Print is dead; long live print

The sad truth behind journalism is that while reputation and readership are important, it’s advertising that ultimately matters. And with that in mind, it’s no great surprise to see pioneers of online journalism citing rising digital advertising revenues to sound the death knell for its print-based counterpart.

But Marcel Fenez, entertainment and media guru for PriceWaterhouseCoopers Hong Kong, has challenged this supposedly inevitable death of traditional media outlets. Fenez said that global print advertising is set to grow 1.8%, and although digital advertising will continue to soar, even by 2012 it will represent only 10% of total advertising for newspapers

Obviously statistics are always fascinating, but potentially more interesting are these claims:

“Traditional media isn’t dead yet and won’t be for the next five years” [emphasis mine]

“The over-50s are helping to sustain traditional media”

So: newspapers are OK for now, thanks to people over the age of 50 buying them, but in five years they’ll be dead (the newspapers, not the over-50s).

That leads me to wonder: what’s going to happen in the next five years to win over the oldies? We can’t predict the future for technology, especially as it develops so quickly (only 10 years ago all films were on VHS), but with so many extras for online readers already, what else can possibly be invented to move the over-50s away from print and onto their computers? In short, what is the future when we’re already in it?

Hopefully the next five years’ advancement will involve online newspapers realising less is more. The reason so many middle-aged and older people don’t ‘do’ the internet is because they’re intimidated – not scared, unless you subscribe to the generalisation of anyone over 50 being an octogenarian pensioner who treats a computer like a bolting warhorse – but intimidated by the sheer number of things you can do with it.

I know these internet add-ons are designed to lead the nervous in slowly. “Hey, Grandad, look: this thing tells you which of your friends read this article, and this thing lets you tell them you’ve read it too!” Admittedly that’s quite a cynical view – there are add-ons that genuinely have use for older internet users. But the fact is that it’s simply overdone: see, for example, just how elucidating this BBC ‘word cloud’ graphic really is.

The most useful benefit for older users is that they can read a newspaper online when they’re not able to buy it. Gone are the days of finding The Telegraph sold out at noon, and having to make do with a Times. And gone are the days of having to wait until the next morning to know what is going on in the world. THAT is the strength of online journalism, and THAT is what it should be focusing on.

But hey, if you disagree, let me know and I’ll make a pie chart of everyone’s opinions, post it to my blog, you’ll get it on your RSS and I’ll see what you Twitter about it tomorrow.