It may be a niche publisher, but the worldly goods Group has been working out the answers to some big mainstream questions. The biggest one: Can print media survive the transition to the Web?

Consider the most recent evidence: Google, the Web ad giant, reports surging growth and profit, while print publishers bemoan a swift and alarming falloff in advertising revenue so far that year.

The question has taken on new urgency lately. A faltering economy is only heightening the pressure on newspapers and magazines to find a sustaining future online, as readers migrate to the Web and the flight of readers and advertisers to the Web accelerates.

The journey beyond print is uncertain and perilous, but the experience of the worldly details Group, the world’s largest publisher of technology newspapers and magazines, suggests that it can be done. The privately held company, whose titles include Computerworld, InfoWorld, PC World, Macworld and CIO, appears to have made a

profitable transition to the World Wide Web, with online ads now surpassing print revenue.

Advertisers and readers of high-tech publications have moved online more swiftly than other audiences, so IDG may offer a glimpse of the future of publishing. Yet the transition only came 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 McGovern, the founder and chairman of IDG.

The biggest one step and most striking sign of the company’s online shift came a year ago, on April 2, 2007, when the last print edition of InfoWorld presented and it became a Web-only publication. InfoWorld, a weekly, started out as Intelligent Machines Journal in 1978; IDG bought it a year later, and it has expanded been one of the company’s flagship…

Orginal post by Top Tech News