Are the days of print media coming to an end?

Saturday, November 21, 2009 5:33 PM

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Friday, July 10, 2009

"What's black and white and completely over?" American TV host Jon Stewart's barb referring to the state of the newspaper industry in that country might not match the present condition in Jamaica, but the woes of the newspaper business in the US might be a harbinger of the challenges ahead.

Newspapers are part of our culture, but with thousands of jobs lost in the US, falling advertising revenue and a general loss of stock capitalisation, newspapers may find themselves heading the same direction as typewriters and portable CD players.

In 2009 at least 12 major newspapers in the US including The Seattle Post will cease print operations and move their output completely to the Internet if they cannot find willing buyers. Willing buyers are unlikely as even Warren Buffett, who has long had a penchant for the newspaper business, has declared that "we wouldn't buy one at any price".

Internet news sources are dynamic

So what happened? Well, the internet with its light- ning quick responses to everything global and its tendency to break down geographical constraints happened. Internet news sources are dynamic, wide- spread and are able to attract readers of far greater diversity than any paper in the world. Newspapers are part of our culture, but with thousands of jobs lost in the US, falling advertising revenue and a general loss of stock capitalisation, newspapers may find themselves heading the same direction as typewriters and portable CD players. American company Amazon revolutionised the way people in the world bought books and they are attempting another coup with the capabilities presented by their e-reader device known as the Kindle.

The Kindle was originally only used to view e-books bought on Amazon's website, but the latest version allows users to get digital versions of newspapers "delivered" to their device without the risk of a paper boy breaking a window in the process. One does get the feeling that the Kindle has the potential to do to print what the IPod did to compact discs, and by selling over 500,000 units within the first year, the Kindle has actually done better than the IPod did in its first year. It may be argued that internet usage and penetration in the United States is far greater than in the Caribbean, thus the digital invasion of our printed word might be a while in coming.

Internet penetration in the Caribbean will only increase

Statistics from www.internetworldstats.com
show the US having a 73.1% internet penetration and the Caribbean only 22%. Jamaica, however, has a 53.5% penetration as of 2008 growing by 21.6% since 2000.
Jamaicans are very traditional about their newspapers, but with a little more than half of the country accessing the internet daily, the possibility certainly exists that a shift is bound to occur if not sooner, then later.

Jamaican newspapers unwilling to be innovative

One of the main arguments over what caused US newspapers to be so easily preyed upon by their on- line competitors was their unwillingness to be innova- tive. Newspaper websites at first provided little more than mirror images of their printed product which makes for a good read before 10 in the morning.
The two major Jamaican newspapers don't seem to be bucking this trend and while they enjoy the lion's share of advertising revenue now, the ever increasing digitalisation of our population might start posing some rather tough questions.

- Courtesy of Your Money eZine

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