This is 💯 true. The costs and faltering of distribution will kill print long before the hard core of print readers are ready for it - ThreadSky

emilybell.bsky.social • 101 days ago

This is 💯 true. The costs and faltering of distribution will kill print long before the hard core of print readers are ready for it

Reposted from Jim Waterson

The thing that’s going to kill British print newspapers and magazines and drag down lots of news outlets is not losing readers due to death/boredom (that’s a nice predictable downward graph) but the collapse of the distribution network. Already happening! Can’t buy a paper at York station right now.

Comments

damon.kiesow.net•101 days ago

Since no one owns their own press anymore, they will also run out of commercial printing options before print itself becomes cost prohibative.

emilybell.bsky.social•101 days ago

Indeed - though I see that in some ways as one in the same

damon.kiesow.net•101 days ago

Definitely. Just some variable we control, and that one we have given away.

valheru.bsky.social•101 days ago

Tbf considering the increasingly extremist right wing shadowy oligarchs who owns UK print media, letting them go under can't actually do any harm.

timmorton2.bsky.social•101 days ago

At the moment it’s the two liberal titles that are at risk of closure.

zoonie.bsky.social•101 days ago

Bloke in the comments raises a brilliant point about smoking cessation and I think more to the point, the "No Smoking" rules around stations and trains. People would go in to a station shop to buy a packet of fags, and also buy a paper. There's some sociological research to be done there.

msoares.bsky.social•101 days ago

Phil Meyer was right, in the note he put on the second edition of "The Vanish Newspaper": linearly the last copy would be in 2043, but red ink would likely end things before.

msoares.bsky.social•101 days ago

In the last couple of months, I've seen the closing of quite a few magazines published by Future PLC - guitar, movies. Is that related?

emilybell.bsky.social•101 days ago

Quite possibly

estanis.bsky.social•101 days ago

Sad...

shanebrownie.bsky.social•101 days ago

Yes but how do you sustain a wide physical network when economies of scale collapse?! Solutions please…

pilhofer.bsky.social•101 days ago

Same in the US. But. Part of the reason distribution is so challenging is the rapidly declining numbers of hard core readers. So symptom or disease?

emilybell.bsky.social•101 days ago

In the UK with different distribution economics there are titles that have continued happily with 70k print editions, and could make the numbers work but the supply chain has other problems - eg decline of distributed retail

pilhofer.bsky.social•101 days ago

Yep, I’m aware of the differences. Still maintain if newspapers had a large and growing core readership, the situation would be (was) very different.

jim.londoncentric.media•101 days ago

Strangely my pitches on this topic never quite got… to print.

alanburkittgray.bsky.social•101 days ago

I was staying in Manchester city centre one Sunday last year and struggled to find somewhere to buy a paper. Similarly in Canterbury earlier this year.

emilybell.bsky.social•101 days ago

Resonates with an early reporting obsession of mine when I was first at Obs 30+ years ago into newsprint prices. Ended up knowing way too much about Russian forests/rail infrastructure - only time I ever got personal note from the CEO commending my work 😂

jamesrball.com•101 days ago

I rode on the boat that brings a load of Europe’s paper stock from Finland (which is where we get it from now) the other month. It’s for a piece, but the fact it was carrying the paper was entirely happy chance.

davidchild.bsky.social•101 days ago

One thing I don’t get is why more magazines don’t sell single edition digital copies. Long flights / journeys I’d happily flick through an iPad / phone copy of a mag without wanting a monthly sub. And per edition it must cost less than printing and distributing a single copy.

emilybell.bsky.social•101 days ago

Amazing! I am very jealous of shoe leather paper reporting + also anyone who goes to Finland, my favourite recently-visited country. In Russia they cut the forests next to the paper mills first, as they cut further and further out, transport costs soared as did paper prices ….

emmavj.bsky.social•101 days ago

Much better returns on vaping

kgsbca.bsky.social•101 days ago

I think there is enough demand for printed news to justify making a special low cost(~$100) printer capable of printing on newsprint paper, & offering a subscription that downloaded the stories (the reader is interested in) to it at whatever time in the AM the reader wants a newspaper.

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