Wow! What a week it was for the proponents of "the death of print". Firstly the Guardian is forced to deny the rumours that they are considering a move to all-digital distribution, and then Newsweek announces that is will stop printing at the end of the year.
Whilst it’s hard to present the Newsweek decision as good news, I’m still optimistic about the future for publishers: the way that a publication is distributed isn’t that important: what counts is content. And if publications can continue to deliver great content, engaging readers and attracting advertisers, then perhaps digital distribution is a good thing. Newsweek’s move may be a defensive approach to cut costs, but in the future I’m sure that we will see publishers moving successful print titles to digital for positive reasons, because they see more opportunities and more profit in digital distribution.
