I returned to the NEC, Birmingham today to participate in PIRA’s Great Print Debates for a session that pitched the iPad against print.

The iPad will no more spell the end of print than any previous generation of technology. Radios, TVs, PCs, CD-ROMs and the internet were all at one time set to hasten the demise of print.

The iPad is simply another device in the ongoing narrative of an industry reeling from the shift towards advertising online, the internet as a low cost real time distribution platform, and competition for consumer attention from screen based media.

Frank Romano, Professor Emeritus, Rochester Institute of Technology, did an excellent job as chair in navigating the issues facing the print industry. He divided the market up into three segments for ease of the discussion. Here’s a summary of the debate.

• Newspapers – the game was up long before Apple dreamt up the iPad. Newspapers have never recovered from the loss of classified advertising to online and the availability of free news content. Publishers are valiantly trying to build alternative funding models ranging from micro payments to clubs and from firewalls to traffic-baiting content supported by ads.
• Books – the market splits clearly into fiction and non-fiction. Consumers are unlikely to give-up the convenience or familiarity of paperbacks or the kudos of a recently published hardback any time soon. Electronic books are likely to become a convenience item for travellers but are unlikely to make a significant impact on print sales. Non-fiction books are likely to move online in time as a digital format provides a means to promote richer content, revisions and updates, and is a means to create a community.
• Magazines – There’s strong evidence to support the view that the future of business-to-business magazines lies in a digital model as display advertising continues to decline and content moves to the web. But the story for consumer titles is very different with several standout successes. Magazines are artefacts typically focused around a rich content proposition or strong niche. As long as publishers can create compelling content and the cost of publication and distribution makes it viable the consumer magazine industry will continue.

You can follow the conversation after the debate on the IPEX forum on LinkedIn.