Rick Short posted a great blog entry titled “Are Magazines Dead?” His post directly addresses many of the issues surrounding B2B magazines, but I think transcends magazines right into our homes.
You may not have noticed that a number of daily newspapers have closed their traditional print editions lately. The most recent casualty is Arizona’s oldest newspaper, the Tucson Citizen. After 138 years, seven months and a day, the Citizen published their own epitaph with their last print edition. Yet the tradition carries on with their online news site – tucsoncitizen.com.
They’re not the first to close and will not be the last.
Earlier this year we lost Colorado’s 150-year old Rocky Mountain news, survived by an online version and the print edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer to mention a few. By mid-March four newspaper publishers had filed for bankruptcy protection including Tribune Company and the owners of the Philadelphia Inquirer.
The Boston Globe continues to fight for survival while the venerable New York Times considers moving some of its’ online content behind a paid barrier. Over the past month or so the International Herald Tribune online presence has changed to become ‘The Global Edition of The New York Times’ according to the redirected iht.com domain.
There are rumors of a number of other print-based papers closing amidst the dwindling number of magazines moving to online content only. And these are mainstream, consumer products.
My local daily paper, the Asbury Park Press (owned by Gannet News) has made the transition from print only, to a mixture of print and online with some level of success. They use condensed versions of stories in the print edition to drive traffic to full stories located online. What a concept. But that does not bode well for households with little or no online connection. And that still covers a large number of people in my area, Central New Jersey.
What’s happening with your local newspaper?
Stay tuned for more on the new paradigm for print in my next post.
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