"You know what a newspaper's news desk is like? It's like the emergency room at a hospital, or a military system. Both organizations are very goal-oriented, and both are very hard to change."
Arthur Sulzberger
Is print dying?
It’s a question guaranteed to send chills down the spines of bibliophiles, English students and tiny British men with half-moon glasses everywhere. It’s a question we avoid, as well, as it approaches something close to blasphemy. How dare someone suggest that the holy medium that’s served us well enough for the past half-millennium (give or take a revolution) could be outgrown? PHILISTINES! ON THE SIDEWALK! Someone get the broom so I can get those damn kids off my lawn.
But seriously, guys: Advertising Age gives print five years. Fast Company mag says 20. The Times Online is a little kinder, saying that while it’s not dying, print is certainly looking at a face lift. But Arthur Sulzberger, chairman of the New York Times, seems to have the funeral home on his speed dial: asked by Haaretz whether the Times will still be around in five years, he replied, “I really don't know whether we'll be printing the Times in five years, and you know what? I don't care, either."
In Sulzberger’s defense, he seems to think the decision is out of his hands. He’s concentrating on the move to a web-based existence (not a crazy plan: the Times print edition has 1.1 million subscribers—the online edition has 1.5). To that point, I remember the rumblings of the Wall Street Journal getting their social networking on and it was like the Walls of Jericho had finally toppled. Once the giants start waking up, then it’s finally time to ask the tough question. Print: dead in the water or thriving under pressure?
Like most questions worth asking, I don’t think the answer is straightforward.
If we slip into the rather simple pursuit of seeing knowledge as a linkable, downloadable commodity (something I’m starting to see with these awful e-Books…QUESTION! If I kill everyone who thinks they’re a good idea, will they go away?), then it’s online reading for the win. Also, it’s The Matrix, which is…well, it’s awesome, quite frankly.
If knowledge is going to remain a personal engagement and an intellectual election, then print has the advantage. As a cerebral notion, print travels with you, long lasting in the physical space but probably longer still in the mind space where intellect and emotion meet. (That’s where Don Draper lives! …for me anyway. Aaaaaand we’re back to fake people. Though, to be fair, it’s likely we never left)
But in these modern times, when everything we consume, from breakfast cereals to leisure time, comes with its own up-sell, ‘tactile satisfaction’ doesn’t seem terribly persuasive. At least on the surface. The chief benefits, superficially, that drive print’s advantage look like something approaching nostalgia.
AHA! But wait—there’s more. There’s always more.
Consisting of so much more time, effort and cost, print is automatically granted legitimacy upon existence. Sort of like a Kennedy, I guess. It’s an important sticking point in an era of cost-free blogging and user-generated content that could quite actually come from anywhere: while The New Yorker still has deliciously high standards for its publication (Anthony Lane’s endorsement of Unforgiven not withstanding), any yahoo with an internet connection can compose their own ten page treatise on how the moon landing was staged in their back yard. The internet is in danger of becoming a bloated kind of honor system that no one really follows.
But that tactile thing---it’s not just a superficial thing. The eye reads differently on the page, allowing for more thoughtful, patient digressions. Try folding up your desktop and taking it with you on the ride to work. You can read the entire paper, but you can’t close the last page on Wikipedia (though my brother seems hell bent on trying). The joy of seeing a glossy Vanity Fair spread recreating classic Hitchcock scenes is considerably negated when—well, when it’s not glossy. And if all else fails, damn it, they make impressive, low-cost coffee table decorations.
That being said—I’m no purist. I love online reading. What can I say? I’m a proud peg in the Cold Y Generation—fuelled by latent memories of oppression, I am prepared to eat information for all three meals. Advertisers, take heed: I am a prime demographic! I can go for hours reading online—I am one shameless, blog-hopping, link-chasing intertart.
In short, the internet reads your mind, offering related links, top stories and any number of suggestions you may find on your own. It’s interactive, albeit at a rather base level, making you a participant in your own edification. And outbound linking means that no reference—cultural, socio-economic, political or otherwise—can ever go over someone’s head again: obscurity will see its magnificent heyday! Just link to Wikipedia or About.com and let the reader pick up their own slack. Used properly, online words create the most beautiful love-in for the English language I’ve ever seen, an endless loop of information sharing and a slice of creation for everyone in our common existence.
When the Christian Science Monitor announced a few weeks ago that it was dismantling its daily print format in favor of a web-based version and scaling back their print services to a weekly, I’m pretty sure that long mournful wail heard collectively around the world was the publishing industry falling to its knees. The first nationally circulated newspaper to replace its daily print edition with its website, this change in Christian Science Monitor was one of those century-long holdouts that seemed to signal the end of something important. But it’s not as scary as it seems: adaptation doesn’t mean failure. There’d still be the weekly version, as well as online. They did what they had to do to stay within the changing scope of the modern word, and they did without abolishing print.
In truth, I think the dangerous thing comes from comparing the two mediums, which is kind of hilarious because that’s exactly what I’m doing. But for serious: they’re complementary, but they’re not the same. When it comes to which is superior, it’s not either/or. It’s when/how. Contrary to popular belief, video didn’t kill the radio star. They got along in the end, once they learned how they fit together. Besides, the system was hurting for a little strange.
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