Print is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age

Richard Perez-Pena, writing this week in The New York Times, had an article entitled “Why Big Newspapers Applaud Some Declines in Circulation.” The story, as you can probably tell by the headline, is about how some large newspapers actually don’t mind that their circulation is dropping; indeed, they’re cheering about it.

“As the newspaper industry bemoans falling circulation, major papers around the country have a surprising attitude toward a lot of potential readers: Don’t bother,” writes Perez-Pena. “The big American newspapers sell about 10 percent fewer copies than they did in 2000, and while the migration of readers to the Web is usually blamed for that decline, much of it has been intentional. Driven by marketing and delivery costs and pressure from advertisers, many papers have decided certain readers are not worth the expense involved in finding, serving and keeping them.”

Perez-Pena documents a number of big city newpapers that have cut down on marketing costs because the kind of reader (or even subscriber) that they get via the traditional marketing methods either won’t renew their subscription, or else the swollen circulation numbers won’t be attractive to advertisers who — in a Google world — want more targeted advertising. In this respect, the newspapers are trying to beat the Internet at its own game.

In terms of other aspects of online competition, the papers are just plain giving up. Since most people get their news online, and since the Internet obviously shatters geographic boundaries, newspapers have chosen to raise the drawbridge and cater to only a hyper-local clientele. Writes Perez-Pena: “Some large papers have made conscious decisions to limit their geographic range. The most striking recent example is The Dallas Morning News. Last year, it stopped distribution outside a 200-mile radius, and weekday circulation tumbled 15 percent to a little over 400,000.”

All of which is fascinating since, in most cases print does not go gentle into that good night, but here print is willingly running itself off a cliff. And why? Because they know there’s an inflatable mattress down below named the Internet, and that any readers of the print edition they might lose they stand a pretty good chance of winning back via their websites. As said Jim Moroney, the publisher and chief executive of The Dallas Morning News puts it, “I have no regrets. The people who really want to read The Dallas Morning News can still get it online.” Of course, this is risky; on the way to the Dallas Morning News website the user may stop by YouTube or MySpace, and never make it to the newspaper’s site. After a couple of days of this, they’re getting their news from Digg and the Dallas Morning News, to them, is yesterday’s news.