My two cents: Here’s an interesting question: Does anyone reading this blog seriously think people are going to be reading daily printed-on-paper newspapers in the year 2100? How about 2050? Me neither. It follows, then, that there will come a date when the last daily newspaper is printed. What newspapers have to figure out is a strategy for determining exactly when it’s time to pull the plug.
It’s absolutely true that no one is making more revenue from online that they are through print. But as I’ve said before, the revenue will come around as more and more of the general population becomes accustomed to getting the news online. In other words, old people who grew up reading print will die and will be replaced with people who text each other in the crib. Add to that fact this: It simply costs far, far less to gather the news your organization has gathered and distribute it on the Web (a couple of mouse clicks in the office) than it does to distribute it by planting and then killing trees, making them into pulp, shipping heavy rolls of paper and barrels of ink to a printing press, then hiring paperboys to hand deliver 12-hour-old news door to door. The advantages of online delivery over print edition delivery are so great that eventually, someone is going to come along and successfully compete with a local newspaper.
Hat tip: 802 Online.
Billy Dennis is a former reporter and editor at small daily and weekly newspapers in Illinois and Missouri. He comments on media, news and politics. He also owns and operates 
Yes, but will they PAY to get the news?
And gee, we’ll all turn to blogs for our news. Too bad most of them rely on newspapers.
And gee, what a surprise. Whenever I write about this topic, someone with low reading comprehension skills posts a comment suggesting that I’m suggesting that newspapers will be replaced by bloggers. No one in their right mind thinks this. But it’s trotted out by the luddites every time a suggestion is made that newspapers might not exist in the exact same form 50 or 100 years from now. What I am talking about is a business that hires professionals to collect the news and edits it, then distributes it via the Internet. This service would be paid for by subscription and ad sales or both, exactly how newspapers are financed today.
It has NOTHING directly to do with blogging.
But thanks for the input.
Yes, I am sure the ‘dead tree edition’ of the newspaper will be a thing of the past very soon.
All news will be available solely online in the near future in the hard to use, expensive, and slow PDF format.
And think of all the lost jobs….the woodcutters, the papermakers, the truck drivers, the ink makers, the printing press operators etc. All that will be left will be a few high-tch jobs that can be performed anywhere in the world to pull together the contributions of a few reporters!
I hope that comment was said with tongue firmly planted in cheek.
Paper is about 80% on its way out. The problem is not only that the online version is free, but the convenience aspect of getting the news when you want it..makes it almost obsolete. I do like the newspaper version, and I wish I could sit down in the morning and read it, but I don’t have time. I hate to think of all of the jobs lost in the paper industry, but you have to shift your focus to online versions, make them better, offer something different, diversify…Kick it into high gear and expand the online version now. That would be next step in my opinion.
I think we’ll have paper for a while to come, and I certainly wouldn’t say 80%.
Here’s a thought – I’m all tech advanced and stuff. I get most of my news online, yes. But it might be a good transition thing for someone to come up with a printable paper. You could go get it from the website and print it yourself, or the paper could email itself out to “subscribers” who could then print it out if they wish.
it is certainly a trend for newspapers to be downsizing – purely size wise. WSJ recently shrunk it’s size. I personally hate big ass newspapers. Freakin’ impossible to deal with!
This is actually reminding me of something I read at another blog, about school days being totally misaligned with the modern work day – or, to paraphrase, why are 21st century schools still sending kids home to milk 19th century cows? The size of our current newspapers, to me, seems nothing more than tradition. Or is it so retro it’s cool now, NOT.
I am rolling on the floor laughing at the dilemma that the ultra lib greenie global warming types are having. Yes! Save the trees. Wait! Our leftist paper is going out of business! But, we’re preventing global warming! No, we’re not! More computers would be worse than using trees! Think of the landfills that will have computers stuffed into them! Think of the coal-fired electricity plants needed for all those computers!
Technology is indeed a bitch, MDD. But most “greenies” are pretty smart folk, and we’re working on these issues right now. So your joke is actually reality as I know it.
If they are so leftist, then why do they usually endorse GOP candidates at the state and federal level? I don’t recall them ever endorsing a greenie for office.
Howard Owens is an idiot.
You should read what he says about newspapers producing online video stories. It’s a joke.
You mean the post about how newspapers should hand their reporters cheap-ass video cameras and tell them to get some video for the Web version of their stories.
Hey, why not? They can take notes with their right hand and operate the cheap-ass cameras with their left. Of course, if they aren’t sitting at a table (always the best vantage point for photography, BTW) they won’t need someone to hold their notebook for them while they scribble.
Of course, you can’t hand these cheal ass video cameras to their regular photographers, because GateHouse is going to fire most of them and make whoever is left do double duty shooting negatives for the plates (I’m not kidding, that’s a true story).
*sigh*
I pity the JS. I really pity them.
Major newspapers and news magazines are definitely on their way out. The people at Time magazine and the NY Times are moving toward internet versions as sales continue to plummet. If these “institutions” are preparing for an internet future coupled with the 24 hour news networks how long will the smaller newspapers survive? It would be far easier to tag local news on a large regional news internet venue.
As cgiselle12 mentioned in the post above, newspapers are shrinking. The Wall Street Journal’s printed area is now about 11 1/4 inches wide by 21 inches deep. It wouldn’t take much to make it 11 X 17, which would enable readers to print it out at home. Newspapers might even shrink to the size of a news magazine.
What if people could have the best of both worlds: the newspaper on the web and the printed newspaper? Wouldn’t they prefer the option? What if they could select what they wanted from the newspaper web site, meaning the newspaper as they themselves define it, and print it out any time they wanted to read it – 24/7? Wouldn’t they sometimes (frequently?) prefer to print it out and take it with them to the breakfast table or the back porch or the beach or the local bar or the john?
There is simply something about our nature that seems to make us want to hold a book or a newspaper or a magazine in our hands. And it has nothing to do with how old we are.
What if newspapers could eliminate their presses, their inks, their paper, their delivery trucks and their carriers? At today’s prices it would be cheaper for newspapers to simply give every reader a printer and a monthly supply of paper.
Recently I purchased a complete 11 x 17 inch copy of the New York Times – ads and all – for $5 while on vacation in Mexico. It was printed on both sides and bound with an adheasive similar to the glue-like substance that sometimes binds the perfume ads in magazines. It was quite readable, even though it was a reduced copy of the actual printed pages.
It wouldn’t take much for newspapers to redesign their page templates to make them more attractive and readable at a smaller size.
Wouldn’t it make sense for readers to be able to get their newspapers both on the web and be able to print it out at home when they buy their newspaper subscriptions? If it was important to them, they could even set their computers to print out the lastest sports scores, political news, weather, etc. automatically as the information is posted instead of checking the web every 15 minutes.
It is indeed a brave new technological world and it is limited only by our imagination and our ability to understand human nature. Remember the e-book? It never succeeded because people prefer to hold a book in their hands, turn down the page ears and write in the margins.
The web is truly a revolutionary wonder. It will find it’s place as the major content provider, knowledge resource and a community meeting place. But it will never eliminate print.
Thanks to the web, the printed newspaper will be around for a long time. The web will save newspapers, not destroy them.