Guccione: Print Downturn Traces Back to Pre-Internet Era

Mac Slocum
September 18, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

Bob Guccione Jr. says the decline in print readership started long before the Internet arrived. From The Huffington Post:

I know the conventional wisdom: that readership is being lost to the speed and efficiency of the Web. But I think the decline of traditional publishing, especially magazines, is more deeply rooted in an arrogance and laziness that goes back 30-plus years. It was once so easy to make money from publishing -- paper, printing and distribution were so cheap and newsstand sales and subscriptions so profitable that advertising revenue was gravy. Then it got more difficult, imperceptibly at first, and gradually more complicated. But, for some reason, whatever other market realities they acknowledged, publishers refused to accept that the perfect magic formula had spoiled.

(Via mediabistro.com's Morning News Feed)

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