Endism never ends does it? Everyone loves predicting the end of things, whilst competing to see who can come up with the most shocking estimate of when that end will come. Slate's Daniel Gross provides a useful counter-weight to those predicting - with glee or panic - that the newspaper business will be defunct within fifteen years. It may be in decline, it may be readjusting its model, but it's not dead yet:
This is the new emerging model—cutting costs, raising prices. It may still fail in the end. But we shouldn't act as if the online-only crowd has it all figured out. Every month, several million Americans pay to have newspapers and magazines delivered to their homes—a trick most online publications have yet to pull off. In fact, in some regards, print-online hybrids like newspapers and magazines have outperformed online-only publications. The Web operations of the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal aren't exactly slouches when it comes to selling online ads. And as poorly as the stock of the New York Times has performed over the past decade, most people would have preferred owning it to the stock of Salon.com, or TheStreet.com.
Well I'm very glad to hear it if the end isn't nigh, being one of those people who cannot manage without their newspaper in its 'proper' format :)
Posted by: ejoch | October 29, 2009 at 07:21 PM
Me neither. I blame the bloggers.
Posted by: Marbury | October 30, 2009 at 12:26 AM