Is 2009 the End Times for Print News?

While the collapse of the print news business has been forecast for a long while now, it’s still shocking to see the speed at which it looks like it’s starting to happen. 2009 really may end up being the year of the apocalypse for the daily print newspaper in the US. Just this past week we can see a couple examples in the Globe and Mail, with staff cutbacks, and the pending sale (or closure) of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, piling on top of the already catastrophic financial condition of the Tribune Company and the New York Times (which includes the Boston Globe among other assets).

Mike Masnick at Techdirt wrote up a bit on the apparent acceleration of the industry’s collapse, in the context of that old business school favorite saw, creative destruction:

Regularly, supporters of those (the recording and newspaper industries) respond that it’s folly to jump to a new “unproven” business model without real proof that the new business model will succeed — especially when the old business model is still going strong. There’s this belief that the companies in those industries can just hang on while everyone else experiments, and when a new business model is clear, they can comfortably make the switch and everything will be fine…

It is true that old industries can hang on for a while, but they reach a sort of tipping point where suddenly everyone realizes that the emperor has no clothes. And, at that point, there really isn’t any time to make the necessary shift to the new business model. Instead, there’s just bankruptcy.

And the emperor is beginning to look pretty damned naked right about now. So are there any viable business models for traditional newspapers? The Atlantic has a great article ominously titled “End Times“, which is worth the read in part for a take on how we’ve arrived at this point, but also to explore what may be the future for the NY Times – essentially an online-only publication that melds the model of the Huffington Post with some of the agenda-setting professional reporting capabilities of the current NY Times.

This ideal describes a world that dispenses with the mass expense of print and large newsroom staff, and mixes and blends a hard-hitting, though small, deep reporting capability with the Wild West “semi-pro” blogger-style reporting from a vast array of sources around the world. Rockstar reporters could still thrive and build off their own micro-brands, though there would be a mass culling of traditional newsroom jobs. Regional or metro newspapers could carve out niches focused on local news, holding city government accountable, and so on, while blending with the huge array of local blogs that have sprung up in most cities already.

It’s one view, and though I’d miss my occasional Sunday Times on the kitchen table, it’s actually fairly appealing. Truth is, while I have an emotional attachment to print newspapers (being an editor of my high school print paper was perhaps the most formative experience of my teenage years), today I’m a product of the digital age. Like many, I already consume news from the NY Times, Seattle PI, and other “print” publications almost exclusively online, and seamlessly flip back and forth between these sites, blogs, and news aggregators to gather up a more rounded view of what’s happening in the world and around my town.

If you’re reading this blog, chances are you’re in the same boat. While I may mourn the loss of the tradition of print news, and certainly feel for those that may be hit with job losses, the future the Atlantic paints is already my reality. It would be richer still if the NY Times and others fully embraced it.

Related: One outcome? The rise of a shadow media – “A sort of shadow media industry is born—properties created and staffed by those pink-slipped in ‘08 and ‘09. This sets the stage for epic clashes with existing players in ‘10 and beyond.” Found via the 360 DI Blog from Ogilvy PR.