Print Media in the Digital Age

Print Media in the Digital Age

The future of print media in a world that becomes increasingly digitized is something that has piqued my interest in recent years. This interest stems from being a web and mobile developer, someone that is part of a micro generation known recently as “Xennials” (Curtis, 2017), and someone who spent a large portion of their childhood without the Internet, smartphones and social media. As more and more content is consumed on smartphones, tablets and computers, it seems that the need for a physical print media is giving way to the desire to more rapidly absorb material without the accumulation of stacks of paper.

Research from the Pew Research Center shows that the circulation numbers for daily newspapers in U.S. households has been decreasing since 1990 (Pew Research Center, 2017). Such a decline in the subscription of print media must be seen by many as an indicator of impending doom for print publishers. I can even see in my daily travels that billboards are becoming no less than giant screens for digital advertising.

However, there may still be hope for print media as statistics from the Alliance for Audited Media as presented by the Pew Research Center suggest that magazine subscriptions (as opposed to single newsstand sales) have largely remained the same from 2008-2014 (Wormald, 2015).

It is my belief, through my own experiences, that the magazine portion of the print media industry will continue to operate so long as the digital platforms do not exceed the ability of the physical pages in a magazine to be more appealing to the viewer. As an example, I often find that reading newspaper articles via a digital platform is as comfortable as, or more so than, a printed article. Although in contrast, browsing through a magazine to consume the information has a greater feel to it than attempting the same action with the digital counterpart. Others may disagree with