And my hand’s up (writes Peter Coleman), having been in the industry almost as long as Romano, who started as a copy-boy on a Brooklyn newspaper in the 1950s. Well not quite that long, although it can seem that way.
And at the end of the lunch, Newsonomics author Ken Doctor reprising and updating the address he gave in Sydney last year. In 2020, grandparents will be telling their heirs of the days when there were newspapers made from trees, chopped up and trucked from place to place. “And they will think we were crazy,” he says.
Right now, however, he doesn’t appear to think that, despite the ‘crossover’ which has seen the digital ad spend exceed that for print… globally, and in countries including Australia and the USA.
In the chocolate capital of Hershey, print lives not only in the minds of a few industry veterans, but also in the conference programme and exhibition floor.
A good proportion of the 81 exhibitors – of which 17 are apparently new this year – have print-based equipment or services to sell… a contrast to next week’s wholly-digital mediaXchange event, being held to the south in (warmer) Orlando.
The Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association-supported event has attracted about 700 delegates, many of whom are here to learn about digital-related technologies, such as the video workshop which was Monday’s opener.
“Even 15 seconds of emotion can be very powerful,” Calkins Media video managing director Bill Johnson told delegates. The Levittown publisher has invested in video, with seven staff committed to the medium, as many as it had on its online team altogether a couple of years ago.
And there’s a synergy here: The primary video tool for reporters is the iPhone, the same piece of kit Doctor reckons is likely to dominate online publishing. He makes a distinction between smartphones and tablets – which have different needs and applications – but mobile is “the big one”.
“The advertising spend tends to follow where people spend their time,” he says.
Over the next couple of days, delegates will learn how to get a share, despite the huge take of five major players led by Google.
Pragmatically, he suggests that after seven years of negative figures, the good news is that publishers are not going backwards any more: “The big number is zero (growth) and we’re getting closer to it,” he says.
And when granddad’s reminiscing about those dead trees in 2020, news-and-information businesses could be more profitable than ever.