The death of print media, maybe.

I was at the Arab Media Forum today with a client, almost every one looked convinced that print media will not survive in the future. But I was shocked to see that some publishers still do not realize the importance of the web, or social media. I really don’t think personally that print media will vanish soon, but what I’m sure about is that traditional journalists, and whoever blindly support print media, need to evolve. I’m not against print media at all, I love reading prints, but I spend more time reading online just like every one else.

Consumers, businesses, teenagers, men, women, youngs, olds, pretty much every demographic you think of spends more time reading online than reading prints.

Print media need to accept that and adjust to it. Many publications (especially here in the Middle East) refuse to invest online. Print is important indeed, but online is just as important, if not more.

I saw Bill Gates in Emirates Towers once, tweeted it and said “I bet he was meeting Sheikh Mohammad”, the next day it was on front pages in newspapers in UAE that Bill Gates met Sheikh Mohammad. I saw my tweet gets retweeted at least 15 times, from Sydney to Knoxville Tennessee, and am sure thousands saw it before newspapers got printed. Information used to come from media to people, now it’s both ways.

I just blogged yesterday about how Queen Rania is using Social Media to get her messages across. If YouTube was a search engine, it would be the largest search engine after Google. If Facebook was a country, it would be probably the 8th largest country on earth. UK media were on twitter during the G20 summit and the amount of information that was shared is way beyond any print. My point, we’ve entered the digital age and are slowly exiting the world of print. Instead of fighting for the survival of your print publication, think of how you can evolve it to survive. I’m sure print can survive, but the business model followed by publishers needs to be changed.

If your media is not online, make sure you get online before it’s too late. There is a lot of money online, trust me. If you do not include YouTube and Facebook and Twitter in your competitor analysis or development tools, make sure you do. If you do not acknowledge that people spend more time reading online than they read prints, then you are in denial and definitely need some counseling.

Watch the video above, I get goosebumps every time I watch it.