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Heric calls on printers to learn the skills of the new generation. 

A few months ago I authored a contribution that referred to the way university students got their news. I asked several college-age students where they got their news. The end-result of that probe was that an alarmingly small number of younger print consumers are not interested in periodical or timely information in print. They answered almost as one that they got their timely information from an online source, blog, or text message than they did from a periodical or newspaper. In the column, I went on to illustrate that this is almost directly in correlation with the age-group, and wired demographic of that modern print consumer, whom might best be referred to as an information consumer rather than a print consumer. During this very informal survey I undertook, I thought to myself…  “This cannot be just me seeing this… there must be somewhere out there that illustrates this trend with hard numbers.”

Hard numbers

To that end, I did a little homework into domestic US print statistics and found some interesting and somewhat scary hard numbers related to the printing of timely, news and periodical information that back up my hunch. According to an article in the New York Times in March 2007, (ironically, one of the publications mentioned in the report,) advert revenues from USA Today fell 14 per cent from the February prior, and the venerable New York Times lost
six per cent of ad insert revenues in that same year timeframe. This trend illustrates the agency research that a smaller number of eyeballs (in the terminology of the advertiser) read newspapers and magazines, and are instead reading www sites, blogs, e-mail, and Google. Once again, the media has changed from the most efficient and timely means with which to distribute that message historically (print) to an evolution of that communication stream...  the internet connected device. We whom are in the business of print for a living should take heed for two reasons: the viability of our craft for its role, and the fascination of watching a sea-change happen before our eyes.

This is not to say that the number of advertisements ad fell in the same timeframe… to the contrary, they grew by a significant number. The media in which those ads are placed however is one that is of pretty significant observation to those of us in print. Increasingly, ad agencies are staffing up on new hires that are skilled with www graphics, banner advertisements, flash animations, variable data marketing, and other computer/internet based advertising methods. We are in the process of watching the transition from our bellwether print ad, to the modern banner ad.

These facts brought the question to me “why are large press manufacturers selling so many web-presses and high-volume printing systems…  and to whom?”

Who’s buying?

Last month, while in Dresden Germany for the CIP4 interop, we had the evening event hosted by KBA (Koenig & Bauer) beginning with a tour of their facility (If you have never seen the manufacturing process of printing presses, you might not understand the incredible infrastructure required to build a press). We had the amazing opportunity to see their massive facility on a tour, and I was impressed at the delivery manifests for the presses being manufactured on the floor. These presses were being delivered to many places around the globe, but most notably, the clients were in China, India, Russia, and other places remote. I thought to myself, particularly in reference to presses being sold to China and India, “Obviously… these countries have hundreds of millions of people who are potential print consumers, and they have a smaller percentage of internet connected readers per capita.” I also have observed a large number of old obsolete film-recorders and imagesetters being sold from my clients to prepress/print facilities in South America, and Africa. In these countries and continents, the internet news and periodical revolution has yet to blossom, and they are still in the need of the tried and true methods of distributing information to the masses… print.

I am not here to tout the death of print, or even to scare my readership into thinking that the sky of our world is falling. I am here however as an observer of trends in the industry I grew up in, and have made my living for the past 20 years, and I find this type of observation fascinating. It is a rare opportunity to observe a change in an industry and infrastructure that has remained very stable for literally generations. There is a positive message to this observation.

As I have alluded to in the past, it is not too late for us as an industry to change and adapt to meet the changing needs of print consumers and print buyers. We in print are graphic professionals. We are trained, experienced and skilled in the means and methods required to produce high-quality graphic materials, and that includes computer files. We however as an industry have relegated the creation of digital files for internet and other cyber media to outside facilities and artists. I find that many of my magazine clients have had to hire website designers that use and implement these files because the printer did not provide that type of print as a service. (I term it print, but the end result is the same… a graphic image prepared and distributed to a readership.) The reason these periodical publishers hired these people is because their print service provider did not proactively offer them this service.

Skilled people

I literally worked with a facility that hired a guy named Spike with a nose-ring, ear-hoops, and enough tattoos to make a circus performer envious as their banner ad guy. Spike had no traditional print experience, but he still managed to get a plum job at this facility by being a graphic professional… with www graphics. There is no reason why Spike could not have been one of us, from the industry we grew up in.  The management of this periodical saw the need for an employee focused upon making banner advertisements and flash animations as integral to their business as their print service provider. The magazines and newspapers realise the value of these skills, and are actively looking for skilled people in these roles.

I still contend that we are the best suited vendors for these new services, and we owe it to ourselves as an industry to grow the scope of the services we provide to meet the evolving needs of our clients. Shame on us if we lose an important part o the print production process because of the lack of foresight and willingness to change to provide those growing needs for graphic services that we have provided for them in the past. I am convinced that we are indeed the best person for the job, once we learn the new tools.