New York, NY (June 25, 2008) – Amanda Bassa over at HiphopDX wrote something the other day that got me thinking about an argument we used to have in my Communication Issues class back at Florida Southern: Was The Internet Killing Print Journalism?
The short answer is yes. But in actuality, it’s really not that simple. The death of print has been greatly exaggerated, mainly because, if anything, it’s more like a migration. Yes, eyes, ears and advertising dollars are moving towards the digital space. For magazines, it’s not at a breakneck pace, but it’s steady enough that publishing houses are closing and others are repurposing their content to stay relevant. But despite the writing on the wall, people will always have use for printed news and editorial. Why? Two reasons: Locality and Portability.
Unfortunately, though, the questions don’t end there for this argument. The Wharton School, a journal published by The University of Pennsylvania dedicated to studying and analyzing various business trends, raises several questions in this article, namely: Can online revenues replace print revenues? Does an unlimited "news hole" leave consumers drowning in content? Can a website whose main audience is national still dominate a local market?
While circulation, subscriptions and ad revenue for newspapers has spiraled down the shitter when it comes to the Internet over the last decade, magazines (the subject of Bassa’s blog) still have a fighting chance, mainly because of portability and the other intangible property of the locality principle. That is, they can adjust their content to the demographic of their reader. And while you’d think magazines would be the ONLY ones to weather the storm, The Washington Post HAS been able to diversify their bonds:
…"The shift from print to digital is gradual, and that cuts both ways," says Wharton marketing professor Peter Fader, who analyzes behavioral data to forecast customer choices. Because print operations are still the dominant players, many companies have been slow to divert resources online.
At the moment, washingtonpost.com, whose newsroom is in Arlington, Va., is an enthusiastic tail on a very large dog. The online operation currently generates 14.5% of total ad revenue, according to the 2006 annual shareholders report. While this figure is nearly twice the national average, Graham is sober in looking ahead. "If a shareholder in this company should want to know what our newspaper and website will be earning five or 10 years from now, I simply have no way to tell you," he said during his Media Week presentation.
The print-based Washington Post also generates the lion’s share of content at its Washington, D.C. office, which has 625 reporters, editors and photographers compared to washingtonpost.com’s 85.
That said, washingtonpost.com does far more than repackage stories from the print edition; it has won an avalanche of awards for original reporting and multimedia storytelling. Last year, video journalists at washingtonpost.com won two Emmys. The website also pulled in two major national awards for best overall large-circulation news site and earned some of the highest marks for any news site from the "State of the Media 2007" report.
OK, so, what about the magazines then? How are they diversifying and surviving? DesignTaxi.com looked to Wired Editor-In-Chief Chris Anderson for answers:
…Online magazines will never take the place of their print mothers, just like no one has stopped having sex in place of erotic chat lines and pornography. Somehow scrolling around the online version just falls short of coming close to the hard copy (pun unintended). In an interview with online resource I Want Media, technology magazine Wired’s editor-in-chief Chris Anderson expressed confidence in print’s staying power, "I think of a great monthly magazine as occupying the sweet spot between the Web and books. It can have much of the timely relevance of the Web combined with the much of the depth of a book. Obviously, it has to live online, too. If you’re not in Google, you don’t exist for many people. But I think the immersive experience of the print version remains compelling."
Publishers are careful to ensure that each medium functions to its maximum in the strategic release of information or updates on e-zines. For titles with both print and online versions, the cover stories or exclusive interviews and features are often updated onto the website after the print publication has been safely out on the newsstands and selling like hotcakes. Otherwise, a tantalizing teaser or image would help to push the reader towards the print publication.
While Anderson trumpets the value of print media, and the situation is probably not as dire as Bassa makes it out to be in her blog, stakes is still high for magazines, that point goes without saying. Print mags aren’t losing younger readers as fast as newspapers, but the cost to launch a magazine and maintain its readership isn’t getting any cheaper. Advertising dollars are slowly slipping away and viable solutions are few and far between. If free was a silver medal, ESPN.com is an example of how subscription services can get you that gold medal content while still giving you the exceptional reporting you want. So there is a way. But slow adoption by some publishers hindered initial efforts to extend their on-line brands and make them viable properties. Many of those companies are forced to depend upon their name recognition and clout to get by – and that will only carry them so far.
This article from Economist.com is from September 2007, but shows that even almost a year ago, major brands were still behind the curve playing catch-up and, in effect, being forced to choose their destiny. Read:
…Magazine firms disagree on whether to take existing brands online or try to do something new for the Internet. Condé Nast believes it can cast a wider net by creating themed websites that use some magazine content but also go beyond to appeal to a bigger market. “You’ve got to have scale on the internet, and magazine brands can be limiting online,” says Sarah Chubb, president of CondéNet, the firm’s internet division, which runs a number of portals such as STYLE.com. Some magazine editors have objected. Anna Wintour, the editor-in-chief of Vogue, is said to have noted the popularity of STYLE.com and asked why it couldn’t be called Vogue.com. (American Vogue will in fact get its own website soon.)
Time Inc, in contrast, has stuck to its big magazine brands with People.com and with SI.com, its website for Sports Illustrated. The price, competitors say, is that Time Inc cannot do the sort of sarcastic, bitchy celebrity gossip that people like on the Internet for fear of tarnishing the brand of People, and therefore cedes first place for entertainment to TMZ.com (also owned by Time Warner), which excels at it. But People.com is able to charge advertisers a premium, points out John Squires, executive vice-president of Time Inc, because of the quality of its brand. And surfers are highly engaged with People online: in June each visitor to the site looked at an average of 85 pages, compared with 13 for TMZ.com. In financial terms, says Mr. Squires, People.com would now rank among the firm’s most profitable monthly magazines.
The Internet still brings magazine companies a fraction of what they earn in print. Publishers have found that websites are good at winning and keeping subscribers, but few pay their own way. If Emap closed down all its magazine sites tomorrow, says a publishing executive, the company would make more money. Even though magazine firms have built attractive sites, says Andreas von Buchwaldt of OC&C Strategy Consultants in Hamburg, huge independent communities on the Internet have often already formed, and it is hard for magazine brands to achieve leading positions. In six countries in Europe including France and Germany, for instance, an internet-only brand, auFeminin.com, dominates the women’s category.
You can see the dilemma. Media is rapidly changing, and the Internet’s greatest strength (evening the playing field) is proving to be the undoing of many profitable businesses. Yet successful entrepreneurs like Felix Dennis, former publisher of Maxim, will tell you: “It’s a long, slow sunset for ink-on-paper magazines, but sunsets can produce vast sums of money.” Whoever devises a model that integrates the various forms of media – social, video, print, audio, broadcast, podcasts, blogs, streaming – and synthesizes them to maximize user portability, locality and adoption, will certainly see the money roll in. Because wherever there’s success, you can find advertisers.
And while the continual dependency on advertising seems like a good idea, the true 21st century discovery is going to be the next real revenue stream. Athletes tapped into corporate sponsors, recording artists are already starting to seek out corporate dollars to supplement their touring dollars… will big business be the ones to rescue and repurpose your favorite magazine? Perhaps.
But I don’t think the writing is going to be on the wall this time. This new revenue stream might very well come directly from the people who literally want to own the product in the first place – you and me. Think about that.
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