What’s Next for the All-Digital World?

So Ziff Davis Media, one of the leading integrated technology media companies in the country, just announced that PCMag, its flagship brand, will go all-digital. The final print version will be the January 2009 issue. For the past seven years, PCMag has leveraged its long-standing position with technology readers and advertisers to build one of the leading digital media properties in the technology category. During this period, its digital assets registered annual audience and revenue growth of 33% and 42% respectively. Today, the PCMag Digital Network, with over seven million unique monthly visitors, reaches in excess of 10 times the circulation of the print publication.

This move probably makes sense – after all, it’s PCMag.  But it probably has print journalists everywhere quaking in their boots.  It’s no surprise that the digital medium has taken over a large portion of the media landscape in the last couple of years as more people are going online for their news (just ask the thousands of journalists who have been asked to write blogs in addition to their reporting responsibilities), but like books, print newspapers and magazines have for the most part still been available.  Now it seems that their very existence is threatened.

I’m curious about other types of jobs that might be in jeopardy as the 21st century plows on.  I think that Blockbuster employees will have to find other work eventually, as renting DVDs will surely be a thing of the past in five years, and at what point will all manufacturing workers be replaced by automated machines?  Customer service jobs are being held by robo-reps, many skilled accountants are already being replaced by even smarter software programs that don’t make mistakes, and speaking of software, some IT developers are at risk of out-developing themselves. 

You would probably do well do think hard about where your industry is going, and develop a plan for staying competitive in the years to come.

Comments

[Dan Schawbel]

Print is in serious trouble, which is a great sign that blogging is important now and in the future. I was going to take my magazine print, but decided against it because of the decline we've seen.

Many newspapers, like the NY Times, have been firing people the past few weeks, which means less content and fewer advertisers. The shift is to the internet.

[Scot Herrick]

Magazines probably have an easier time trying to go all digital than, say newspapers. The print business is just getting killed with thousands of layoffs.

Yet, the managers of the print media have had little success building a business model that works on-line. Until they do, life will get harder and harder.

All jobs change with technology. One has to constantly watch your industry to see the trends. It's not a one-time analysis, but something that needs to be done at least annually.

The digital food chain keeps moving up. You need to as well.

[Erika with Qvisory]

This is very important to think about. It's always better to be aware of new trends and processes than it is to be blind-sided by them!

[Alexandra Levit]

Erika - I hate being blind-sided about anything. Maybe that's why I'm a compulsive blog reader.

Scot - I wonder if some of them just haven't tried. It seems that until now, many print pubs have buried their heads in the sand, saying that the whole online thing was just a fad that would pass.

Dan - thanks for visiting! Even though I'm aware of these trends, the news about the Times shook me up a bit. After all, it's the Times.

[Ben]

I absolutely agree with you about print magazines. Between computers, eReaders, and Smart phones the value of printing most magazines continue to decline until it is no longer cost effective. In fact we should see a tipping point where enough magazines will go digital that the rest will quickly follow. Then the newspapers will switch right after them. Also, I agree that the same will happen to the DVD industry and the music industry. The change there has already started with Netflix and iTunes. The one point I disagree with is manufacturing. While automation will continue to reduce the number of manufacturing jobs, the continuous drop in the price of manufactured good I think will cause people to buy more which will in turn make more manufacturing jobs. Itn addition to that, it sounds crazy but the complexity required to replace people with robots is just to high in many manufacturing environments. Designs change to quickly and the few people with the expertise to keep the robots up to speed are expensive so that will slow things down.

Finally, this is my prediction, magazines, newspapers, books, music, movies, and most importantly, TV Shows are going to be distributed almost 100% in digital format within the next 5 to 10 years. I would even go as far as to say that in 10 years network & cable TV as we know it will not exist and TV will be an on demand thing. Frankly, the only thing that will slow this is a certain percentage of the older generations not accepting the changes. In the end though they may be forced to change as the become the minority of the population and the technology is made easier to use.

[Alexandra Levit]

Ben, you bring up a good point about the older generations. I wonder if the boomers are the only ones holding on to the traditional ways of consuming media. If that's the case, because they are such a huge demographic and still have a lot of influence, it may be a while before we see a complete shift.