I was gratified to see three other people reading daily newspapers – yes printed newspapers – on the “L” this morning. Someone else besides me clearly does not depend on a mobile phone to catch up on world events. A little more than a quarter of American adults now read news on their cell phones, according to a Pew Research Center report released March 1.
The survey shows that people are changing how they get information. At the same time, however, five major magazine publishers are uniting to promote the power of print in a dramatic way. Surprisingly, they’re digging in their heels and pitching in on a multimillion-dollar national ad campaign that will make a case that print trumps the Internet. They maintain that the Web’s content is fleeting and is too much of a moving target.
This sea change is confusing because in the not-so-distant past, the magazine industry invested significant time and effort into trying to prove it could hold its own against digital publishers. They touted e-zines and other formats as being the wave of the future. Whether magazine publishers are abandoning these efforts in favor of trying to attract and retain niche audiences is unclear. What is clear, however, is that the Internet is expected to continue to drain more ad dollars from traditional media.
I don’t know how people can stand to read anything but the weather forecast and maybe the scores from last night’s games on a tiny cell phone screen, but more power to them. How do you get your news? Do you skim or read entire articles on your phone?
