THE story of the death of print is now almost as old as print itself, or at least that is how it feels for those in the print industry that have survived and even thrived through countless premature time-of-death declarations over the past few decades.Indeed, perhaps the most intriguing of mysteries is how and why print-is-dead themes persist in spite of evidence to the contrary, particularly in emerging markets.The prime reasons for this predictive failure include the fact that the assumed consequences of the growth of digital have materialised to a lesser degree and in different ways to what was anticipated. Research data tends to highlight the rise of online over time, from media-owned sites through to intermediaries such as Facebook. Yet there is less convincing data to explain why print is not already dead and buried along the lines predicted for more than two decades now.A further factor is the need to recognise that "print" means significantly more than the newsprint used by ...
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