InfoWorld folds print after 29 years

Tom Shea, writing in these pages 25 years ago, had it almost right. His article “Subscribe to Magazines with your Microcomputer” in January 1983 described Publishers Aide — a “magazine subscription fulfillment” company that planned to let home computer users “key … in a code” to access subscription data from the company’s IBM mainframe. “I believe magazines will, in time, be computerized,” Publishers Aide President Michael Ciuffreda told our readers. “You’ll just go buy a tape that you’ll display on your TV screen when you want to view it. It will then become a permanent part of your library.”

Not bad for an article written before the advent of a public Internet, the World Wide Web, or e-commerce. Sure, “magazines on tape” sounds a bit like something Alaska Senator Ted Stevens (who famously described the Internet as a “series of tubes”) might have come up with. But the idea of connecting to readers online is there, as is the notion of using technology to streamline manual processes. And that thought process leads directly to the current state of affairs, in which online publications, now including InfoWorld, are supplanting their print counterparts.

At this point, hardly anybody argues that online publications are transforming the publishing business and causing headaches for traditional media companies. One look at the financial statements of media firms such as Gannett or The New York Times, which are struggling amid declining readership and eroding print ad revenue, says all that needs to be said.

The question that’s harder to answer is “Why is it happening?” And that’s the question we set out to answer in this, our final print edition.

It’s no surprise to InfoWorld readers that one of the most important things that “happened” was technology.

You can see the first inklings of the coming content revolution in that same 1983 issue of InfoWorld, where Derek Wise reviewed Wordvision, a $50 word processing program for the PC that was “designed to be sold in bookstores and needs no vendor support.” At a time when putting out a weekly magazine still required typesetters who could work with the ATEX publishing system, paste-up artists who assembled typeset copy and art, and photo editors who obtained photos for print, inexpensive desktop tools such as Wordvision were starting to put the power to publish into the hands of ordinary people.

In time, desktop publishing tools such as word processors and, later, e-mail and digital photography, transformed the business. They obviated expensive, specialized systems such as ATEX and empowered reporters to do more of the work of producing the magazine, said Dante Chinni, a former Newsweek reporter and a senior associate who researches the magazine industry for the Project For Excellence in Journalism. “Those little things changed the economics of the magazine business, but we adapt very quickly and forget how different things really are,” Chinni said.