Hamlet’s Blackberry: Why Paper Is Eternal
(533k, Acrobat (.pdf) format)
Why paper is eternal
Can newspapers survive the digital age? According to this Harvard University discussion paper, the medium's future is bright.
Declines in sales and reading of newspapers in the US have led to debate about the future of the newspaper medium.
In Australia, by contrast, the medium is in a healthy state. Sales and readership have remained stable over the last ten years, despite the prevalence of digital media and multiple contact points beyond the printed newspaper. Indeed, World Press Trends, published by the World Association of Newspapers, found that North America was the only continent to have suffered a year-on-year decline in sales of paid-for newspapers from 2005 to 2006.
This Harvard University discussion paper challenges the conventional wisdom in the US to show why the nature of paper as a medium for reading gives it distinct advantages that other media simply cannot match. As a result, we will never give newspapers up as a medium. So perhaps the pertinent question may be not whether this medium will survive, but whether new media will ever escape paper’s enormous shadow.
So what does this mean for advertising? It means that reading from paper, including newspapers, provides a depth of engagement and receptiveness to information that other media cannot emulate now or in the foreseeable future. This view, of newspapers being the most absorbing medium of all, is backed up in our landmark study, Newspapers Today.
Download the full discussion paper below.
