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A print guy's lament: This Web stuff is pretty cool
"I was trying to get to the Victoria's Secret web site
so I could get column fodder. Honest."Let us see if I understand this business: The most successful Internet companies are those that lose the most money?
A quick look at the daily stock tables, and reading the 10-Ks and annual reports, and listening to the daily buzz seems to support that view. Reading the business pages and watching CNBC every day leaves me thinking that the Internet stock business is a big Ponzi scheme. I'm still trying to figure out how to tell a good money-losing Internet company from a bad money-losing Internet company.
All of this is why I'm still a print guy. But I'm bombarded daily by e-mail, on the Web and even in print with the message that these Internet companies are going to rule the world. Every day, I am flooded with press releases from Internet companies that tell me print is dead.
I heard it quite a bit at the Seybold Seminars/Boston earlier this month. One of the mailing lists I am on is sponsored by a Silicon Alley new media magazine that routinely takes potshots at print mavens and their hapless new media efforts (often well-deserved).
On the surface, it looks like all the doomsayers may be right. Newspaper circulation, after all, is stagnant across most of the country. Our readership is rapidly aging. The number of newspapers shrinks a bit more year after year.
But take a closer look, and things don't look so bleak. There's life in the old mule yet, with newspaper advertising revenues up and new products rolling off the presses. Many newspaper companies are reporting increased newsprint usage, even after cutting page widths and decreasing waste. The increase comes from increased ad linage as advertisers find that print remains a core piece of their mix.
With a host of other tricks in the wings, print is adjusting to the Web, just as it did to movies, radio and television. The publisher of the aforementioned Silicon Alley new media magazine points to the increasing size of his print product as a sign of his success. It's also encouraging to contrast newspaper ad news with that of the Web, where rates are dropping as fast as the click-through tally. (One informal survey showed web-site visitors would click on a blank spot almost as much as they would on an ad.)
And though much of the talk at the Seybold Seminars was about the Web, the best-attended sessions appeared to be those that focused on making money.
In other words, print.
Now, normally for this column, I stake out the position that the Web is not all it's cracked up to be. This is an easy position to take, so easy that most weeks, it's like kicking someone when he's down.
Where else can you find companies that go up in value every time they announce another quarterly loss? Or find a couple of million guys willing to turn high-end multimedia computers into the equivalent of an original Thomas Alva Edison videoscope, with sound quality to match, just to watch a Victoria's Secret ad?
If they could even get there that day in early February. (Of course, I was trying to get to the Victoria's Secret web site so I could get column fodder. Honest.)
The Web will be saved, I'm told, when the Internet pipes get big enough to offer video on demand and a host of other services. I have one of those high-speed Internet connections, and while it is far better than using a dial-up ISP, interactivity and multimedia leave quite a bit to be desired.
But I have a sordid little secret: I like the Web. Really.
Most of the articles I write nowadays are for web-based publications. And (I confess) I've been designing web sites, trying to put some of my newspaper layout and design skills to use in this brave new world.
The reach of the Web routinely amazes me. My site has been getting hits from across the United States, Europe and China. I designed a site for a small New Jersey company fostering business in China and Taiwan that has been generating business across the United States and Asia.
But mine are low-budget, low-key affairs. When you need real information, or need to promote something, people turn to print. The Victoria's Secret webcast? It was promoted in full-page ads well before it showed up on the Super Bowl TV show. And they got the same sort of response the Super Bowl ads did.
Many commercial web sites promote themselves in newspapers and magazines in an effort to separate themselves from the chaff on the Internet. And newspapers on the 'Net come with a built-in air of respectability that most sites would die for.
Some of the most popular sites on the Web come from those hidebound folks in the print media. Those that don't have a direct connection to a media company, such as TheStreet.com, are staffed by people with an extensive print background.
Yes, I like the Web. But I'm placing my money on print, for quite some time to come.
-- Steven E. Brier
From NEWSINC. Copyright © 1999, All Rights Reserved.
