Tuesday, February 20, 2007 7:01 AM
Last Friday, I reacted to the growing number of magazines which seemed to be shrinking to comic book size [ Are Your Magazines Shrinking? Mine Seem To Be... ]. While I have not noticed this trend specific to legal-oriented magazines, other magazine categories like weekly newsmagazines are clearly under fire.
Kevin Price, the host of the Houston Business Show and blogger at the Business Plus sent me a note highlighting a post he wrote on "shrinking magazines." His post, The Incredible Shrinking Magazine, got me thinking about the subject again.
Mr. Price outlines his thoughts as to the whys and hows of this subject with some informative bullet points:
I believe that magazines are shrinking, both in size and importance, and this is reflected by the following indicators:
- Cheaper than ever. The price of a subscription must be less than it costs to mail it, let alone print it. Magazines that people paid $20 to $30 a year 5 years ago, cost around $10. In fact, $10 seems to be the going rate for such publications. This is their desperate attempt to convince businesses of the large number of people that are seeing their advertisements. Magazines are finding it difficult to keep up with the growing online viewership.
- The number of pages are declining. I'm sure this is related to the number of ads purchased (there is a formula of number of ads, justifying the number of pages of content).
- Magazines play a copy cat role. Magazines are looking more and more like printed websites. Since you can access most sites for free and they have direct links to other articles, that can't bode well for magazines.
- The growth of the "third screen" (mobile devices) makes it possible for people to access numerous "magazines" through out the day. Increasingly I use my pda to access articles. The content is free (at least what I read) and my selections virtually unlimited.
You can see the above points in context by reading the rest of Kevin's post here: The Incredible Shrinking Magazine.
After reading Kevin's thoughts, I started wondering what others may be saying on the subject.
The Project for Excellence in Journalism suggested magazines were experiencing mixed results in its State of the News Media 2006 report on American journalism. The report's introduction started with a pretty ominous line: Scan the headlines of 2005 and one question seems inevitable: Will we recall this as the year when journalism in print began to die? The report is comprehensive and difficult to sum up in a few words. In general, it seemed to find some categories of magazines doing well while others, like news magazines, clearly struggling (and shrinking). And, while the 2007 version of this report apparently has not yet been published, the same group posted this article, A Rough Year for News Magazines, on January 27, 2007:
A year ago, the news magazine business was in a slump. The number of advertising pages sold was down in 2005 for many titles, and down precipitously at some of the biggest, including Time and Newsweek.
The industry was hoping 2006 would bounce back. It didn’t happen.
On the flip side, Chip Griffin: Pardon the Disruption, noted in his post Magazine Circulation Down, Number of Ad Pages Up: Steve {Rubel] does conclude with a good observation, however: "The takeaway here for me is that media is often additive. One format does not always replace another." He's right, print media is here to stay. The publishers and titles that evolve with the times will thrive; those who continue to do business the old way will suffer.
And, speaking of Steve Rubel, he finds that As Traditional Media Erodes, Magazines Thrive. In his worthwhile post at Micro Persuasion, Mr. Rubel makes some great points, two of which I wanted to paste here:
If you take a look at all of the media statistics, something rather interesting jumps out. Consumer magazines are thriving. I don't mean online. I am talking about good old dead tree versions.
...
What's also notable, however, is that the rising tide is not lifting all boats. Time and Newsweek are both suffering as news really moves to the Web. The Washington Post even said recently that the term newsweekly is really moot in this day and age.
Interestingly enough, I could find nothing in the blawgosphere discussing the state of legal-oriented magazines and newspapers. Yet I know someone must be talking about the subject. The legal vertical is obviously not totally insulated from the larger trends of the online and business world.
In any case, there is a lot to digest in reading through and thinking about what the people mentioned here are saying about the magazine industry. My own conclusion for now is that there is no single answer. It seems some magazine categories are becoming obselete, others are totally reinventing themselves and still others are simply thriving without making significant changes. For the sake of the magazines I read that have shrunk to comic book size, I hope reinvention rather than obselete becomes their defining term in the coming years.