OCTOBER 30, 2008

Print Publication Decline Continues

Back in April, my colleague Mike wrote a post entitled “The Long Goodbye To Newsprint Begins” in which he detailed the final changeover from print to online format for Madison, Wisconsin’s The Capital Times:

The Capital Times may be among the first to step so emphatically into journalism’s future, but every entity of the Old Media – not just newspapers, but TV, magazines and even newsletters and academic journals – has had to face the fact that the digital age has transformed the rules of mass communications.

And while it’s true that every aspect of traditional media is facing a paradigm shift, it seems that print media is taking the worst beating, at least for the moment.

• Condé Nast, an international publisher with numerous publications (many of them household names like Wired, Vogue, Glamour and GQ) announced major cuts across the board, with each title having to reduce staff and budget costs by 5% over a matter of weeks.

• The Orange County Register is laying off 110 employees by the end of the week.

• The Los Angeles Times is cutting 75 newsroom jobs, which is about 10% of its staff.

• Gannett, the largest newspaper publisher in the U.S., is also cutting 10% of its community newspaper staff, on top of 1,000 jobs it let go in August. (Because of Gannett’s size, this will be a very substantial number of jobs.)

• And next year, the 100-year-old Christian Science Monitor will become the first nationally circulated newspaper to go to an online-only daily edition. (CSM will retain a weekly print edition.)

No doubt the economy plays a role here (particularly when the only printing press seeing an increase in demand seems to be the one at the Treasury Department) but it’s also indicative of the rapid convergence of social and traditional media. As we increasingly exchange information electronically, print newspapers - and to a lesser extent magazines and books - become a seeming anachronism. When content I can find in a print edtion of a newspaper is also available online, I will opt for the electronic version every time.

As exciting as the changes are in the way we consume and distribute information, the loss of jobs is unfortunate and has a tremendous impact on the people in the industry.  The question now is whether the decline of print media continues to accelerate, or holds firm. My guess is that 2009 will bring a number of similar announcements to the one made by the Christian Science Monitor.