Is Print Finally Dead?   
By: Stefan Swanepoel

December 2009 saw the demise of Editor & Publisher Magazine, which had been around since 1854. It lays claim to being the chief chronicler of the American newspaper industry and has presided over the business for 125 years and its closing is a clear signal that an era is rapidly drawing to a close.

 NEWSPAPERS

 Daily newspapers have been losing between 2% and 5% per year of their circulation base during the last 10 years. In 1940 there were 1,878 newspapers in the U.S. with a total circulation of 32.4 million. While the number of newspapers continued to decline — 1,611 in 1990 — their circulation increased: 62.6 million in 1990. But by 2008 the number of newspapers had dropped again by a little over 200 to 1,408 while circulation crashed down to 49.2 million.

 In the first half of 2009 alone another 105 newspapers closed their doors — 10,000 jobs were lost. Even among the leader board 23 of the top 25 newspapers suffered between 7% and 20% declines in circulation this year (the worst slump since the Depression), and advertising revenue could be down as much as a 30% for 2009 when all the data is finalized.

 One of the most critical statistics revealed that only 27% of Gen Y read a newspaper, compared with 55% of the Silent or Greatest Generation. And as the consumers change so do their preferences in other print related industries as well.

 MAGAZINES

 There are no reliable industry-wide magazine ad revenue numbers that are publicly reported (for obvious reasons), but according to a report compiled by The Magazine Publishers of America's Publishers Information Bureau, automotive ads for the first six months of 2009 were down 21.3% and technology down 17.5%.

 MAIL

 The number of pieces of first class mail has steadily decreased and according to CEO Pat Donahoe, the USPS estimates a decline of 10 billion pieces in each of the next two years, dropping from a high of 213 billion pieces in 2006 to 170 billion in 2010. They are trying to cut costs in all areas to stop the bleeding: asking Congress to authorize reducing mail delivery to five days a week (approval unlikely), offering buyouts to 30,000 workers in 2010 to save $500 million and reducing the number of collection boxes across the country, of which in the past 20 years over 200,000 have vanished, more than the 175,000 that still remain.

 SPAM

 But it’s not just first class mail that is migrating to the Internet. The junk mail business is moving in that direction as well. Today there are 100 billion pieces of junk mail sent in the U.S. every year and 44% of it is discarded, unopened. Consumers respond to only 2% of all the junk mail sent and as a result one of the biggest producers of junk mail — the banking industry — has made getting out of the mail a high priority. Meanwhile, it is estimated that 200 billion spam emails are sent every day.

 DIRECT MAIL

 Revenue from direct mail is also expected to fall from $48.7 billion in 2008 to $29.8 billion in 2013 — a decline of 39% — dropping it from the #1 ad revenue generator to #4, behind the internet, broadcast TV and newspapers. In a mid-2009 study, Anthea Stratigos, CEO of Outsell, Inc., a media research and advisory outlet, predicted that $65 billion would be siphoned away from traditional advertising channels in 2009 and be spent on companies' own websites and Internet marketing.

 THE SHIFT

 According to Pew Research, fewer than half of Americans (43%) say that if their local newspaper closed, it would hurt their community “a lot,” and even fewer (33%) say they would personally miss reading the paper. Over 68% indicated that they get their news from local television or television websites, 48% from print, 34% from radio and 31% from the Internet.

 INTERNET

 Ninety trillion emails were sent in 2009 – that’s 247 billion per day. Twitter send 27 million tweets per day, You Tube serves up one billion videos per day and Facebook enjoys 260 billion page views per month. No wonder the Internet is redefining every industry, including real estate brokerage. Real estate professionals have to redefine what they do and how they do; where they find their customer and how they stay in contact with them.

 Many progressive Realtors® have adapted and continue to every day, uncovering new ways to use the internet in their profession. However, hundreds of thousands of Realtors® still remain stuck in a paradigm that is dead. The jury is still out on how many will survive and how many will retire over the course of the next few years.

 READ ALL ABOUT IT

 The changing arena of real estate marketing is but one of the key trends detailed by Stefan Swanepoel in the 2010 edition of his Swanepoel Trends Report. The 172-page annual report (www.RETrends.com) was published in February and is a must read for all Realtors® and real estate professionals.

 

Stefan Swanepoel

A leading visionary on business trends and change in the real estate industry, Stefan Swanepoel has penned fifteen books, whitepapers, and reports, including the Amazon Bestseller Real Estate Confronts Reality (1997), the widely acclaimed annual Swanepoel TRENDS Report (2006-2009), and the new Swanepoel SOCIAL MEDIA Report (2010). To contact the author or learn more about any of his books visit www.RETrends.com.

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