Indeed, it's the computer equivalent of the analog hole.
As I'm sure you guys can guess - Zymurgy adds up to pretty much the most expensive thing the AHA does every year. (Although the Conference is pretty damn expensive too). Everyone is moving towards digital distribution because the printing and mailing pieces are the most intensive cost we all have.
When you combine that with changing demographics and realize that to this new generation of brewers - paper doesn't mean as much - well you can see the outcome of that. Several years back my club after years of trying - finally switched to all digital. We had a lot of people b**** about the rest break friendliness of the paper version over the e-version, but those slowly drifted away. For a while we even offered a "paper or bit" option on the membership, but dropped it after only about 5 folks wanted it. Of course, I don't think anyone is deluded enough to think people join a local homebrew club for the newsletter.
So I think one of the things we really need to focus on is making sure the AHA is more than just Zymurgy to our members in addition to other educational bits.
Lastly, if anyone knows of any small "semi-commercial" publication that went digital, please let me or Gary or someone else know so we can study what their experience was. Thanks