Print vs. online publishing. (Who, what, when & where).

In the NL/NL 10/17/02

Publisher Profile, we quoted Llewellyn King that "paper is here to stay. People have a deep cultural attachment to it. It's convenient. It's portable. Fifty percent of our electronic subscribers still insist on receiving a paper copy.

"Investigative reporting may belong on paper. The internet, like TV, has an impermanence; it floats into the ether. It may be great for covering live action but not for critical investigative reporting."

To that we add this from Graham Communications' newsletter: "We just heard about a company that replaced its print newsletter with an e-mail version. Several months after making this change, they reinstated the hard copy edition of the newsletter. Why? They found that an e-mail 'newsletter' is effective for communicating brief, timely messages, but does not work for longer, more complex messages.

"This company's original thought was to substitute an e-mail newsletter for the print edition in an effort to save money. As it turns out, they found they had also lost touch with their customers."

And we received this note about NL/NL from a subscriber who's a sophisticated user of the internet:

"I like the serendipity of opening the envelope at the post office, getting my coffee, and reading the print version.

"BTW, the online e-mail alert often attracts me back to the print version, to read an article that originally escaped my notice.

"I really hope you don't abandon the print version. There's a time and place for all."