The death of the printed medium is a contentious topic these days, as the online components of many publishers are enjoying increasing ad revenues.

But as a recent article, Rupert Murdoch shows that news isn’t dead, on ZDNet.com suggests, traditional publishing is still a good and highly profitable business

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A case in point: Rupert Murdoch-owned News Corporation offered $60 a share for Dow Jones last May, a 71 percent premium on the price of shares in the publisher of The Wall Street Journal before the unsolicited bid was announced.
One doesn’t pay a premium for a dying company, the article stated. Rupert Murdoch doesn’t pay a premium unless he has to in order to win a deal. So, we can safely assume that publishing the news is still a good business.

A research report by the Kelsey Group (Car Classifieds Shift Gears as Online Auto Sites Transform Market) also showed that such publishing companies increased their revenues by $180 million last year.

With the exception of the years following a U.S. stock market crash after 9/11, total advertising revenues have continued to rise since the 1980′s, according to the Newspaper Association of America (NAA). In 2006, total print ad revenue was down slightly (by approximately $800 million) but up $1.8 billion overall when online revenue was factored in.

Although most newspaper publishers now sell cross-media advertising packages, online revenue still accounts for only five percent of the total ad revenue at these publishing companies.

Print is definitely here to stay, and it won’t be going away anytime soon. But as many analysts in the past have suggested, print publishers have to start treating their online components as prime real estate they have to sell in order to survive the digital age.