Fatal Move From Print to Internet

While ad sales continue to fall across many newspapers and magazines, it occurred to me that big media companies have made a fatal mistake when they tried to run both print and web version of their content simultaneously.

The internet is a source of infinite information made accessible only by those who have permitted themselves to make it accessible for free.

Newspapers and magazines have made their revenues from advertisers for over a century before the internet came along. Whether it used to be $0.10 or $0.50 for a printed newspaper, to a few dollars for a glossy magazine, media companies made their money through ads, this is a given.

When the internet came along, though it was neat to be able to share information in one common world wide web, advertising on the web was, right from the get-go, very cheap. Pennies were made based on impressions, clicks, and leads. Then, when content was reproduced on the web, the print media followed. However, the fatal mistake from print media was to reproduce their content for free.

If I were a business person, who made their fortune by offering a service for a price in person, and then offering the same service for free on the internet, of course my client base will grow on the internet. But my internet clients aren’t paying for my services, they’re getting it for free. And everybody, and I mean everybody, loves the word “free”. So it’s only logical that you would attract more people online than you would in person. By the end of if, I wouldn’t be making any money at all since my in-person clients will flock to me indirectly and get my services for free rather than in person.

Thus, my question to the big print companies such as the New York Times, The Globe and Mail, and the thousands of other newspapers…why did they make their content online free? It’s like shooting yourself in the foot. The Wall Street Journal was smart, they limit their free content and still rely on paid subscriptions to generate some revenue and it isn’t free falling into a black hole like other newspapers. Women’s Wear Daily is also able to stay alive with their subscription base model, while offering just a trickle of free content. It’s content is still linked to from numerous websites despite it being mostly off limits to casual browsers. Newspapers could have still been afloat if they would’ve offered their news for the same subscription price online as their print version. The only foreseeable problem with that is having their content reproduced by users – however, with hundreds of articles being printed each week, I doubt all of the content would be made public.

Fashion magazines however are not entirely at fault. Fashion brands have established their own sites and thus can propagate their ad campaigns from their home base without the need to pay for space in a physical world. The internet allows them to reach a much wider audience than their print (and costly) versions ever could.  Combine that with viral marketing from blogs, and cheap web space, there’s little need for fashion magazines except for the fashion gurus to cherry pick the cream of the crop of products. I suppose a temporary solution for fashion magazines is to also privatize their content online and have users pay to read their fashion experts’ opinions.

If print media companies would’ve started out with privatized paid subscriptions online, then I doubt there would’ve been such a global meltdown in the print world, perhaps saving thousands of jobs. Of course, there are hundreds of thousands of sophisticated users who can pirate content, but quality content as the big medias were known for, wouldn’t have disintegrated so quickly if they did some planning and foreshadowing.

If print work does indeed die out in the next decade (and reduced to an art form), I expect online advertising prices to go up. With no ulterior source of income, I think coveted online fashion websites will have the opportunity to break out a new standard for online advertising. Of course, online fashion magazines will have to compete for attention with the very brands who are buying their ad space.