Friday, February 16, 2007 8:01 AM
Has anyone else noticed that magazines seem to be shrinking? Not all magazines, but a lot of them. Some magazines I have read for years seem to have shrunk to about 20 pages total. What is going on?
It could be that these magazines simply do not have as many advertisements as past years. But, I also wonder if along with declining ads, there are fewer stories being written? Declining ad numbers, that has happened before. Even in recent history, I recall technology magazines that were almost as large as phone books during the dot.com days; only to shrink significantly during the dot.com bust. Some titles went out of business altogether.
This time, though, I didn't really notice the change for a long time. My magazines didn't shrink from phone book to comic book overnight, but instead seemed to have gradually grown smaller until I couldn't help but notice how thin they really were.
I understand that magazines come and go every year. It has always been that way. And, yet, a number of the magazines I am thinking of are stalwarts that have been around for many, many years.
Where are the advertisers going? Is it just a cyclical downturn or part of a longer, more permanent trend away from traditional print to other mediums?
And, where are all of the articles the comic book size magazines no longer have space to include? Are they just not being written? Or, are they now published to different mediums: websites, podcasts, weblogs, etcetera?
I don't know the answers to the above questions and would be curious as to what others think. When a magazine starts to resemble a comic book, it is probably not a sign of good health at that publication. Is it also an undercurrent of a much larger wave coming down on an entire industry in some permanent and lasting way?