The future of print news

BEING in the newspaper business for over two decades, both on the field as a reporter and now in the management cubicle as an editor, it has dawned upon me that the print business is a shrinking hunting ground for adbucks.

As technology improves, we have less and less time to spend reading printed news. Rising costs of newsprint and the increased need for information on the fly will nail the growth of print news. With the wide availability of the internet access - the primary conduit for news - and improved web-centered devices (specifically WiFi, MMS and GPRS) such as PDAs, Smartphones, etc., it will come a day that we many no longer need printed newspapers. Even then, for wrapping fish, someone would have developed a shrink-wrap so easy to use and biodegradable.

Newspaper readership is shrinking, too. Your print news readers who used to buy your paperw while commuting to work are now probably in their 50s. Their fathers who bought your papers would have been long gone.

It will come a day that even when commuting you may not need a newspaper to keep yourself occupied. I forsee trains and buses with LCDs broadcasting news and other entertainment programmes as it takes you to work. Some advanced ones would have WiFi access points to allow you to access emails or your company servers to check messages from your boss.

If print publishers have ignored information technology and the internet, perhaps a cursory look around the office will enlighten them a bit. How many of your staff Google for websites, splitting windows and multitasking as they write that very story that you hope to sell your papers?

And if you have called your marketing department recently, how about requesting this month's sale and compare it with the same of say five years ago when internet use is not so widespread? And how many of your staff now own Smartphones which are equipped to download news from Telcos at the press of the button?

Just consider that and you will see that print days are numbered. An arrogant pro-print newsvendor will fast become the casuality on the information superhighway, knocked down by his ignorance of the power of information technology.

Is there hope for print? Yes. But that will be another blog.