"Eventually reading a print paper will be like owning a horse"
-Jeff Bezos
Is print media dying? We think so.
Up until just a few months ago I worked for a local newspaper as a Digital Advertising Consultant and had the liberty of listening to the CEO of a very large media company based here in the U.S. deliver an in-person speech about the current state of their company. He stated that the people selling print advertising and not focusing on digital were only a few years away from being laid off, and that unless print media took a good look at digital solutions to fill the revenue gap that the whole thing was going to collapse. Personally I was given a paper every day I worked there and still only used them when I needed to paint something or wrap glass for a move. Let's get real honest with ourselves over the next few minutes about the way we consume media and news today.
When was the last time you read the paper because you felt like it and were not in a captive situation in a public setting?
For me this hasn't happened in sometime. However we all know how it works, you go to the doctors office, the brake shop, or your setting in a car with a paper machine within eye shot. You may glance and read a headline or two, but how often do you pick it up and consider it as a piece of the news funnel? I know a lot of people that still consider local news to be the most credible and interesting news because it pertains to them and their geographic area. But, what if I told you that behind the scenes that a majority of the work goes on in a newsroom half way across the country, or what If I told you that the people that work in the papers are more concerned about advertising dollars than real news. Well I can't tell you that's the case everywhere, but at my local paper it was.
I was being told every day about some new promotion that had been put together just to justify asking a local business for an extra $400 when we knew it wouldn't have a direct result on their bottom line or even visibility. The more I think about it I overheard very little news. In most cases the managers at these papers start to believe in the value of clicks that equal nothing for an advertiser, and that's because they are not focusing on user experience. Let's assume you don't follow the difference between what digital solutions are and what print media is.
- Print media is your basic newspaper or magazine with printed news articles and advertisements. (everyone should be familiar with this)
- Digital advertising solutions are more focused on getting a business to appear on the internet and capture the correct audiences and influence them to benefit the company either monetarily or with data of some sort. So this would be your Search engine marketing ads on google & Bing, Search engine optimization services, managing social media accounts and helping to build brands and creatives for businesses.
So the old way of making money in America used to be as simple as starting a business and advertising in the local newspaper. There are business owners all over the country that will tell you this is all the used to have to do. Then they will tell you that yellow pages came along and that if you had your number in the yellow pages or a good ad somewhere in the book you could generate a considerable amount of profit from it.
So let's stop for a minute and take care of a few things, because I would bet that most people reading this don't think newspapers are bad for business, are profitable, and are here to stay by default. I want to share a few stats with you so you can see just how bad it is. Take note of the trends. All sourced from PEW Research.
There are some spike where they have made good effort to increase readership, but on an overall the numbers show a steady decline occurring.
I didn't even do the research to find what the current percentage is of Digital vs Print, but the last time I heard it was cresting 50% digital and climbing. Print is becoming the minority in the ROI conversations.
Declining year after year.
Now this is where I come in. Like I said before, I worked for a newspaper, actually the largest newspaper in the United States. I was laid off after my company decided that they were so revenue negative for soo long that they needed to do something. so they laid off a large amount of their staff and started acquiring small tech companies, this is something that will probably continue.
They are shrinking their workforce and expecting growth in revenue from cutting out the people who generate it. Just like Bezos says "You can't shrink your way to profitability.
Since the whole fiasco I took the opportunity to start my own advertising agency and get back at the company that laid me off by taking as many clients out of their market as possible and giving them solutions at price points that big papers can't afford to offer. Essentially undercutting them, and I would feel terrible about this if I didn't know that their days were numbered to begin with. Believe it or not a lot of emerging companies are looking at digital advertising as a way to increase revenue for their already large companies, but they lack the personality and locality that small to medium sized businesses feel comfortable working with. It's kind of like taking a class with 2 people versus 100, there's just more one on one time, more of everything really.
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@kichen Great Article! I agree! I feel like the newspaper and the days of advertising in the classifieds and being listed in the YellowPages are over. Everything is going digital! I can't even remember the last time I read an actual newspaper that was not online!
They create a echo chamber about how things are fine. It's like using your credit card without knowing the balance, eventually you're going to get a huge wake up call. Thanks for commenting.
It is just so wasteful alone. And to be able to save or archive them means practically turning into a hoarder and saving stacks and stacks of fire hazardous newspapers.