I still remember, as a child, the shock when our family received the letter announcing the end of 'Life' magazine. How could that be? Then it happened again when 'Saturday Evening Post' went under.
In my 30s, I worked for a technical magazine, and learned the fundamentals of publishing. Subscription income is nice, but represents dribbles of $10 or $30 for a year. Magazines rely on advertisements, of which a single ad represent $10,000 or $100,000 for a single issue!
In the field I write about, computer-aided design, the print magazines have fallen like flies over the last five years. The competition from digital forms of magazines, such as my own upFront.eZine e-newsletter, as well as the rising cost of paper, printing, and postage, have put almost all tech magazines under, or made them very thin.
Magazines grow thin because of this rule: paid ads should represent 50% of the magazine's pages. Go through a thin print magazine, and count the number of ad pages. Make sure you leave out the non-paid ads, such as self ads, ads from company affiliates, and ads with promotional exchanges, such as trade shows. You may well find the paid-ad-page percentage to be as little as 20%.
Once the ads drop too low, the publisher has to make a decision. Something has to go, because the magazine's job is to make a profit. Thus it is with interest that I read today that "Newsweek Drops Issue, Cites Poor Ad Sales."
Newsweek removed one issue from its annual output, and plans a "double issue" for Aug 29 - Sept 5, due to poor ad sales. So far this year, ad pages fell 15.6%. The article notes that ad pages for the entire newsmagazine industry have fallen by 10.5%. Expect to receive more double issues in the future.
In the past, magazines could recover. 'Life' did. This time, however, it's different. What are the reasons? Here are some I've come up with:
- Editorial scandals that leave subscribers skeptical and advertisers wary.
- Weak editorial content. My parents pass along their copy of 'Time' magazine; I was shocked to see a recent issue that had more coverage of entertainment than world news. Is Time still a newsmagazine? (The reason for the huge entertainment sections in 'Time' is that it is much cheaper than to report real news. It represents editorial-based advertising for the entertainment world.)
- The immediacy of Internet reporting; there's no longer a need to wait a week to read the news.
- Improvements to local papers; with color photos and great layouts, newspapers are just as good a read as newsmagazines, although newspaper circulations are also falling. (Exiting the Edmonton Airport parking lot last week, I was offered a copy of an Edmonton paper -- a desparate move to boost circulation figures, and maintain advertising revenue, which is tied to circulation.)
- Availablility of alternate viewpoints. 'Newsweek' was read for its leftwing viewpoint, while 'Time' was righwing. Through blogs and the Web, we now have access to many viewpoints. I will read the English-languages news offered by Russians, Canadians, Palastinians, Israelis, Australians, and so on.
Just as many CAD magazines have folded, expect to see newsmagazines do the same in the coming years.
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