, marketers, bloggers and social media freaks will all tell you that content is still king. Which means someone is reading the content. The new challenge for us all will be to figure out how to make churning out the content profitable.
I love the physical feel of books and newspapers, but I have to admit, I turn to my computer and my mobile for news and with my Kindle, I find it infinitely easier to juggle the little device when reading in bed, on public transportation, in the car, than I do with a big clunky tome.
The publishing world is in transition, just as we were when moving from tapes to CD to mp3 or from manual typewriters to computer keyboards. Change is sometimes very sad and is often difficult, but the flipside can be equally exciting. It will be interesting to look back 50 years from now and say, wow, remember when?
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