Economist Warns Printers of Complacency: Wisconsin's stable of printing press operators, collectively the fifth-largest industry in the state, has been blindsided by the Internet, e-books and a wicked recession.
Yet the biggest challenge is not technology, but complacency, according to the chief economist for the National Association for Printing Leadership, a trade group.
"Our biggest threat is complacency, the status quo, and assuming that what worked yesterday will work tomorrow," Andrew Paparozzi told a gathering of commercial printers from Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana on Thursday.
The industry that prints the nation's books, magazines and catalogs has shrunk, to be sure, Paparozzi said. Despite all the technological change, which diminishes demand for bound-paper publishing, Paparozzi said he continues to tour the nation's printers only to find that most are stuck in a mind-set of the last century — the belief that if a commercial printer hangs on long enough, other printers give up and open up opportunities and eventually things might return to what they were once like in the predigital age.
