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The decline of the print cash cow isn't the end of journalism
Cross-post from Reportr.net
There already has been much discussion online about the piece in the New York Times on woes facing the newspaper business. It paints a gloomy picture about the future of print, with a litany of layoffs, buyouts, and declining revenues.
None of this is new news. As Dan Kennedy points out, "the news business has been through several paradigm shifts since taking on a form we'd recognize beginning in the 1830s".
But then, newspapers are conservative, lumbering beasts that tend to resist change.
The real issue isn't about change. The real issue is that newspapers have enjoyed artificially high margins for decades, based on an anomaly of time and space.
Once upon a time, a newspaper could enjoy a geographical and spatial monopoly on the supply of news to a community. Newspapers defined where you got the news, in your town, and when, in the morning. It is hardly surprising that print was a good business to be in.
New technologies, from radio to TV to the Internet, has eroded print's monopoly on news, and with it, its profit margins.
Print revenues might be declining, but as the New York Times points out, newspaper profits remain high.
Gannett's newspaper division had a 21 percent margin last year. Other industries would rejoice at such a healthy balance sheet.
Newspaper owners should accept that the cash cow is on its last legs, and instead learn to live with more modest returns.
There already has been much discussion online about the piece in the New York Times on woes facing the newspaper business. It paints a gloomy picture about the future of print, with a litany of layoffs, buyouts, and declining revenues.
None of this is new news. As Dan Kennedy points out, "the news business has been through several paradigm shifts since taking on a form we'd recognize beginning in the 1830s".
But then, newspapers are conservative, lumbering beasts that tend to resist change.
The real issue isn't about change. The real issue is that newspapers have enjoyed artificially high margins for decades, based on an anomaly of time and space.
Once upon a time, a newspaper could enjoy a geographical and spatial monopoly on the supply of news to a community. Newspapers defined where you got the news, in your town, and when, in the morning. It is hardly surprising that print was a good business to be in.
New technologies, from radio to TV to the Internet, has eroded print's monopoly on news, and with it, its profit margins.
Print revenues might be declining, but as the New York Times points out, newspaper profits remain high.
Gannett's newspaper division had a 21 percent margin last year. Other industries would rejoice at such a healthy balance sheet.
Newspaper owners should accept that the cash cow is on its last legs, and instead learn to live with more modest returns.
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If publishing/media/content companies think that they're in "the newspaper business" or, worse yet, "the print business", then I only hope my tax dollars won't be going *there* as well.