Views of five industry experts on the future of publishing:
Lorraine Candy, former editor-in-chief of Elle UK, incoming Sunday Times luxury content editor
Lorraine Candy expresses her view that the death of the print platform is nothing but a myth. Not only but this but she says there 'there is enough evidence to prove [...] it will continue to be in many forms and be available in many places.' She also goes into how the world we live in now is primarily driven by both consumers and by companies that aggregate content which are essentially social networks.
Simon Fox, CEO, Trinity Mirror
Simon Fox makes clear his hope that print will have still have a part to play in the next 2 decades. However in assessing the likelihood that a 'generation that has not grown up with papers' will migrate to print, makes it clear that there's no viable reason to think it would happen. He brings up that the imperative decisions that current publishers have to make is the amount of their content they're going to make available on social media and how it can still be monetised. With this he brushes over the issue that adblocking poses which makes it so that digital advertising can't be relied on as a sole stream for revenue. Things like e-commerce which publishers like The Sun have adopted must also be opted for.
Bob Franklin, professor of journalism studies, Cardiff University
Bob Franklin starts off by talking about how search engines with their algorithms suggesting content to users based on previous searches don't challenge the integrity but rather just reinforce their own views. After having a brief digression to the topic of drone journalism, Franklin mentions how the current issue is that once people read news content online, they stop buying the print product. This is a 'real uphill battle' when: 'you've got to get 100 online readers to match the [ad] revenue income from one print reader.'
Lucie Greene, worldwide director of The Innovation Group, J Walter Thompson, which recently published their own 'pop-up' magazine, Glass
Lucie Greene begins going into how with publishing, the mass market printbrands are now shrinking to reallocate focus onto e-media and also how new entrants to the market are launching online first as oppose to going into print. Audio is also something that is becoming increasingly used to get new information across with things like branded podcasts and also products like Amazon Echo contributing to this. At the same time though, what's being seen is publishers for design and women's titles opting for a luxury experience with things like high quality paper and also a luxury price point. Things like this may become more common over time since what seems to be the case now is that there is a focus 'on scale rather than price point.'
Roy Greenslade, Guardian columnist and professor of journalism, City, University of London
Roy Greenslade brings up that social media companies like Facebook and Twitter need to realise that they actually do need publishers. Bringing up how the agenda for the Brexit debate was set by mainstream newspapers, Greenslade wonders how national conversation will occur in the future as print 'will not be in a position to do that.' He doesn't view social networks as being capable of this with the eco-bubble that they are known to have, particularly Facebook in particular, just feeding you information that reinforces your own ideologies.
What the future of publishing looks like is very unclear as of now. While most share the view that print will be dead, there also a few that actually think it'll continue to live on albeit in different forms. Challenges that there will be come in the form of things like adblocking and also the monetising of online content, with the latter being a very iffy topic in particular. With this said there also worries as to how these social networks will evolve into becoming 'forum(s) for national conversation' as papers die when at the moment they only seem to be good in showing us things that reflect us. It's clear here that publishing's future is unbeknown to anyone as of now, digital expert or not.
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