Is it too early to write the obituary for printed newspapers? And when I say “write”, I mean “type on a computer and upload to a website where it can be viewed by anyone anywhere in the world”, not the archaic “print on dead trees and sell to people in a limited geographic area” way that it used to be used.

For years, techno-geeks and futurists have been declaring print dead, but to paraphrase Mark Twain, who sadly passed away decades before he ever got to use the Internet: reports of the demise of printed media may have been greatly exaggerated.  For my generation, printed newspapers are a dinosaur.  I, personally, would never risk smudging my hands with ink when I can view everything I need to know for free online.

But the older generation is still with us.  They’re alive and kicking, and they wouldn’t know what to do with themselves if they couldn’t start their morning with a cup of coffee and a newspaper.  An old fashioned, printed on a dead tree, smudgy ink newspaper.

There’s no doubt that circulations are sinking.  Newspapers are consolidating, sharing resources, outsourcing, raising prices, including more advertising and less content; whatever it takes to stay in the black.  And all their hard work will keep them afloat for a little while.  But even with advances in medical technology, the print generation won’t last forever.

Now here’s the rub.  Those old timers who are reading their morning paper are essentially subsidizing the free, online web news that you and I read.  When there are no more print subscribers, there’s no more online version of the printed paper.  The model has to change in the coming years.  The days of free Internet news sites will be coming to an end as the print generation begins to die out.

You can bet that the whole economic model of news delivery will change in the next decade.  The new format most likely will be subscriber-based and may be the model for the Internet of the next generation.  If you doubt that anyone would ever pay for access to websites that are now free, ask an old timer what it was like when TV was free.

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