Being Good At Media Criticism Doesn't Always Mean Being Good At Media Strategy
from the focus-on-the-paper? dept
Plenty of paper based publications are struggling to figure out how to play in the internet world. While offline subscription revenue is still important, publications have to realize that it's a revenue stream that is likely to dwindle over time. Surprisingly, though, the Columbia Journalism Review, has decided to bet in the other direction. The dean of the journalism school there has decided to cut the budget of the publications popular website cjrdaily.org in half, causing its two top editors to quit. Instead of investing in the future, Columbia plans to use that money on a direct mail campaign to try to drum up more subscribers to the paper magazine. You can understand the basic reasoning, if you look at the decision as a snapshot today. Paper subscriptions bring in revenue. The website, so far, has no ads -- and probably doesn't generate enough traffic (only 500k page views per month) to make any serious ad revenue in the near future. However, if you look at it from a trend perspective, it seems risky. Paper subscriptions for publications is still a dwindling market, and investing in online properties -- including experimenting with new business models, seems like a bet worth making these days. That doesn't mean ignoring the paper side of the business -- but recognizing that the bang for the buck in a direct mail campaign is likely to be pretty low. From a long term perspective, putting a bigger effort into online properties seems to make more sense.
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They would rather invest in a known working format then the unknown but that will hurt them in the long run like you stated. Its a tough one to juggle.
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Scientific journals are surviving through online s
These journals that once relied on paper-based subscription are surviving the digital age and popularity of the internet because of their reputation and great demand for a specific group of people to read those articles. Scientists and other specialists need those articles for their research, job duties, or just mere intellectual development. Online subscriptions are becoming popular among those journals because of easy accessibility. Who wants to go through the hassle of going to the library, locating the specific journal issue among the dusty binds of journal issues, flipping through the pages to find the specific article, and photocopying it? Instead, with my own subscription or VPN access to my job web network to use the university subscription, I can search through the journal’s webpage, download the article, and print it within a few seconds. The electronic version is definitely better than the paper version.
Aside from easy accessibility, the electronic version is better than the paper version of a journal because the cost of production is cheaper. Paper and ink are expensive but word processor, visual editor, and wedpage development softwares are cheaper since they can be used over and over again. Also, not everyone reads the whole entire journal issue. For example, I tend to read just read one or two articles and a few of the news tidbit in a paper version. With the electronic version, I print out the article I need and read the rest on the webpage; this reduces paper consumption, which is good for our environment.
For other popular magazines and newspaper to survive, they have to specialize in a particular field to create a big demand to win online subscriptions. Another option would be to have several magazines and newspapers create a partnership and offer an online subscription for a nominal fee to have access to all their publications. Magazines and newspaper would either need to specialize or partner up for them to survive the digital age aside from depending on revenues from advertizement.
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Good point Ryan
I think it's too soon to completely abandon the traditional paper format but this would be the time to invest in them both.
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Re:
For me, I prefer getting my journal articles online since I save a lot of time. I can read excerpts of the article before printing it out to make sure it's something I want to read. Because I print them out, I still have this preference for the paper version. I like to highlight and write comments on the paper, which I can't do from the web. But I can download the pdf file and use Adobe Acrobat to make my markings. I am slowling transitioning to that. But I know that not many people have whole Adobe Acrobat software except the reader.
With companies and engineers attempting to generate a paper-like computer screen and the younger generation are being expose to computers and the web earlier in life, I can see how our world will become more reliant on electronic publication rather than print publication. It will take some time and new technology though, which is emerging.
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Re: Good point Ryan
Anyways, i do agree that it might be too soon to completely abondon print publication. But avoiding such transition would be detrimental. Rememeber what happened to Kodak when it did not invest in the early development of digital imaging and photography. It suffered greatly and is still suffering as it invest more (even though it jumped the bandwagon later than most companies) in the new technology. Journalism schools would have to change as well in its pedagogy to accommidate the new emerging technology. In fact, colleges such as RIT is doing that through its programs in new media publishing and others.
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wrong approach
Too often these decisions are viewed as an either/or proposition. Yes it takes funding to keep an online presence but if you are creative and give readers a reason to go online you not only prepare yourself long term for the ALL digital media age but you also can potetentially solve the short term dilemna by making an advertsiing based business model more viable.
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