Dead Tree Publishers in Italy Build a Hadrian’s Wall
January 15, 2009
Hadrian’s wall is an interesting tourist stop. Archaeologists continue to thrive as rubbish pits are exhumed and effluvia from the garrisons reveal the secrets of a miserable life far from Rome. Now Italian publishers (yep, the dead tree crowd entrenched in paper, ink, and 15th century business processes) are creating a digital Hadrian’s Wall. Perhaps one day far in the future, scholars will twiddle bits to figure out the secrets of traditional publishers nine years into the 21st century. You can read about this development in the International Herald Tribune (a thin thing I scan whilst in an airport outside the US) here. The article is called “Italian Publishers Form Online Alliance.” There’s no author on the version I scanned online. The source is another dead tree outfit, Thomson Reuters. The idea is that big newspapers are going to team up to create “an online alliance.” The article points out that newspapers have been affected by the downturn in readership, advertising, rising costs, etc. Not much of a surprise in my opinion.
For me the most important comment in the article was:
In the United States, several newspaper publishers have already formed consortiums to take advantage of rising online advertising. About 800 U.S. newspaper Web sites in the Newspaper Consortium have arranged a partnership with Yahoo, and several top U.S. newspaper publishers have formed an advertising sales network called quadrantONE.
The idea that there are 800 newspapers working in concert in the US was news to me. This means that there is another digital Hadrian’s Wall probably running through the wilds of Kentucky. My ignorance knows no bounds, but I am an addled goose. If there is a consortium, what is the group doing to generate significant revenues for its members. The Chicago Tribune is introducing a tabloid version of the newspaper and retaining the traditional “big” paper. Okay, that’s one way to make sales I suppose. In Detroit one newspaper is producing a hard copy three days a week. That will thrill advertisers and readers who want sports news for a game played last night. Well, the newspaper will provide the news in a couple of days. That will work too, right? If the Courier Journal (the local newspaper) gets any smaller, I won’t be able to wrap trash in it.
Italy is building a digital Hadrian’s Wall. The US newspaper publishers already have one. The problem is that the walls won’t do much if anything to reverse what is a problem brought about by a change in the way in which people think about timely information.
I would wager that Hadrian himself would point out the folly of a digital wall. He used troops who killed intruders. Now the enemy is the children of the newspaper media wizards. My hunch is that the progeny of the newspaper barons use iPhones and the Google, not hard copy documents to keep up with what’s happening.
Stephen Arnold, January 15, 2009
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