“I really don’t know whether we’ll be printing the [New York] Times in five years, and you know what?” asked NYT chairman and publisher Arthur Sulzberger in May 2007 about the transition from print to online media. “I don’t care either.”
Despite rising newspaper circulation rates globally (partially due to a lack of broadband access and internet illiteracy in many developing nations), the United States and Europe continue to lose print subscribers to online media.
When you consider the results of a March 2008 news media poll indicating 67% of Americans think publishers are ignorant with what people want from news, and 48% use the internet as their primary news source (a jump from 20% in 2007), Sulzberger’s perspective is on target.
His hope continues to gain momentum with the latest issue of American Journalism Review shows 70% of political journalists spend an hour or more every day reading blogs and other online media.
I wonder what the Museum of Media History will say about Sulzberger’s predictions for 2012. Will Robin Sloan’s online movie about the demise of the Fourth Estate in 2014 hold true?
“Once upon a time, people had to read the paper to find out what was going on in theater. Today there are hundreds of forums and sites with that information,” said Sulzberger. “But the paper can integrate material from bloggers and external writers. We need to be part of that community and to have dialogue with the online world.”
That’s the essence of social media. When will the global media heed Sulzberger’s call?
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Ari Herzog is an online media strategist and Newburyport City Councilor-Elect.
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Timing a transition like this is always a difficult thing, but maybe there’s an interim transition. When I was a much younger girl I used to deliver a paper called ‘The Progress’. It was distributed only on Wednesday and Sunday. The articles were always well thought out and well followed. They lost steam when everyone wanted a daily paper to get current news. Maybe it’s time to bring it back!
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