You can’t turn a page these days, online or off, without stepping right into the old print-new media “controversy”. I use those cutesy little finger quotes to indicate my suspicions that this is less about controversy and more about contrived drama.

My pal Robin Hartfiel, recent gatekeeper at Motorcycle Product News and Dealernews and industry sage whose card index is legendary even as he eschews a personal cell phone (for now), takes some delight in referring to himself as a print dinosaur simply because he picks and chooses those digital media aids many of us take for granted, discarding most along the way but happily pounding out copy on a wifi enabled laptop nonetheless. More out of the closet than in, I’d say.

I, however, am a true print dinosaur of the Paleozoic age. He’s a poseur, dating only back to the late Jurassic era. I can say that because I know for a fact he never worked on a Linotype, with it’s jingling strands of brass letters imprinting their lines of type into a lead slug. True, he also experienced the heady days when pasteup required double-ought Staedtler tech pens, sniffing Bestine and rubber cement while trying to avoid dicing your fingertips to shreds with an X-acto blade, but sad to say, he wasn’t in the trenches when the hot lead was flying.

Today the camps seem to be divided into those who advocate centralized oversight of both digital and print mediums, and others who believe separate is equal – the so-called silo approach, with blogs and web sites over there, magazines and papers over here, each with it’s own dedicated set of staff and editors. Protective of turf and slow to responde, it’s chain-of-command versus do-the-necessary, so to speak.

It is tough for print guys to acclimate to the unique features of digital. For instance, in a culture where protecting the copyright is a religious pursuit, it can drive publishers nuts trying to keep up with the wholesale piracy that goes on in the digital realm.

And for those who subscribe to BPA audits as the Rosetta Stone of rate cards it’s even more difficult to rationalize an onscreen version of that same printed page that’s jealously guarded like original Egyptian papyri. Besides, protected rates are, practically speaking, more wishful thinking these days than carved in stone law of the land.

But if you go by the bottom line, the battle’s over. Even though there are exceptions, print revenue continues to erode. More money’s going into digital than print – blogs, web sites, new media, social content, whatever – and at an increasing rate. Print’s not dead, and I don’t think it ever will be. But it’s now part of a much more diverse media strategy, not the only media strategy.

For marketers, this obviously means more choices, but also more tough decision making about where ad dollars get spent. For publishers, this means that finally upgrading to web 1.0 when the pack’s already rolled out web 3.0 will absolutely cost you revenue, and your market valuable opportunity.