Understatement of the month is that Traditional Media is changing. What’s interesting is how those changes are coming about; some subtle, some less so. Newspaper readership is declining constantly, and the ad dollars needed to keep it going as well. Yet there are more magazines and books than ever before being published. This is a bit of a dichotomy. Perhaps it’s good to look at “how” the Web has impacted changes in newspapers and magazines.

The newspaper as we’ve known it will never be the same. Nor will magazines. But they will likely survive for many years to come. What’s changing is the formatting of these traditional publications and how they are becoming more integrated with Social and New Media. Take for instance the NY Times. Last year they implemented summaries of the stories in the paper in the first couple of pages - so you don’t have to read the whole paper. Magazines have increased the number of sections with “shorts” - quick information perhaps with an associated picture - and less long articles. Some publications like Atlantic, Harpers or the Economist continue to have in-depth articles, but this is also relevant to the audience - and the story is always carried over onto the Web.

We do very little long reading while on the Web. In considering this blog post (an abstract of our soon to be released eBook, The Conversant Corporation) I’ve had to write in summary form. Web reading is a skimming behaviour, the shorter the content the better. Reading on the Web is typically a skimming style because we plant links in stories and a reader may quickly go off on a tangent, skimming yet other stories?

Author Nick Carr (The Big Switch) has pointed out in his article Is Google Making Us Stoopid that our reading style on the Web is changing how we read books as well. Our attention span is shortening and we want things in clips - the deeper material and answers are always available on Google or Yahoo! at the tip of our fingers. This is a hallmark of the 90-Second-Economy.

Many newspapers have websites, and with them is the ability for the public to blog and comment on articles. The stories are extended on the Web. Even traditional television news extends the stories on the Website. Watch a TV documentary and a website address will be displayed for more information on the story.

This anecdotal evidence shows us that the Web is having an enormous impact on Traditional Media. They are re-formatting their content to reflect the reading style of the Web. This concious shift is subtle, yet remarkable…what does this mean for how magazines and newspapers will be read in the future?