Stop worrying that the Internet will consume print

”The Internet will not consume print, because it’s not strong enough, it’s not better, and it’s too busy consuming itself”, predicts Bob Guccione on his blog at the Huffington Post.

Bob Guccione, a magazine entrepreneur and publisher, explains:

”That does not mean that print has nothing to worry about. It has, quite literally, everything to worry about: from the expense of its materials, workforce and delivery, to loss of revenues and the erosion of its dominance as a source of information. But the print medium can fix that set of problems.”

Guccione claims that ”the future will not be a war between new media and traditional media, but between obsolescence and vision.”

”Too often publishing executives complain about their ill fortunes rather then set about the necessary reconstruction, like depressed home owners shocked to discover their homes are not impervious to nature and weather. Newspapers have to change, because they’ve become anachronistic.”

Guccione predicts also another internet bubble:

”I think the Internet has a looming financial crisis which, when it explodes, will birth a new and invigorating way that media is created and distributed. Funding came too easy to too many digital businesses, and that always leads to an investor panic when one of the giddiest investments goes bad, as invariably happens. The valuations are once again seriously out of whack with earnings, and business models presume too clear a road ahead of them. (…)

I think the advertising model will shift — as unlikely as that seems now — from the unrealistic promise of infinite audiences to smaller aggregations of people really engaged, really interested, and predictably present.”

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