Thursday, April 11, 2013 'newspapers in print are clearly going away. I think you're an idiot if you think that's not happening.'
It's not just the naysayers who say that print newspapers are winding down. But can they meet the challenge of digital first? One man thinks so. And he's got a news business with a $1.3 billion turnover.
by Dan Slee
Fail to understand the changing landscape and very soon you won't have a job.
It's something I've been banging on about for some time now and It's true whether you are a journalist, comms person or a fifth generation pit prop maker in 1983.
A bright person a few weeks ago told me that there would always be newspapers because they'd always be there.
I disagree.
People thought that about coal mines once too.
There'll always be news but there'll always be print newspapers? Really?
As the rise of Twitter as a breaking news medium and sites like BBC that's just not the case.
Here's an interesting few quotes from John Paton, CEO of Digital First Ventures who own, as their website says, more than 800 print and digital products that reach 57 million customers a month.
If you aren't taking it from me take it from a news organisation that has a $1.3 billion turnover.
They are quotes that comms people need to know about because they represent more evidence of the seismic change in the media landscape.
But why switch to Digital First as a company name?
"Digital First is my name. I've been saying it long before I got here. The name originally was to say very loudly — in a headline kind of way — that what we thought we did in newspapers, we had to change dramatically. And that, of course, meant digital first.
"And actually "digital first, print last." I wanted to hammer home that this idea about the Web as something else we do was ridiculous."
"The Web was and it should be what we do. Print is something else that we do, which happens — at this moment in time — to have almost all the revenue. But that's not going to be our future. It was something that I named to try to hammer home that message. It's kind of funny — I don't think they have a "digital first" strategy at Google. They have a strategy. The name, hopefully, if we're successful, becomes very dated."
On paywalls and digital dimes...
"I don't think paywalls are the answer to anything. If we're swapping out print dollars for digital dimes, I think paywalls are a stack of pennies. We might use the pennies in transition to get where we're going."
On newspapers going away...
"Newspapers in print are clearly going away. I think you're an idiot if you think that's not happening.
"I don't think that news organizations are dying but are newspapers going to stop running in print? Yeah. Absolutely."
On making the shift...
"I think we still are too afraid to take the kinds of risks we need to take because there's so much money tied up in print. We have $1.3 billion in revenue. And of $1.3 billion, $900 million is advertising and $165 million of the advertising is digital advertising. Four years ago, that was almost nothing. That $165 [million] is going to have to more than double in three years. To do that, we're going to have to take some risks on the print side. That's the one thing that scares the [expletive] out of everybody.
"I love newspapers. I'm a newspaperman. My father was a printer. I started off as a copyboy. I love newspapers. But they don't love me anymore."
You can read the whole interview here.
That's something worth reflecting on.
Dan Slee is co-founder of comms2point0. He also blogs here.
Reader Comments (1)
I don't doubt you're right, Dan. The trend is bleedin' obvious. Same applies with books: http://on.mash.to/ZPS803
I wouldn't be surprised to see on-demand printed newspapers in the future, with production costs falling as whizzy new technologies come online. I can imagine a 'choose your format' option - a bit like data stores where you can download data as Excel, CSV, JSON, PDF etc
There's also the potential blurring of the edges between physical and digital paper with innovations like graphene paper: http://www.electroiq.com/articles/sst/2013/03/american-graphite-technologies-announces-successful-test-product.html
Perhaps have a 'looks like paper', 'feels like paper' but choose which bits you want updated and how often. Just don't use it to light the fire ;-)