Dead Trees and the Death Narrative

“We will stop printing the New York Times sometime in the future.”

These were the words of the newspaper’s publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., in 2010. Since the first newspaper websites started appearing in 1994 and dedicated apps more recently, history has seemed to support this idea.

Digital audiences to newspapers have continued to rise. comScore reported that 179 million American adults (three-quarters of the total) accessed newspapers online in August 2015, up 10% from the previous year. In the UK, 72% of adults accessed newsbrands via their PCs or mobile devices in September 2015.

Digital revenues have also risen, while print advertising keeps on falling. Globally, digital newspaper revenues have doubled since 2010, while print-related revenues have fallen by 9% (print advertising revenues on their own dropped by 18%; circulation-based revenues have grown slightly due partly to increasing cover prices).

Hence the so-called ‘death narrative’ – the notion that printed newspapers (the ‘dead tree’ editions) will eventually disappear, proclaimed in numerous reports, headlines and consultants’ reports. But is this inevitable? Or, as US academic Iris Chyi has argued recently¹, in danger of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy?

It is important to put the figures into context. According to the World Association of Newspapers, the global newspaper business (comprising both advertising and circulation-based revenues) was worth around US$ 179 billion in 2014, of which digital revenues accounted for a little under 7%.

This is more than twice the share achieved in 2010 (3.2%). But in dollar terms, the drop of $16.5 billion in print-related revenues since 2010 has not been compensated by the $5.9 billion rise in digital revenues. At the rates of growth and decline seen in 2014, it would take until 2031 for digital to surpass print revenues.

Wolfgang Riepl, A German newspaper editor, coined what has become ‘Riepl’s Law’ back in 1913, arguing that, in fact, new media never entirely replace existing modes of media and their usage patterns. History supports him. Video recording and digital streaming have not stopped people watching television live (on their television sets). Internet radio has not killed local radio. And online news has not stopped people reading printed newspapers.

More than two-thirds of UK adults continue to read a printed newspaper. In an average week, 73% of Germans, 68% of French and 65% of Australians read printed newspapers. More than half of Americans only read their local newspaper’s printed edition over the course of an average week and do not access their online content (although they may look at online news elsewhere).

Iris Chyi argues that two decades of digital experimentation have failed to pay off for most newspaper publishers, while the focus on trying to maintain online their historically dominant positions as primary news gatherers and disseminators may be doomed to failure.

Heavy investment in building websites and apps, offering content either free or behind paywalls have not been rewarded with sufficient revenues to replace that lost by the decline in print advertising.

She also criticises the fact that this investment in digital technology has been at the expense of the printed product. Fewer writers are being employed to create distinctive content (in the US, the number of newsroom employees dropped from 55,000 in 2006 to 36,700 in 2013). Sections and pages have been cut in many cases, eliminating content that readers once enjoyed.

And ‘news’ – hard news – is an area where it has been hard for newspapers to maintain their historic position. Competition for attention in this area has never been higher. It is freely and easily accessible from a vast range of sources, of which newspapers are just one.

In Chyi’s view, online news is what micro-economists might term an ‘inferior’ good – the kind of product which people buy less of as incomes rise in favour of better quality products. Other examples of inferior goods include bus travel, second-hand cars and certain basic foodstuffs which people buy less of when they no longer have to buy them. Or, in other words, inferior goods are something easily abandoned when something better is available and accessible. Like free online news from a news aggregator, a digital news site or Facebook.

She quotes a range of studies which suggest that printed newspapers are not inferior goods in the same way; they don’t suffer to the same extent from being perceived as ‘free,’ there is a value in a good that is tangible and also that people often want to take a break from staring at screens all day.

Her concluding advice to newspaper publishers:

“Print is your asset, not a burden. Print is where your competitive advantage lies. Google does not know how to run a newspaper, just as you don’t know how to make money online!”

1: H. Iris Chyi: Trial and Error: US Newspapers’ Digital Struggles toward Inferiority

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