There will eventually come a daywhen The New York Times ceases to publish stories on newsprint. Exactly whenthat day will be is a matter of debate. "Sometime in the future," thepaper's publisher said back in 2010.
Nostalgia for ink on paper and therustle of pages aside, there's plenty of incentive to ditch print. Theinfrastructure required to make a physical newspaper-printing presses, delivery trucks-isn't just expensive; it's excessiveat a time when online-only competitors don't have the same set of financialconstraints. Readers are migrating away from print anyway. And though print adsales still dwarf their online and mobile counterparts, revenue from print isstill declining.
Overhead may be high andcirculation lower, but rushing to eliminate its print edition would be amistake, says BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti.
Peretti says the Times shouldn'twaste time getting out of the print business, but only if they go about doingit the right way. "Figuring out a way to accelerate that transition wouldmake sense for them," he said, "but if you discontinue it, you'regoing to have your most loyal customers really upset with you."
Sometimes that's worth making achange anyway. Peretti gives the example of Netflix discontinuing itsDVD-mailing service to focus on streaming. "It was seen as ablunder," he said. The move turned out to be foresighted. And if Perettiwere in charge at the Times? "I wouldn't pick a year to end print,"he said. "I would raise pieces and make it into more of a legacyproduct."
The most loyal customers wouldstill get the product they favor, the idea goes, and they'd feel like they werehelping sustain the quality of something they believe in. "So if you'reoverpaying for print, you could feel like you were helping," Peretti said."Then increase it at a higher rate each year and essentially try togenerate additional revenue." In other words, if you're going to make aprint product, make it for the people who are already obsessed with it, which maybe what the time is doing already .Getting the print edition seven days a weekcosts nearly $500 a year-more than twice as much as a digital-onlysubscription.
"It's areally hard thing to do and it's a tremendous luxury that BuzzFeed doesn't havea legacy business," Peretti remarked. "But we're going to havequestions like that where we have things we're doing that don't make sense whenthe market changes and the world changes. In those situations, it's better tobe more aggressive than less aggressive."
總有一天，《紐約時報》會停止在新聞紙上發(fā)表報道。那一天的確切時間是一個有爭議的問題。“將來的某個時候，”該報的出版商在2010年說。
除了對紙上墨水的懷念以及書頁的沙沙聲，人們還有很多拋棄印刷的動機。制造實體報紙所需的基礎設施——印刷機、運輸卡車——不僅昂貴，而且在僅限于網(wǎng)絡的競爭對手沒有同樣的財務限制的時候，這種基礎設施過于龐大。無論如何，讀者正在遠離印刷品。盡管印刷廣告的銷售額仍然比在線和手機廣告的銷售額要低，但印刷廣告的收入仍然在下降。
BuzzFeed首席執(zhí)行官喬納·佩雷蒂說，管理費用可能很高，發(fā)行量可能較低，但急于取消其印刷版將是一個錯誤。
佩雷蒂表示，《紐約時報》不應該浪費時間退出印刷業(yè)務，但前提是他們要以正確的方式行事。 “找到一種加速轉(zhuǎn)型的方法對他們來說是有意義的，”他說，“但如果你停止轉(zhuǎn)型，你會讓你最忠實的客戶對你非常不滿?！?/p>
有時候改變一下也是值得的。佩雷蒂舉了 Netflix 為了專注于流媒體而停止 DVD 郵寄服務的例子。“這被視為一個錯誤,”他表示。事實證明，此舉是有遠見的。如果佩雷蒂是《紐約時報》的負責人呢？“我不會選擇一年來結(jié)束印刷,”他說。“我會把它們結(jié)合起來，使它們更像是一種傳統(tǒng)產(chǎn)品。”
最忠誠的客戶仍然會得到他們喜歡的產(chǎn)品，他們會覺得自己在幫助維持他們所信仰的產(chǎn)品的質(zhì)量。佩雷蒂說：“所以，如果你為印刷品支付了過高的價格，你可能會覺得自己在幫忙?！薄叭缓竺磕暌愿叩乃俣仍黾?，基本上努力創(chuàng)造額外的收入?！睋Q句話說，如果你要制作印刷產(chǎn)品，那么就為那些已近癡迷于印刷產(chǎn)品的人而做吧，這可能是《紐約時報》已經(jīng)在做的事情了。每周七天購買印刷版每年花費近500美元，是純數(shù)字訂閱的兩倍多。
這真的是一件很難做到的事情，而 BuzzFeed 沒有傳統(tǒng)業(yè)務，這是一種巨大的奢侈,” 佩雷蒂表示。“但我們將會遇到這樣的問題: 當市場和世界發(fā)生變化時，我們所做的事情是沒有意義的。在這種情況下，更積極一點比不那么積極要好。”
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