Will WSJ’s print edition disappear before NYT’s?
Image by AFP/Getty Images via Daylife
What I found most interesting about Rupert Murdoch’s interview on the Fox Business Network was this simple exchange:
CAVUTO: We’ll always have a paper “Wall Street Journal.” We’ll always have a paper “New York Times.”
MURDOCH: I can see the day — it may be 20 years away — where you don’t, where you don’t actually have paper and ink and printing presses. I think it will take a long time. I think it’s a generational thing that’s happening. But there’s no doubt that younger people are not picking up the traditional newspapers.
Seems like Murdoch is saying, well actually Neil, we won’t. In his purchase of the Journal, as has become clear with Robert Thompson’s edicts about reporters writing for the wire services, information and newsgathering is the core. Form is secondary– Dow Jones information goes out all over the place, via any platorm News Corp. can get it on. The moment print newspaper distribution stops making sense, you can bet Rupert is going to be, pardon the pun, turning the page on it. One more:
MURDOCH: But if you’ve got a newspaper with a great name and a great reputation, and you trust it, the people in that community are going to need access to your source of news. What we call newspapers today, I call news organizations, journalistic enterprises, if you will.
I for one don’t believe it’s going to take twenty years for the demise of mass-distributed print newspapers to happen, or at least not for the first domino to fall. And if you look at how News Corp. moves in the digital space, I would bet Murdoch doesn’t either. Twenty years sounds like a safe number to throw out, one that won’t raise alarms, but I think it’s cover. As Murdoch himself says in the above quote, his Wall Street Journal trades on the reputation it has in the community that needs access to its news. And by and large, that community is sitting in front of glowing screens all day long, and increasingly doing so on the subway/town car ride to and from work. It’s diferent enough from the New York Times’ community that they could conceivably make the leap years ahead of the gray lady, and remain a viable business, where the Times might not.
It would be fascinating to see what Murdoch’s “journalistic enterprise”–in the form of a post-print Wall Street Journal–looks like.
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I think the online, the mobile and the ‘paper will merge together over the next few years with new delivery devices. Some people will still get their ‘paper’ but not on conventional ink and paper. Contributors, the Publishers-Consumers or what I call Pubsumers will be more important in the publishing cycle but the role of the professional journalists will remain strong and central.
Paul,
What do you think of the notion of the print product becoming more of a special feature rather than the daily vehicle. I can see a day when the print WSJ is a weekly, maybe a Saturday morning wrap-up with features and lifestyle content — sort of what the Weekend Journal is now.
Maybe I’m just pig-headed, but I can’t imagine the convenience of the print paper going completely away — but its era as the dominant vehicle for news has already ended.
Matthew,
I’ve spoken to a couple of really smart book editors who are thinking in that direction. It’s not completely analogous to what you proposed but it’s definitely along the same lines.
The one certainty is that the Journal is not going to one morning greet all its customers with zero printed newspapers on the stands. There will be a transition period, perhaps tied to selling an electronic device bundled with a subscription that makes economic sense–ie, not the Kindle’s typical 30% cut to newspapers.
If the Journal can move the vast majority of its readers off of the print product over the course of a couple of years, then yes, that’s exactly what I think the print product will look like– a niche, speciality product, for airports, hotels and libraries.
Being that the Journal likely won’t be able to eliminate the print product altogether, at least initially the electronic replacement is going to have to be nothing short of amazing. The Kindle seems…almost there…but when an e-paper, lightweight cheap Kindle competitor with an open economic model comes out, which isn’t be too far off–and could be a future version of the Kindle itself–that will be a true threat to dead tree distribution.
The newsPAPER will be gone in a lot less time than you think. I don’t even have to haggle with The Wash Post for a deal on my subscription. They’re practically giving it away. But my concern is, will the newsPAPERS be able to survive the transition to digital before they all go chapter 11 or 7. Hope so. Watch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wl1HsZpKAdQ
It will clearly happen sooner or later. Then there’s the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the first major city daily to go online-only. The PI’s online readership plummeted after the print edition closed in March. As much as readers love getting news online, they still like knowing that what they’re seeing on their screens is an offshoot of an actual printed newspaper.