David Murray, a consummate writer and the editor of CW’s sister publication/website, Vital Speeches of the Day, waxes nostalgic on his personal blog about the glory days of print.
He misses those days not just because they were, in many ways, more fun (the tactile nature of shepherding a publication to press, the thrill of committing something to print) but also because he believes we editors have lost some of our influence in our “society” — whether that mean society as a whole or the micro-society within an industry or organization.
I find his observations particularly interesting in light of the 2009 ContentWise Budget Survey. It found that spending on print publications in the custom publishing/content marketing industry rose 32 percent over 2008 (which was a dismal year in terms of spending), but less than a half percent over 2007. In addition, most companies anticipate that their spending on print will stay the same or decrease in the year ahead.
Of course, organizations need to use the media that are most effective at communicating their messages, and perhaps print is no longer among the most effective. (I believe there’s still a role for print and will address that topic in a future post.) As David points out, it’s nice to know that many of the skills we veterans of print learned in days gone by still translate well to online media.
But there’s still something special about print.
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