• by George Simpson , Featured Contributor, November 8, 2010

Some 52 years after the advent of ARPA and more than 20 years since the launch of the World Wide Web as a way to make sense of the Internet, a panel of magazine publishers at ad:tech apparently said that simply repurposing print material in digital publications is ineffectual. So they have focused on developing original content for those editions. For example, "90% of the content" in Hearst's e-magazines is "original," according to DigiDay. Meredith, it is said, makes a special point to develop "different" material for digital offshoots of its brands, such as Better Homes & Gardens.

Let me wrap my head around this. Print brands that have spent millions (perhaps billions) over decades to establish their unique content and design identities that generated loyal subscribers -- and more fickle, but more lucrative newsstand buyers --  have decided that their unique value props for readers and advertisers must be enhanced for the world of digital distribution? Deadtree publications just too static? Not enough interactivity? Or searchability? No video to support advertiser demand? Can't compete with the production costs or immediacy of social media and bloggers (33% of whom told Technorati they used to work in traditional mainstream media)?

Or perhaps is it not any of those things. Back when I was in the magazine business, somebody important (exactly whom I can't recall) said: "Every magazine is for a generation." Which means that beyond about 20 years you are on borrowed time. Yeah, you say, but Time magazine has been around since 1923. And Better Homes & Gardens since 1924. There are also scores of octogenarians somewhere in the Urals eating yogurt and living happily without indoor plumbing -- but, as in the magazine business, more of their acquaintances are dead than alive. Some 60% of magazines fail in their first year, 80% fail by their fourth year, and 90% fail by their tenth year.So the titles that you probably subscribe to are like late-stage cancer patients, hanging on, hoping for a cure.

One of the silent killers of magazines is that their readership constantly ages (according to Mediamark's spring 2009 survey, the average age of the readers of the news magazines was 48.03).

  The median age of female readers of that bible of teen and young adult anxiety, Cosmopolitan, is over 30). Meanwhile, advertisers consider the sweet spot to be 18- to- 35-year-olds (despite all evidence that older folks have far more discretionary income). To combat this, the editors introduce makeover after makeover to try and capture younger readers. As a rule, this just pisses off the loyal readers without attracting new ones in a enough numbers to have made it worth the cost. When U.S. News & World Report reconfigured and converted from a twice-monthly news magazine to a monthly theme-based print publication, its print circulation per issue fell by 25%.

I understand the idea of refreshing a brand. Who doesn't introduce new models and new packaging every once in a while (not always with good results -- ask The Gap)? But you can't spend 20 or 30 years setting an expectation (call it a brand promise), then walk in one day and pull the rug on readers. Look what happened when Newsweek did it.

Having nearly a 24/7 connection to the Internet has without a doubt stolen some, if not all, of the time people used to spend reading magazines. They pile up unread on my nightstand for weeks until I just dump them, with the blow-in cards still in place, a sure sign of neglect. But a week does not go by that someone doesn't point me to a story (or "Glee" photos) from a magazine that I print out and read.  With enough of a preview, I would happily pay a buck or two for those stories. But there they are hanging out for free, as a way to drive traffic to the magazine's Web site, I guess.

No amount of "original" digital content will attract me back to a magazine. But if I could buy just the stories I like from a centralized site (think Hulu for magazine stories), then perhaps we can extend the life of many titles beyond their generation.