Phoenix from the Ashes of Print?

In North America last week for a media seminar, I couldn't
help noticing the 'panic about print'. In end-2005, BusinessWeek had
shut down its Europe and Asia print editions, replacing them with online
editions and a 'global US print edition'. Several US magazines followed
suit. Last week, IDG's Infoworld also shut down print and, yes, moved
to an online/events model.

There have been prophets of the decline of print for decades.
And of the death of every medium 'superceded' by another. Radio was to die
when TV came in; newspapers, to give way to, variously, radio, TV and the
Internet.

Fact: Yes, there is a gentle power shift in media, from
'pure broadcast' (anything created in one place and sent out to millions:
TV, radio, newspapers) to 'interactive' (any medium that allows rapid
interaction with or among the target group).

Fact: Broadcast-TV, radio, print-still rules
revenues, Print itself dominates many media houses. The top blogs do not have
the influence (let alone the revenues) of the smallest 'traditional media'
houses.

Fact: Traditional broadcast media are adapting and
evolving. TV uses SMS to interact with audiences in real time; time- and
place-shifting and changing TV and radio. Newspapers are using email, blogs and
SMS to build up and interact with reader communities.

But there are disruptors out there, and the big one is Google.
This 'simple' search engine is one of the most powerful media entities on
the planet today. If 400 mn people turn to Google for information on everything,
it's no wonder advertisers spent $11 bn on it last year-no matter that the
information is actually coming from a BBC or NYT site.

Yet every print media house has an online play, though much
of it is still segregated or simply an archive of printed stories. USA Today
publisher Gannett is experimenting (in a regional paper) with integrated
print-online approaches, using the immediacy of online to precede print and also
publish "hyperlocal" content that print could not easily manage. Their
mo-jos, mobile journalists, have no offices other than their cars, and file
directly into the site. And the integrated newsroom, which brings together print
and online journalists, allowing news to flow into both instead of locking up
exclusives for 24 hours.

So despite the panic and despite Google, print and other
broadcast media are adapting rather well, with a foot and more in the 'interactive'
door.

And so the Fourth Estate is gradually evolving into a
majority of integrated, multi-media entities, with specialized exceptions in
individual niches.

And in this century of paperless technologies and digital document
management, more paper than ever in history is being spewed out from digital
printers across the planet.

Prasanto K Roy

pkr@cybermedia.co.in