Part 1: The fate of print…

The following is a talk, abridged from a larger paper, given by the writer recently to two separate audiences—one of journalists, the other of advertising and media-relations practitioners. Its point: Communicating with ink on paper may have been fast going, if not about gone, thanks to technology; but the paper as craft, profession, and institution shall go on to prove itself timeless and to build further on its long and rich tradition in paperless times. It is here posted in a series of two parts.

I think I’m reconciled to the idea that I belong in the last generation of writers and readers on paper. Indeed, what I see is no mere generational gap, but a sea change, one simply too radical, too stark, too quick, too inexorable to allow for any sentimental hopes or illusions. And among the life forms lying utterly helpless in its path is something especially dear to me, the newspaper– for that matter, the entire paper species. In fact the point of no reprieve has long been crossed, such that no kinder choice remains than the very ultimate one: accept, adapt, or perish.

The driver of this change—the “culprit,” as many of us who grew up and flourished in the romantic age of the paper, would doubtless regard it—is technology.

Already I myself miss that age, though I can’t help feeling somewhat awkward, guilty – guilty enough, that is, to suspect that technology comes bearing Nature’s mandate of retribution, a sort of Sword of Wrath loosed upon the sinners who profited and indulged themselves out of the depredation of the forests.

Anyway, in the end, I put it all down to the way of the world—the course of time: everybody and everything inevitably pass into history– the only question is when they will arrive there. All of us mortal subjects of time grow old and passé, and go; things happen around us and, consequently, to us. And in our particular case and time, it’s all happening in most awesome ways, and, again, the decisive event is technology.

To be sure, we’ve seen technology come and go. The 25 years of BusinessWorld and the 20 of its forerunner, BusinessDay, have taken us from hot-metal to photographic publishing, and, along the way, through improvisations, innovations, and inventions. Through it all the material resource remains the same—ink and paper. Now paper is going out from its very source, and without paper ink is nothing. And even if the supply were replenished, still it would be of no consequence; the issue is not supply but demand: a whole new culture, nay, a whole new world is risen, and it’s a world that has no use for paper.

No phenomenon is comparable. That which has given us the movies, radio, and television is notable only because it has since been the most significant phenomenon in the realm in question—communication. For one thing, it has not made paper useless—in fact it has itself continued to require its use, if not as a product component, as an operational resource.

True, television has managed progressively to ease the newspaper out of the market (cornering 77 percent of the advertising money, with radio taking between 17 and 18 percent, leaving newspapers and the rest of the print media to compete for the remaining 5 percent); but also, owing to both its nature as a medium and its less-than-rigorous predispositions as a profession, television has served only, along with radio, to accentuate the merits of the newspaper, itself widely conceded still as the sanctifying medium, such that, until set in irrevocable print—in ink and paper—the truth remains provisional. Whether the newspaper has been able to live up to that perception is another matter; in any case, it has no excuse: it has more space to fill than television—or radio—has time; it has more time to put together its product; and it has a longer and richer, and, because informed by a sense of public duty and mission, nobler tradition.

But it cannot live on tradition and mission alone; it also needs bread. And dogged increasingly by costs, the newspaper has been hard put sustaining itself and maintaining its preordained primacy. With a broadsheet page costing 50-60 centavos to print alone, and with as much expense entailed to meet other costs, the point of diminishing returns has been receding steadily to such levels as to make surrender a sensible option.

(Next column: “The future of newspapers”)