Thank God you're here on watoday! The newspaper that ain't a newspaper, a pure online portal brought to you by the futurists at Fairfax Media. It looks like Fairfax's flagships, the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, but it doesn't bounce on your doorstep or avail itself in fragrant, just-arrived-from-the-printer piles at your local newsagency.
Get used to it.
Start a physical newspaper now and you'll watch millions of shareholder dollars vacuumed off the bottom line. Start a website and it's a whippet of cash. Every new venture is a roll of the dice. But, in the advanced binary age, you can bet low and win big.
Faster than you can imagine or even process, newspapers and magazines will begin evaporating in their labour and resource intensive forms. Five years? Three years? The day of reckoning is almost upon us.
The argument for print goes like this: you can't beat the portability and pleasingly tactile nature of paper. After a day of staring at backlit computer screens our heads ache and our eyeballs plead for the subtlety of sunlight.
Which is true.
But that magazine, so inflated with cruel photos of a skeletal Angelina Jolie and a balloon-like Jessica Simpson that you caress? That newspaper, with all its supplements and lift-outs, that makes Sunday mornings so special? The reason they can fill you with so much pleasure at such a reasonable price is because of the magic of paid advertising.
Of course, you knew that. That ain't news. But, now it's starting to manifest in actual spending. Print advertising is drying up faster than Colin Barnett's skin at a Burswood Casino pool party.
And without the subsidies of marketing budgets, will you be happy to eventually pay $12 for your newspaper? Or $20 for that 48-page copy of Vanity Fair?
Five years ago, no one predicted the sudden and overwhelming takeover of digital photography. Suddenly, magazines didn't need pre-press departments or a film budget or darkrooms or vast drum scanners. Jobs were lost and jobs were created. And, are we crying over the loss of film?
In a few years, how many companies – with the exception of the French and Italian luxury marquees LVT, Gucci and Chanel – will still want to drop 20k on a double-page print ad over a dozen titles, when half of that cost is purely the raw cost of physically producing the 200,000 pieces of paper that comprises the ad?
Right now, it's all about connection and collaboration. Money is sliced off the pie to improve hits on Google and via social networking. Viral videos, tumblr blogs and targeted instagram feeds all take a bite.
In five years time, can you even begin to imagine the power of our phones and tablets or the technology that will enable foldable LCD screens? Peel it open at the breakfast table, punch the touch screen and call up the New York Times and the experience is almost the same as paper. Only better. Now you have access to every single great newspaper and magazine in the world.
Our crush on print will die as fast as the medium.
And, yet this isn't the death of print but the death of mass-produced paper products.
Newspapers and magazines will flourish as we accept and embrace the need to pay for news and information. A pay-wall erected in front of our once-free columnist won't have us clicking away but clicking through with our credit card details.
And here's something that we never mention: imagine all the trees that will remain standing and all the rivers and lakes that won't fizz with the chemical detritus of the printing process.
We live in a very exciting time.
Or do you disagree?
.gif)
6 comments so far
New user? Sign up
Make a comment
You are logged in as [Logout]
All information entered below may be published.
Thank you
Your comment has been submitted for approval.
Comments are moderated and are generally published if they are on-topic and not abusive.