Print is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age

Rachel Smolkin has an interesting article on the American Journalism Review website. Entitled “Finding a Niche,” the essay asks “Is there a role for the weekly newsmagazines and their Web sites in a 24-7 news environment?” Here’s how Smolkin sums up the current situation: “The weekly newsmagazines could use some divine inspiration as they grasp for a foothold in a media landscape increasingly dominated by the Web. Over the last few months, the repositioning has been illustrated most dramatically at Time. In addition to shedding about 50 staffers as part of a larger contraction at parent Time Inc., the magazine has hiked its newsstand price by $1, reduced its guaranteed circulation to advertisers from 4 million to 3.25 million, debuted a new advertiser option for counting readers and unveiled a redesign in its March 26 issue. Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report are adapting as well, if at a less precipitous pace.”

Throughout the piece there’s the usual hand-wringing and doom-and-gloom predictions (”I worry about the future of newsweeklies,” says a media analyst, “I don’t know what their relevance is in the world today”), and while the “print is dead” debate gets an oblique mention (“Writing obituaries for the newsweeklies has been a popular pastime for media handicappers for decade”), the essay is a thoughtful, non-hysterical look at the current facts (and the eventual fate) surrounding newsweeklies in an increasingly digital world.

In the end, though, the article comes to the conclusion that most people are slowly realizing, in terms of the digital reading debate, that electronic screens or audio players or tablet devices or whatever simply represent a new way to consume and enjoy information, the same way that the Iliad a long time ago went from lips to the page: “Through that media cacophony, the leaders of the old-guard newsweeklies believe they still provide a special service — no matter what the platform.” And it is indeed all about the service, the content, the stories, the words; what matters least is the paper, the staples, the ink.

American Journalism Review: “Finding a Niche”