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New York Times CEO: Print Journalism Has Maybe Another 10 Years (cnbc.com)
New York Times CEO Mark Thompson believes that the newspaper printing presses may have another decade of life in them, but not much more. "I believe at least 10 years is what we can see in the U.S. for our print products," Thompson said on "Power Lunch." He said he'd like to have the print edition "survive and thrive as long as it can," but admitted it might face an expiration date. "We'll decide that simply on economics," he said. "There may come a point when the economics of [the print paper] no longer make sense for us. The key thing for us is that we're pivoting. Our plan is to go on serving our loyal print subscribers as long as we can. But meanwhile to build up the digital business, so that we have a successful growing company and a successful news operation long after print is gone." CNBC reports: Digital subscriptions, in fact, may be what's keeping the New York Times afloat for a new generation of readers. While Thompson said the number of print subscribers is relatively constant, "with a little bit of a decline every time," the company said last week that it added 157,000 digital subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2017. The majority were new subscribers, but that number also included cooking and crossword subscriptions. Revenue from digital subscriptions increased more than 51 percent in the quarter compared with a year earlier. Overall subscription revenue increased 19.2 percent. Meanwhile, the company's fourth-quarter earnings and revenue beat analysts expectations, "even though the print side of the business is still somewhat challenged," Thompson said. Total revenue rose 10 percent from a year earlier to $484.1 million. New York Times' shares have risen more than 20 percent this year. "Without question we make more money on a print subscriber," Thompson added. "But the point about digital is that we believe we can grow many, many more of them. We've already got more digital than print subscribers. Digital is growing very rapidly. Ultimately, there will be many times the number of digital subscribers compared to print."
Seems like a gross overestimation. May as well try to sell stories chiseled on clay tablets.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
and here we are.
I have had any newspaper/magazine subscriptions. There was a time I had 2 newspaper subscriptions and 6+ magazine subscriptions.
;)
Maybe if the print media kept a more just the news stance and made even a small attempt to keep opinions in the editorial sections they might be doing better.
Just my 2 cents
Given what passes for "journalism", that might be a bit of an optimistic assessment.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
there is the prison market unless they get e-mags
... to supply me with quality crossword puzzles each week.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
I commute into a major US city every day and just today noticed someone reading an actual newspaper on the train. I can't even remember when the last time I saw that. Between me with my book and him with his newspaper, we really stood out among the rest of the passengers. If newspapers and books aren't for commuters, who are they for? And commuters have left them by. Sadly, I think this is an accurate assessment..
Paper will have a longer tail than any tech before it. At the end of the day, it's the internet before the internet, and self publishing will be impossible to extinguish. Try extinguishing the internet and see how that works out for you.
There's no end for print journalism. Even if you cut it's reach in half every year, I suspect most here know that you'll never get there.
Where I live I can't see printed newspapers surviving another 10 years, but it is because of the awful quality.
There are two newspaper groups nationally, and they attempted to merge with each other last year. Thankfully the regulator told them they were dreaming.
Their real problems are the fact that they have no idea who their audience is any more. They print an endless parade of celebrity tittle-tattle and no world news to speak of. Their opinion pieces are all written by 25 year-old who who know fuck-all about anything because they got rid of anyone with any real experience years ago.
Even the standard of the photography is rubbish now, because they laid off all the photographers.
The idiot managers do however wonder why no-one wants to pay for their product.
Printed Newspapers are dead already today.
Paperbacks and hardcover books are on the decline.
Reading a book on a pad is mixed at best, but it's the direction that is going.
Fact is digital future is the norm.... until they can jack it directly into your head!
Seems to me whoever chose the "digital" image in the submission had no idea what that image actually is.
I see no relation to DEC whatsoever here.
That there were quite a few really, really good print newspapers in this country. Not coincidentally, Sunday papers were huge with tons of classifieds and other advertising, but also enough decent reporting to spend more than an hour poring over, even while skipping articles that weren't of interest.
I would guess late '90s was probably the peak. Craigslist took away much of the classified business, then everyone started getting their news from the web, fake or otherwise.
maybe if "journalists" would stop misconstruing facts and statements for editorial purposes, there would be a market for what you have to say.
you're all idiots.
One problem with digital subscription as well as with news apps is the constantly analysis, tracking, measurements which might occur. Which article did the customer read, how long, when, from where, during work time? In the future, news might be delivered individually, maybe even adapted to the individual user, like in facebook. What prevents me from signing up often is not so much the pay but the realization that you essentially read the news while becoming part of big data, there are mostly machines which analyze you but still, you are categorized and mined, and your data possibly sold to advertisers. I could imagine that a relatively cheap subscription version which guarantees: "we don't track you, we don't analyze and sell your metrics to anybody" could have a larger success. Maybe it is here where micro payments or crypto currencies could be useful. You pay anonymously and get the newspaper, nobody looks over your shoulder and you don't get special adds because of what your interests might have appeared to be. Or worse, that you would get a version of the news paper which is adapted to you. An other problem with subscription versions is that they sign you up very cheaply, then increase the prize constantly. This happened also with print subscriptions. A simple payment scheme would be relaxing, like "you pay 10 cents and can read the news for a day" and this prize applies to anybody, as it used to be when the papers were sold in the stores.
Oh, you mean the bag of rolled-up advertisements which gets dumped on my property every day against my will?
Or the other local bastion of journalism that copy-pastes AP wire articles next to a photo or two and calls it a day?
Yeah, serious print news has been nearly extinct for a long time already. And it's not like the NYT has anything original to say.
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""Without question we make more money on a print subscriber," Thompson added. "But the point about digital is that we believe we can grow many, many more of them. We've already got more digital than print subscribers. Digital is growing very rapidly. Ultimately, there will be many times the number of digital subscribers compared to print.""
Hmm, pretty sure literally everyone has been telling you jackasses this was the case for roughly 20 years now. Next we'll see an article in the Washington Post telling us its more lucrative to bring advertising sales back in-house because it bypasses adblockers and allows them to curate safe content for their viewers!
I wouldn't mind paying someone like Amazon or Google $10/month for access to every meaningful newspaper in America (with Google dividing it up among the papers I read that month), but I refuse to get sucked into a half-dozen monthly subscriptions... especially when seemingly all of them are "pay {some reasonable} rate for the first {n} weeks, then {get ass-raped} thereafter until you notice and cancel". I MIGHT do it if there were an option to automatically end the subscription once the promo rate expires, but over the past few years, I've gotten to the point where I automatically tell anyone trying to get me to sign up for teaser rates that silently go up to just go fuck themselves and die. I fell for subscription scams like that all the time when I was younger, but now it just seems like total bullshit and I refuse to put up with it anymore.
CNN's story (and the /. summary above) promulgate its own propaganda thusly:
newspaper printing presses may have another decade of life in them
The headline and CNN reporter Kellie Eli's quote above completely misstate NYT CEO Mark Thompson's actual point. What he said was "I believe at least 10 years is what we can see in the U.S. for our print products." (Emphasis added by me, for clarity's sake.)
Note the profound difference in meaning between Thompson 's statement "at least 10 years," and Eli's characterization of his meaning as, "another decade of life ... but not much more." (My elision here is, once more, strictly for the purpose of clarity.) Her story quotes him as saying, "an absolute minimum of 10 years" of existence for the NYT print edition, whereas the CNN headline (precisely echoed by /.'s own headline) twists that to, "Print journalism has maybe another 10 years," and that mischaracterization continues in Eli's purported paraphrase of his statement.
This would merely be another case of CNN clickbait, were it not for the fact that this time they're straight out lying to their audience about the content of the interview their story pretends to be about. And that point seems to have completely escaped /. editor BeauHD. The real story here is that a reporter for CNN - a non-print news organization - is deliberately misrepresenting what the CEO of one of best and most professional print journals still in existence has to say about the medium-term future of his own publication, one of CNN's major competitors.
In my universe, that's yellow journalism at its most despicable.
I think Donald Trump is a lying asswipe who wouldn't recognize an actual fact if it rose up and bit him on the bunghole - but, sadly, this story is patent, deliberate, no-shit, fake news.
CNN should be ashamed of itself - but it's been pellucidly clear for at least 3 decades now that it it has no sense of organizatonal shame, so I'm not holding my breath on that score. But it pisses me off mightily that it has so casually discarded what pitiful shreds of journalistic integrity it might once have had - and thereby placed me in the profoundly awkward and embarrassing position of being forced to publicly agree with the likes of Donald fucking Trump ...
Check out my novel.
Touch a newspaper and get ink all over your hands. Having to jump around to different sections of the paper to read the 2nd half of a story is really annoying. Papers are too large and too thin, you're either constantly folding and unfolding or you risk unable to read the paper because too much light is leaking through mixing both sides of the page.
I'd read newspapers if they were more book like. Better paper, better ink. Index in the front with a quick summary of each item. Ads that don't fall out nor are a different texture than the rest of the paper. Quality also counts. This Slashdot article is trash because it's completely twisting the CEO's words to mean the opposite of what he said. Companies like that should lose their journalism privileges and be forced to add "For Entertainment Purposes Only" on all their articles. Journalism is killing itself in the race to the bottom, profit at all costs, and viewership numbers at all costs.
I thought the world would improve as the years go by. It does, but technology has enabled the corrupt to reach far further than they individually have been before. Cheaters always win, so I can't say if we're getting net gains or not.
How much of the revenue increase at NYT was black money from USIC? Gotta keep that semi-official propaganda factory humming!
Newsprint world wide takes about 1 Billion trees per year. That would greatly improve sustainability of the environment to reduce paper demands. Though newsprint is low quality, so a good place to put recycled paper, and is made from fast growing crap trees, rather than the slower growing hardwoods. So deforestation may not be as greatly affected as one would hope. Unless the replanted forests are planted with hardwoods, as they'll have longer to grow.
Learn to love Alaska
Just get every browser to mine cryptocurrency for the brand in the place of third party malware ads.
A per session use of the users CPU to mine cryptocurrency to grant access to the story.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
One of the benefits of printed news is its permanence. You find a newspaper clipping from April 15, 1865 and you know that's what the people back then read.
The news I read on websites is often updated, edited, and re-edited to delete a controversial phrase, erase speculation which turned out to be mistaken, or add information which wasn't there in the original report (without updating the timestamp). You read a bunch of people complaining about the article, go read the source article for yourself, and because the statement was edited out you don't know what the fuss is all about and you think the people complaining are idiots. Likewise, whereas before if a newspaper published something which was later discredited, they'd print a retraction but the original evidence of their shoddy reporting was still out there. Nowadays they simply delete the discredited story, erasing their failure from history. Occasionally I link to newspaper articles from the 1990s, but I honestly have no idea if it's still true to the original or if it's been altered in the intervening quarter century. Archive.org used to help, but I'm increasingly finding more sites have set their robots.txt to not allow archiving. And perhaps more disturbingly, some sites have requested archive.org delete the entire archived history of their site.
Despite the explosion in the availability of information, historians of the future are going to have a bitch of a time figuring out what we were actually saying and thinking, because a lot of the evidence is being scrubbed, sanitized, or deleted. It's the digital equivalent of burning books, except it's all being done silently and out of sight. The only evidence being a broken link; or a "quote" in a forum posting which no longer matches the purported source, and you have no idea if the post is in error or if the source was edited.
I'll believe printed journalism is dead when the Paperless Office and IPv6 become more than a kitschy theme song.
Been hearing about that shit for the last two decades, and the overwhelming majority of business still runs on IPv4 and holds on to their beloved multi-function paper killing machines.
Reading a daily paper used to be one of the highlights of my day. Especially if I had plenty of time in the morning and could relax with the paper and a cup of tea. Bliss.
I read the same publication online every day but the experience is diminished.
Once Google gets done AMPing up email and so on,paper news will make a comeback because there is no way to embed trackers and "engaging" content in it. Then it will die again when they start using "interactive" paper.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
tabloids can be a harmless guilty pleasure.
Tabloids might be a guilty pleasure but they are almost never harmless.
Anonymous, no strings attached, a clean cut transaction.
Wait are we talking about tabloids or the prostitute you just picked up?
Actually the US Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 "would effectively nullify the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which explicitly forbids information and psychological operations aimed at influencing U.S. public opinion.
Thornberry said that the current law "ties the hands of America's diplomatic officials, military, and others by inhibiting our ability to effectively communicate in a credible way," according to Buzzfeed. "
And I'd agree with you, except on the metro, I see it littered with newspapers every time I ride it. The catch? They're not the "big name" city newspapers. What you see more of in print are the small, regional papers that get handed out free and survive on advertising dollars.
That's really where I see print media having more staying power. If you're a local publication that just wants to inform people about what local bands are playing where, covering some news items of local/regional interest that will never be found on the AP wire newsfeeds, and featuring underground cartoonists in your comics? You do best printing physical papers and distributing them to readers at no charge. When one person is done reading it, they tend to leave it on a bench or seat where the next person picks it up and peruses it, just because it's sitting there. You'd spend more than it would be worth trying to convince enough people to do online subscriptions and to actually download the latest edition every time it comes out.
Print media has been dead for at least 10 years already. The NYT doesn't even realize that they are irrelevant and have been for awhile now.
More things are political today because there is more disagreement, often in areas where there used to be consensus. (Or at least there appeared to be consensus; maybe a lot of people were being very quiet about their beliefs, always making sure to never speak about them and never, ever vote.) But nowdays, nobody can even define "conservative" anymore! Small, cheap government? Hell no, conservatives want to spend more money than liberals. Less intrusive? Nope. Then there's the liberals. What does that word mean? Everything is up for grabs now.
The other thing, is that all politics is intersecting with tech more heavily, mainly just because more laymen are using more computers for more things. Most political issues have technological aspects to them.
And of course, politics has always at least tried to threaten tech. DMCA was a big one (since it happened right around the birth of Slashdot) but before that was CALEA, Clipper chip, CFAA, etc. Computers get legislated, and so anyone who is into computers necessarily has a stake in politics too, at least at the national level. Congress is always threatening to outlaw or more heavily regulate YOUR PROFESSION. You can't just talk about how things work, when what-your-allowed-to-do is being debated by men-with-guns. And DMCA even made talking about how things work sometime forbidden, if you go into too much detail.
How could Slashdot not be at least somewhat political, and increasingly so over time? It's exactly what you would expect for enthusiasts in an area that is increasingly threatened by government.
I fucking swear, in ten years we'll be talking about professional licensing, mark my words. You won't possibly be able to talk about your work without politics being involved, even if you just give up and say "fuck computers, I'm becoming a gardener." People will ask why you turned to gardening.
... how long until we can get rid of the twice-monthly collection of super-saver ads, wrapped in a 1/2 page "article" so it can be legally litter^H^H^H^H^H^Hthrown onto my property? Because that thing is strictly waste from beginning to end -- from the paper and ink, to the power needed to print it, to the guys who drive around throwing them out their windows, to the trucks that carry them back to the recycling center (it goes straight from my driveway to the recycle bin), which then processes it. Oh yeah, and they come in a plastic bag, too. That goes into my grocery bag recycle bag.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
and here we are. But let's give them a bit more time, maybe they'll be right some day...
Journalism is already DEAD.
a long established part of the 4th estate
Interesting choice of words. They are true of course....but it's interesting how you framed up the argument. You relied on the NYT's historical credibility.
Is it possible that in recent years (10 or so) the NYT abused the credibility they built up over 100+ years and as a result, they have lost their status as the paper of record for most of America? That doesn't seem to be in dispute except in places like NYC, LA or Chicago. The rest of America sees the NYT pushing a specific agenda and they are reacting accordingly. Yes, I know that Edwarrd R Murrow says news orgs aren't supposed to push an agenda.....but they are. And it doesn't take a genius to see it. It's blatant.
In the U.S. most news outlets are one large editorial page...they no longer just call balls and strikes. Journalism as a profession are mostly made of us activists attempting to change public opinion, not reflect it. If you disagree with this, then you are blind to your own biases.
I get the WSJ print edition, and it delivers on time to my small town. I would subscribe to the NYT, too, if it were available, but it is not. Maybe the problem is not growth, it's saturation in it's existing markets. If the NYT didn't have such limited availability, then maybe it could have some subscriber growth. Does the WSJ make money off of me as a print subscriber? Who knows. But when you get the WSJ in my town--and you can't get the NYT--I'm reminded of how many coastal people and businesses treat middle America as just flyover country.
Make love, not reality television.
I'll admit when it comes to books/novels, I can see the nostalgia for the print format. I still buy real books, but now when I do, it's always something that I want to keep to be able to read again and again and eventually even pass to my heirs (which when I do, I buy high quality hard back copies).
But when it comes to these sorts of "disposable" print media, newspapers, magazines, tech books that will be obsolete in 12-24 months (and you'll probably only read once in any case), then e-media just makes total sense. It's available instantly/doesn't require shipping and no disposal required when done with them.
Among other things, I erroneously stated:
This would merely be another case of CNN clickbait, were it not for the fact that this time they're straight out lying to their audience about the content of the interview their story pretends to be about. And that point seems to have completely escaped /. editor BeauHD. The real story here is that a reporter for CNN - a non-print news organization - is deliberately misrepresenting what the CEO of one of best and most professional print journals still in existence has to say about the medium-term future of his own publication, one of CNN's major competitors.
Although the criticisms I level in the above quote, and others like them in the parent post, are valid, they are completely mistargeted. Kellie Eli, the author of the article to whose dishonesty I so strenuously objected, works for CNBC, not CNN, and it is that news organization, not CNN which deserves everyone's opprobrium.
To compound my error, when several of you attempted to point out my misattribution to me, I responded to your polite reproofs with scorn. And, worse yet, smugness.
I'm sorry for that: for my fundamental error of attributing to CNN the journalistic sins of CNBC, and for my dismissive and condescending smugness in responding to those of you who more-or-less gently tried to make me aware of my mistake.
I apologize to you all, and I hope you can find it in yourselves to be a better person than I am, and forgive me for acting like an asshole.
I feel obligated to tell you that, for more than two years now, I have suffered from a medical condition that causes severe, chronic sleep deprivation. When I wrote the parent post, I was running on about 2.5 hours of sleep. As I was composing it, I repeatedly referred to the article whose integrity it attacks. In all, I must have looked at that CNBC story a half-dozen times or more - and, every time I did, when I looked at the logo at the top of the report, what I saw was "CNN", not CNBC. Later that day, after another almost two hours of sleep, I posted a raft of responses to your comments. In the process, I know for a fact that I visited the CNBC story page at least once - and, again, what I saw was "CNN", not CNBC. It was only when I read a reply from gnick wherein he explicitly stated that I had confused CNN with CNBC that I finally realized what all the criticism of my original post was about.
I was mortified by that epiphany. I have always prided myself on my mental acuity, and it was devastating to me to realize how far that has deteriorated.
In a letter to his long-time agent, the late Robert A. Heinlein observed, "An honest man can choose to follow the path of reason, or he may choose the path of faith. He cannot do both." I have tried since I became literate at the age of six to follow the path of reason. That path demands I adhere to established facts, and let them guide my conclusions, rather than attempt to warp facts to fit my beliefs. My original post failed to meet that standard, and I must now apologize for it.
Although I hope it helps to explain it, my misperception does not excuse my conduct. I am responsible for what I do and say, and it is my responsibility to acknowledge and to apologize for my misstatements of fact, and intentional discourtesies.
I do. I am sorry for being a jerk to you all, and I aplogize to you for my impolitesse. And I still more deeply regret my misattribution of journalistic misconduct on the part of CNBC to CNN. I sincerely apologize for that, as well.
Mea culpa ... Mea maxima culpa
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