Magazines, Eating Their Young

I presume everybody who reads this blog also looks at Jeff Jarvis' BuzzMachine, but just in case, you should click over there and read his post about the magazine industry, which in turn references an interesting and troubling story from the New York Observer.

Upshot: Many magazine companies, cutting back costs like everybody else, have decided to make those cuts on the digital side, and hunker down in print. That's a pity, as Jeff points out. Magazines have always been slow to understand the power and potential of the online world, and this is just more of the same. Blindly assuming that the print business will come back to previous levels, they're missing great opportunities to position themselves for the future, especially, as Jeff notes, leveraging their brands into online community hubs.

Maybe when you're a weekly/monthly your culture just doesn't understand the concept of urgency. Or maybe they're intoxicated by those damn smelly perfume ads. But magazines need to be doing more, not less, on the Web if they want to have a long-term future. Clinging to print is a close-minded, losing strategy. 

It's probably not a coincidence that America's smartest magazine, the New Yorker, is doing smart things online these days, rather than retrenching. But the rest of its glossy brethren are acting very, very dumb.

Comments

[ea]

I really don't disagree with your general premise, but I do believe there is a future for print. My evidence for this is the Economist, a (newspaper) magazine that I can get online, but still enjoy in its printed glory each week. I would note that as Time and Newsweek and the News and World Report have cut back on their production of the printed weekly versions, the Economist has expanded. This all goes to a theory of mine, and that is that people will buy the printed version of a quality product. Witness the New York Times, which should have been dead by now, but isn't.
By the way, have you tried to read the Economist online? I have. They gave me a month advance on their annual predictions for 2009. I love this predictions magazine, not for the predictions, but for the features that go with it that are so snarky and savvy. Anyway, I have had access to this electronic version for the last month, and am sitting here waiting for the mailed version. It will replace the 2008 version that has sat around my couch for the last 11 months.

[carl]

i used to read buzz machine, but i find his thought process rambling and confused. i don't read it anymore.