When Will the Dead Tree Times Come Crashing Down
December 24, 2008
Peter Kafka, writing in Media Memo, provided a useful summary of the New York Times’s bleak November 2008. You can read his article “New York times: November Was So Terrible, Even Our Internet Ads Were Down” in “D: All Things Digital” here. Mr. Kafka provides a link to more nitty gritty here. For my purposes, this key point was that Internet ad revenue and other Internet revenue declined as well. What is my agenda? Three points to bright your December 24th:
- What’s the big surprise? The Wall Street Journal’s early push into proprietary desktop software more than a decade ago and then its flirtation with BRS search generated losses as well. As one traditional newspaper after another brought its Gutenberg business model to online, revenues were not just down, most online ventures were disasters. Anyone recall the Knight Ridder “play”? Or, what about the Times’s own smooth move to kill the “Times file save tool”? Nice, especially with no provision to save the content elsewhere. Info about this gaffe is here.
- For most traditional publishers, the online train has left the station. I used to work at a newspaper, and I have watched costs run out of control. The response has been to trim down staff and raise rates. Stepping back and thinking about alternative business models was a common practice. Whilst pondering, new media luminaries rose (Mike Harrington’s TechCrunch) and new distribution systems (Google to name one) emerged. Where were the traditional newspapers? Most were congratulating themselves on their ability to “manage” their problems. Wrong. The management was a hoax, and the problems are not really expensive and painful to solve.
- It is not a question of which newspaper is next. My analysis suggests that the old doctrine of the Domino Theory” is right for our time and our place. Once the gray lady topples, the others will plummet with little or no warning. In death as in life, most of today’s dead tree publications are a bit like sheep. These four footed wizards are heading toward the cliff’s edge.
You can read Erick Schonfeld’s analysis here.
My thought picture of the New York Times and some other dead tree publishers. Source: http://parkerlab.bio.uci.edu/pictures/photography%20pictures/bigthumbs/screenDead%20tree%20on%20Inyo%20crest.jpg
I am delighted I have four or five readers. One or two may take issue with my opinions. If I reached more people, I would have to deal with assertions, cat calls, and so-so vilifications. My specialist study Publishing on the Internet: A New Medium for a New Millennium (Infonortics, 1996) included this statement:
… Technology’s impact cannot be predicted. Small innovations and incremental improvements interact almost organically and behave in complex ways. the use of those technologies and the impact of those instrumental applications of what appear to be harmless inventions create a new type of information environment. this environment is not routinely recognized as a distinct construct almost in the way that a fish does not recognize water. Experts on electronic information are only beginning to come to grips with the rhetorical and syntactical rules of the network publishing information types. The social impact is not fully understood. the implications for commerce, education, medicine, and politics are not understood. Indeed many think it is business as usual. We do not know what will come next. Many aspects of digital life seem unpredictable. they are. It is the datasphere showing its true colors.
I suggest beet red as the new color to signify failure. Okay, tell me why I am wide of the mark even for an addled goose in rural Kentucky.
Stephen Arnold, December 24, 2008
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