About Brad Sugars

It's possible that there is a future for print publications...as long as there's a digital version.

Here’s an early Christmas present, newspapers: print publications can and will stay in business…so long as there’s a digital version of the publication.

A recent article on GigaOm.com says John Paton, CEO of the Journal Register group of newspapers, says the time for debate is over. Newspapers need to be digital first in everything they do, he says, and more than that, they need to take the same approach to their businesses that many web-based startups have, and that means being transparent, crowdsourced, collaborative and flat. To demonstrate this point, Paton at a recent speech he gave at the Transformation of News Summit in Cambridge, Mass., which was put on by the International Newsmedia Marketing Association (INMA).

We’ve said before that print might not be on its way out, but this news makes sense; in regards to print, there’s just a smaller need for print vs. digital.

Paton said that the Journal Register — which he took over in February — has been living and breathing these principles for the past year, and they’ve paid off in terms of both revenue growth and profits for the company, which was effectively bankrupt last year. Paton says the Journal Register’s profit margins will be about 15 percent this year.

In effect, Paton says, the Journal Register — which publishes about 170 daily and weekly papers in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Connecticut, New York and New Jersey — is already a digital-first company whether it wants to be or not, because its total online audience is bigger than its print audience.

“With small sales in the area of growth and a burdensome cost structure on the declining business – print,” Paton said, that’s how he made it happen. The newspaper CEO said the company has dealt with that cost structure problem by outsourcing everything it can to others who can do it cheaper or better.

What’s interesting about this approach is it doesn’t rely on putting up paywalls, the way that media mogul Rupert Murdoch has done at his newspapers in Britain, which actually led to a decline in online readership of more than 90 percent. Instead, Paton is focused on expanding the relationship his newspapers have with both readers and advertisers in their local communities, and taking that online. He says it’s working even better than expected.

Is this surprising news to you? Whatever the case, this news — and this approach to print — could save a lot of businesses this Christmas and after.