Print death watch

A small handful of publishers made recent announcements on their decisions to cease publishing in print and move to sole digital content delivery.

The most notable is, of course, InfoWorld's cessation of print this month. 

We are merely embracing a more efficient delivery mechanism --the Web -- at InfoWorld.com. You can still get all the news coverage, reviews, analysis, opinion, and commentary that InfoWorld is known for. You'll just have to access it in a browser (or RSS reader) -- something more than a million of you already do every month.

We also heard Time's announcement that it will discontinue the LIFE newspaper supplement, but still look to build online product offerings under the LIFE brand.

(New York, NY March 26, 2007) – Time Inc. announced today that it will close LIFE magazine, but the company will continue to develop LIFE online and operate the brand's other successful businesses. The issue dated April 20, 2007 will be the magazine's last.

(A quick side note, in the interesting blog world, I read this on Bill Trippe's blog, who linked to PaidContent.org, which linked to a news release on Poytner Online). 

On a much smaller scale, but with a touch of irony, earlier this year the oldest newspaper in the world stopped print publishing.

The world's oldest paper still in circulation has dropped its paper edition and now exists only in cyberspace.  The newspaper, founded in 1645 by Sweden's Queen Kristina, became a Web-only publication on Jan. 1. It's a fate, many ink-stained writers and readers fear, that may await many of the world's most venerable journals.

And in a completely different world, although they still churn out their journal in print, 

The American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) is considering discontinuing the print version of its journal Molecular Biology of the Cell (MBC). We welcome comments from the library community about the value of print journals and the adequacy of LOCKSS, Portico, and PubMed Central as archives of electronic journals.  We are also curious about whether librarians would be interested in a print-on-demand option for obtaining archival print copies if regular print subscriptions were discontinued.

This was posted by ASCB's director of publications to the Yale University Library's Liblicense-L discussion list.  The post prompted a flurry of responses.

So we've heard the demise of print for years and we are probably still a far way off from seeing this on a grand scale, but I imagine we could see more announcements this year.

For anyone who's interested, I'll be collecting stories related to the demise of print on my del.icio.us links at:  http://del.icio.us/estevenson/demiseofprint

And one final note: I wonder what percentage of InfoWorld.com visitors print out the articles to read?