Same business, different mindset

LinkedIn has published an interesting study of economic trends across various industries over the past five years.

The most revealing part is this chart. The two sectors at opposite ends of the scale, Newspapers and Online Publishing, are effectively in the same business. Yet Online Publishing is growing strongly, at +24.3%, while Newspapers are shrinking badly, at -28.4%.

That gap is hard to dismiss as a problem with demand for information. People are still reading, sharing and paying attention. The weaker explanation is that publishing is in decline. The better one is that a particular model of publishing is in decline.

This is where the legacy mindset becomes expensive. If you define the business around the format, the old structure looks like the thing worth saving. If you define it around the reader, the opportunity looks rather different.