Print vs Digital: Who is Winning The Battle?

There is an ongoing battle between print and digital – obviously at one time, print was our only option – and it was incredibly popular. But the rise in technology and particularly the ability to read our favourite publications from our smartphone or tablet, on the go - this is bound to have had some affect on print, isn’t it? We can now get news updates to our phone in the same way we would a text message and scroll through newspapers and magazines 24/7.

You may be quick to think that it has caused print to decline and in some respects it has, with major titles moving entirely online.

Firstly, this year, The Independent became the first national newspaper to embrace a global, digital-only future. The move capitalised on the paper’s position as the fastest growing UK quality newspaper website – ensuring a sustainable and profitable future.

But, although some printed publications have closed in the last few years, several have also opened.

Following the successful opening of the ‘i’ back in 2010, this year saw ‘The New Day’ hit the shelves – this, however, wasn’t such a success – closing just nine weeks after its launch.

This could have signaled the end for print, couldn’t it? But, it hasn’t. Newspaper sales have actually benefitted recently from Brexit - including a new ‘pop-up’ weekly paper – The New European - aimed at the 48% who voted to Remain, which is initially running for four weeks.    

Type ‘magazine subscriptions UK’ into Google and you will see that they are still going strong. Plus, a new wave of independent magazines are thriving – in 2014 an independent-magazine subscription service reported a 78% increase in revenue, with its numbers of subscribers growing by 76%.

However, while there are a significant amount of publications still in print, you won’t find many that don’t have a digital version running alongside it. 

Print generates more advertising revenue than digital – which is a key reason that many publications run the two alongside each other – print makes them money while digital helps them keep up with the times.

The beauty of digital editions is that the publications can connect with its reader on a more personal level thanks to social media and news can be delivered as and when it happens – with stories being added and updated throughout the day.

However, this year’s UK Audit Bureau of Circulation shows that readers are still not migrating over to the vast majority of mobile editions. There were declines in numbers for eight of the top 12 UK digital editions – including well-known brands such as Empire, GQ, BBC Good Food, Cosmo and Men’s Health. Empire’s most recent digital edition fell by 12.5% year-on-year to just under 11,500 a month compared to 133,210 print issues. There was, however, a gain of 225% for The Economist – with sales of 71,000 – a little under half the print readership. Of course, this doesn’t necessarily mean we aren’t reading them online, it just means we aren’t choosing to pay to have them as an app on our phones.

It is hard to say who is winning the battle, more often than not digital is seen as the future and print the past, but each time it looks like print is losing, it comes back and in some cases is still beating digital when it comes to revenue and readership.

However, it would appear that ultimately, over time, as technology becomes more and more advanced – further print publications will move online. Although, it doesn’t look like print will completely disappear any time soon.