Print v. Post

Lazy Monday morning, not super warm... but at least it's not raining, and the wind has calmed a bit. I should do yard work today, now that I have fallen behind. At a minimum, I should try to get some fresh air.

The last couple of weeks, have been spent researching copyright law, and sitting within arms length of a landline, waiting for industry people to call me back. For obvious reasons, none of the details can be posted on the internet, until there is some sort of resolution. It is causing me to lose sleep. And my appetite. The moral and ethical scope of protecting my work is expensive. Not just financially, but mentally. If it goes unchallenged, someone 'gets away' with something. But if I pursue it, I'll ruin somebody's career and livelihood.

I'm a graphic designer, by the way, with a couple of decades of print publishing experience. Thanks (sarcasm) to the recession, and the internet, for the last 28 months, I have been sporadically employed, or in re-branded braincase terms, trying to enjoy a mini-retirement.

A 'full dead stop' economy, a market that has limited prospects, and a 'new crop' of graphic designers every year in this city. These are the challenges. I'm also not getting any younger, so that's a disadvantage also. But I'm willing to weather the storm. It's been done successfully before, it's just never taken quite this long. I'd be lying if I didn't say, I've started to wonder whether there will be an print industry left to go back to.

Meanwhile, a centuries old business model 'the print industry' is struggling to find it's way to prosperity... again too. Is it a lost cause? It has failed to understand or prevent the internet from siphoning advertising revenue from it. Underestimated might be a better term, how do you charge $30 dollars for a 3 line classified listing that will run for 3 days, when internet sites like Kijiji and Craigslist, will let you write a small novel about your item or event and post 10 photographs of it.

In the last two years, there have been a record number of print publication failures in North America. They close up shop, because the ad revenue and subscription dollars are less than the costs to produce a publication . The city where I live is no different. We lost one newspaper in 2008, The Daily News, and approximately 80 jobs. About 10 people were kept on to launch Metro, which is a free daily, that has little to no local content (sans ads) and just regurgitates CP & AP stories, that as a large media company, they already pay to use.

The other paper, and Canada's largest independently owned newspaper, The Chronicle Herald, laid off 24 newsroom staff (approx. 25% of the 103 they employed), and 9 from the production department in early 2009.

Graphic designers and production staff cost money, and salespeople bring in money. The majority of the time when a 'downsizing' or 'corporate restructuring' occurs, the production staff is the first to be shown the door.

So here's the question. Is the graphic designer to print publishing, what the internet is to print publishing, a drain on the financial bottom line? And if so, will the feral universes' next reap be the traditional print/publishing industry?