To print or not to print, that is the question
One of the more interesting media stories over the past couple of months has been the announcement that Newsweek is to be published in a print edition again – 12 months after it became online only.
Another story to catch my eye was one that showed strong appetite among readers for fashion magazines in print as opposed to online. There have been other articles in a similar vein.
It will be very interesting to see how Newsweek fares in the print space. Having been a publisher, I know full well that many people still value highly print products – I was party to a number of surveys among readers and a significant number still preferred their content on paper.
The internet has had a profound effect on publishing, and much of the media has benefited. Another recent article in The Guardian reported that Mail Online had seen another surge in traffic in January, “increasing its online audience by nearly 20% and putting it within touching distance of 190 million monthly unique browsers”.
And it’s not just national papers benefitting: the article noted that Manchestereveningnews.co.uk reported 256,444 average daily unique browsers.
Notwithstanding the reconstitution of the media world around the web and social media, the much-discussed print vs. online debate is still far from over, and the stickiness of some elements of the print world will clearly remain.
For me personally, while a significant amount of my media intake is online, from national newspapers to trade magazines, some key titles have stubbornly remained preferable on dead trees, namely The Economist and Private Eye.