Print – fearless trumpeter or second fiddle? Print21 magazine article

Once regarded as sturdy defenders of truth and freedom, printers have been on the back foot of late, forced to fend off attacks from rival media and industry nay-sayers. Enough is enough! Like a bugle blasting through the fog of war, James Cryer issues a rallying call and says now is the time to fight back.

Crossroads of civilisation,
Refuge of all the arts against the ravages of time,
Armoury of fearless truth against whispering rumour,
Incessant trumpet of trade.

From this place, words may fly abroad,
Not to perish on waves of sound,
Not to vary with the writer’s hand,
But fixed in time having been verified in proof.
Friend, you stand on sacred ground,
This is a printing office.

As an industry, we seem to have drifted away from the underlying pride, even assertiveness, which seems to positively flow from these words. Written in 1932 by Beatrice Warde, the great typographer and print industry advocate, these are the sentiments of a young, vigorous industry – proud of its role, comfortable in its own skin – and confident of its future.

In fact, even up to a few years ago, these words were prominently displayed in the foyers of many printing companies, proud to be described as an “armoury of fearless truth” and an “incessant trumpet of trade”.

So what’s happened? Have we gone soft? We now seem to be apologising for chopping down trees. We’re finding it difficult to attract school-leavers, and print is now just one of several, optional methods of ‘content delivery’ as emails become the preferred medium of choice, especially for the financial services industry.

Losing control of content
Did the rot set in when we slipped the harness of being content originators? Think of the film industry and you think of scriptwriters, producers, directors. You do not care about the guys in the darkroom slavishly splicing it all together. Even the catering industry (another service-provider industry like ours) generates public interest with food fairs and television shows. While studying Nigella Lawson intently, we don’t give a fig about who the food manufacturers are. Likewise, think ‘fashion industry’ and images of scantily-clad models slinking down the catwalk come to mind; you really don’t give a damn about which textile-mill made the fabric.

Fast forward to our industry: what do we think of when we think ‘printing industry’ - or more importantly what does the general public think? (They may think ‘telephone books’ as that’s what they see lying around in apartment foyers, but that’s another story.)

We have, in fact, drifted away from being a ‘retailer’ to a ‘wholesaler’, and accordingly we’ve lost our direct contact with the general public. For whatever reason, we’ve resisted the urge to win over the content generators; via a little backwards vertical integration we could have become the proud owners of ad agencies and design studios. Printing companies could have been aligned with publishers – even authors. Wouldn’t it be nice to say JK Rowling worked for a printing company: her job title ‘chief content generator’! For whatever reason, we’ve become the last carriage on the supply train.

Enemy engagement

As an industry, we’re being beaten to death by perception prevailing over fact, but what we need to do is not preach to the converted, but rather engage with the enemy. Why not promote print to the media, be it radio or TV, by a series of press releases to encourage a broader debate on the merits of paper versus electronic delivery? Why not have a genuine forum in which we engage directly in public debate with someone from the stock exchange or a large financial services company or consumers advocacy group? In other words, someone who believes, with equal vigour, in the cost justification of sending shareholder reports by email and who is actively against print as the default medium to communicate with shareholders (and others).

We could invite members from the mainstream media (Fairfax, News, etc) to cover the event and allow us communicate our virtues (as ‘accidental environmentalists’ to borrow Phil Lawrence’s phrase) to a wider audience? Such a forum could be a newsworthy event in its own right: ‘Industry Holds Itself up to Fearless Inspection!’ could be the next day’s page one headline!

We constantly say we want the understanding of the public, and a forum such as this would be the perfect medium to promote such views. We may yet be seen again as a “fearless trumpeter”.

Perhaps as an industry we’ve been too inward-looking, too conservative, too polite. Now the stakes are higher, we have to think more strategically about getting our message out into the public domain. Put it this way: we have to do something on this contentious topic, to send a message to the community at large about the environmental impacts of print vs email.

Let’s rattle the cage and build on the good work which the APIA has started in providing more, better, clearer information on the relative merits of paper over its alternatives.

Where to find like-minds
There are numerous websites and/or publications that address the issue of promoting print, several of which are listed on the Printing Industries website as downloads. They include:
•    The British schools program <www.printit.org.uk>, a brilliant, whimsical look at print and its potential through the eyes of young kids;
•    The US-based The Print Council <www.theprintcouncil.org> which has published an outstanding full-colour booklet called ‘The Top 10 Ways Print Helps You Prosper’, and
•    The British-inspired ‘Two Sides’ project <www.twosides.info>, a myth-busting alliance of printers and other stakeholders in the print supply chain.