The printed word will continue to endure

Some years ago, there began a rev­o­lu­tion which has changed the way we com­mu­ni­cate, do busi­ness, enter­tain our­selves, and get our news. That rev­o­lu­tion, the dig­i­tal media rev­o­lu­tion, is still going on today, and it has ush­ered in a new era of tran­si­tion and uncer­tain­ty. As news­pa­pers and book­stores close down or go online-only, we are increas­ing­ly sub­ject­ed to the prog­nos­ti­ca­tion that print, as a medi­um, is dying, and will soon be dead.

While it is cer­tain­ly true that many peri­od­i­cals once pub­lished only in print are going the way of the dinosaur, the notion that print as a medi­um is head­ed for extinc­tion is unfound­ed. The print­ed word will con­tin­ue to endure because it has val­ue. It will coex­ist with oth­er means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, as it already has for decades.

The advent of radio and tele­vi­sion did not kill the print­ed word, and nei­ther will the dig­i­tal media rev­o­lu­tion. What the rev­o­lu­tion has done is change the eco­nom­ics of pub­lish­ing. For instance, it used to be that news­pa­pers had a vir­tu­al monop­oly on clas­si­fied ads. But when the Inter­net came along, clas­si­fieds start­ed migrat­ing online to web­sites like craigslist, deny­ing news­pa­per pub­lish­ers revenue.

The old eco­nom­ics of pub­lish­ing sup­port­ed large news­rooms at one or two papers in most major cities, per­mit­ting the assem­bly of a broad­sheet with dozens of pages for dai­ly dis­tri­b­u­tion. The new eco­nom­ics does­n’t, and that’s why so many big news­pa­pers are shrink­ing or dis­ap­pear­ing. The media com­pa­nies that pub­lished them did­n’t both­er to adapt, or were not in strong posi­tions pri­or to the onset of the rev­o­lu­tion. So they were bat­tered, and in some cas­es, ruined.

Para­dox­i­cal­ly, many small papers are doing just fine, because they pub­lish less fre­quent­ly and are put togeth­er by a small staff that writes for a very loy­al read­er­ship. The con­tin­ued exis­tence of such pub­li­ca­tions proves that the print­ed word is in no dan­ger of going away. A great many peo­ple, myself includ­ed, still like read­ing books, mag­a­zines, and newspapers.

What’s more, there will always be sit­u­a­tions where it makes no sense to be read­ing on a tablet or lap­top (and maybe not even a smartphone).

The beach is my favorite exam­ple. A beach is a fine place to bring a paper­back nov­el or a mag­a­zine, but it’s a bad place to bring a Kindle.

As any read­er who has acci­den­tal­ly dropped a cam­era at the beach can prob­a­bly attest, sand does ter­ri­ble things to electronics.

But sand isn’t the only prob­lem. A Kin­dle left on a beach blan­ket might get stolen while its own­er is stand­ing in the surf or explor­ing tide­pools, unless it is being guard­ed by some­body else. A paper­back nov­el or mag­a­zine, on the oth­er hand, does not need to be guard­ed — it isn’t worth that much.

This exam­ple illus­trates that there will always be sit­u­a­tions where cart­ing around elec­tron­ic gad­gets isn’t a great idea. What’s more, there will always be peo­ple who sim­ply pre­fer read­ing the print­ed word to read­ing on a screen. Not every­one is going to buy an e‑reader, no mat­ter how much mar­ket­ing Ama­zon or its com­peti­tors do. Not every­one wants a tablet, either.

And even peo­ple who do buy tablets and e‑readers won’t nec­es­sar­i­ly do all of their read­ing on a screen. I have a tablet, and as I said ear­li­er, I still enjoy read­ing books, mag­a­zines, and news­pa­pers. I grew up read­ing news­pa­pers. Before I became an activist, I was a pas­sivist — I fol­lowed pol­i­tics in the newspaper.

When I was a child, our fam­i­ly actu­al­ly got mul­ti­ple news­pa­pers deliv­ered dai­ly. We always had at least one morn­ing news­pa­per and one evening newspaper.

Since that time, evening news­pa­pers have become all but extinct. Two of the papers we used to sub­scribe to — the Jour­nal-Amer­i­can and the Seat­tle Post-Intel­li­gencer — are no longer pub­lished. The Jour­nal-Amer­i­can, lat­er the King Coun­ty Jour­nal, ulti­mate­ly evolved into Reporter News­pa­pers (a group of week­lies, which I reg­u­lar­ly con­tribute to) and the Seat­tle P‑I thank­ful­ly endures online.

The media land­scape has changed and will con­tin­ue to change, but I believe print will always be a part of it. As I wrote ear­li­er, print will coex­ist with dig­i­tal media.

Will there be a time when e‑books become more pop­u­lar than print­ed books? Per­haps. But thanks to the tech­nol­o­gy of print-on-demand, it will nev­er be dif­fi­cult for pub­lish­ers to cater to peo­ple who pre­fer the print­ed word.

The dig­i­tal media rev­o­lu­tion has, again, already changed the eco­nom­ics of pub­lish­ing; it may even be that its dis­rup­tive effects on print have peaked.

The broad­cast­ing indus­try may have more to fear at this point, because it seems like­ly to be the rev­o­lu­tion’s next vic­tim. The Project for Excel­lence in Jour­nal­ism has been track­ing the decline of the audi­ence for local and nation­al tele­vi­sion news for years. In 2009, they report­ed:

Local tele­vi­sion news appears to be los­ing its audi­ence at an accel­er­at­ing pace.

In 2009, view­er­ship at affil­i­ates of the four major net­works, which pro­duce most of the local tele­vi­sion news in the U.S., declined across all times­lots, accord­ing to PEJ’s analy­sis of data from Nielsen Media Research.

For ear­ly evening and late news, the view­er­ship decreas­es were steep­er than in 2008. And in 2009, there were declines in ear­ly morn­ing local news­casts as well, which had been sta­ble the pre­vi­ous two years.

Things haven’t improved too much since then. Data sug­gests that the land­scape  have sta­bi­lized, but how long is that going to last?

Even if the dig­i­tal media rev­o­lu­tion does upset the eco­nom­ics of broad­cast­ing, it won’t kill broad­cast­ing as a medi­um, just as it has not killed print.

It cer­tain­ly may be the cat­a­lyst that forces already mis­man­aged media com­pa­nies into bank­rupt­cy (or worse, liquidation).

News­pa­per own­ers cer­tain­ly have a cau­tion­ary tale to tell broad­cast­ers. Many of them were ill-pre­pared to weath­er a rev­o­lu­tion in how peo­ple access and con­sume infor­ma­tion. In some respects, news­pa­pers were a monop­oly. Pri­or to the dig­i­tal media rev­o­lu­tion, there was­n’t anoth­er way to eas­i­ly get the infor­ma­tion that news­pa­pers dis­sem­i­nat­ed. Now there is.

But just because the infor­ma­tion that is con­tained with­in in news­pa­pers, mag­a­zines, and books can be read on a screen does­n’t mean that we are head­ed for a future where there is no such thing as a paper publication.

There will always be an audi­ence and a mar­ket for the print­ed word. It may not be as big as it was in the days before com­put­ers, tablets, and smart­phones were inex­pen­sive and wide­ly avail­able. But it will still be there.