As Trinity Mirror and Johnston Press are trying to prove, you can stamp on it, or wash it down the drain – but you just can’t kill print.
It has been some week-and-a-bit in the parallel universe known as Publisherville. It started with the Independent becoming the first national newsbrand to go digital-only, the consequence of selling i to Johnston and removing what former ESI managing director Andy Mullins called its “rubber ring” .
This was, timing apart, to the surprise of absolutely no-one, but nevertheless drew yet more obituaries for print.
Then sentiment turned. Dominic Ponsford, editor of Press Gazette, wrote a stimulating piece outlining why print is alive and well, and how certain print performance of certain magazine titles was flourishing.
Momentum picked up as it became clear that Johnston’s national footprint and distribution muscle could transform i into a genuinely national title, and boss Ashley Highfield talked a good game about taking on the Telegraph and The Times for ad revenue.
Then came news that Trinity Mirror is to launch a week from today a new national daily – in print (gasp, swoon, faint) – called, The New Day, prompting commentators to bring out their dusty hymn books with which to sing the praises of print.
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So there we have it: one publisher (ESI) going with the grain of digitisation, while two (Johnston/Trinity Mirror) go against it. This makes print the cockroach of media. You can poison it, you can stamp on it, you can wash it down the drain, but you can’t kill it.
But I wouldn’t go so far as to say print was – yet – enjoying a renaissance. One or two cockroaches…er, and this metaphor is going horribly wrong…don’t make a summer.
Of course it’s interesting that both these initiatives are in print…but less so to me than the fact that we have two established, traditional publishers taking bold initiatives at a time when the prevailing wisdom has it that only non-legacy publishers can create new products and thrive.
We’ve got so used to thinking of legacy publishers as incapable of anything other than managing decline, that we don’t give them credit for taking the fight to incomers.
As for the print/digital divide, a reading of the runes suggest that, for both Johnston and Trinity Mirror, this is more about chasing what money there is left in the market than it is about betting that consumers (especially young ones, as The New Day is rumoured to be after) really prefer print to digital.
Print will only thrive in dark, dirty corners, in the publishing eco-system’s equivalent of drains”
Put simply: there’s no money in digital, it’s so competitive anyway, and the business model/s are, as yet, unproven. But there’s still money in print. So, for the likes of Johnston and Trinity Mirror, it makes sense to chase that while they still can.
The Press Gazette, for example, quotes a city analyst as saying: “[The New Day]…is a low-risk exercise, which could prove usefully accretive even on fairly modest volumes,” and which could generate Trinity Mirror £18.7m of incremental revenue on a circulation of 350,000. This money, it says, “is helpful, but not a game changer.”
Similarly, Johnston’s digital journey has not been a smooth one, so if it can ‘consolidate’ print revenues with acquisitions like i, as city analyst Alex de Groote wrote here in Mediatel, then it buys itself some extra time to get itself match fit digitally.
Much as I love print, its survival other than in certain niche areas, or to perform certain functions, is wishful thinking. Of course, in a decade’s time, there will still be a need for print, and publishers who continue to enjoy the revenues it brings. But it won’t be mainstream.
Like cockroaches, it will thrive in dark, dirty corners, in the publishing eco-system’s equivalent of drains. Long may it continue. But talk of its renaissance, to turn Mark Twain’s comment on his obituary on its head, “is exaggerated.”
Media language that leaves me utterly baffled
It may be that I am off the pace, but sometimes the language used by media people leaves me confused and lost for words. But equally, I don’t think they know what they’re always talking about either.
Take this quote from Jay Lauf, publisher of news site and wannabe digital challenger Quartz.
Quartz has just launched a news app for the iPhone, and Lauf says [my emphasis]: “We put aside existing notions about news apps and imagined what our journalism would be if it lived natively on your iPhone.”
You can read the full piece here.
I understand ‘native advertising’. I understand what they mean when people talk about ‘digital natives’ (and even Quartz describes itself as a ‘digitally native news outlet’).
But what is ‘native’ journalism, or journalism that exists ‘natively’? If indeed there is such a thing, then there must be journalism that doesn’t exist ‘natively’.
Maybe there is, but I have no idea what it might be. As far as I can see, Quartz’s business model exists on selling ‘native’ advertising, so ‘native’ is all Mr Lauf thinks about, and everything he talks about must contain references to ‘native’. Even when it’s meaningless nonsense.
