Reason to Fear for the Future of Magazines

Many thanks to Ann Handley for pointing out this sad example of how magazine publishers apparently plan to defend their turf: by irritating us into subscribing again.

Once again we’re reminded that radio didn’t kill theater. Movies didn’t kill radio. TV didn’t kill movies. The VCR didn’t kill TV. Etc. New technologies don’t kill previous technologies to make room for themselves, the wise suits inform us. We foolish mortals obviously don’t understand how media works. (Or work. I always get them mixed up.)

You see, people find room in their lives for the new medium alongside the old media they love. Isn’t that nice?

In other words, there’s room in my life for my digital media and my print magazines and newspapers. My digitally streamed and iPod-contained music. My Netflix-delivered movies and TV shows on CD and my movies and TV on demand via cable and delivered through Hulu. And of course my VCR, my LPs, my cassettes, my—oh wait, maybe there are platforms that get snuffed.

I hate to be mister obvious, but CDs did kill the VCR, digital delivery is killing music CDs, and the internet is kicking the newspaper industry’s ass. TV and theater audiences aren’t nearly what they once were, and a growing number of magazines have been put down by the very companies represented in this quaint little cheerleading video.

But I digress. Let’s stick to magazines for a moment. In a previous life I owned a bookstore that carried more than 5,000 magazines. I’d wager we were one of the largest and most diverse newsstands in the country, so I know a little something about the incredibly inefficient system that is newsstand distribution.

Print is expensive to produce and to distribute. It’s incredibly wasteful—somewhere in the neighborhood of two-thirds of all those magazines you see on newsstands and in bookstores end up being destroyed when they don’t sell. And as much as I love them, magazines aren’t nearly as compelling a format as one that engages you by sight and sound, providing you with countless opportunities to dive deeper and deeper into the story if it interests you.

I think magazines will find their place in this new media environment, but it won’t be a return to the glory days of Look, Life and The Saturday Evening Post. Watching a group of aging New York execs extol the virtues of their medium while failing to acknowledge the huge paradigm shift that is occurring as they pontificate is just pathetic.

Too bad they couldn’t dig up some digital-savvy magazine folk to talk up the opportunities that the new media environment offers magazine publishers. Or how magazine brands might seize on digital platforms to deliver their content to audiences in new and innovative ways.

No, instead we’re reminded that magazines are doing quite well, thank you very much. And rumors of their imminent demise are greatly exaggerated.

It may not be apparent, but I love magazines. I love the look and feel. The portability. The sense that, as a subscriber, I’ve plugged into something special. (As an example, check out Garden and Gun.)

But as much as I love magazines and pray they find their place among the new media currently eating print’s lunch, I’m afraid we’ll look back on this video in another decade or so and laugh at the wrongheadedness of it.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Tagged as: ann handley, magazines, publishing, video