Is the printed page doomed?

Printed publications have long looked to the web as a way to revive their diminishing prospects. But, asks CIO Ian Cohen, even if they do embrace it will it be enough to save them?

When it comes to publishing, Bob Dylan said it best: "For the times they are a-changin''.

If you believe the prophets of doom, then the publishing industry is in terminal decline. Advertising revenues are shrinking faster than an expensive cashmere sweater in a spin dryer and circulation figures are falling off a cliff in all but the developing world.

Worse still, the online messiah has failed to deliver on its promises for the vast majority of print publications that launched a .com or .co.uk version of their title. Dalliances with online subscriptions and paid content have been inconclusive for all but the most targeted of publications and no one has yet cracked the key issue of yield. Sure, the volume is there in terms of page impressions and unique visitors but, as Jerry Maguire said, 'Show me the money'.

Get another viewpoint

Tech guru and silicon.com columnist Peter Cochrane argues that the newspaper is indeed dead. Read all about it.

Given I spent some time as a CIO in the newspaper business, I was especially interested to see Deloitte's thoughts on the issue in its 2009 predictions, summed up as: 'Putting print out of peril may require stopping the presses.'

In among the expected consolidation spiel, Deloitte cites the 2008 economic downturn as simply exacerbating an already depressing position and forecasts up to 20 per cent decline in advertising revenues through 2009. Equally the consultancy highlights the essentially obvious position that "in late 2008 the online contribution was at most a few per cent of a title's revenues and most of these were tied to the print version in various ways".

None of this is particularly contentious stuff, however one of the bottom line statements caught my eye. In the general comments about re-evaluating business models and not simply relying on cost cutting, I found this comment: "a paper's online presence may need to be reduced significantly to encourage people back to the physical product".

Deloitte is seemingly advising publishers who can't make a financial fist of the online world to restrict online content as a way of forcing people back to a physical product. What?

The report uses the Japanese market as an example of such an approach on the basis that the rates of readership decline in that region are lower than those seen in North American titles.

I thought I'd gone back in time.

Now don't get me wrong. I don't subscribe to the view that newspapers will die out completely. Neither do I believe that the web holds all the answers. I'm a 'multi-channelist'.

It probably comes from my time in financial services in the 1990s when the panic of impending internet-only banking swept through the retail banking industry. You remember: Egg, IF and Smile all arrived on the scene and the commentators screamed that it was the end of the retail banks. However, they overlooked some pretty basic business fundamentals when they made such comments.

Firstly, customer behaviour is the key element of any structural business change and many customers were not ready to give up on the branch. Secondly, there was never going to be a situation where transactional substitution would be so complete that it would allow the traditional banks to close all the branches.

Never mind the social aspects, without that key element of structural change, there would always be a high-cost branch network to support. This is where multi-channel banking came in.

Now compare that to the current situation faced by publishers. Reader behaviour is the key. Readers want to consume their media the way they want it - not simply in the format that best suits the publisher. Some want short snippets of news on their mobiles, others want the breadth of content that can only be provided through the web and others just want the immersion of reading the printed page.

More importantly they want all of this when they want it and they will change their minds and behaviours at any given point. Just like the banks, the publishers have to respond quickly to changes in reader behaviour, as a result of the increasing number of new channels.

The winners in this game will be the ones who find new ways to create value though a better and deeper understanding of reader behaviour and requirements.

That's the challenge - no one said it would be easy, but one thing's for sure if you're a publisher - you'll need to be flexible and nimble enough to react quickly to the dynamics of the market because times, indeed, are a-changing.

Ian Cohen is the managing director of The Simply Great Group and the former chief information officer of Associated Newspapers