Print is So Over…Says the New York Times?
Important Details: What’s the future of the New York Times? Apparently it is journalism. That’s what Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger made a point of saying in a recent Davos session, now being re-sent around the world courtesy of an interview in the Israeli daily Haaretz and drawing lots of consternation.
"I really don’t know whether we’ll be printing the Times in five years, and you know what? I don’t care either," he told Haaretz. "Internet is a wonderful place to be and we’re leading there." Sulzberger underlined that the costs of producing online content were so much lower than print, saying it cost a billion dollars to upgrade print-oriented infrastructure while online products can be built at a small fraction of that cost. He noted that while the paper has 1.1 million print subscribers, it has 1.5 million readers online each day. Average age in print: 42. Average age online: 37.
On the question of the print here — print still contributes about 90% of the company’s revenues — to the online there, Sulzberger described it as a journey. He didn’t get too deeply into the bumps and crevasses the industry is traversing, especially around the relatively low monetization now achieved off those online readers. But he did say the Times was in better shape as a national paper, not as dependent as the 1500+ local dailies on the classifieds business, which the Internet is eating away mightily. On bloggers, Sulzberger suggested that they are important, smartly integrated, but that the Times’ value is a unique one: "We are curators [curators of news]."
In Outsell’s Opinion: There, he has said it. We can imagine a world without the print New York Times. That’s not the same as a world without the Times. It’s hardly earthshaking — other than the five years, which is hyperbolic — but worth saying. In so doing, Sulzberger pushes forward with the notion that it’s the journalism that counts, not the medium. It’s something that will have to be said over and over; it’s not easy letting a several-hundred-year habit go.
We take this mentioning of the unmentionable as stepping over a metaphoric line in the sand. Day after day, again and again, we are reminded of what print does best, of the the humanity, coziness, comfort, convenience, and effectiveness of print. Print going away is not a net plus. For the foreseeable future, though, the trick is to have sufficient revenue to pay experienced, talented staff to create an evolving mix of print, online, and wireless products.
So now, after the headlines and the hubbub over speaking the taboo words have receded, it’s time for Sulzberger and the industry to go back to the business of making the new business pay.