Reuters blogs’ Media File (“Where Media and Technology Meet”) offered more evidence of major media transitions (November 21, 2008):
The New York Times Co’s announcement on Thursday that it’s cutting its dividend by almost 75 percent is a pretty grim indicator of the fortunes of the storied newspaper publisher. It also is fraught with implications. It prompted us to put some of the numbers in perspective, …
Meanwhile, Bloomberg tells us that
Magazine Ad Slump Sends Publishers Into Freefall (Update1)
By Tim Mullaney
Nov. 5 (Bloomberg) — Magazine publishing, an industry that outpaced U.S. economic growth by 30 percent last year, is now in freefall.
Time Inc., publisher of People and Sports Illustrated, will cut 6 percent of its 10,200 employees and incur costs of as much as $125 million to restructure, parent Time Warner Inc. said today. Last month, Hearst Corp.’s CosmoGirl folded and the independent Radar shut down. Conde Nast Publications Inc. ordered companywide job cuts and scaled back Men’s Vogue and Portfolio.
A decline in ad revenue and discounted subscriptions are blamed.
Meanwhile in Canada, Gardening Life and Wish magazine will both cease publication in December:
[President Douglas] Knight pointed to cutbacks across Canada, the U.S. and Europe and said the economic slowdown was hurting advertising.
“The global financial crisis has triggered such a sharp decline in advertising markets that prudent media companies around the world are evaluating their portfolios and making tough decisions about those brands least able to withstand the downturn,” Knight said in a letter to staff on Friday.
Masthead Magazine will also cease print publication.
Amid all the gloom and doom and the usual cries of No! It’s not over yet! People LOVE their magazines! Or “The government should do something!”, some thoughts on how to survive:
The world is going online. People who are 16 years old today probably do not know a world before online information.
There is more information than ever out there, but much of it is not in print and never will be.
One reason I stopped subscribing to print publications is that I simply can’t fit them into the recycle bin. Nor do I wish to. Trees should not die for that.
Consider how much waste print publication creates anyway. To read an article in a women’s magazine about new treatments for breast cancer, one must leaf through fourteen pages of ads for makeup and hair colouring. Priorities, priorities, ….
The editor will, of course, reply that the ads for makeup and hair colouring are essential because they fund the article about breast cancer. Yes, but the Internet largely obviates huge costs like printing and shipping.
If the science journalist simply put the article on new treatments for breast cancer online, the online magazine can sell ads around it. So she will still get paid for her research and writing.
Yes, one cost of online publication is that everyone needs access to a computer or ipod, but access is increasing rapidly. Replacement of these technologies is an occasional cost, not a constant one.
How does it affect making a living in publishing?
One outcome of the low setup costs of blogs and other types of online publication is that markets are increasingly fragmented, but at the same time, increasingly global. That is good news or bad news, depending on what you are trying to do.
It is good news if you are an expert in a specific field. For example, suppose you know a lot about helping people combat Alzheimer syndrome. To make a living, you need to identify 10 000 core readers worldwide who want and need the information you, your contributors, and your advertisers provide. You become their online hub. They can print the information off themselves, if they want to.
It is bad news if – to stay in business – you need 3 million women who want to read a lot of articles in a general interest magazine (lose weight fast, set boundaries for mother-in-law, get kids off drugs, manage your money, fight breast cancer, lose weight fast … ) funded by ads for waterless mascara and foaming toothpaste.
Despite gloom and doom, there is a new world out there, and it’s not bad. But it is a global specialist world, not a national generalist one.
1 Comment
December 4, 2008 at 2:09 pm
[...] informed discussion, but for now briefly: The dying establishment media were not always the red ink-a-sauruses we see today. They were once young and vibrant. Of course, they grew up with and imbibed [...]