The increasing use of the Internet in the publishing world has brought a revolution in the printing industry. Remote distribution of data and variable data printing has been made possible by the use of Internet. The ability of the Internet to distribute large quantities of data to diverse locations has bridged the gaps in the printing industry.
How are print media companies revising their formats? According to News Corp. chief digital officer, Jon Miller, research indicates that “on the axis of money and time spent, print seems to be losing, the web seems to be winning, and television is in a happy place in-between.” As a result, he says, print is the medium that needs to adapt the most. News Corp. recently made a deal with Microsoft to deliver the Wall Street Journal’s WSJvideo programming to the XBox video game console. Now viewers can watch WSJ’s programming on their TV sets.
What about books? Clive Thompson writes on wired.com/magazine that he believes that mass publishers doing “big” books will continue to shift to the Kindle and its peers, while smaller outlets will use print-on-demand with printers such as the Espresso Machine for formats that favor a physical presence such as mementos, visually lush books, and custom-designed, limited-edition copies of novels. His conclusion is that this trend will accelerate in 15 or 20 years when the average home printer will be able to spit out paperbacks. Will this be good for readers? Yes and no. As with blogs, most DIY books will be dreadful and treasured only by their authors. But the system encourages new voices doing things we can’t predict, which is generally good.
The dilemma hits all the way to the classroom. While some teachers believe that television and film media are invasive and discourage students from reading, others are drawn to the possibilities of pairing film and print texts. Nathan Phillips, who teaches English to 10th, 11th, and 12th graders at a suburban high school in Utah, believes that students are much more willing readers of film than they are of written texts. And because fictional films offer many similarities to fictional print texts—narrative, characters, metaphors, symbolism, themes, setting, and point of view for example—he hopes that viewing might motivate students to learn these important concepts. He believes that a study of adaptations of print to film can even make students more interested in reading.
Marketing groups still consider print as a vital part of the media mix. They believe that print can be a critical ingredient in marketing strategy. Brochures, product catalogs, direct mail, product packaging and trade journal advertising can play a vital role in communicating a company’s brand, products and services to new and existing customers.
Print Electronics may be the wave of the future. Companies like Printechnologics in Germany and Soligie right here in Minnesota are using miniaturized electronic engineering to print lightweight, flexible products using sheetfed, web, and screen print formats. The possibilities are mind-boggling.
So what do you think? Where is print going? Will it go the way of the horse-drawn carriage, will it be an ongoing vital component of our lives, or will it be a happy medium?