Does The Print Industry Have A Future?

You can hold the future of Canadian newspapers in your hand. It’s the size and weight of a large paperback book, with a memory that stores about 200 titles.

Kindle, an E-book created by Amazon that can mimic pages of novels, textbooks and newspapers, is one of the latest technologies that’s challenging the print industry in North America.

Though a young technology – first released in the U.S. in 2007 – it’s part of a larger trend pushing more print publications online to contend with the interests of younger readers.

And now, as the struggling economy has forced some long-time publications to close, many newspaper traditionalists are left wondering what the future of print will look like in just a few years.

“The newspapers themselves, the print product, might not survive,” said Mary Doyle, a print journalism instructor at The University of Western Ontario.

Many more of today’s readers are getting news online, she said, so newspapers as a system of delivery might eventually die – but not the content.

“The newsroom . . . can survive by looking beyond just the print product and they’re doing that already. I’m confident there is a future for all the excellent journalism that print reporters and editors do,” she said.

“(We should) not mourn for the newspaper the way it was, but think of the journalism instead and how that can be delivered in a more effective way.”

Many newspapers, from the London Free Press to the Globe and Mail, have amped up their websites with videos, photo galleries, blogs and breaking news stories.

So far this year, about 10 per cent more unique visitors are also viewing newspaper websites compared to the same period last year, according to a recent Newspaper Association of America study. It’s the highest figure of its kind since the association began tracking the trend in 2004.

But whether or not newspapers develop successful websites, the poor economy is putting pressure on many Canadian publishers and threatening their products’ survival.

Across North America, newspapers have been falling under the credit crunch. Denver’s Rocky Mountain News stopped printing days shy of its 150th anniversary and more than 30 U.S. dailies have sought bankruptcy protection.

In Canada, job cuts have affected Torstar, Canwest, Sun Media, CTVglobemedia,
Transcontinental and independents like the Chronicle Herald in Halifax. Torstar also reported a fourthquarter loss of $211.2 million compared to a $47.2 million profit last year.

Many newspapers have also had to cut back on the number of days they publish, including the London Free Press, which slashed its Sunday edition. The National Post will stop its Monday paper for the summer.

“The economy sure didn’t do journalists any favours,” Doyle said. “I think it’s a double whammy. All newsrooms were struggling to deal with the new online reality. Then the economy tanked – it just made everything so much harder.”

In 2006, the print industry was making a modest and stable profit, according to Statistics Canada. Much of that money came from advertising. For example, in 2005 the industry earned more than two-thirds of its operating revenues from ads.

Today, it’s a challenge for newspapers to make their websites more attractive to advertisers so they don’t lose precious dollars, said Paul Berton, Editor-in-Chief of the London Free Press.

“Part of the problem is that advertisers might not understand yet the wonder and value of the Internet or websites. Certainly our readers do,” he said. “Maybe it’s just advertisers catching up to younger readers.”

About 200,000 people read the London Free Press daily – the same number of unique visitors who view the paper’s website every day, Berton said. Though the online component has become more important to readership,he said he’s not worried about the Free Press’s future.

“We have more readers than we’ve ever had in our history,” he said. “The (print) industry may never make as much money. It doesn’t mean people aren’t looking for information; it means they’re looking for it in different ways.”

To Berton, that involves creating a more robust and dynamic website and experimenting with different methods of news delivery, such as Twitter, a free
social messaging forum. And that’s how newspapers can survive, he said.

“In the end, the best thing for newspapers to do is to deliver interesting stories and give readers facts to help them get through their days.”

The Canadian print industry has struggled in past economic downturns, especially during the early 1990s, according to Statistics Canada. Ad revenues decreased by 12 per cent between 1991 and 1994, and the industry took until 1997 to regain stable revenues, despite a rebounding economy in 1993.

Though today’s recession hasn’t wiped out the Canadian newspaper industry, hundreds of layoffs and cutbacks are looming ahead of new journalism graduates.

The Guelph Mercury, Hamilton Spectator and Waterloo Region Record dailies cut 64 jobs in February, while printing firm Transcontinental Inc. cut 1,500 positions. Sun Media announced in December it was cutting 10 per cent of its workforce.

Keeping up with the job market and the changing reader interests is important to Western’s journalism program, said Doyle.

Students are taught print, radio, TV and online reporting, and now instructors are considering adding multimedia assignments to help prepare students for what’s now expected of novice journalists, Doyle said.

“You have to know how to tell stories in more than just text,” she said. “Adding a video component, taking pictures, adding (audio), being able to post things online. Any or all of those things make the grads we turn out more valuable in this current climate.”

The future of journalism will be exciting to see unfold, but it would be upsetting to see newspapers die, Doyle said, adding she has been reading the London Free Press and the Globe and Mail since age 12.

But with technologies like Kindle sparking more of the public’s interest in the print industry, people will learn to adapt to whatever changes come, she said.

“Newspaper traditionalists will adapt; people always adapt. I would be more worried if the actual content died.”

*Courtesy of Jenni Dunning