Print's not dead yet
Co-founder of Rolling Stone magazine and owner of Wenner Media, Jann Wenner, is far from a fan of the iPad, describing the rush of publishers to Apple's tablet as driven by"insanity and insecurity and fear," in an interview with Ad Age.
Perhaps unsurprisingly for a print media veteran, Wenner remains undeterred by the so-called death of the print media, and believe that it will be years, if not decades before the shift from print to digital publishing happens. Said Wenner: "People's habits will shift, they'll make improvements in the delivery system, the screen will change, it will get lighter, whatever, and new people growing up will find that as a habit. But you're talking about a generation at least, maybe two generations, before the shift is decisive."
In Wenner's opinion, the numbers of sales on the iPad don't justify the compromises required to put his publications on it. "I'm not in any rush to break what I consider fundamental principles of what the magazine industry has to have and make a deal with Apple that will mortgage me into the future on the basis of getting 2,000 copies sold a month." To assume that Apple is going to mount an overnight takeover of the publishing industry, is implausible, Wenner believes, cautioning that: "to rush to throw away your magazine business and move it on the iPad is just sheer insanity and insecurity and fear."
Wenner thinks that the magazine publishing industry should take a lesson from the music industry, which all but ceded digital sales to Apple, which for a long time all but controlled the business of digital music distribution. Where the music industry was slow to develop its own solutions for digital distribution in a way that left the publishers - as opposed to a third part - in control, says Wenner, magazine publishers: "the lesson for magazine publishing business is not to rush like the music business should have done, because it's a different product. Music is really easily reducible to digital. There's a different beat to it. "
Although it's unsurprising to hear a magazine publisher arguing that print media is far from dead, Wenner does raise some interesting points. Sales in the millions for print vastly overshadow the few thousand copies of many magazines iPad editions - and it is well known that print advertising is less lucrative, making those digital sales less valuable as well. There's no doubt that at some point a middle ground will be truck between the views of the print stalwarts, and those of the new wave of digital publishers, but where it will lie remains an outcome we look forward to seeing.
