There should be three payment options. One for print, one for web only and one for both. Web only should be like V magazine where you have to click from page to page without the ability to skip over the ads along with links and interactive video, print only should be more in-depth, more elaborate, move lavish and make picking up a newspaper or magazine an experience rather than just a content dwindling, excersize in cost savings. Subscribing to both should give you the best of both worlds regardless of how you travel or move about.

“Print is dead” is a self fulfilling prophecy. Money’s tight so the publishers have cut content, content becomes homogenous, so they lose advertising and hitting www. anything gives you the complete publication for free, with tiny 1/4 page advertising banners, instead of full page advertising.

The thought that any major publication is going to survive by replacing the advertising business model with subscription based payments are dreaming. Nobody is going to pay $11 a day to read the NYT’s online or $22 a month for Vanity Fare.

Print also has a habit of limiting and downsizing the people that produce compelling content. For decades editorial didn’t pay their contributors that well, but today it pays even less and no industry can survive by taking a hammer to their inventory and like it or not the inventory of a publication, web or print is the writing, photography, illustration, design and quality of presentation.

This is also the time to get brave. Publishers and contributors alike need to shake off the thought of “let’s not offend” and get into a mindset of producing an issue that is stunning and compelling.

It’s time for the boardroom to invite the artists into the decision mix. Roll up their sleeves, strap it up and produce something that is worthwhile.

JRR

“print has always increased” I meant the diversive amount of magazines that you see on newsstands and other places compared to 10, 20 or 30 years ago. The circulation of individual magazines is going down but in terms of variety and number of magazines it has increased. If you calculate global circulation I am pretty sure it has increased too.

We don’t want to be so egocentric and look at the US market only, do we?

this threat is becoming old . But I am happy to continue the discussion for the next decades on newer ones…

It’s funny reading luddite comments on internet blogs. Seems ironic in a way.

“Digital cameras will never replace film.”

(heard this one circa 1998)

Do you really think paper – the price of which has skyrocketed and is the largest material expense of any publication – is going to be around forever as a mass medium? Are there going to be magic trees invented that create sudden huge amounts of paper that somehow render it more economical than electronic delivery?

“Print has always increased” – have you been to a printer lately? They are retooling away from the huge presses that require ginormous runs to make economic sense. It’s all about short runs and making on-demand printing profitable now.

There’s disagreement, and then there is just not seeing whats in front of you…

Again- Newspaper: some will dissapear. Maybe in the US a lot will dissapear. In Europe and Asia and Emerging Markets a lot of Newspapers will still be there in 10 years.

But that Print will exist in only niche or collector magazines is laughable. Maybe I have heard this just too often the last 20 years (and in the meanwhile print has always increased).
Also people working in media seem to have a natural disposition of predicting doom.

Apart from that most of your argument seems to consist of the usual technoblabla which totally ignores the user.

I am in complete agreement with much of what’s been said. When times got tough, many media outlets cut the few things that separated them from amateur blogs; namely quality writing and photography. If you run a restaurant and serve up crap food, with bad service, there’s no question as to what the outcome will be. Why is it so difficult for this industry to figure out?

There were far too many mediocre (at best) publications available, and many did ignore the internet for too long, and are suffering because of it. But they are also suffering due to the other poor business practices already discussed.

1) Cheap amateur photography of inferior quality, thereby reducing the quality of their publication, causing reduced circulation, causing them to buy even cheaper, even lesser quality photography, causing even less circulation…and that continues.

2) They have blurred the editorial and news pages to such an extent that their entire publication becomes a politically charged, editorial page. Most of their readers do not agree with their editorial page, and when the objectiveness of their news work becomes less clear, their subscribers decide that they would rather get their news elsewhere.

As I have posted elsewhere, I gave up my 30-year subscription to National Geographic and other nationally circulated magazines based on the faults listed above. Even though the photography is slick, gritty, and “stylish”, that is NOT what I want from a picture that should illustrate the story. And when a publication such as National Georgraphic and Newsweek which are supposed to report the astounding facts to me, but rather want to feed me their opinions, I turn elsewhere for the facts, so that I can form my OWN opinions.

When editors begin to realize that the reading public wants the facts, ON BOTH SIDES, and good, REAL illustrations of those facts, things will turn around IMHO.

If they continue seeking cheap illustrations and cheap commentary rather than good reporting, their magazine, newspaper, or advertising, will continue to loose viewership. They lost mine.

T. C. Knight

I think print as a mass consumer medium will be finished, yes. Within 10 years. Time, newsweek, your local paper etc,

Print will still exist in more niche magazines. And in special “collector” issues from the big guys. I feel that most niche mags will probably be electronic for the most part, but you might be able to get a print edition for an added fee.

This is all made possible by technology – it’s much cheaper to do short runs of printed material than it used to be, so an on-demand hard copy of an art magazine won’t be outrageously expensive.

Right now the speedbump is in delivery of the media to the consumer in a convenient format. The amazon kindle points the way to a future where print quality meets electronic convenience. I’ve read that prototypes of 300 DPI full color e-paper are being polished in the lab, so we’re not far.

Take the iphone, scale it up a few inches, replace the LCD with color e-paper, then have the chinese knock off brigade turn it into a $99 product and there you go. Paper becomes a niche product.

Maybe in 100 years ok.

Nobody with a serious mind will deny that vast changes are occuring and that new business models will have to be developed (which will take a considerable amount of time). Arguably newspapers will have a tremendously hard time and maybe become obsolete at some point. But I do not see magazines becoming obsolete for decades. I think the internet as a replacement for magazines is just pathetic and to speak of a general death of print is really dubious.

Information and methods of distributing information are different topics. There appears to be a voracious, and growing, demand for information. However some information distribution models (notably print) appear to be losing popularity because of a variety of factors: economic conditions, production/distribution costs, immediacy, changing patterns of consumption, technology advances, etc.

Simply switching to a Web distribution model and charging micropayments for everything is an over-simplification. The organizations that ultimately prosper will re-think how they gather and present information. The challenge is finding the right mix of information distribution methods, and producing a variety of unique, quality products.

As economic conditions improve, expect a period of consolidations, strategic alliances, acquisitions and new ventures. While any tumultuous period is going to leave unfortunate victims; I remain hopeful that the successful information sources that emerge will mark an improvement over the mindless drivel that comprises most of the current information products.

A business model funded largely by information consumers (as opposed to advertisers) could ultimately be a very positive development.

It’s hard to tell from that Diller interview whether he really has a clue — what a waste of a CEO interview.

With independent news makers – photojournalists, writers, bloggers – it’s hard to achieve the same level of trust (QC and accountability).

So in addition to the self-policing/self-correcting nature of the web, the suggestion here is that we’ll see umbrella companies that aggregate, quality control, and put a single brand stamp on news content generated by a distributed network of contributors. At the same time, these new organizations will avoid the cost basis of print publications; no printing, physical distribution, smaller physical “plant”, fewer full time salaried staff, etc.

To get ahead of the curve, why wouldn’t the NYT et al. just stop producing a print product today? Is this really what subscribers are paying for? A dead tree that looses relevance within a few days and becomes fire kindling? Or are they just paying for the trusted info brand?