Commentary
No Longer Worth The Paper They're Printed On
- by George Simpson , Featured Contributor, February 27, 2009
Now, math has never been one of my strengths (and if you read my copy before Phyllis and Tanya get a hold of it, you might also argue "...neither is spelling, pal,") but I am pretty sure it costs Time Warner more than $20 to send me 84 weeks of their magazine (however thin it has gotten). I expect postage alone would eat up most of my check, were I not already a subscriber and inclined to send in yet another payment. And I am sure that laser thing set the sub folks (oops, sorry "consumer marketing department") back at least another 50 cents.
The game plan is to renew me at a much higher rate with that tiresome effort to start in the same confirmation letter with a pitch along the lines of "extend your subscription now for...." In the coming year, fifteen or twenty more solicitations will attempt to persuade me that I will be smarter, more informed and well, just a better person in general if I continue to read TIME. But like everyone else, I will let the subscription lapse and wait for another desperately low ball offer and reup then. It is an odd quirk of the magazine business that they highly incent new subscribers and stiff loyal readers who end up paying higher renewal rates.
Meanwhile in a poll conducted earlier this month, 67% of respondents said they feel "traditional journalism is out of touch with what Americans want from their news." Nearly as many (64%) said they're dissatisfied with the quality of journalism. But I am not one of them. I think traditional media does a pretty damned good job of covering the news (most of the time) even if increasingly somebody with a Twitter account beats them in breaking big stories.
My problem is with waiting a week for a magazine with either "time" or "news" as part of its title. Even the daily newspapers can't keep up with the 24-hour news cycle of the internet, much less the news magazines. Consequently they become less and less of a "must read." And not just for me, all of the news magazines have been shedding rate base like a wolfhound in 95 degree humidity.
Traditional media sellers like to toss around the term "banner blindness" to suggest that online advertising doesn't work. And magazines will claim its readers are "more engaged" because it takes a while to tear out all of those annoying sub cards and heavy stock ads which adds minutes to your "time spent" with the publication. But unless you are reading a special interest magazine with ads for the newest cool equipment for your hobbies or sports or a women's book where you can't afford to miss the occasional topless ad, you are just as blind to magazine ads as you are to banners. Trust me, when I tell you that I haven't been influenced by a magazine ad on a major purchase in 15 years or more.
Before the internet, magazines were a primary resource for researching ideas when you remodeled your kitchen or bought a new car. No more. I can spend 10 minute online and get 500 times more useful information about potential purchases (including those always important user opinions.)
The MPA canceled its annual conference-in-the-sun this year. One wonders if they will ever have another one.
You have a point here. I subscribe to to specialty magazines, and if money wasn't so tight, would consider a couple of others. The two I get limit what you can get for free and the web, and offer lots of goodies online if you do subscribe. They also heavily crossmarket (books on the subject, special single topic issues, their other magazines in the same field). Time spent with them is well spent, since their content is not available anywhere else. I no longer get either local metro paper because there is no reason -- breaking news is on radio/tv, the on-line version carries everything (most of it lamely). I do get the community sort of daily (4 days a week) only to find out what is happening in the community I live in (the metros ignore us); if their website wasn't from hell, I'd consider dumping it. I do get the Wall Street Journal daily because: 1) it covers actual news in depth; 2) no celebrity gossip; 3) well written; 4) nearly no sports coverage (who won, who got traded is all I want, tv/internet provides); 5) actually has articles that make a person think; 6) nice to read words on paper. Mass audience mass media is dying in print, not because of internet, tv, radio, but because of failure to hold the audience's interest. Time has been competing with broadcast and newspapers for breaking news for years but used to be good for story behind the headlines. I have seen no reason to read it for years.
I think you are missing the somewhat larger point. These magazines are not here to blithely update every nuance of a story like the 24 hour cable nets do. Or to report on what Obama wore to work today like most "news" websites. Instead the real purpose of these magazines is to cover stories in a more in depth manner with a removed perspective. I happen to think that most publications (online or off) do a rather poor job at this, but indeed that is their real raison d'etre. Their function follows the form, not the other way around.
Andrew, good point. Having worked at Newsweek for 13 years I appreciate the efforts of the newsmagazines to provide more in-depth analysis (I still read Nwk only for George Will), but in their attempts to redefine themselves I think they have lost a good deal of their ability to provide additive, intelligent (and fresh) insight. G
"Failure to hold the audience's interest" is a focal point in every measure of "behind the headlines" and in depth investigative journalism. The juicy part is who is going to pay for it. $10 per copy? Really! How about advertising? Yeah, that's the ticket! Talk to the advertisers. Show them what they can accomplish with print which they need to succeed in other media. The problem lies more with a disconnect than the media itself. Solutions will have to sit on publishers and owners of print media to get with the program or change the management that has led the charge in the 1970's direction back with the heart of CYA.
Building on Andrew's, then George's, comments - I guess in an ideal world, the pubs would be able to stick to their core value prop, and provide in-depth analysis of "old" news behind a "pay for" firewall online (and give up on the ad-only model, given the infinite supply of ad space on the Web).
In an ideal world, either they build an audience that will pay, or vice versa sort of some % of the public tires of blogs and demands good content once again and is willing to pay for it.
How many publishers can hang on until then? I'm hopeful, but...
George, you are dead-on. I ? magazines, but outside of specialty magazines, I just can't relate to them anymore-just as you noted.
I also had the same thoughts recently as I noticed my stack of old newspapers were getting dangerously smaller by the day; I began to worry, "What will I use now to pick up my pet's litter?!"
:)