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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."
Given what passes for "journalism", that might be a bit of an optimistic assessment.
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Not really, a lot of people like to have a physical newspaper, especially the elderly.
Of course the use of paper is terrible for the environment, all the millions of newspapers printed every day not to mention all the worthless advertising junk that gets delivered to people on a daily basis which gets thrown away without ever being read.
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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.
Of course the use of paper is terrible for the environment
Only if it is recycled. If paper is dumped into landfills, thus sequestering the carbon, it is a great way to mitigate AGW.
Vinyl is dead. The technology hasn't advanced since we learned how to read a record with a laser, and that was ages ago. Records aren't improving, and record players aren't improving. Vinyl is dead as a doornail. That DJs and hipsters still consume it doesn't change that; nobody else is interested, and even DJs are using it less and less.
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The real story here is that a reporter for CNN - a non-print news organization - is deliberately misrepresenting
Not CNN! CNN would never deliberately misrepresent someone or something.
The sad thing even if it was stupidity instead of malice that doesn't change the damage done.