By STEVE LOHR

A faltering economy is heightening the pressure on newspapers and magazines to find a sustaining future online, as the flight of readers and advertisers to the Web accelerates.
One question has taken on a new urgency lately: Can print media survive the transition to the Internet- The journey beyond print is uncertain and perilous, but the experience of the International Data Group, the world’s largest publisher of technology newspapers and magazines, suggests that it can be done. A privately held company, whose magazines include Computerworld, InfoWorld, PC World, Macworld and CIO, it appears to have made a profitable migration to the Internet, with revenue from online ads now surpassing print revenue.
Advertisers and readers of high-tech publications have moved online more swiftly than other audiences, so I.D.G. may offer a glimpse of the future of publishing. Yet the transition at I.D.G. came only after years of investment, upheaval and changes in its practice of journalism.
“The excellent thing, and good news, for publishers is that there is life after print - in fact, a better life after print, said Patrick J. McGovern, the founder and chairman of I.D.G.
The biggest single step in the company’s online shift came on April 2, 2007, when the last print edition of InfoWorld appeared and it became a Webonly publication.
There were nervous months after the switch as the company awaited the reaction from advertisers and readers, but before long InfoWorld’s Web audience was growing and its business improved. Today, I.D.G. says, the InfoWorld Web site is generating ad revenue of $1.6 million a month with operating profit margins of 37 percent. A year earlier, when it had both print and online versions, InfoWorld had a slight operating loss on monthly revenue of $1.5 million.
The remaining print publications still typically play a vital role, but a lesser one - physically smaller and financially diminished. In 2002, 86 percent of the revenue from I.D.G.’s publications came from print and 14 percent online. These days, 52 percent of the revenue is from online ads, while 48 percent is from the print side.
The giant technology publisher has not just stabilized its business, Mr. McGovern said, but is also now growing at about 10 percent a year .
Throughout its far-flung network of 300 print publications and 450 Web sites in 85 countries, I.D.G. has converted smaller magazines to online only, but InfoWorld was the big one. More will come, company executives say, as print magazines are left behind. The most striking change has occurred at news-oriented publications like InfoWorld, the former weekly, given the Internet’s ability to deliver news instantly to readers and deliver narrowly defined audiences to advertisers.
Steve Fox, the editor in chief of InfoWorld at the time, said that the most fundamental difference between print and online was the ability to measure precisely how many readers view a particular article on the Web - and how those results influence editorial decisions on what to write about.
The link to the business is direct. When a person views a Web page, ads are automatically presented on the page and the publisher collects a payment.
“It’s wonderful to have the feedback that you get online, but you need enlightened ownership so that you are not a slave to page views, said Mr. Fox, who left amicably last October to join a social networking start-up.
At InfoWorld, page views are important, said Eric Knorr, the current editor in chief, but as a guide rather than a substitute for editorial judgment. Predictably, he added, certain topics that stir strong opinions among technology readers produce spikes in traffic. “If we were chasing page views, all we’d ever write about is H1-B visas for tech workers, Macs and how bad Microsoft is, Mr. Knorr said.
Yet as a Web-only publication, InfoWorld is very different from the bygone print edition. Gone, Mr. Knorr says, are the long pieces of more than 3,000 words, with anecdotes and narrative, examining how technology had transformed some company or industry. Instead, he said, the key online is packaging information into “digestible chunks, typically of no more than a page of text or so, sometimes in lists of “10 things to do to solve some technology problem in companies.
The Web, Mr. Knorr said, also opens the door to offerings that are impossible in print. He pointed to short animations that explain complex technologies, and an online petition urging Microsoft to keep selling the aging Windows XP operating system beyond its June cutoff date .
Without the physical limitations of print, Mr. Knorr said, it becomes easier to explore topics more deeply. InfoWorld presents a stable of bloggers, including 19 freelance writers . The goal, with reporting and blogging, Mr. Knorr said, is to create “thought leadership and depth in several subject areas online, and also set up InfoWorld conferences around those topics.
The approach, it seems, resonates with the advertising industry. “Print brands are going to continue to live, but the distribution channels are certainly changing and so is the content, said Latha Sundaram, a senior vice president at Starcom Worldwide, an advertising buyer. “InfoWorld has focused on the depth of information in technology that is best presented in an online format.
Stewart Alsop, a journalist turned venture capitalist, was the editor in chief of InfoWorld in the 1990s, when it was thick with ads and its editorial staff was at its peak.
“Technology publishing just happens to be at the point of this whole transformation of media, Mr. Alsop said. “What’s happening at I.D.G. is a fairly accurate map for every other publishing organization. Get over it, it’s going to happen.