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Written by Jeff Gayduk
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Wednesday, 23 July 2008 03:17 |
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Killing Trees
If you read any of the financial websites, there’s a lot of chatter about the demise of newspapers and magazines. Major media companies like The New York Times (down
6.8%) and USA Today (down 9.9%) experienced significant drops in advertising revenues for the second quarter of this year. Coupled with equally significant drops in readership and one’s bound to ask, when will the bottom fall out?
It’s easy to cast a gray shadow over the entire industry, and I’ll be the first to admit that the market is changing. But, while the web has proven adept at delivering a bulk of news and information, it’s not yet proven to be effective in delivering robust content in a portable fashion — essentially it lacks the structure of print magazines. Whether you’re seated at the front of the motorcoach, on an airplane or at your desk, it’s simply easier to read a well-constructed publication than to click and squint to read a 1,500 word article on a website.
One day that will change, but today, what the web is great for is displaying and sorting data and shortening the cycle from news inception to news delivery. For example, we used to produce directories in each edition of LGT; for 2008 we are debuting an annual Group Travel Directory (scheduled to roll out next month) with regular updates to our online search engine directory – www.GroupTravelDirectory.com.
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