What the Metro North Indicator and the JetBlue Barometer are telling us: Print is running on empty.

When you find a reliable, real-world leading indicator, go with it.

Japanese teenagers and the general population of Singapore tend to be among the best gauges of the technology future. Unfortunately those are half a world away for me, so I have to learn to look local.

I find that the next best observable thing is busy commuting mid-level executives and their offspring. My part-time vantage point is watching suburbanites commuting into Manhattan. During peak commuting hours, many of these head downtown to Wall Street or to Madison Ave to play the ad game. During off-peak hours, their offspring head into the City to become cosmopolitans. My observation is that both groups have a good track record of being ahead of the technology adoption curve. That commute into the City is an early adopter zoo where one can safely observe technology-savvy species evolve before the eyes. The Metro North Indicator works.

Along the same vein, passengers on JetBlue and other lower-cost airlines tell their own tales. Couples with kids: that's where the action's at. See how they entertain. 3DS and tablets and laptops and smartphones and iPods.

A decade ago such observations made it clear to me that RIM and their BlackBerry line were about to go mainstream. On a series of peak adventure rides into Manhattan, I counted that 100% of the observable passengers were glued between BlackBerry screens and newspapers.

And now, about ten years later, a recent count brought the BlackBerry count to zero. The bring-your-own-device trend and worker demands has has led the iPhone and similar looking Android devices into the enterprise.

But what has become very clear is that the printed newspaper is on its last leg. I'm seeing very few newsprint readers these days and lots of eReaders (including tablets).

The Metro North Indicator is clear: print is on a one-way track to extinction.

Talk about Knight vision! “Mediamorphosis.” Cool tablet vision from Knight Ridder ca. 1994. “Newspapers can evolve into a new form of media...”

As a follow up to my last post on the death of printed newspapers...

So, who invented the tablet? I still give a hat tip to “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry and his script writers.

But check out this vision from the mid-'90s from Knight Ridder's “Information Design Lab” talking about digital paper and tablets. (Knight Ridder was once a major American publisher of newspapers before being acquired.)

Knight Ridder exec, 1994: “Tablets will be a whole new class of computer...” Did Knight Ridder get their IPR issues in order?

[ Update: I would say that Roger Fidler (http://www.linkedin.com/in/rogerfidler) and his team deserve more recognition for this. ]

Knight Ridder's Roger Fidler, Director of New Media & Information Design Lab from 1992 to 1995: “...our role is to ... develop long-range vision of where the newspaper industry is headed over the next five, 10, 20 years...” Note that this video was made in 1994.

The writing is on the wall: the end of printed newspapers is nigh. But how nigh? New study says five years.

USC Center for the Digital Future STUDY >>

via Guardian STORY >>


Back in late 2010, the chairman and publisher of The New York Times, Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., said that the writing was on the wall: printed newspapers won't be around much longer. “We will stop printing The New York Times sometime in the future, date TBD,” said Mr. Sulzberger.

So, what's the TBD part? According to a study done by the University of Southern California, TBD = 5. In five years, it is claimed, most printed newspapers in the U.S. will be gone, replaced by tablets and smartphones and laptops and internet-connected big-screen TVs.

If not in five years, certainly within 10. And then we will explain to our children and grandchildren how the newspaper used to be delivered at our doorsteps just like our parents and grandparents told us how the milkman came each day to drop off a bottle or two.

Will print be missed? As the telephone became ubiquitous, there was grumblings of how that device would take away the charm of the personal messenger. And now this message is clear: it's time to move on. It's written in black and white.


Jeffrey I. Cole, director of USC's Center for the Digital Future: “Circulation of print newspapers continues to plummet, and we believe that the only print newspapers that will survive will be at the extremes of the medium – the largest and the smallest,” said Cole. It’s likely that only four major daily newspapers will continue in print form: The New York Times, USA Today, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal. At the other extreme, local weekly newspapers may still survive.”

Tablets are on a roll. Is it soon the end of newsprint?