Column
The agony of printed media lasts and lasts...
21.09.2009
Although everyone has been stressing lately – let me paraphrase a famous sentence of Mark Twain from 1897 – that the news on death of printed media are somewhat premature, the fact is that we almost daily hear or read about an announced winding up of a daily or weekly magazines, mostly in the USA, but Europe is not immune either.
Most indicators of success or sustainability of the press, from circulation to advertising efficiency, from credibility to the trust in media have been decreasing.
More: Prelog_smrt_tiska.pdf
Or: Besker.pdf
Or: Hayes.pdf
Mark Deuze, in his widely read blog on digital media and society, has lucidly noticed that these are perhaps big changes in the business model of media, the model that was primarily based on production of goods, news used to have their price, and then they included work and other activities at the places designed for that purpose, let’s say in editor’s offices, publishing companies etc. and all this happened by making use of the knowledge of employees of media industry. Naturally, things have dramatically changed over the past ten years or so.
More: http://deuze.blogspot.com/2009/03/end-of-newspapers.html
"After a century of continuous publication, The Christian Science Monitor will abandon its weekday print edition and appear online only, its publisher announced Tuesday. The cost-cutting measure makes The Monitor the first national newspaper to largely give up on print."
More: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/29/business/media/29paper.html
This was also partly reported by our media:
http://www.jutarnji.hr/magazin/clanak/art-2009,4,11,,159181.jl
What are the publishers trying to do? (or: The empire strikes back)
"Taking aim at the way news is spread across the Internet, The Associated Press said on Monday that Web sites that used the work of news organizations must obtain permission and share revenue with them, and that it would take legal action against those that did not."
See the full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/business/media/07paper.html?_r=1
"We're not using long-form content on the Web because it's not clear to us that's the way people want to consume content. But also the business model isn't there yet, so we're taking it slow."
See the full article: "http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/showbiz/2009-07/12/content_8416804.htm ili: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/film/news/e3i7cc109eb3af4302ca34ec311a159e64c
But not everyone agrees…
“All recent information indicates that the internet is not going to be the great savior of major media companies, at least not anytime soon.“
See: http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1876945,00.html
