A growing number of people now look to the World Wide Web for their daily fill of news, style tips, gossip and daily design inspiration. Newspapers and magazines are facing profound challenges with the explosion of news and rich content.
BBC, Facebook, Twitter, Skype and blogs displayed on work computers, iPhones and laptops give instant access to endless amounts information at any time, in any place, keeping you up to date with what’s going on in the world. By the time I ‘ve walked to my local shop to buy a Sunday paper the stories on the printed pages before me are old news, made redundant by the live feed on my iPhone.
My latest App supplies me with content from 18 separate news outlets, including: BBC News, the Times, New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, USA Today, Time, Newsweek, CNN, NPR, ESPN, CBS News, MSNBC, CNBC, ABC News, Reuters, Fox News and Yahoo! News. Updated every five seconds the App gives up to the minute comprehensive content 24 hours a day all for a one off payment of 50p.
With this free news and information so easily available combined with the worlds growing awareness of environmental responsibilities and not to forget the current global recession, we are seeing printed magazines and newspapers struggling to survive. Some may have a strong case to argue that we may be witnessing the potential demise of print.
Recently we have seen sales of magazines and newspapers slump to an all time low while long running magazines like Smash Hits announce defeat after 30 years of distribution. Costs of producing and distributing paper is a significant expense for publishers and in a period of decreasing advertising revenues, lower circulation, and higher production costs, we can expect more and more publications will either embrace digital in an attempt to save money or just die. The entire industry has realised its future is heading digital and maybe even one day completely paperless.
News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch has said “The future of newspapers is digital, but it might take 10 to 15 years before readers go fully electronic. Newspapers are faced with eroding print advertising revenue and circulation and were going to have to start charging readers on the Web”.
This shift from print to online is mainly among younger adults with a recent survey confirming 55 percent of those aged 18 to 29 get most of their news and information online, compared to 35 percent of those aged 65 and older.
Digital magazines are offering far more that just simple content. They are packed with additional content, interaction, animation, music, podcasts and videos as well as blogs and other social networking features all designed to enrich the online experience and to help to entice readers.
Images above from Rio Ferdinands’ new digital magazine #5.
Check out: http://www.rioferdinand.com
Images above from car magazine Rubber Duck
Check out: http://www.rubberduckmag.com/
With the success of downloadable music, TV and film, it comes as no surprise that the literary world is not far behind. Digital has many benefits including instant delivery, bookmarking, sharing on Facebook, video and connecting with other readers that in some peoples opinion outweigh the benefits of print. That all being said I personally think that in most cases magazines and newspapers are still superior to websites when it comes to the quality of writing, photos, and layout. However this may be due to decades of growth and development that online media is yet to experience.
Researching this article I read a lot of articles promoting the death of print, and concluding the switch to digital is not far off. It’s all too easy for us to get caught up in the idea of electronic media conquering print, but we have to remember that the majority of the world’s population doesn’t have access to the Internet. I don’t think its time to give up on print yet as Newspapers and magazines aren’t the first media business to be threatened by technology. Radio didn’t die with the advent of TV. It changed.
I think it’s more of a case that print and web can be used to compliment each other by providing content via each medium in a way that recognises how readers consume information, and therefore reinforce each other. Established publishers who can build their websites around their brands (rather than just reproductions of the print editions in PDF format) which will provide added value to subscribers, readers, and advertisers.
One thing’s for sure, digital can’t replace the traditional walk to get the Sunday papers, reading in bed, or an impulse purchase of a magazine for a train journey. Not everyone has the desire to be attached to a portable electronic device at every minute of the day like me.
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There’s that lovely way that people leave their already-consumed papers on public transport for others to read. And the way that, while waiting for the dentist, you get to pick up a publication you wouldn’t normally have read. I can’t imagine an electronic gadget filling these shoes.
I never understand why online magazines have the page turning mechanism. Just seems very antiquated.
Interesting article Stephen, and i’m sure most people will agree with the points raised. I think that a majority of news websites are poor relations of their print counterparts, excluding the Guardian. The Guardian Unlimited website was relaunched as guardian.co.uk, supported by a £19m investment programme in the site, improving its design, functionality and usability. The online audience continues to grow strongly and interestingly, two thirds of the Guardian’s reach is now outside the UK. I think this is a great example that will surely be followed and I won’t mention how the online advertising has also seen their annual profits soar…
[...] The Beginning of the End [...]
Just this week the New York Times released their new Times Reader 2.0 powered by Adobe Air. I downloaded it to see what it was all about and it’s actually very elegant and reminiscent of actually reading a newspaper.
It’s available for free to current NYTimes subscribers and $3.45 a week otherwise. I’ll be interested to see how this takes off. So many of us are used to getting our online news for free - but since NYTimes has created something much more akin to reading an actual newspaper - could this be the future of news publishing…?
View the demo here:
http://timesreader.nytimes.com/timesreader/index.html?campaignId=34W8F
I think the real challenge will come in a few years - when everyone has a decent hand held internet browser. Without an Iphone or blackberry browsing the net for news is a bit of a chore. The other factor will be the arrival of a totally wireless city. Virgin have just hooked up their trains, you can surf on some BA flights - I think that will affect the pick-up value of a lot of print.
The major advantage of online, as we all know, is that it puts the user in control by providing choice. This is especially important with news. With a newspaper you’re shackled to one viewpoint, one journalist’s opinion. On the web i can be the editor, corroborate stories, read articles from contrary points of view or backfill knowledge that i’m meant to already know. All those football fans will understand how pointless it is following transfer rumor through just one source. News aggregation services provide a brilliant service and you can now see BBC freely linking you to other unaffiliated sources following the same leads. Brands can no longer be as self serving and contained as they can in print, they have to be generous and open with content which is all in the best interest of the reader.
Paper’s here for a long time yet but it’s a no brainer when functionality not tactility is the issue.
Thank you for posting this article, Stephen. It’s been an interesting and thought-provoking read.
Being a digital designer who uses a computer almost every day for work, I have access to news from a number of online sources - the Web, RSS feeds, Twitter, Facebook… and so on. The continual demise of paper-based media such as newspapers and glossy magazines is inevitable as information becomes more available and plentiful online. It makes no financial sense for publishers to print hundreds of thousands of magazines when the same content can be distributed at a fraction of the cost online to a worldwide audience… and we’re going to need all those extra trees to suck-up the increased CO2 emissions from the power stations as the world becomes more reliant on digital!