Sam Whitmore: Infoworld To Fold Print Edition
Sam Whitmore at MediaSurvey (a paid registration site, and a Vario customer…) broke the news yesterday that IDG (Vario also has done several projects for IDG companies) would stop publishing the print version of Infoworld Magazine.
InfoWorld will announce on Monday that it is discontinuing its print edition, sources tell SWMS. There may be other aspects to the reported announcements.
David Churbuck notes on his blog that:
“…it’s not a big surprise, nor, does it mean anything especially dire or negative about the ongoing strength of the InfoWorld franchise online.”
Former Inforworld reporter and veteran tech media hand Jim Forbes has an excellent bit on his blog here.
My take: expect to see more niche publications expedite their transition from print to online, esp. in tech where changes happen so fast that long print publishing cycles leave them reporting yesterday’s news, when compared with their online counterparts. As Churbuck notes, online vs. print is only a question of how the material is delivered.
The big question will be how they will fare at maintaining ad revenue and journalistic standards.
(update 3/26/07 – story is confirmed, and there is a great piece on Matt McAlister’s site…the official InfoWorld announcement is here, and worth a read.)
One thought on “Sam Whitmore: Infoworld To Fold Print Edition”
I agree that we’re going to see a lot more of this going forward. Magazines/newspapers/books that are read for information will go online (and/or audio), those that are read more for pleasure/entertainment will stay in print, although we’ll probably see more audio.
Not that you wouldn’t read Infoworld for pleasure…And something is lost by not being able to drift around a publication and find something that you didn’t know you were looking for. That happens online, too – maybe even more so when you take the bigger picture with its entire universe of grazing possibilities into consideration. Still, I can’t help but think that a little something will get lost in translation.