Print is dying. Dry your tears.

By: Matthew Burris

With the shut down of both the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Rocky Mountain News over the past couple of months, there has been an outpouring of lament for the death of print news in this country. I have yet to figure out why.

The Luddite "save print" movement misses the point. Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD) proposed to allow newspapers to become non-profit organizations. The senator even cited the shut down of the P-I in his bill. At least it isn't just an excuse to shovel money to an industry who will just squander it and then coming asking for more (GM, I'm looking squarely at YOU).

That being said, the problem isn't the intention. News is a nice thing to have. The issue really starts when we realize that we are attempting to rescue something that doesn't work anymore. The age has passed the newspaper business behind. Movable type is a 15th century technology.

Jeff Jarvis, creator of Entertainment Weekly, said,

We are bailing out the past, not the future. We are forestalling the need to change. Change isn’t easy. It’s hard on people. It’s destructive. It will leave voids and vacuums. But it is inevitable. The smart thing to do today is to run to the change, seek it out, find the opportunities in it, deal with the hard problems it brings instead of avoiding them.

When people decry the rise of the internet (which is what all the tears are really about), they seem like the kind of people that are too scared to make their way into the future safely, and successful PR practitioners can't be sympathetic to their ilk.

Michael Arrington, creator of the technology blog, TechCrunch, called print media "absurd,"



Link to full program: "New Media Models."

He has a point. The business model is failing. Media is screaming headlong into the 21st century, and public relations HAS to change with it.

We can not wait around and weep for the death of a failing medium. We, as professionals, will be passed by just as the Post-Intelligencer was, and just as all those who refuse to trudge ahead will be.

As the media moves online, ads will change, outreach will change, and how people get their news will change. Gone are the days of placing stories in daily newspapers. Calling up professional journalists will have a place, but the yield will be smaller and the audience limited.

People aren't going to media brands for information. They are going to each other. E-mailing bloggers and getting your story on digg.com, reddit, facebook, twitter, and their brethren will become the way to get hits.

Time's they are a-changin' indeed. Time to stay ahead of the curve or see your effectiveness as a professional falter.