One of the more ridiculous things I saw last week was the iPad, sporting iBooks, mimicking as closely as possible the process of reading a real book. Why is this ridiculous? Because it’s not a book, it’s a touchscreen electronic device. It may be pretty, but it’s certainly wasn’t designed with the ideal user experience in mind.
That cute app typifies exactly what’s going on with print. Everyone is asking if the iPad can save print, but that’s not even a valid question–once content is on the iPad, “print” ceases to exist. It doesn’t matter how much the experience of reading the New York Times on the iPad is like unto reading a hard copy, it’s still digital content. Maybe this is just semantics. Maybe by saving “print” people don’t actually mean saving the traditional form of newspapers and magazines, but of saving the publishing companies themselves.
If that’s the case, then the real question is whether or not the iPad and other digital devices can save the big publishers. The answer to that question is yes, of course, in the same way it can “save” and sustain the new publishing companies. Digital is the new medium for content consumption, and the big publishers are not-so-subtly conceding this by hailing the iPad. It’s ironic that the device they’re pinning their hopes on actually just further blurs the lines between their content and all the other content residing on the web.
Unfortunately the blurring of that distinction is something they can’t avoid. Digital content is the future, and the rules are different on the web. The vast majority of consumers are content with getting their news from sources that aren’t the newspapers or magazines–sources like any number of hugely popular and well-written blogs on the Internet. These new publishers developed low overhead models of doing business that actually work on the web, and in order to survive, traditional publishers will have to make similar changes.
All publishers need to start thinking of themselves as digital content companies. They need to start shuffling things within their organizations to make them viable in the digital economy. They need to take a good look at the business models of new content companies that are thriving to see how they should adapt. Salaries are going to have to be slashed and budgets are going to have to be re-evaluated. It won’t be pretty, and it may very well have a net-negative affect on the quality of journalism available, but such are the demands of the market.