More musings on the death of print
Written by John Allsopp. no comments
In the week or so that the parent company of the Chicago Tribune and LA Times, two of the world’s best known quality newspapers went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy, more folks are discussing the “death of print”.
Designer extraordinaire Jason Santa Maria argues that while the death of the word printed on paper is exaggerated, the days of its “spot atop the mountain of mainstream content distribution is in its final days”, but sees the silver lining the this could “bring about a rebirth of design innovation online”.
Meanwhile, New Yorker columnist, and author of the highly successful “Wisdom of the Crowds” James Surowiecki considers the issue in detail in this weeks “The Financial Page”.
Surowiecki concludes
For a while now, readers have had the best of both worlds: all the benefits of the old, high-profit régime—intensive reporting, experienced editors, and so on—and the low costs of the new one. But that situation can’t last. Soon enough, we’re going to start getting what we pay for, and we may find out just how little that is.
It’s clear there is a demand for quality writing, and it’s also clear that the experience of reading from the printed page is a far more pleasurable experience than reading from the screen in many circumstances, and will be for many years to come. But are people willing to pay in sufficient numbers for that? Well, at least we hope so.
