What do you get when you put 2 magazine editors and 2 art directors of varying age and experience and ask them about the future of their craft? The answer: uncertainty, because no matter how much any of these men think they know the answer, the truth is that none of them have ever experienced anything quite like what is going on in the magazine industry today.
One editor has been around long enough to have seen and done just about everything, but isn’t the most tech savvy. The other editor is well-versed in technology, but hasn’t been an editor long enough to know what makes readers tick. One art director is idealistic and hopeful, but unsure about anything related to new media and how to reach people, and the last guy can see all sides of the sorry, but can’t make a decision to save his life (guess which one I am).
The big problem with magazines is the self-fulfilling prophecy of planned obsolescence. Fewer mags are sold, less people are reading. Advertising pays off less, if at all, so advertisers pull their ads. Less ad revenue means smaller budgets and fewer pages per issue. Lesser quality editorial means even more people stop reading. Of course sales ebb and flow based on the economy, but since the advent of the Internet, the long term trend is a long fall into nonexistence. It’s entirely possible that the magazine stand at your local bookstore will cease to exist as you know it within a few short year, and that’s the fear these four guys have as they pontificate on their futures.
This is a Game Changer For the Whole Industry
The ripple effects would stretch a long way, from magazine sellers, to distributors, from print designers to printing presses. The first question is always the same, “Why not move it all to the web?”
The truth is, at least for the magazines published my our company, is the readers aren’t on the web. Most of our readers are older, less savvy and less interested in reading on the web. It’s not to say their inept, but rather, they just don’t like to sit on a computer to get the kind of information they liked getting in the mailbox. The tactile aspect of magazines is probably the one thing that’s keeping them afloat the most.
Also, the money isn’t on the web, at least not the kind of money needed to run a magazine like we do now. Granted, there are lots of places we could cut (some of which scare me personally) that would make our magazines more online friendly, but its likely our websites would not be able to sustain the budgets needed to keep creating the kind of content we do each month on the web.
Consider all the automotive related magazines out there, namely the more technical books that do complicated builds and installs that you just can’t find anywhere else on the web. There just isn’t anyone out there online doing what we do in the magazines. Mostly its because the technical stories cost money time that up till now hasn’t existed, which is part of the reason the readers aren’t online. The quality of content keeps readers away, and with them go the advertisers and the money.
Other smaller problems exist like how poorly designed our websites are and how their run more like traditional media style of broadcasting rather than interacting. Our marketing efforts are rooted in the old school and the use of social media was widely discouraged up until recently when us editorial grunts started drifting into Twitter and Facebook on our own. I won’t go into the company mandate of not linking to any sites outside of our own, or acknowledging the existence of any other media sorts.
So Where Does That Leave Us?
Good question; one that the four guys in the room have been scratching their heads over for nearly 2 hours, and nobody seems to have an answer. You would think the amount of knowledge in the room would lend itself to some sort of success system, but we’re stumped. At the point, only time will tell. Maybe the answer will come to us in a dream. If anyone out there has any thoughts, we’d love to hear them so we can debate them further to no avail. In the meantime, I’ll be here doing what I do best, riding fences.
