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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."
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..
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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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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Are you on crack?
Slashdot has always been political. That's why people come here.
You're just butthurt that many nerds favored Emperor Trump over his opponent The Butcher of Libya.
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.
I'm sorry, but that's twisting the truth a bit. I've been coming here since the 90s and there has always been political discussions, but at nowhere near the level, and without the sheer bitterness, on display these days. I'd like to blame the editors for pushing political stories, but sadly I think they are just pandering to the user base since the political crap gets all the comment - plus its the same all over the Internet.
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?
As I type this I am sitting. Yes indeed I am on a crack.
However, I would like to purchase 3 cracks please. For science.
Not everything was politicized in the 90s like they are now.
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. "
Most of trees used for paper ware intentionally grown for that purpose. The alternative is permanent deforestation and the land put into some other use.
-Dave
I agree.
I have the most annoying experiences trying to read large articles or books on a screen. The font is always smaller than I find comfortable, and enlarging the page causes the necessity of scanning back and forth by moving the "sheet" back and forth, and then of course the stuff is still in 2 columns per page, so you have to read down to the bottom and then scroll up to the top of the next column, all of that taking a tremendous amount of attention that isn't necessary with a real book where you can just flick your eyes where you want to read.
And then often information on computers is presented as the result of searches. What if you don't know that something exists? How do you find out about it? With a magazine or newspaper, you have all the information in front of your eyes, so if there's something "new" that you've never heard of before, it may have a chapter title or a newspaper headline that says something about it, and then you read it. With a computer, you have to search for something in order to bring it up to see - if you don't know it exists, then how do you search for it.
I've found that certain businesses are once again sending me catalogs, such as camera retailers and ham radio retailers. I sit with those things and learn of the existence of things I never suspected existed, and maybe buy them.
As for the NYT, if they hadn't turned it into a support group for the Democratic Party, I would at least be open to buying it occassionally. But as long as all they can do is laud the left and bash the right, I'll not be throwing my pennies their way. They don't have to stop promoting the democrats or bashing the republicans, they just have to also promote the republicans and bash the democrats, too. IOW, they need to be neutral. Journalists are supposed to be neutral, but many of these rags editorialize in far more corners of the publication than just the editorial page.
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.
... 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...
Now that's odd. I often scan the NYT headlines...and I tend to think that they have a right wing slant, though not a strong one. I'll admit I never read their stories, and perhaps if I did I'ld have a different opinion.
FWIW, in my opinion newspapers highly process all their stories to make them more exciting. Using them as "sources of reputable information" isn't viable...but then there *aren't* any accurate sources of politically important information. And it seems plausible to me that there never were. It was said a long time ago that the power of the press belongs to the man who owns one (paraphrase of A. J. Liebling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...). And this may be the true reason that control of ISPs has been centralized.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Generally these days "Liberal" just seems to mean people I don't like with different opinions. I haven't heard anyone self-identify as a liberal for nearly a decade. Part of the reason is it never had a solid definition (in the US)...or at least I don't remember it having one.
And these days most of the people who self-identify as conservatives tend to be xenophobes. The ideological conservatives of several stripes seem to have abandoned the term.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
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.
With a computer, you have to search for something in order to bring it up to see - if you don't know it exists, then how do you search for it.
I didn't know about this story about printing presses, and I read it on a computer. It was on my slashdot news feed.
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.
Maybe if the newspapers weren't so far left and in love with socialism, they would have a better chance of surviving!
Trouble reading long articles on the screen? That's because you're reading things that are formatted for print, most likely PDF images of the print version. Or worse, one of those magazine reading sites that locks up the magazine in a proprietary format while still only presenting it as a print replica.
Try reading a proper e-book (EPUB or MOBI) using good e-reader software or a dedicated e-ink reading device instead. No moving around the page; the text automatically reformats to fit your screen. Just one column, always. No fonts that are too small; you can change them to a larger or smaller size to suit your eyesight.
Citations?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
What the NYT has is a neoliberal slant. On economic issues that's nearly indistinguishable from a neoconservative slant. (Differences: neoliberals are less hostile to unions and more likely to favor some degree of antitrust regulation.) Neoliberals and neoconservatives are far apart on social issues such as abortion and LGBTQ rights, and the NYT is on the liberal side of those.
The NYT has not been particularly friendly to progressive positions on economic issues. Nor have they been as active on social issues outside the white mainstream as some would wish; for example, they favor Black Lives Matter in theory but have not championed issues such as curbs on police. I suspect that's the right wing slant that you are speaking of.
The NYT has been hostile to most of the Trump administration agenda, as it is neither neoliberal nor neoconservative.
Don't want to choose what to read by the format in which it is presented. Want to read my magazines, newspaper articles, and so forth, and yes, in PDF. Sooo... gimmie a book.
And DRM is the devil that will kill this mode if anything does.
Hi! I'm a liberal.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
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
Check out my novel.
If the font is smaller than you find comfortable, change the size... You can't do that with a paper book.
If you have to scroll back and forth then the content is presented poorly, it should adapt to the width of the device you're using to view it and linewrap accordingly. Same goes for the columns...
If properly setup, you should receive the raw text and then choose how you want it displayed to you - this is what user stylesheets in browsers were for etc.
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My point is more that you should choose a more appropriate file format for online reading if it is offered. And if it's not offered, it should be - publications that expect you to read PDFs online are making a mistake.