Is print really dead?

I went to a mixer last night that was, according to the invitation, to be on the topic of “publishing,” and brought along a friend, a publicist for a boutique publishing house in the Chicago suburbs, who was looking to do some networking and meet some of her peers.

As it turned out however, two of the three advertised speakers (the third didn’t show up) were members of what I like to call the Screen-Based Community, which is to say professional bloggers, and the discussion was entirely about online publishing, micro-blogs, corporate blogs, and the like. 

Attempting to be a devil’s advocate and a mild-to-moderate pain in the ass, I tried during the discussion session that followed the presentations to question the largely unquestioned assumption by at least one of the presenters that, as he put it, “print is dying a slow and painful death.”

It is inarguable that many print publications are exhibiting these days all of the signs of “cachexia” (wasting away), and it is equally inarguable that, if present trends continue, we may sooner or later be left with only a handful of print newspapers — the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and so on — and few if any of the traditional city newspapers.  Here in Chicago, in fact, there appears to be a spirited race between the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune to see whose pulp incarnation will disappear first.

Magazines, most of them anyway, would appear to be in trouble too, as their lifeline, advertising, slowly bleeds away to the Web.

But, as I pointed out during the discussion, “present trends almost never continue.”  The reason is that technology trends, and trends in general, rarely if ever move in a straight and predictable line, and are instead subject to reconsiderations, reversals, and revivals of older and seemingly abandoned methodologies. 

As an analogy, I pointed to an area of particular interest to me — food.  (I’m somewhat obsessed with food, having had little of it in my childhood.)  Beginning in the days of Charles Birdseye, inventor of frozen food, and some of his colleagues, there have been predictions that food will become increasingly standardized, technologized and packaged.  And these weren’t just empty prognostications; at its nadir, food culture in America did in fact consist mostly of frozen, canned, and fast food.  If “present trends had continued” we all would, as many very seriously predicted at one time or another, be dining primarily on pills.

But there have been a number of countervailing trends, as there almost always are with any new technology.  Many people got fed up with the tasteless, overly processed, deracinated, and mind-numbingly dull cuisine of mass-produced hamburgers, microwaveable burittos, Campbell’s soup casseroles, Twinkies, and Banquet frozen dinners, and began turning to other, older alternatives.

Here in America, Alice Walters and her Chez Panisse restaurant were pioneers in the welcome return to an emphasis on fresh, locally sourced ingredients.  Today, most of us take for granted the value of farmer’s markets, organic produce, local food specialties (including, even, high-quality fast food such as, in Chicago, the Italian beef sandwich), and food that is free of excessive additives and genetically modified ingredients. 

At the same time, there also has been a blossoming of interest in new comestibles, such as unusual ethnic foods that, a generation ago, most of us would have been afraid to eat, as well as in radical experimentation that attempts to return food to its basic building blocks and then reconstruct it in new and mind-boggling ways, as in the molecular food movement.  (Few of us have the money these days to eat at the temples of molecular food, but the more-successful and tasty of the techniques these restaurants are pioneering will inevitably work their way into the mass market.)

Then there is the “slow food” movement, which values above all the sensual pleasure of cooking and eating food, and here, I think, is the clearest way of connecting the food business to the publishing business.  For some people, at least, there is a sensual pleasure, too, in leafing through a glossy publication, or even a newspaper, and even more so in relaxing in an easy chair and reading a beautifully printed book.  (Even the more-hostile of the two panel members generously allowed that print books are likely to remain around for a while, despite the best efforts of Amazon and its new Kindle book reader.)

So I think it’s possible that people will get tired of doing all of their reading off of one or two flat screens (their computer screen and their mobile device.)  I also think that, if all publications are online, there will be a “flattening effect” in which they all begin to look alike and seem equally valid, and thus equally invalid (what future is there for the Chicago Tribune, say, to go completely online when a half-dozen independent operators could start a website called “The Chicago Chronicle,” that utilizes a mix of original and borrowed content, and that, at first glance at least, might look almost indistinguishable from the Trib’s operation?)

The extremely low barriers to entry on the Internet — no heavy printing presses, no paper, no cumbersome delivery mechanisms, and so forth, not to mention the ability to imitate the look of more-substantial publications with a few inexpensive fonts — mean that virtually anyone with a small bankroll can launch an impressive-looking website, and certainly anyone with a computer can now start a blog.  This, combined with the fact that virtually no one is willing to pay for online editorial content, and, accordingly, that most successful online operations are supported by advertising only, creates two disturbing possibilities: 

One, because they are almost entirely advertising supported, online publications would appear to be even more vulnerable to advertiser-influenced editorial decisions than their print counterparts, which at least have the offsetting influence of paid subscribers, not to mention long-standing traditions and prestigious reputations to uphold (even if those aren’t often well-supported in practice.)

And two, because very few online publications can afford to pay their contributors, and as print publications that do indeed pay, however poorly, are beginning to die of starvation, we may be witnessing the disappearance of the professional journalist and the professional editor.  This is not to say that there aren’t many superb online editors and writers, only that they, including the professional bloggers at the presentation, may find it difficult to sustain a career solely online, merely because they have to pay the bills. 

And this, in turn, means that it may be more difficult than ever to find dedicated journalists willing to spend months pursuing a major story, or years following a particular beat.  (I don’t deny that there are some who in fact do just this solely online, but the concomitant lack of professional editors — and of a professional and institutionalized journalistic culture that at least attempts to hold both journalists and their editors to high standards — is likely to result in an even-greater dumbing down and trivialization of news and cultural commentary than we have already witnessed to date.) 

Add to this the undeniable reality that far more online writing than print writing is amateurish and borderline unreadable — the literary equivalent of, at best, a Campbell’s Soup tuna casserole made with canned mushroom soup, peas, and crumbled potato chips on top — and we all have real reason to worry about the future of written discourse. 

This isn’t even close to being an original observation, by the way — there are a great many people out there concerned about the death of professional journalism, though their voices are being drowned out, I fear, by the overwhelming tide of interest in the volunteer-based electronic version. 

While perhaps somewhat more original, my food analogy is also undoubtedly flawed, as some at the presentation pointed out.  (My definition of “analogy,” in fact, is “a comparison that’s somewhat useful, but has something wrong with it.”)  And in fact, I could be entirely wrong and indulging in nothing other than wishful thinking and rationalization.  It may be that ten or fifteen years from today, we will be affixed, Cyclops-like, to a single, all-consuming screen or, just as likely, Argus-like to a half-dozen different mobile electronic delivery systems of unimaginable cleverness and sophistication. 

But it’s also possible that, as in the slow-food movement, people will begin to rediscover the tactile, three-dimensional pleasures of print.  And that print will, itself, discover new and creative ways of presenting itself, as we see, for example, in Mcsweeney’s literary magazines, which despite their extremely uneven content are incredibly clever in their design and presentation. 

As someone who spends a good part of his day online (not only reading online publications and blogs, but contributing to several of them, including the great PopMatters and the equally great When Falls the Coliseum, and also creating other online content for clients of my consulting business)  I’m not trying to argue that there’s anything inherently wrong with online publishing, nor that all of it is equivalent to the canned, frozen, or inorganic.  Some of it, in fact, is incredibly fresh and creative.

Indeed, blogs, Twitter, and other electronic media are beating print media to the punch on a lot of major stories these days, providing alternatives to the sclerotic practices and prejudices of over-rated, moribund, and increasingly mediocre institutions such as the New York Times, and creating the opportunity for many previously unheard voices to join the cultural conversation.  And it isn’t all just intellectual “fast food” online – some of it is exceptionally well-written and carefully reasoned, and much of it is fast in the best sense of the word, providing us with scoops that print publications can’t match. 

I’m merely pointing out that, as a part of a balanced intellectual diet, print has an important role to play, too, and those that would cavalierly consign it to the recycling bin of history or, worse, attempt to hasten its demise, are not doing our culture or our society any favors. 

My friend walked away from the mixer somewhat disappointed that she hadn’t been able to meet any colleagues in the (print) publishing business.  Several other attendees, who hadn’t spoken up in the question-and-answer session, sidled up to me later and said that I had made some good points (along with some, I don’t doubt, stupid ones, as I am wont to do.)  But I left the get-together feeling encouraged to some degree that there is a continuing interest in print and that, despite the expectations of some, it’s going to be around in one form or another for a long, long time. 

Then — because we’d missed dinner — my friend and I stopped at a 24-hour diner nearby and had some eggs, hash browns, waffles, and orange juice.  All of it was fresh, and made from scratch by people who knew what they were doing, and all of it was good.