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Where have all the customers gone?

By Stefan Stern · November 12, 2010
Management ·

A scene to break an old journalist’s heart: I was speaking to a room full of media and communications students earlier this week - must have been about 60-70 people there.

I asked how many of them bought a newspaper every day. Three hands went up. That’s right – I said media and communications students.

For most people under the age of 30, the newspaper is basically finished. They simply don’t see the point of them. Why wait for yesterday’s news to be handed over in a pile of paper which can’t even be updated? They carry devices on which they can receive as much news as they want.

Some newspapers – my old employer the Financial Times is an obvious example – do have a future as high-end, specialist products available at quite a high price. (The FT may or may not continue to be printed on paper, but that is a second order consideration. It looks great on an iPad.) In London, the Evening Standard has a (paper-based) future. It is distributed free, and with a circulation of 730,000 is now arguably the best-read quality newspaper in the UK. And they are literally giving it away.

But every other newspaper (the generalist ones I mean) faces a hard choice: to go on distributing a paper-based product at great expense to an ever-diminishing group of people. Or to give up on newsprint and go electronic-only, with or without a paywall. Find your customers, and then see if you can charge them enough for what you are offering.

So what are we going to read on trains/subways/planes? Screens, probably, of one kind or another. Or books. Real ones, printed on paper.

About the author

Stefan Stern has been writing about business and management for the past two decades, most recently for the FT, where he wrote a weekly column between 2006 and 2010. He joined Edelman in August 2010 ...show more
  • http://twitter.com/GoooRooo Sarah Stimson

    I was one of those hands that shot up, but at 36 I was probably the oldest person in the room. I still like a physical newpaper – but I read online too and most of the interns I teach would rather get their news online or on their mobile.

    I’m not sure physical books will be reading material for the train much longer either – judging by the Kindles and Sony Readers I see on my commute.

    I’m old fashioned – I like to be able to flick through, make notes, tear pages out (of newspapers, not books), but I suspect that expensive print distribution will dwindle and electronic news will fill that gap. I can’t imagine we will be completely paper free in the next 20 years though – my mother and others of her generation have never used a computer and don’t intend to start now so will always read a daily paper.

  • http://scaryworldofbusiness.blogspot.com/ Carli

    It was really interesting the fact that not many of the students who attended put their hands up (I didn’t either…) I do believe that there are so many choices available to us now that the printed paper isn’t one of our highest choices. I personally keep up with the news from 10 Yetis as I have signed up to their headline emails. A service that sends you the headlines from all the major papers. It comes through straight to my phone via email and I don’t have to carry around a paper all day and if I want to find out more I search online.I think the important point to make is no matter what the form the content still has to be good :-)

    Thank you for speaking at the Impress event last week, was interesting to hear your thoughts.

  • http://www.brightone.org.uk Ben Matthews

    Hi Stefan,

    Thanks again for coming along to speak at Impress London – was a really interesting discussion around the future of journalism, which I felt was as eye opening for the panellists as it was for the media and comms students you mention.

    The sheer and rising cost of print seems to be a big issue for publishers, especially as news content is available online in a far cheaper and quicker format that newspapers will never be able to match.

    What seems to matter is the exclusivity of valuable content – something that can’t be matched online in the same way as it does with print. More and more publishers will be forced to adopt a platform “neutral” approach, putting resources into platforms where their reader communities are.

    Perhaps the reason “under 30s” (as a general demographic for the purposes of this discussion) aren’t reading print daily is that they haven’t developed the reading habits that older generations have got used to – with regular favourite columnists, features, etc.

    When you can make your media consumption completely personalised to you (through RSS, blogs, etc) and this is often cheap if not free, why would you want to stick to buying a regular paper which might only contain a small percentage of content of interest to you?

  • http://brightone.org.uk/your-impressions-of-impress-london/ Your Impressions of Impress London | Bright One

    [...] Stefan Stern: Where have all the customers gone? [...]

  • http://twitter.com/dribblermag Dribbler Magazine

    hey Stefan you absolutely sure the Evening Standard is a quality paper???

  • http://twitter.com/aynurpala Aynur Pala

    Hi Stefan,

    I have been following you on nytimes.com and twitter for a long time. I also think newspaper is finished. Also books, magazine…

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