The Hastening Demise of Print
Two stories during this week about the future of print publishing caught my eye.
First was the heavily covered Haaretz interview with Arthur Sulzberger of the New York Times where he indicated the possibility that the Times could stop offering a print edition within five years.
The second article to catch my attention was a post by Colin Crawford, SVP of Online for publisher IDG (via PaidContent’s post) that the growth of their online business now exceeds the decline in print revenues and accounts for more than 35% of their revenues. IDG, of course, is the publisher of ComputerWorld, PCWorld and other trade publications, and is also parent to IT Consulting firm IDC.
Together, these two articles should provide a jolt to the handful of publishing industry holdouts who want to believe that print will still play a significant role in 10-20 years. In my experience, these holdouts tend to either think their customer demographics are different (believe me, they’re not) or they are still holding onto the belief that their electronic products are unique and should be priced at a huge premium to print (they’re not and they shouldn’t). For publishers whose print subscriber base is shrinking faster than their online subscriber base is growing, it may already be too late.
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