There is no question that the newsprint industry is hurting, with dailies and weeklies seemingly folding every other day. Most blame the internet, some fault management, while across the board everyone understands that the industry is in upheaval. The business model used for over a century is just not working anymore, but, as an alternative, what other business model is there to use? The largest newspaper printing plants in the world are desperately trying to find an answer to this quandary and, so far, from most heads of industry, no clear answer has come to light.
So, is newsprint about to become extinct? Are the final days of the newspaper at hand? Is newsprint going to go the way of eight-track tapes and become a nostalgic memory triggered by finding yellowed copies in the back of our garage during our occasional overdue spring cleaning?
Of course not.
Over a hundred and fifty million people a day still read a newspaper, and the "niche" newspaper is thriving, taking a page (literally) from their magazine counterparts...it's not that people don't want to read hard copy, it's that the consumer wants to read exclusively on subjects that hold their attention.
The internet supplies the news bites that fill us in on various subjects, something that the daily newspaper used to do-dailies are still read, it's just they're read on average about fifteen minutes compared to the cover-to-cover that we all used to do over morning coffee or in our easy chairs at night.we don't have the time to do that now, and the internet, interestingly, fit that time frame that we were already losing because of our busy schedules.
But billions are still spent on magazines, brochures, newsletters and sundry other periodicals that people still can, and like, holding in their hands and perusing over a drink, a meal or even more intimate places (dare I say it.the throne?).
With newsprint still by far the most inexpensive print media on earth, it's not that printers have to be put out of business.it's that they need to change their business, and adapt to the market that's changing around them.
In the past, a four-color newsprint web-press has depended on multi-page, hundreds of thousands of newspapers every day, week or month. That has been the model for over a hundred years. That is the model that every printing plant of kind has followed without question since nearly its invention.
That model is history. That model is dead. That model needs to be packed in a drawer, perhaps in the back of our garages, and the industry needs to see the future and embrace the hints of evolution that is taking place all around us.
Specific, niche, short-runs newspapers are not only the future of newsprint, for individuals, for businesses and organizations, for everyone, but they are the only logical path for the survival for one of man's greatest inventions.man's original social media:
The newspaper.
Author Resource:
PJ Carson, currently CEO of Makemynewspaper.com, Inc., has owned several community newspapers and is a published screenwriter.
Makemynewspaper.com enables individuals, businesses, churches, and non-profit organizations to create and print short-run newspapers at the lowest prices in the printing industry. The company offers a free online designer, pre-built templates, in house and syndicated content, display stands, direct mail delivery and more; now anyone can publish their own short-run newspaper for only pennies per paper. There is no better way to market directly than an enjoyable newspaper!
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