There is no question that the printing industry, the second largest manufacturing industry in the United States and the third largest industry overall, is under pressure. In the “good old days” of printing, our primary competition came from each other. While printers certainly continue to compete with each other, other printers are not the real competition today—the availability of alternative business communications media and a lack of knowledge on the part of buyers as to how print can be most effectively used in a multichannel media mix is the real competition.

The objective of The Print Council is to raise the awareness of print, which is “nearly invisible, taken for granted, and with a dire lack of information on its value among decision makers.”

One thing is certain in this time of uncertainty for our industry: alternative media won’t be going away. If you read Dr. Joe Webb’s column every Friday on WhatTheyThink and listen to his quarterly WhatTheyThink economic outlook webinars, you will certainly have seen which way the trend lines are going—and it isn’t up. According to PIA data, the number of printing establishments started declining at the rate of about 1,000 per year in 1995—not surprisingly, the year that use of the Internet began to gain broad-based support. And between 2003 and 2004, that number jumped to 1,538—a 50% increase.