What is the future of printed garden media? It's a question I have constantly asked on this blog over four years now and, to date, the subject has never really got the airtime it deserves.
I have to declare an interest; I have a website: it would appear - to a casual visitor or a magazine publisher - that I want to see the back of print at the earliest opportunity.
This is not the case: don't shoot the messenger: the truth will always out and now, I feel, is the right time to invite all interested parties into a debate.
The subject was raised once again this morning when I posted on Twitter that an MD of a company told me yesterday that sales of his hedge cutting platforms, through printed media vehicles, had fallen from 70% to 2% over the last two years.
Garden writer and TV landscaper, Matthew Wilson (LandscapeMan) picked up on my Tweet, responded by saying: '@LandscapeJuice - Think the recession is big part of that too LJ, dangerous to take stats out of context and a lot of jobs at stake in print.'
It is fact that pure Internet economics have contributed (quickly) to print's demise. Matthew feels that the recession has been media's problem, but, I feel, it would be easy to use the credit crunch as a scapegoat: human behaviour, craving for instant information and news, as well as the speed at which we live our lives, has changed the newspaper and magazine market forever.
Yes, there will always be a place for paper: older generations will insist on reading paper, but the numbers will be so low that print and distribution cannot be sustained financially and the young of today will not relate to newspapers the way we did growing up.
I think that the biggest failing of printed media publications has been the late reaction to the digital media curve. Editors and owners pooh-poohed the notion that their empires could crumble, with such arrogance that most internet publishers cared not about their demise.
I feel it is high time print saw digital, not as a threat but a partnership opportunity. The silo mentality is still so strong that I fear change will never happen within some organisations.
I know that the internet will start to charge for its content because people need to earn a living. As yet, there is not a single model that works.
Blogs are becoming exhausted with too much regurgitated content rather than getting out and investigating stories or collating useful information.
The consumer is ready to buy but I am not too sure that there are enough aggregators ready to sell.
Readers - what do you feel....are you too nostalgic to consider the business and economics of running print?
Publishers - has printed media got legs...is the internet debate a flawed one?
Bloggers - is mainstream blogging dying...can it be unique anymore?
This post is deliberately not exhaustive. Please join in...this is not my debate, it's everyone's.
Image:Thanks go to Lee Beel
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