The Web is slowly and quietly killing the weeklies

The will be difficult for newspaper publishers to ignore. The industry’s trade magazine, Editor & Publisher is moving from weekly to monthly publication, moving its news to the Web and using print for features, analysis, and commentary.

Steve Outing (an E&P columnist) notes that this is part of a long-term trend in magazine publishing. The Net killed weeklies years ago, and we’re just waiting for the bodies to drop. All the computer weeklies have been struggling to find a reason to exist for years.

How much longer can newspapers ignore the impact of the Web on their own publications? I’m still waiting for the first big daily to drop stock price listings.

2 thoughts on “The Web is slowly and quietly killing the weeklies

  1. The web has been “eating away” at newspapers and other “traditional” news sources for years.
    I interviewed Steve Outing in July of this years, and when asked, “Will the internet put newspapers out of business, or are most newspapers making the cross over to online newspapers effectively?”
    Steve replied,
    “The Internet will transform the newspaper industry into a news industry that’s not so platform specific. Print won’t go away in my lifetime, but it will find that digital/online news is its equal. I have no doubt that my daughters (ages 5 and 11) will get more of their news from the Internet (and television) than from print publications when they become adults. The Internet for them won’t be just the desktop PCs they currently use, but portable wireless-broadband devices. Newspaper companies better understand that and deliver their content to where my daughters live online — or they will go out of business in the decades to come.”
    Many more opinions on old vs new media @ Media Man Australia. PS: We have a blog also, but our website blows it away.

  2. Did the Web kill E&P’s Weekly Edition?
    Because in January Editor & Publisher magazine will switch from weekly to monthly print publication and announced that it also would “significantly enhance” its Web site operation, it perhaps only natural for Web-based journalists to believe that the W…

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