The print media is in its death throes.
I remember when this started, in 1995. I was at Interactive Age, a magazine dedicated to covering the Internet. It was closed, quite suddenly, and the reason, I later learned, was the rising cost of newsprint.
But newsprint is not the culprit this time. The price for newsprint today is less than it was then.
It was oil, delivery costs, that killed the industry.
Consider my own hometown paper, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Until this year its distribution range covered the whole state. It
prided itself on being the state’s newspaper. But now it has retreated
to the Atlanta metro area. Why? Because subscriber density was low
outside that area. It took too much gas to get the papers into the
mailboxes. Thus there weren’t enough readers to justify the
newsgathering. The retreat made business sense.
But it’s going to get worse. Even inside the city you no longer have
delivery boys on mailboxes. You have delivery men (and women) in cars,
tossing papers on the lawns. Those cars use gas. Their costs are
increasing, dramatically. The only way to recoup this is by raising the
price of the paper, which causes subscribers to drop it. In order to
prop up the circulation numbers, the AJC has let unsold papers go free
to vendors who stand on street corners on weekend mornings. It’s
hazardous work, with very low pay. It’s not working anymore.
The problem for magazines is worse. They rely on the post office. Postal rates are rising,
and to protect its own bottom line, the Postal Service wants to limit
the impact of increases on its biggest customers. This kills small
magazines, reduces the industry’s diversity, and will eventually kill
the big customers as well.
The only way out seems to be the Web. But I know it didn’t work with Interactive Age. Once the print version died, there really wasn’t enough ad money around to support a staff. Infoworld‘s
staffers are making happy talk about their switch, but the resulting
online paper will be nothing like the print paper it replaces.
Different media, different products.
