What Happens To The Readers When Newspapers Kill Print And Turn Fully Digital?

One of the questions I’m most interested in for the near- to medium-term future is what will actually happen when print newspapers start to disappear in large numbers, whenever that may be. Will those print readers just become digital readers? Will they spend as much time consuming local journalism on their phones as they do at their breakfast tables? Or will their attention wander as readers’ competitive set widens to, well, everything else the Internet can offer?

These are some key questions asked by Joshua Benton, director of the Nieman Journalism Lab. In his article he argues that what the media industry faces is not about mass closures, but mass shrinkage of newsrooms, and pages in print press, which is dying in a slow manner.

There’s no Zeno’s Paradox to prevent newspapers from eventually deciding on one of two courses of action: going online-only or shutting down entirely. Even the most pro-print publishers will tell you that, someday, the “cost of print” and “revenue from print” lines will intersect on an accountant’s projection and it’ll be time to stop the presses for good. The only question is when: Two years? Five? Ten? Thirty?

Benton is enthusiastic to share with us recent research by Neil Thurman and Richard Fletcher to highlight what the future offers. They examined the case of The Independent, the national British daily that after 30 years in print went online-only in 2016. 

In the 12 months before and after stopping print, the total time spent consuming The Independent dropped from 5.548 billion minutes to 1.056 billion minutes. Of its print readers, half read the newspaper “almost everyday.” Its online visitors read a story, on average, a little over twice a month. Print readers spent, on average, 37 to 50 minutes with each daily edition they read. Online Independent readers spend, on average, 6 minutes a month.

To understand what is beyond the horizon, Benton's is another alarming report.