Is Mort Zuckerman whistling past the graveyard or is he taking a gamble that will pay off? Today Forbes.com published an interview with Zuckerman, chair and co-founder Boston Properties, editor in chief of U.S. News and World Report, and publisher of the Daily News. Clearly he believes that newspapers - and print - are still alive and kicking!
We are transforming the product. These presses will give us 120 to 160 pages of fantastic, magazine-quality color with incredible speed and efficiency. There is only one other printing plant in the U.S. that approximates this kind of visual experience. We will leapfrog every newspaper in America. That said, I'm not trying to pretend this is going to make the Daily News hugely profitable. I'm doing this, to be candid with you, as much as anything else because I'm addicted to the print press. I've been a fanatic about journalism since I was 12 years old.
Read Mortimer Zuckerman's $200 Million Gamble for the rest of the interview.
Discussion
By Michael J on Aug 10, 2009
It seems neither Rupert Murdoch or Mort Zuckerman believes in the End of Print blablabla. I'm watching the enormous excess capacity this press might have.
I wouldn't be surprised if the Daily News puts an even larger focus on doing print collateral for local advertisers. They already have to engage them about ads. Why not cross sell print collateral with space ads and web ads.
Maybe good news for Mort. Another stress in the market place for commercial printers.
By Andrew Tribute on Aug 12, 2009
It is interesting that Mort Zuckerman references the UK market in his feature. In the UK some years ago every major newspaper publisher spent "zillions" on upgrading their newspaper printing plants to be able to print 128 pages plus of full "magazine quality" publications in full color every page. The biggest spender was Rupert Murdoch, however his plan differs from Mort Zuckerman's in that Murdoch appears also to want to become the contract newspaper printing leader in the UK, rather than just printing his own newspapers with more color. The Murdoch papers, despite their wonderful new printing facilities (the largest newspaper printing operation in the world), are showing greatly reduced pagination and dropping levels of readership. All the UK papers, despite their major increases in color printing capacity are reflecting dropping circulations and reduced pagination driven by low levels of advertising. It is all very well increasing your printing capacity so one can print 128 pages plus in full color, but unless the advertisers are prepared to back you to the hilt, the extra print capacity will lie idle.
Perhaps Mr Zuckerman should start looking at how the newspapers of the future should operate with integrating high-speed digital color newspaper and personalized editorial and advertising supplement printing alongside his new offset presses, and then also linking in the Internet to create a multiple media publishing capability. This is where the future newspapers will operate. His vision is still fixed in the past. Perhaps he should be issued with a free entry pass to Print09, or better still perhaps he should employ a consultant who understands what is really happening in the media.
Now who could that be I wonder???
By Michael J on Aug 12, 2009
There are two threads on the internet that I think might be interesting in this context.
The first is at the Niemann Journalism lab at Harvard. The title is If it's Good Enough for Cheese, What Would an Artisanal Newspaper Look Like. The author of the post is Gina Chen, with 20 year's experience as a journalist in upstate NY. http://bit.ly/AM1ve
The second is on a blog that comes out of the UK. The title of the blog is Tunnica Pre Media Blog. The post in question is The Future of Newsprint. The author of that post is Gary George, based in London.
http://bit.ly/YOF0c
I think they are useful as a way to look at the newspaper question from some different viewpoints.
Discussion
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