Ask a Panicked Print Media Executive

Dear Panicked Print Media Executive,
My wife and I adopted a shelter puppy from the local kennel but we're having trouble with the paper training. Do you have any advice?
--Desperate in Dallas

Dear Desperate:
After she got nailed in the last round of layoffs, Nell said I should consider farming, but what am I going to do--grow rows of sentences? Here's my advice; with print advertising as dry as the Texas panhandle you're likely to experience more luck with your little Twitter if you try to get him to crap on a website, or a text-enabled cell phone, or a Kindle. With paper now obsolete, you can paper train with my MFA degree since no one seems to care about that anymore--or my undergrad paper on Proust, since no one reads novels anymore.

Dear Panicked Print Media Executive,
I'm sure you get this question a lot, but I was at the supermarket check-out line for 12 items or less, and the woman in front of me had fifteen items. Do you think I was wrong to assault her?
--Paroled in Pensacola

Dear Paroled,
You know, I used to eat at Michaels, front of the room, with the likes of Joan Didion and David Brooks. Now I'm packing peanut butter and banana sandwiches, and shudder every time the phone rings. What happened, you ask? I'll tell you what happened, even if you didn't ask: digitization. Look it up. It will rock you to your very foundation, and put your petty, trivial concerns in perspective. And while you're perusing your online dictionary, try these terms; "disruptive technology", "disintermediation", and the one nearest though not dearest to me: "dinosaur". You might even be able to explain to me "cost-cutting efficiencies to help sustain market leverage", as my company put it.

Dear Panicked Print Media Executive,
Why do airlines make it so hard to use frequent flyer miles for flights you'd actually want to take? What's up with that?
--Grounded in Gainesville

Dear Grounded,
Your troubles are over! Apparently there's no need to travel anymore. Did you know that if Facebook (population: 300 million) were a country it would be the fifth largest in the world? Did you know that? If you did, you're probably one of those technogeeks responsible for the downfall of everything we hold dear in the Western World, like predictable business models, stable employment, and print advertising. Yes, print advertising--ever heard of it? Ask your so-called Facebook "friends' about print advertising--throw it against your wall and see what kind of ignorant crap gets spewed back in response.

Dear Panicked Print Media Executive,
My outplacement counselor says I should market myself as a brand. Do you think my brand would be enhanced if I came with lemon scent? I tried discount coupons but my husband says the coupons make my butt look fat. Thoughts?
--Branded in Buffalo

Dear Branded,
Outplacement, huh? With unemployment over 10 percent in New York there are a lot of good people out of work these days--and then there are people like you, blithely ignorant of the tectonic shifts happening right here, right now. Newspapers are folding faster than you can blink--the New York Times lost $200 million last year. Magazines will be obsolete in three years. The music industry is gasping its last breathes. The book publishing business model is unsustainable, and in the meantime $14 millions of eBooks were sold last June, more than twice as many as the previous June. Your children will be reading Great Tweets of the 21st Century in freshman English. Look up and you'll see: The sky is falling, Lady, the sky is falling; no lemon-scented umbrella will save you, since the sky, she is a-falling. Get with the program: try farming.

Dear Panicked Print Media Executive,
I'm a publisher of content in a multi-channel environment that strives to be platform agnostic, and our metrics vary from click-throughs to pay-to-play. We're striving to benchmark social media best practices, and so I'm curious to hear your perspective on the value exchange between consumer and brand.
--Techie in Tallahassee

Very funny, son. Tell your mother I'll be late for dinner--although then again the day is young, I may be home early. Carrying boxes. Filled with paper.

 

 

Follow Steve Ross on Twitter: www.twitter.com/slross58

Comments

[Billie]

I see people reading novels all the time on the nyc subway

[melponeme k]

What you are in the middle of Print Executive was a hostile takeover of an industry.

The tech media used FREE as the sure way to undercut the existing structure. They could only do this with the help of Free Trade Policies that made this wacky way of business possible.

I hope they enjoy their 2 seconds of success.

Due to all the tech know-how they outsourced to Asia, they won't have a hold on the market for long.

[iblogleft]

Had you read the effect of the technological advancements in the steam locomotive on society, or listened to the countless "Techno geeks" that consulted the print industry years before this self inflicted downturn on traditional media, you would probably own the medium on which this story was made available, the internet bandwidth backbone.

Its hard to listen to the weeping on an industry that so ignored the reality of the future, due in part too an overwhelming feeling of superiority to anything not print.

I was one of those consultants quickly "bought out" when I consulted one of the largest newspaper organizations in the world when I spoke out in favor of restructuring capital toward the digital media markets.

Not, "I told you so", reality told you so. As with so many other issues we face these days, you can only deny what is real for a finite amount of time.

[lifeforcekris]

Great article! If it helps you to feel any better, I just bought a knitting book. In an independent bookstore.

[Humanistic]

Dear Panicked Print Media Exec: I'm a photographer who spent 25 years perfecting my craft, and invested mega bucks in pro gear. Then came digital photography, and now anyone can "snap" a picture that can be put up for sale as MicroStock for unlimited use for a buck. Even cell phones have built-in cameras now, so pictures have become a practically worthless commodity. Companies hire mail room guys to shoot pictures of their products, and the doc designer gussies them up in Photoshop. I've got Creative Suite too, but nobody needs me to do that. When and where can I meet you, so we can cry in our beer together?

[ORpolitico]

I'm one of those formerly-in-demand photographers, also a victim of the "buck a download" photo stock market. I'm in the process of reinventing my business. Maybe we could form a support group that does more than cry in a mug of beer!

P.S. I'm a writer, too. Boo-hoo-hoo.

[iblogleft]

There will always be a market for brilliant photography, and the same goes for brilliant anything :-)

[ORpolitico]

That is what I'm banking on. I would not consider my work brilliant, but it's certainly unique, and people respond to it. So I'm in the process of diversifying my market base and expanding my potential audience.

It's not the first time I've had to reinvent my business, and it probably won't be the last.

[kendraro]

personally, I cut up magazines and make art from them. I grew up in a family of magazine-addicted women known for being unable to part with their piles and stacks of magazines. After admiring my Mother-in-law's collagework I decided to give it a try. I had a baby and no money, but I had magazines! And I had an ingrained love of the images, colors and objects to be found therein. If there is anything I could say to the magazine-makers out there it would be this: could you please not put the numbers on the objects?
check out my art at
http://www.kenniemac.blogspot.com/
more to come soon

[Aaira]

tragedy and comedy

[PunKinPai]

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

[josephXY]

It's a really great article. However, for the consolation and peace of mind of the panicked media consumer a different side to that story:
http://rinf.com/alt-news/media-news/where-was-media-when-sub-prime-disaster-unfolded/2854/

[Roseberry]

Read this fine and funny electronic article while working at my job on a print magazine. How appropriate.
We are read mostly by seniors, so I figure I may have a little more than three years, like you said. Some of them still don't have computers!
Anyhoo, thanks for putting some humor into what is a scary situation for all of us who still use paper and ink.

[zagyzebra]

HYSTERICAL! Funny, sad, but true.