Is Print Media on It's Last Legs?
Is Print Media Truly on Its Last Legs?
By: Abigail Ryan
In the past two years we have seen many publications go digital and make the decisions to no longer print physical copies of the publications. Two of these subscriptions are considered giants in the industry, selling thousands of copies and thousands of subscriptions with their ‘target audience’ Seventeen Magazine and Teen Vogue. For 74 years Seventeen magazine dominated the industry with their fashion, beauty, college tips, and life sections. While Teen Vogue provided a much more polished high fashion look to their pages which had a certain draw to it. In December 2018 and January of 2019, Seventeen announced that their issue for the months of December 2018/January 2019 would be there last physical issues. While teen Vogue issued a similar statement seven months earlier in April 2018. Is there a way that publications can still print monthly issues while maintaining a digital presence or will the content slowly shift more so towards digital until that is essentially the publication?
A concerning factor that many individuals had towards the end of Seventeen and Teen Vogue’s printed era’s where that the issues were getting much smaller and containing less of the college tips, and life section (in Seventeen’s case). While the websites to both publications were very specific in what they published there was and still is a distinct difference between the two. A difference that was in the magazine’s but not as noticeable as it is on the corresponding website’s. Teen Vogue has a politic’s section, stories of how people who are high school, college aged, to leaving college feel about the political climate as well as their response to certain events.
To try to gauge just how many individuals get their information from website’s of news outlets rather than physical publication’s. I asked members of Kingsborough’s staff and student population from the journalism department for their opinions on physical publications, mores if they can maintain a presence on both shelves in store’s and online or is the focus shifting now more than ever to an online presence?
I interviewed Professor Hickey of the Kingsborough Journalism Department for his perspective. “It is not the death of journalism, it’s the adaption of journalism.” Professor Hickey explained that for years you had many journalists writing for many publications. However the publications had no way of knowing how many people were reading the columns. “They can see how far you scroll down, what links you click on, which articles you read”. Professor Hickey also explained that if there was a mistake such as a misspelling with print media you cannot fix it, with online you can fix it almost immediately. What is more worrying is “When websites shut down” Prof. Hickey stated that with websites you have articles that are digitally archived and stored, when a website goes out of business the articles cease to exist. There is still a push behind physical publications, the advertisements. As Professor Hickey further explained there are people who prefer printed ads rather than digital ads.
I also interviewed Saul De Leon a journalism student here at Kingsborough, I asked him what he thought of publications switching to a more digital presence. Mr. De Leon stated “Everything being digitally publicized is more the main course for publications, because everyone has an iPhone, a device, or access to a place that has digital devices” This is true, almost eve ry student on campus has a laptop, and even more have phones. Mr. De Leon also acknowledged that “Publications are looking for more readership and the numbers of people who are reading their stuff.” Both Professor Hickey and Mr. De Leon make excellent points, while print journalism is on a decline, it is not necessarily dying, just changing to better meet the new market that a new demographic brings.
While many people have stated that the websites don’t have the same material on them that the publications do, the fact is that for the people behind the publications that there are now two separate markets to hold a presence in. Many are simply trying to make both the websites and the physical publications very similar, such as the New York Times. With the demographic slowly changing, the business of print journalism will try to meet these changes by appealing to the new demographic while still reporting on the news.
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