Over at Silicon Alley Insider has a link to an article following up on the impending demise of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The article discusses the P-I and other old media properties in trouble:

The most endangered of the media sectors is the newspaper industry. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Denver’s Rocky Mountain News have already been slated for closing if they do not find buyers. They won’t. The Miami Herald is on the block. Due to the remarkably poor real estate environment in South Florida, this property is unlikely to find a new home. National newspaper chains Journal Register and Gatehouse have been delisted from the NYSE and are likely to try to auction off their operations. McClatchy, the third largest chain in the country, will struggle to make its debt service. Scores of papers, large and small, will fold this year. Newspaper expert Alan Mutter recently wrote that any paper in a major city with two dailies is in tremendous trouble.

The magazine industry is not in much better shape although its very sharp downturn did not begin until last year. Conde Nast recently closed Men’s Vogue and cut back the frequency and online operations of Portfolio. Media giant Meredith recently closed Country Home. Two months ago, PC Magazine said it would close its print edition and operate only online. According to MIN, at least a dozen major magazines had ad page decreases of more than 20% last year including US News & World Report, Rolling Stone, Boating, Gourmet, Ladies Home Journal, More, and Smart Money. A number of these magazines also had sharp page drops in their January editions. With advertising expenditures likely to fall throughout the year, it is hard to imagine how many men’s magazines, car publications, food, and shelter magazines will be able to stay afloat in segments of the industry which are already crowded.

But new media isn’t insulated from the problems.

A year ago, most analysts expected that the online marketing business would be largely recession-proof. It is now clear that this is not true. Gawker owner Nick Denton expects online ad revenue to drop by double digits. Even if that does not turn out to be true, web properties which are losing money now won’t all make it to the end of 2009. Denton has already closed ValleyWag. Retail website eLuxury.com is closing. 8020 Media, started by CNET founder Halsey Minor, has been shuttered.

Regardless of the fact that new media isn’t recession proof (is anything?), I would much rather be in new media than old. New media has a number of things going for it in an environment like this:

1. You’re not wedded to one way of doing things. The oldest possible online business model is about 10 years old, so it can’t be that hard to change your mindset.

2. You don’t have huge capital costs, either in PP&E or people. Unless you’re Google or Yahoo and own gigantic buildings full of computers, all you need is some content people and a Rackspace account.

3. Everyone in your company is either a creative risk-taking person, or probably needs to go anyway.

4. You can live anywhere. Going with the PP&E thing, if you’re working online, you can close down the fancy offices with the view of the hills and move into somebody’s mom’s basement for a while until things shake out.

So those are the four reasons off the top of my head this morning that I’m glad I work in new media and not old media.

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