Pavlik 5e

1. 5th edition
John V Pavlik & Shawn McIntosh
Chapter 3:
Print Media: Books, Newspapers and Magazines

2. E-PUBLISHING:
UNDERSTANDING CHANGES
IN PUBLISHING
 2012: Apple accused & convicted of price-fixing on e-
books
 Amazon: The leader in e-book sales; did the suit against
Apple inadvertently strengthen Amazon’s monopoly?
 How will traditional print publishing shift in an electronic
environment?

3. FUNCTIONS OF PRINT MEDIA
 Transmission of culture
 Diffusion of ideas and knowledge
 Entertainment

4. DISTINCTIVE FUNCTIONS OF BOOKS
 Compilation of comprehensive knowledge
in a single document considered a vital,
even sacred endeavor
 Book burning, protests and censorship
highlight importance of books like no other
medium

5. HISTORY OF BOOKS TO TODAY
Monastic scribes
 Specially trained monks, or scribes,
copied religious and classical works in
monastic writing rooms called scriptoria
 Largely dedicated to promoting the ideas
of the Christian Church, many books in
this era were written in beautiful
calligraphy and richly illustrated
Johannes Gutenberg
 Invented printing with lead, using movable
type and pressing oil-based ink on paper
with a converted wine press

6. HISTORY OF BOOKS TO TODAY
Mass communication and mass
literacy
 The printing press spread scientific
discoveries and religious beliefs
 Books and broadsheets printed in local
common languages (the vernacular) found an
eager audience as more common people
learned to read
 Most Europeans and Americans remained
illiterate until the nineteenth century with
development of textbooks to teach alphabet
Cheaper & smaller books
 Dime novels
 Print on demand
 Digital books

7. CURRENT BOOK INDUSTRY ISSUES
 Industry mergers and
consolidation enable
publishers to increase profit
margins by reducing operating
costs
 Book publishing industry is
intertwined with global media
and the entertainment industry
 Emergence of online
booksellers, electronic books,
and on-demand printing is
transforming sales and
distribution, growth that
renders the future of traditional
brick-and-mortar bookstores
uncertain

8. SALES AND READERSHIP OF BOOKS
 Patterns of book sales have been
unsteady: sales of
paperback/hardback have fluctuated
 Trade books produce the greatest
revenue
 Sales of children’s & young adult
literature on the rise – but adult books
cost more, so net profits can be
deceptive

9. OUTLOOK FOR BOOKS
Ebooks accounted for about 1% of total
book sales in 2008; 22% in 2012; and
are expected to top print sales for the
first time in the U.S. in 2013
Downloaded audio books increased 38.8
percent in 2010 to $81.9 million
What price consumers are willing to pay
for ebooks remains a question;
different publishers try different
pricing structures

10. DISTINCTIVE FUNCTIONS OF
NEWSPAPERS
Surveillance: informing the public of important events
Local newspapers
 Serve local geographic communities, monitoring their government, law enforcement,
business, religion, education, arts, and other institutions.
 Provide a legal record of the community’s public communications, running obituaries
and various announcements.
National newspapers
 The New York Times, the “paper of record” in the United States, offers especially
strong coverage of international events and issues
 The Wall Street Journal is the nation’s leading newspaper covering business and
finance
 USA Today, a strong mix of general-interest news featuring colorful graphics and easy-
to-read sections, an overall design inspired by television

11. HISTORY OF NEWSPAPERS TO TODAY
The commercial press & partisan press
 Commercial: Merchants published the
commercial papers, reported on ship
arrivals, departures, and cargo, as well as
weather and other items of commercial
interest
 Partisan: Between Independence -1830s,
most U.S. newspapers were affiliated with a
political party or platform
Colonial readership & finances
 Readership was largely limited to those
who supported the political position of the
paper and to society’s well-educated, land-
owning, and affluent groups
Golden age of newspapers
 1830s-1930s: Technological developments
transformed newspapers
 Penny press
 Appetite for news (and literacy) increased

12. CURRENT NEWSPAPER INDUSTRY
ISSUES
 Many newspapers defer to marketing
polls and focus groups when setting
standards for content, tone, and
layout: increased visual & sensational
content
 Experimentation with electronic
delivery
 Reduction, or elimination, of paper
printing (increased reliance on
electronic production)

13. CURRENT NEWSPAPER INDUSTRY
ISSUES
Newspaper chains
 U.S. newspapers traditionally
owned by families, individuals, or
political parties within communities
their newspapers served
 Pro: Chains offer shared
resources for news gathering
 Con: Chains can pressure local
newspapers for higher profits; can
weaken the connection between
the local media and the local
community

14. SALES AND READERSHIP OF
NEWSPAPERS
2/3 of the cost of publishing a newspaper:
Printing press, newsprint, ink, press
operators, delivery trucks and drivers,
and maintenance of subscriber
databases
Circulation & readership
 Readership: number or percentage who
read a newspaper
 Circulation: number of copies sold or
distributed
 Readership down, especially among the
young, though evidence of increased
readership online
Advertising
 Generate 2/3 of U.S. newspaper revenue

15. OUTLOOK FOR NEWSPAPERS
Trends in newspaper
publishing
 More newspaper executives are
outsiders, with little appreciation
or understanding of the industry’s
unique aspects
 Digital subscription models
progress slowly
 Understanding and measuring
audiences increasingly critical in
an online world

16. OUTLOOK FOR NEWSPAPERS
 Local coverage is increasingly important
 Smaller but more numerous revenue streams need to be
developed as alternatives to traditional advertising and
subscription-based models
 Advertising increased across all media channels, with
relaxed restrictions on political advertising that greatly
helped newspapers and other media

17. DISTINCTIVE FUNCTIONS OF MAGAZINES
 Magazines gained popularity in the
1800s with serial novels, released one
chapter at a time over many issues
 Magazines are published at regular but
less frequent intervals (than
newspapers), most typically monthly,
although weeklies and quarterlies are
also common
 Magazines typically published on high-
quality paper stock intended to be kept
considerably longer than newspapers

18. HISTORY OF MAGAZINES
 Early histories of magazines and newspapers are
interwoven: technological, business, and
journalistic/entertainment functions overlapped;
both helped spur the development of modern
mass media
 19th century: magazines helped America define
itself and reach a nationwide audience

19. CURRENT MAGAZINE
INDUSTRY ISSUES
1940s-1950s: Magazine
publishers stopped
publishing general-interest
magazines in favor of
specialized magazines on
almost every conceivable
topic; attracted advertisers
who wished to target
specific audiences

20. CURRENT MAGAZINE INDUSTRY ISSUES
Magazines specialize in several major
topic areas; the top ten include:
* news * fashion * women (with at least three major
subgroups: middle-aged and older women, women
under thirty-five, and teenage girls) * families
(especially aimed at parents of children under age
twelve) * sports * ethnic * medical/health * political *
farm * lifestyles (type of home, region, cooking, and
so forth)

21. SALES AND READERSHIP OF MAGAZINES
 Contemporary magazines subject to
ownership consolidation and media
concentration
 Circulation & revenue down since 2011, yet
every year, there are new magazine titles
published (most do not survive more than 2
years)

22. OUTLOOK FOR MAGAZINES
 Online reading trends point toward relatively short pieces as opposed
to long, in-depth features
 Changing media consumer behavior: greater competition for reader
attention makes people less willing to invest the time necessary to
read long articles
 Full-color pages and high-quality, glossy paper make print magazines
both expensive to produce and environmentally unfriendly