How Long Will Print Newspapers Last?
by Matt on May 27, 2010 in Industry
If you run a news-based hyperlocal site, that’s got to be an important question for you. No one argues that journalism is undergoing dramatic changes, and the end of print newspapers would seem to be one of eventual results of these changes.
Britain’s Financial Times, founded in 1888, has an opinion:
Solomon says the FT is committing to “less print” and says the FT sees a five-year trajectory for having exited print in substantial part. “They’re not saying that, by five years, they’ll completely stop it, but they do see that the sunset is going to be in about five years for them.”
The “Solomon” mentioned there is Madi Solomon, part of the FT’s parent group, and the comments were made Tuesday during a panel at the E-Publishing Innovation Forum in London.
Five years. Not completely stopping print by then; but that’s their sunset. Five years.
The Times later retracted Solomon’s comments, but no mind; PaidContent UK has a list of similar comments from other print publishers trying to guess-timate how long their print editions will survive.
My Reaction
I think it’s obvious that pretty much all newspapers will eventually make online their primary home. Does anyone doubt that? But I think it’ll be the bigger papers making that switch first — the ones like Financial Times, the New York Times, USA Today, and so forth.
In smaller towns, like where I call home, getting local news online is still a challenge. There’s really no alternative here to the newspaper and its web site (at least not yet). I suspect it’s the same way in a lot of smaller towns, and so small-town newspapers might not see their print sunset for quite some time.
Your turn: How long do you think your local paper will last in print? Do you agree that small-town papers will live longer?
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6 Responses to “How Long Will Print Newspapers Last?”
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Matt –
I actually hadn’t thought about it being the smaller newspapers that stick around in print longer, but I think it makes a lot of sense. Many of the smaller papers simply don’t have the staff power to maintain a robust online product, whereas a daily or weekly paper requires a finite amount of news that can be tackled by whatever staff the newspaper has.
I also think we’ll see the bigger papers moving into the local news realm. I’m not saying that the New York Times is going to set up shop in Orinda, California. But you already see newspapers putting offices in new cities — Wall Street Journal and NYT in San Francisco, for example.
Hello Matt…
first great topic! I too have been considering much of the changes that I’ve seen up here in Canada with newspapers and the yellowpages groups as they slowly “morph” into becoming more of a multimedia source to try to recapture shrinking revenues from advertisers. A big part of that I think is the whole “Newspapers to offer SEO?” thought I blogged about here — http://www.canuckseo.com/index.php/2010/05/24/canadian-newspapers-to-also-offer-seo/ — and that appears to be at this point US based only. Course, as in all things, that idea will get to canuck land…it just takes awhile. So we’re watching here too…
Jim
I think there may be a local news void for a short time while all of this stuff shakes out…smalltown papers aren’t going to be able to sustain themselves via print advertising, and it’s going to take awhile for larger networks to set up as Ben suggests where they can incorporate long-tail hyperlocal journalism.
The end result of all this will be, I think, a curated set of online stories that people read on their iPads/Kindles/Nooks etc. The curator will be key but I think that eventually we’ll get to a place where instead of having one curator (the local paper) we might have four or five significant curators even in towns like the Tri-Cities.
I think that Solomon’s five-year sunset sounds about right.
[...] is intriguing to me in light of my comments yesterday about small-town papers having a longer shelf life right now than big city and national papers. The World obviously sees the writing on the wall. As [...]
.. an online “newspaper” for a locale – Something I’ve been messing around with for a decade and not coming up with a final plan – just half arsed efforts.
Now I’m back in my hometown in England after 23 years away I really want to give it a go here.
I know all the best themes and like Woo Local
I need to make money at this and have many contacts in my City – the entire postcode PL is about 400,000 people strong and has a pretty thriving community.
Sticking with it and local content is my major problem
I know I can make money at it – it’s just doing it!
D
The “city” I live in has a population of about 4400, with nearly 10,000 more in the local rural (non-incorporated) area.
The local, weekly newspaper has recently added an online portal to try to reach those old readers who no longer buy the print version. It, however, doesn’t carry the full load of info that the print version does.
As with many local papers, the focus is absolutely on local news. I don’t even think 9/11 was covered. But, that is their charter – focus on local events, activities in the schools, local businesses, etc. and cater to the local businesses for ad revenue.
I think they will still have an audience going forward for quite some time simply because the readers seem to like the small town feel, and if something important happens to them or a neighbor or friend, the know they will read about it in the paper.