It is the end of paper publishing; we have reached the point of no return. There I said it – and I am not alone. It is now the global common, spoken or unspoken consensus that the publishing industry’s paper products have reached the end of their lifecycle.

More and more great titles from glossy monthlies to super size dailies are closing down the print issue and are focusing on the online product and many are consolidating several titles to offer a wider choice to its readers and maybe, maybe keep a few more staff on its roster. Even Arthur Sulzberger Jr of the New York Times said just the other day that it is a matter of time before The New York Times will no longer publish an actual paper. The question is, where is the revenue going to come from, the heavily underpriced online advertisement or paid content?

Paid content is just plain wrong

The Financial Times are giving the paid content model a go, but to be honest there are so many holes in the system and so many copycats in the competing media environment, that I can find the FT article for free in a matter of minutes if I want to read it badly enough. And this is hardly going to change; getting the publishing industry to make a consensus deal of paid content in a digital age, where everyone is a publisher and the industry fights not only for readers, but for its very survival is like getting cats to herd sheep. – It is not going to happen.

Keeping the format like the products of yesteryear will only accelerate the precious time we have left before we face the industry’s impending and inevitable doom. The industry has got to change its very foundation, walk in a different direction. The business model will have to change as well, charging per read or charging per reader will no longer have a place in the future of publishing – it is not the answer it is the demise.

If content is king, then paid content can, without too much of a stretch of the imagination be linked to the crown tax and I believe that I have history on my side when I mention that overdoing the whole taxation bit has caused great empires to fall, spectacularly. There is no reason to believe that this should be different in the great freedom-loving, wild nation of Cyberia.

Faceless

The last straw for many publishers seem to be to pin their hopes on, recreating the past in a digital format, loosely pinning on a social media feed and a retail business model to the existing publication. We are approaching a new media context where people are treated as virtual crated cattle, fed on nothing but mindless applications and hollow, faceless social networking sites populated by the directionless normalcy of the individual. This is not what the free press has worked for. This will not secure the existence of quality press work. Content will be dethroned and the consumer will take the stage and I can only guess which kind of truth the publishing industry will face then.

There is no way, nor a reason to put Social-Media-Jack back in the box now he is out , but it is important to note that we are still in the first generation social media and the internet is still an unruly twenty-something. The system can still be changed, there is no fixed format; the development is in full swing, the direction can be altered and history is not written yet.

The publishing industry, if it is indeed serious about its own survival must take charge of this “once in a century” media opportunity and adapt the new media context and format to suit its own needs, not just to Xerox one format to the other. The social media products on the market today are not thought through to the end (or they would be far more profitable than they are in reality), nor are they developed by communication professionals and they are not made for publishing use.

The perfect mix

But social media is the perfect vehicle for the publishing industry if the content, form and format are changed to fit the purpose. If that happens, the publishing product can be all things to all people and reach further into the lives of the readers (and contributors) than the paper product ever could. All the qualities of the press and social media will be able to unfold in the digital roam creating a rich and vibrant media environment. Community, the individual, opinion and information will be able to live side by side, nourishing each other instead of pulling the media world in opposite directions. And the marketing, oh the marketing. There will be sharp-shooting, cross-channel marketing opportunities beyond what has so far been even thought possible.

To own the digital future the publishing industry must want it and be willing to change. The media system must change profoundly and fast. There is a need and rhetoric will to change, but honestly no real will or deeply felt want to evolve exists in the boardrooms c-suites and new business departments, where the home made and in-house brand of the digital product is still preferred.  The big change is at the moment a pipedream, a pie in the sky for professional developers to shoot for and to be shot down by old, navel-gazing mindsets. This lack of will to redefine the publishing industry for the digital age is catastrophic for an industry who is grapping for straws.

I implore the industry leaders and great thinkers of the industry to lift their gaze from the excel sheet bearing the downward spiralling circulation numbers and see the possibilities that the new media lends us. If only we do not leave the development and the thought process to the IT-engineers and marketing executives alone, but let creative media professionals with an expertise in the field of mass communication take the lead, the publishing industry will live once more.