We have shifted from a world where the information and news was held by a few and distributed to millions http://www.teamnhlcapitalsshop.com/nicklas-backstrom-jersey/ , to a world where the information is held by millions and distributed to a few (niche markets). This has huge ramifications for traditional newspapers. The Internet caused major newspapers and magazines to rethink their business online payment models. While these traditional mediums were still trying to grasp how to handle the upshot of blogs and user-generated content, social media suddenly came along, causing yet another significant upheaval in the status quo. In 2008, it was estimated that traditional newspapers would see a drop of 23.4 percent in revenues. And 2009 can almost be labeled as the year the traditional newspaper died. PC Magazine is a good example of a periodical that experienced this macro shift firsthand. Launched in 1982, PC Magazine was such an icon in the tech world that at one point advertisers lined up in droves.
PC Magazine closed the doors on their print version in November of 2008, moved all of their operations online, and renamed their online publication PC Mag. The move was necessary, even though they were in a relatively good position with revenue still in the tens of millions of dollars and digital already accounting for 70 percent of the PC Megabrand’s revenues. Their online revenues have grown an average of 42 percent since 2001. PC Mag brand’s revenues grew 18 percent in Q3, 2008.
Traditional newspapers and magazines need to recognize that people are having their news pushed to them from friends and automated free subscriptions. This means newspapers and magazines need to change what their content delivers—otherwise the decline will continue. Newspapers should no longer be reporting the news; instead, they should be commenting on the news and what it means. Even if they do this, their chance of survival may still be slim and only a few, if any, will survive. In fact, it was interesting to see legendary advertising and marketing columnist Bob Garfield start his 2010 presentation at the SXSW Interactive conference by announcing “While I am a huge social media Kool-Aid drinker, I still believe that social media is more of an “and” thing than an “or” thing.
A quick ironic example is that as more and more companies cut down on direct mail (expensive to print; slow; environmentally damaging; more difficult to track than digital; etc.), the few companies that continue direct mail pieces may actually see an uptick in results, because there is less clutter in the mailbox. If we are no longer walking down to the end of our driveways in anticipation of reading what is going on in the world, and if we are no longer even going onto our favorite Internet news sites payment gateway to find the news, what does this mean for the various news outlets and the businesses that support them?
This book is actually a microcosm of the “newspaper magazine” phenomenon. By the time this goes to print, many of the news items and examples in this book will be outdated; in fact, some websites listed in this book will no longer be market leaders or even exist at all.
There may only be a handful of paper newspapers left, as well. Hence, the importance for the material in this book, as well as in newspapers and