by Allison Hope

As print advertising dollars- and the newspapers and magazines that they belong to- crumble, we are seeing the emergence of a new paradigm of news reporting and publishing; and it’s all online.

The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Miami Herald, and Newsweek, among many other titles, have been threatened by bankruptcy. Playgirl, Good Homes, and more titles still were more than threatened and went under. Several smaller, city papers, in Ann Arbor and Seattle, for example, have already announced that they will cease from carrying on with their regular print production processes. Business Week and The New York Times were bailed out by private investors after uncertainty with facing their toughest balance sheets.

I work for a specialty consumer magazine. We held a full day pow wow this week to talk about how we might move to a web-based platform. The consultant hired to address the issue has decades experience in the print magazine industry. He is a lover of magazines and of print media. He is convinced that print is dying and that those who wish to be on the media stage moving forward must figure out how to monetize their business model on the web.

This seems a tall order for news organizations to reconsider so dramatically their place in the world. the options are limited, though, as the industry has been backed up against a wall. First, we loved the web when it surfaced as it served as a place where we could offer ancillary information and products to our growing audiences with little overhead. We introduced into the budget new revenue streams from the web that, while helpful, were never significant enough on their own to sustain our print efforts.

The major challenge that media outlets face when turning to the web to help supplement or replace their print efforts is that the revenue streams currently being created do not come close to matching the dollars generated from print advertising, subscription and newsstand sales. As time progressed, we felt more and more defeated by the web. Ad revenues were not growing as steadily as they had initially or to the levels we’d hoped they’d reach. The online subscription figures weren’t matching what we thought they might. Users increasingly expected content to be made available to them for free. And while we continued to innovate and sample and test new content and offers on the web, we turned our heads back to our main line of defense, our print products.

Seattle’s daily paper, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, owned by the Hearst Corporation, was the first of several newspaper outlets to make the move from a print to a web-only home. The future of this paper is uncertain, but at least there now exists a guaranteed current presence. The paper will never return to the level of operating that it once existed at, though.

It’s important to keep in mind that when news organizations move to the web it is not a lateral move. The Seattle Post, for instance, had to downsize their staff almost 80% from more than 100 to less than 25. A fair question to follow might be, how does this shift affect the integrity of the reporting that they are able to provide? Clearly, a smaller staff means fewer research assistants, fact checkers, and all of the other positions that provide a contextual, investigative outlet with the tools needed to publish accurate, timely information.

To date, very few outlets have figured out how to monetize the web in a way that allows them to remain the same, reputable news source that they can be in print without comprising quality of reporting. Outlets like the Harvard Business Review are able to make a web model work, as people are prepared to pay high annual digital subscription prices, but would this dynamic work without the print product to back it up? How long would the nostalgic print brand help support the continued success of an online business before collective amnesia sets in and sheds the prestigious reputation these major outlets formerly held.

And what will happen to sites like Google News or the Huffington Post, that rely on the new the major outlets put out their own news and maintain their traffic figures? There remain a lot of big questions with few answers.

Even as circulation numbers decline, though, print media still operates as a multi-billion dollar industry. Until the paper mills, printers, newsstands, and bookstores go out of business, I personally don’t see the point in eradicating products that many folks still find useful and enjoyable. I think our magazine still has a place in the world and I hope to continue to help run it so long as that’s the case.