After years of hearing the refrain that “print is dead” it wasinteresting to read comments in The Australian this week by News Corp chief executive Robert Thomson that “News Corp’s famous mastheads will be available in print for ‘decades and decades and decades.’”
No matter what your views on newspapers or News Corp, it reinforced to us at BlueChip that ultimately what makes good story telling is the quality of the message, not the type of medium.
And while some media lend themselves better to individual stories, as a general rule it’s not a case of one versus the other. As News Corp’s Mr Thompson declared, it’s not about print versus digital. Just like it’s not radio versus television. Or magazines versus the internet.
He noted “certain people have been embarrassed to speak up for print” for fear of being seen as not understanding digital.
As Mr Thompson noted, print newspapers can be more effective if you’re trying to reach highly-engaged readers.
Newspapers, particularly for advertisers but also for those wanting to tell their stories through editorial (whether public relations or content marketing), will be part of multiplatform proposition for media companies like News Corp in the future.
The message? Digital is an addition, not a replacement. And integrated communications – across a number of channels – is the way of the future.
