Print -- is it dying or is it dead?

A question I am asked often, especially by students of mass communication is: "Is print dying? Or is it dead?"

My answer: "It might be dying. But it's not dead. I don't think it will die."

Yes, especially in the United States, many publications have closed down. For many newspapers, like the NYT, their digital subscription has been growing. But the print medium will be there, surely at least in the foreseeable future. Only that the number of physical newspapers, magazines and books might come down.

The printed document, all said and done, has its own impact on the reader. When we see a headline across up to around 15 inches of a newspaper, it has its own impact on us, compared to a similar headline across around less than half of that on a laptop, or still smaller on a mobile phone. Headlines on newspapers also signal to us the relative importance of news items, which is very difficult to achieve on a mobile phone.

Newspapers, magazines and books are unique in the sense that they have just printed words and photos on them, and nothing else, like a mobile phone are a computer.

A comment I keep hearing is: "Children don't read newspapers or books, nowadays. They are all watching videos or movies, and listening to music."

My reply: "True there is more of photos, memes, GIF and videos. But it's not that kids aren't reading anything. They are reading "newspapers" but it's online, mostly on their mobile phones.

Also, look at the crowds at some of the book stores, no one will ever say that people have stopped reading actual books. And it's mostly youngsters who are reading these books.

Where digital scores is in storage, portability, and easy retrieval of data. So, it will be too far-fetched to say that print will vanish all together.

(This post is a part of the "Blogging from A to Z Challenge April 2018.")

Newspaper seen as credible source of information

Those days there were no apps, mobiles, computers, internet or 24x7 news coverage on a dozen television channels. After getting to know very briefly about news developments on All India Radio or Doordarshan, we had to wait for the next day's newspaper to know the details.

Cut to the present. The widespread belief is that fewer and fewer people, especially teenagers and youth, are interested in reading the newspaper. They, instead, turn to websites of their choice or apps on mobile phones or tablets.

The number of newspapers might dwindle, even substantially, over a period of time. But it may be too early to write their obituary.

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to attend an open house of some readers of the newspaper I work for. And, in many ways it was an eye-opener. Some of the points I gleaned from the interaction were:

• Newspaper, especially the broadsheet format, is considered as the most credible source of information
• Children are not put off by the language. In fact, they look up to newspapers to learn new expressions and usages.
• Youngsters love to see colour and illustrations in newspapers.
• Few people think that newspapers should minimize or abandon their predominant serious role of informing and educating people, in favour of trivia and entertainment
• It's very difficult to understand what exactly readers want since they are interested in everything from local civic issues to international political developments.
• Web editions are mainly to check out the latest news developments. But there is huge demand for the e-paper format, the digital version of the physical paper. Because people want to see different sections and page numbers.

Even though lot of news is disseminated via blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Buzzfeed, Reddit etc, most people turn to news organizations for confirmation. The web formats may be catching on, but for the average reader, the printed word on paper seems to still comes across with a stamp of authenticity. Just as movie houses have thrived, though in fewer numbers, in spite of DVDs and online, many years down the line, we would still see physical newspapers coexisting with the web and e-paper formats.

30 top US news websites

Editor and Publisher has put together has put together a list of top 30 US news websites. New York Times, USA Today, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal Online and Los Angeles Times are on top, in that order. All these have gained traffic over the past year. More

While traffic has gained, the average time spent by a reader on the NYT site has decreased from 44 to 36 minutes during Jan 2007 to Jan 2008. More

It's well acknowledged that print media in the US has been losing circulation. But how well has the online versions of the newspapers been doing?

An analysis by Scarborough Research says that the online audience has been making up as much as 28% of the loses in print readership. More

But, on the contrary, Outsell Research says that online newspapers aren't attracting eyeballs fast enough. More

I guess, the disparity is because of the types of newspapers covered. For a still fledgling medium like online communication, it's very difficult to generalise.

NYT backs Hillary Clinton, John McCain

This is not something the media in India do -- openly backing a candidate in an election. The first two editorials in today's New York Times are about who the newspaper's editorial board thinks should be the Democratic and Republican candidates for the Nov 8 US Presidential election.

"As Democrats look ahead to the primaries in the biggest states on Feb. 5, The Times’s editorial board strongly recommends that they select Hillary Clinton as their nominee for the 2008 presidential election," the newspaper says. "The next president needs to start immediately on challenges that will require concrete solutions, resolve, and the ability to make government work. Mrs. Clinton is more qualified, right now, to be president."

• Primary Choices: Hillary Clinton

The second edit on the Republican Party, the NYT says, "We have strong disagreements with all the Republicans running for president. The leading candidates have no plan for getting American troops out of Iraq. They are too wedded to discredited economic theories and unwilling even now to break with the legacy of President Bush."

Backing McCain it says, "Still, there is a choice to be made, and it is an easy one. Senator John McCain of Arizona is the only Republican who promises to end the George Bush style of governing from and on behalf of a small, angry fringe."

• Primary Choices: John McCain

Opinionated media & blogs

This is quite a normal feature in the US. But in India, though the media might editorially endorse or criticise the stand taken by political parties on specific issues, they (particularly big media houses) rarely openly declare its backing for a particular candidate, that too in a parliamentary or assembly election.

I guess the highly opinionated feature of mass media in the US is an indication of the highly evolved state of its society that makes elaborate use of multimedia to access, process and disseminate information. The society is not only highly literate but also has the benefit of sophisticated technology.

There is an argument that blogs have flourished in the US mainly because of the "bias of the mainstream media". Probably. But in no way can blogs claim a "holier than thou" tag, since there is nothing to show that the blogs themselves aren't biased and they themselves don't have any agenda?

I feel the best indication of a well-evolved society is the diversity of opinions. To that extent blogs are only complementing in their own way the multiplicity of opinions in the society.

Journalists and their family life

This week it's my turn to take leave. Last week it was my wife's. Reason: To be with our son during his studies as he prepares for his exams. No longer people take leave only for going on holiday tours. Thanks to modern-day lifestyle, dictated by long and unusual working hours, parents have less time to spend with their children.

Journalists, like us, are among the worst hit. When children are at home in the evening, we are in the office. Even though people on Sundays follow news on radio and TV, and on Mondays read newspapers, few of them realise that journalists work on Sundays too. Yes, both of us work on Sundays, and our Sunday is on a weekday! Besides, most public holidays too are working days for us, with the result, in a year, there are very few days when all of us are at home through the day!

There's an opinion that such work schedules aren't good for the family. In fact, people do ask us: "How do you manage?!" There are also parents, faced with their children's dream to be journalists, who ask us: how good is the career, is it safe, is there family life for a journalist?

My answer: we manage just as others do. It's not journalists alone who lead such lives. Families where parents have the perfect 10 to 5 job aren't free of problems, are they? I know a family: the husband and the wife are officers in banks; but they are in two cities and their daughter stays with her grandmother. If that you think is the worst part, the best part is the daughter is so much smarter than some other girls whose parents are always with them. I am sure there are many such examples to show how generalizations aren't true.

Of course, more time with children does have its benefits. It'll be quite wrong to say that our son doesn't miss us. The same holds good for us: we too miss the evenings with our son. Family life of most journalists isn't the same as of many others. We do miss the usual weekends; but we do find time to go out as a family, relax, unwind and recharge ourselves. There are lot of advantages when you are a little different and you aren't following the crowd! That's the fun! One example, as we work from afternoon to night, we never get caught in the rush-hour traffic.

It's a tough job, no doubt. However, I believe adversities do play a positive role in shaping our lives; they make us a little harder and more prepared to face challenges in life. The trick, I guess, is not in ducking problems, but in working around them. And, it's not the problems we should be worried about, it's the way we tackle them.

Reporters told to write shorter stories

One of the ways journalism has changed is in the length of stories. Newspapers and magazines now a days carry shorter articles and news reports. There are more of graphics, illustrations and photos. One reason is that people have lesser time today to go through long-winded articles, two, the printable area of newspaper itself has shrunk.

The Editors' Weblog is reporting on how Washington Post has asked its reporters to write shorter articles. "Len Downie, executive edior of The Washington Post, has made it clear: writers will have to write shorter stories if they want to go on writing them. Downie’s memo is representative of a trend to trim and trim more. The memo also discusses the Post’s new policies for the structure of its content."

Washingtonian.com has the full text of the executive editor's memo.

And there is a comment on the above site welcoming the move. A good observation:

"This is good news, not bad news. Kudos to Downie. Based on the memo, I believe he's trying to get articles in the Post that people actually will read and that maintain journalistic excellence. Young people - our future market - like shorter articles, and succinct writing has greater impact than bloated writing. The Post has figured out that long-winded journalism is all but dead, putting the paper far ahead of most."

Newspaper circulation going up

This is probably against conventional wisdom in a tech-driven world; but not surprising. Technology has replaced some devices with newer ones, but not all. We still have pencils, pens, inks, white paper to write on, radios, television sets, cassette players, cinema halls, theatre, bicycles, motorbikes, grinders and mixers (though precooked food is available)…

We do get excited over the theoretical possibilities that technology offers. At the turn of the century, during the dotcom boom, one of them was how we would all shop online and we would see the slow death of retail markets. The other was how we would all stop reading the newspaper and just be content with what we got on the mobile devices.

I guess our love for the written and printed word is very innate to human nature. So, it’s not surprising that newspaper circulation around the world has gone up.

Look at these latest figures put out by the Paris-based World Association of Newspapers. (Source)

Circulation of Indian dailies jumped 33 per cent.

Global newspaper circulation increased 9.95 percent.

Daily newspaper titles surpassed 10,000 for the first time in history.

India has 1,834 dailies (in 2005) up 22.8 per cent from 1,493 dailies in 2001.

The circulation of India's dailies consistently increased from 5,91,29,000 in 2001 to 7,29,39,000 in 2003 to 7,86,89,000 in 2005.

More than 450 million copies of newspapers are sold daily world over.

Even in North America and Europe both circulation and the number of new titles have increased.

A previous posting, on June 9, on the same topic

Washington Post holds bloggers meet

Washington Post on January 9 hosted a meeting of bloggers; perhaps the first of its kind*. Only 100 attended, though anybody who has "a blog about DC" was invited.

The Post's Marc Fisher reported: "This was a chance for all sorts of local bloggers to hear from Post news executives about how the paper is not equipped to cover the micro-local events and issues that bloggers specialize in, and to explore ways in which the paper, its website and bloggers can collaborate, at least by referring readers to one another's work."

Company executives talked about sharing revenues with local bloggers from ads sold by the Post's sales staff, which must be exponentially bigger and effective than any bloggers' effort. The meet-up, coincidentally, came just a few days after Backfence, a local news/blog-like effort co-founded by an online WashingtonPost.com veteran announced a staff cutback and reorganization.

Just an indication of how the mass media landscape is changing.

* Update following Dinakaran's comment: ... perhaps the first of its kind organised by a media organisation.

Supreme Court on press freedom

The Supreme Court dismissed yesterday a petition seeking a ban on publication of obscene photographs in newspapers. Delivering the judgement, a Bench comprising Justice A.R. Lakshmanan and Justice Tarun Chatterjee, came out with a number of observations pertaining to freedom of the Press and choice of media for people in a democratic country like India.

The text of the entire judgement of the case can be read here.

Here are some the observations:

On blanket ban:

• “Any steps to impose a blanket ban on publishing of such photographs, in our opinion, would amount to prejudging the matter... An imposition of a blanket ban on the publication of certain photographs and news items etc. will lead to a situation where the newspaper will be publishing material which caters only to children and adolescents and the adults will be deprived of reading their share of their entertainment which can be permissible under the normal norms of decency in any society.”

On choice of media for people:

• “In addition we also hold that news is not limited to Times of India and Hindustan Times. Any hypersensitive person can subscribe to many other Newspaper of their choice, which might not be against the standards of morality of the concerned person.”

On publication as a whole:

• “We are also of the view that a culture of 'responsible reading' should be inculcated among the readers of any news article. No news item should be viewed or read in isolation. It is necessary that publication must be judged as a whole and news items, advertisements or passages should not be read without the accompanying message that is purported to be conveyed to the public. Also the members of the public and readers should not look for meanings in a picture or written article, which is not conceived to be conveyed through the picture or the news item.”

On nudity and obscenity:

• “Where art and obscenity are mixed, what must be seen is whether the artistic, literary or social merit of the work in question outweighs its obscene content. In judging whether a particular work is obscene, regard must be had to contemporary mores and national standards…

• “Articles and pictures in a newspaper must meet the Miller test’s constitutional standard of obscenity in order for the publisher or the distributor to be prosecuted for obscenity. Nudity alone is not enough to make material legally obscene...

• The definition of obscenity differs from culture to culture, between communities within a single culture, and also between individuals within those communities… Many cultures have produced laws to define what is considered to be obscene and censorship is often used to try to suppress or control material that is obscene under these definitions.”

Newspapers tie up with Yahoo

The print media won't concede defeat. It has always changed with times, by innovating and adapting.

A consortium of seven newspaper chains representing 176 daily papers across the United States is announcing a broad partnership with Yahoo to share content, advertising and technology.

This is another sign that the wary newspaper business is increasingly willing to shake hands with the technology companies they once saw as a threat, says The New York Times.

Newspapers to sell ads on Google

In a move into the old-fashioned business of ink on paper, Google is going to start selling advertisements that will appear in the print editions of 50 major newspapers.

For Google, the test is an important step to the company’s audacious long-term goal: to build a single computer system through which advertisers can promote their products in any medium. For the newspaper industry, reeling from the loss of both readers and advertisers, this new system offers a curious bargain: the publishers can get much-needed revenue but in doing so they may well make Google — which is already the biggest seller of online advertising — even stronger.

The new system will begin a test with 100 advertisers later this month. Some newspapers see Google’s proposed system as a way to increase sales. More in The New York Times.

Newspaper circulation on the rise

If you thought in this age of fast-evolving multimedia applications, newspapers are dying, think again. Newspaper circulations world-wide rose slightly in 2005 while newspaper advertising revenues showed the largest increase in four years, says the World Association of Newspapers.

The WAN report released on June 5 says newspapers are "proving to be incredibly resilient against the onslaught of a wide range of media competition". There are many references to India in the report.

** Seven of 10 of the world’s 100 best selling dailies are now published in Asia. China, Japan and India account for 62 of them.

** The five largest markets for newspapers are: China, with 96.6 million copies sold daily; India, with 78.7 million copies daily; Japan, with 69.7 million copies daily; the United States, with 53.3 million; and Germany, 21.5 million. Sales increased in China and India and declined in Japan, United States and Germany in 2005.

** Indian newspaper sales increased 7 percent in 2005 and 33 percent in the five-year period.

** Twenty-one countries saw newspaper advertising market share growth in 2005: Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Chile, Colombia, Egypt, Finland, Germany, India, Indonesia, Kuwait, Lithuania, Malaysia, Panama, Poland, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States.

** Over five years, newspapers in 24 countries and territories saw increased market share: Argentina, Belgium, Colombia, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, Egypt, France, Greece, Iceland, India, Ireland, Japan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Malaysia, Myanmar, Norway, Pakistan, Poland, Puerto Rico, Russia and Slovenia.

** In India, newspaper advertising revenues increased +23.18 percent over one year and +107.69 percent over the last five. South Africa also saw remarkable gains -- +20.71 percent over one year and 232.23 percent over five years. Turkey’s percentage gains were even higher -- +39.14 percent in 2005 and +236.61 percent over the past five years.

Read the full report here

Whither blogging

The Financial Times Magazine, London, has carried a well-written and comprehensive article by Trevor Butterworth, a writer based in Washington DC, on blogging. It discusses how the nascent medium has grown, where it stands vis-à-vis conventional journalism, and the economics of the medium. A unique thing the magazine did was it opened a blog to where readers could post their comments on the article.

Some salient points of the article:

** Even in the US, the blogosphere’s superpower, most internet users -- 62 per cent according to a survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project -- aren’t exactly sure what a blog is.

** At the close of 2002, there were some 15,000 blogs. By 2005, 56 new blogs were starting every minute. As I type this sentence, there are, according to technorati.com, 27.2 million blogs. By the time you read this sentence, there surely will be many more.

** One of the conventions that happened to work in blogging’s favour was the way the media take a new trend and describes it as a revolution.

** That established journalists were blogging gave the revolution a dose of credibility that it might not have had if it were in the hands of true outsiders. And then, just before the presidential election in 2004, blogging had its Battleship Potemkin moment, when swarms of partisan bloggers rose up to sink CBS’s iron-jawed leviathan Dan Rather for peddling supposedly fake memos about Bush’s national guard service.

** Isn’t the problem of the media right now that we barely have time to read a newspaper, let alone traverse the thoughts of a million bloggers?

** Some experiments have gone awry. When the Los Angeles Times decided to try letting readers insert their own ideas into its editorials online last year, the trial ended within days after obscene pictures were posted on its site.

** Blogging will no doubt always have a place as an underground medium in closed societies; but for those in the west trying to blog their way into viable businesses, the economics are daunting.

** If the pornography of opinion doesn’t leave you longing for an eroticism of fact, the vast wasteland of verbiage produced by the relentless nature of blogging is the single greatest impediment to its seriousness as a medium.

** “Mere potboiling,” wrote Engels of the more than 500 articles he and Marx wrote for The New York Daily Tribune, “It doesn’t matter if they are never read again.”
And that, in the end, is the dismal fate of blogging: it renders the word even more evanescent than journalism; yoked, as bloggers are, to the unending cycle of news and the need to post four or five times a day, five days a week, 50 weeks of the year, blogging is the closest literary culture has come to instant obsolescence.

A wonderful article. Go ahead and read it here.

Newspaper cuttings

Spring-cleaning not only gets the junk out of our house but also provides us an opportunity to travel back in time. Today I spent a couple of hours doing just that.

Among the things that I treasure are clippings from newspapers and magazines. I have a whole lot of them. Reading newspapers and listening to radio was once a past time, an obsessive one. But now, being in the mass communication profession, it has become a part of my job.

The habit of cutting out articles and news items sprang out of my interest in news/current affairs, and thereby in newspapers and radio. I also have cassettes in which I have recorded BBC newsreports of memorable events. I still keep cutting articles; I am struggling to put them in some order.

A few newspapers I that went through with nostalgia were the ones of Oct 31, 1984 and of a few days after that. That was the day Indira Gandhi was assassinated. She was the prime minister when I was in school and college. My first memories of her are of the Emergency. Incidentally, tomorrow, it will be 30 years since that day. More about that tomorrow...

The Oct 31, 1984 paper that is with me is already near-yellow, bleached. I have carefully wrapped it in a plastic bag and tucked away deep inside the cupboard so that light won't fall on it bleaching it further.

NYT buys About.com

The New York Times Co. agreed to buy the online consumer information group About.com for 410 million dollars from holding company Primedia in an all-cash deal. The deal announced late Thursday highlights growing traditional media interest in Internet properties following the Washington Post acquisition of news site Slate.com last December and the Dow Jones Co. acquisition of Marketwatch.com.

About.com employs approximately 500 experts or guides who create content on thousands of topics ranging from the arts to zoology, attracting 22-million visitors per month. About.com, which uses considerable advertising, features a variety of information sites about personal finance, consumer electronics, history and geography and other topics. It has been among the most visited properties on the Internet but has been slipping to competitors such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft's MSN.

Along with their flagship newspaper, the Times owns the Boston Globe, the International Herald Tribune, 16 regional newspapers, 8 television stations and 2 NYC radio stations. It also publishes nearly 40 unique news related websites. About.com, which was put on the block late last year, also attracted interest from Google, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves and AOL. Combining the websites of the two firms would create the 12th largest entity on the Internet, the company said.