As these two pieces have approached it, you’d think the newspaper, and print media in general, have no merit at all when compared to the web.  But this is arguably not true, and a gross simplification of a more complex problem. Sadly, the people who’ve argued the web allows cheaper, faster, more demographically-appealing news coverage are right. But, because they look at consumer trends alone, they’re wrong about the roots of the problem facing papers today.

That is, the web isn’t killing papers with its competitive advantages. The web is killing papers by beating them over the head with their own cockiness. First, newspapers they’re always the purest, best source for news–and this is sometimes true, but more because of the deep pockets of paper financiers than because newspapers employ English majors and journalism grads. To say you need more than a sense of fairness, a knack for clarity, and a smidge of brevity to succeed in the reporting business is only a partial truth: but the flip-side of this expression, the one that says only nimrods work for online outlets, is false. Newspapers employ good purveyors of the written word, and so do web sites.

But the thing that’s killing newspapers right now isn’t a disparity in newsmaking power: In fact, they can get the news to their web sites as fast, or faster, than the most well-informed blog or Slate.  Actually the real problem in the paper business lies in the dimishing value of print advertising to potential advertisers.  The web has a near-zero production cost when compared to the composing costs of a newspaper. This means advertisers aren’t required to spend as much money on the web to get the same mind share in return, at least in theory.

Furthermore, content management techniques on the web outstrip any current CM thinking in the print periodical industry.  The web is a cheaper, faster output mechanism that doesn’t require QuarkXpress or InDesign labor, doesn’t require expensive inks and press upkeep, and doesn’t impose a diesel bill for distribution. Yet these issues alone don’t undermine the success of the newspaper. Remember, newspapers still think they are all-in better than web sites.  Cockiness is at the heart of the matter.

The web also empowers the news preferences of the consumer, something newspapers have struggled with. Lifestyle nonsense doesn’t matter to the guy who wants the business section and real estate doesn’t matter to the single twenty-one year-old.  The web solves this by putting the end-user in command of his news consumption preferences. Of course, it does so at the expense of the tactile pleasure of handling and reading the news from the printed page. While sentimental, this can’t be over-valued.

That said, it’s easy to pick on papers because of what the’re bad at. But there are still free rags that turn a profit.  And there are still monthlies that turn a profit. I write for several of them. There are also small-market dailies that break even or make a small profit by concentrating on the news that is hyperlocal in nature: high school sports, local arts, and the like.

But if the Times and the small-market news shop alike are going to be in business in 10 years, it’s going to have to be online.  The boomers will start dying and the diminishing value of print advertising will so burden the print industry that the web will be, for some shops, their only option.

Hopefully, my friends in the print industry recognize this long enough before it happens that survival is still an option.  The newspaper industry must first recognize that classified advertising is not the model of the future but of the past.  Paying $40 for something you can do on EBay or Craig’s List isn’t going to work any more.  Moreover, display advertising can continue to work but only if newspapers learn how to subsidize print production costs using the web. This is a difficult proposition at best, since the web itself has no physical production costs to speak of.

Newspapers: here are your keys to survival.  1. Keep it local. 2. Play the web game and learn how commerce works online. Classified advertising is a dying ilk.  3. If print production and daily delivery remain close to profitable, find out who your customers are. If they’re over 50, by and large, it’s time to move online for good.

I hate to say it. I really do.

With tradition comes a sense of comfort and rightness. But PC Magazine feels neither comfortable nor right about persisting with a print edition. Like the hood ornament, print zines may soon be just a luxury item.

Does this mean Time will go online-only?  Almost certainly not.  But the trade journals and vertical publications with a small circulation may be forced into an online-only format due to a number of reasons:

1 – There are just TOO MANY magazines out there.  In any given vertical, there are 3 or 4 magazines. Penton Media here in Cleveland publishes 40 or 50 vertical rags alone, many of which overlap each other in content.

2 – Demographic information about news consumption is easier for the publisher to obtain in an online format.

3 – Social media and the democratic web create “online weather systems” around news items, prevailing concepts, and fads.  It’s nearly impossible to catch a breeze from one of these online weather systems using print journalism.

4 – PCMag has already crossed over the “web revenue hump” that so many publishers struggle with even now.  With 70% of their brand’s revenue coming from the web, it’s pretty hard to argue in favor of keeping a costly print edition around to satisfy the old-timers.

5 – Blogging matters.  It used to be that print journalists, and in particular, newspaper folks, would dismiss bloggers as inaccurate, teeth-bearing, shit-stirring zealots.  As it turns out, many in the old media were of the same ilk.  Sometimes it hurts to look in the mirror.

6 – Community-based interests, be they purely cultural or geographic, are easier to satisfy using the web. Hyperlocalism in news coverage prevails on the web.  It’s what separates small, promising web publications like chroniclet.com from the behemoth one-size-fits all monsters like NYT.com.

Still, I’d rather read Time magazine that read a 5000-word piece on my iPhone.  I like my iPhone, but do I want to read that much on it?  No.

Check out what Burrows writes:

In a demonstration for BusinessWeek earlier this year, Attributor executives showed how many times scenes from The Sopranos had appeared on 20 leading video sites since they first aired on TV. In all, 1,500 scenes from 52 episodes had been viewed 32 million times. For Time Warner’s HBO, those viewings might have brought in more than $1 million, said Attributor Chief Executive Officer Jim Brock.

ERRNTT. Wrong. Those viewings would not have happened if they weren’t free. Setting a price for this otherwise freely-viewable content would be the same as telling people not to view it at all.  See, it’s the value perception of old media that’s in question in the consumer’s mind.  Empower the consumer and he sees more value. When the thing he wants is free (the Sopranos episode, say), then the consumer is empowered.  Now–go monetize that concept.   Empower the consumer and you make money–just not by charging him for something there are 5 other ways to obtain for little to nothing (BitTorrent, the public library, Blockbuster Video, NetFlix, etc.).

When is old media going to realize that the world of charging $$ for proprietary content isn’t the only model that works any more?  Traditional pubs and especially the recording industry need to stop fighting the notion that there are other ways to monetize content than to charge for it.  The basic precept of the copyright is at odds with content monetization anyway.  So the struggle between licensing of content and free exchange of information is only made worse when NOBODY is allowed to use content without PAYING for it.

If I had 32 million video views on MY web site, I would find a way to make money, and I would never once charge somebody to view the videos.  MPAA, HBO, you guys basically want to do what porn sites do when you should, instead, find a way to work in the framework of consumer demands–things like democratization and social networking.  There’s a way to make money there, but you’ve got to take off the blinders in order to see it.