There is nothing more defeatist than the phrase “print is not dead.” Worse than that, we are talking to ourselves rather than our desired audience of communications creators and service buyers. Fewer and fewer of those buyers know a time, 15 years ago, when print was thriving because it was one of a few choices, where now it is one choice among many alternatives.

“Print is not dead” is the Monty Python “dead parrot” sketch playing out in real life. “It's not dead, it's pining for the fjords” is our pining for a pre-Internet industry, and still selling and managing in those ways. “Beautiful plumage, isn't it” might as well be a misplaced emphasis on static image quality in a real-time information-drenching age. Print and its advocates who even inadvertently utter that phrase, “print is not dead,” are just like the man behind the counter in the sketch.

I am guilty, too... even this reference to Monty Python is more than three decades old, my own sense of repurposing, revealing my age and the context of a far different time. Monty Python is itself dead, except in retrospectives and nostalgia pieces. Comedians are products of their time, and just as I find that Saturday Night Live no longer seems as funny as it once was, I know that millions are rolling in the aisles. Many of them are not even watching the show, but viewing portions online, with online often drawing a greater viewership than the broadcast. I understand the delivery system, but I don't grasp the content. I have not heard anyone running around saying that “TV is not dead.” Instead, they're supplying content in almost every format available. It is rare that anything is broadcast once anymore. With online sites, DVD sets, and numerous cable channels, it is possible to find almost everything being rebroadcast, given enough time.