As a freelance writer, I’m periodically asked my about my views on the state and the future of the publishing industry, although I suppose using the term “asked” is perhaps ambitious.  More accurately I’m accosted with the interrogative, “so I guess newspapers and magazines won’t exist pretty soon, huh?”  I will admit that this very possibility regularly leaves its trail of bread crumbs across the synapsis of my own gray matter.  Are books, newspapers, and magazines really on the chopping block?  While my own wishful thinking might taint my opinion, I still think that there is valid precedent to examine.  Short answer to above question, yes they will with a but, long answer...well here’s the long answer.

I think while people are stumbling around looking for an answer, it’s important to remember that as far as the evolution of media, and who gets paid for what, we’ve been here before.  Let’s take a little trip to the 19th century when a crazy thing was happening: stage actors and playwrights were well paid and highly regarded.  Flash forward to the turn of the century and the growing popularity of motion pictures.  At first, the live theater crowd didn’t view motion pictures as much of a threat, it was after all an entertainment for the great unwashed masses, where hack theater actors and writers went to proverbially die.  A few years later we have movie stars and newspaper men like Ben Hecht tripping all over themselves to make their fortune in Motion Pictures.  A few playwrights could still make a decent buck and even the odd stage actor, but their numbers had dwindled.  

Next came television, which helped knock the wind out of two mediums, film and radio.  Video after all really did kill the radio star, or at least wounded it.  During the early days of TV in the 1950’s, when much of the population had television sets but the medium was still relatively new, the actors and writers were not generally well paid.  Movies was where you went to make money.  A couple of decades later and most of your TV stars and TV writers were the biggest earners.  Especially the writers.  Trust me on this one, I used to work for the WGA.  But of course there are still a decent number of people who strike it rich in film and even radio, although the numbers in radio are far from large.  

Now here we are with a new medium and a new threat in the guise of online content.  Film, TV, radio, newsprint media, and books are all under siege as far as viable business models.  But notice the trends of the past; yes the new media eventually went on to be the big earner, but the old forms of media didn’t die away.  People continued to go to the movies when television erupted, people continued to see plays after film, and people still listen to the radio.  Just the same, people will continue to read books and magazines, and hopefully even newspapers.  The media of the past won’t go extinct, they just won’t have as many people getting the big paychecks.  The New Yorker recently had an interesting article by Malcolm Gladwell in which he reviews Wired editor Chris Anderson’s new book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price.  In it he counters Anderson’s argument of free content being the way of the future by citing the difficulty of broadcast TV and YouTube in sustaining profitability.  Premium cable on the other hand is doing fine.  This seems to suggest that people will always pay for quality content, no matter the media.  The fiscal pie just has to be divvied up to a larger number of people.  

In the long run I think books, magazines, and newspapers will be okay, although the days of a lot of people making money off of them are at an end.  It just emphasizes how important it will be in this new content rich paradigm to actually be good.