Could the Collapse of the Magazine Industry be Upon Us?

I may have put my foot in my mouth when I wrote this post... because, just a few days later, I read this in the Huffington Post. Yes, it's true, Radar Magazine and Radar Online have folded. Though the magazine seems to have steady readership, both in print and online, and was even nominated for a National Magazine Award, it failed to meet financial expectations. The print version of the magazine will be discontinued, while it's online counterpart is being sold to AMI and will likely exist as somewhat of a TMZ-type site.

I still hold true to my claim that magazines offer the depth of coverage that blogs simply can't provide and thus won't completely abandon print in favor of fancy, interactive Web sites anytime soon, however with a 9.5% drop in magazine ad revenue this past year, investors are begining to lose faith that the industry will remain monetizable.

While I personally hope that magazines continue to stay afloat, this is proof that advertisers are begining to follow customers' desire to go digital and looking to spend more of their dollars online. In this industry and amidst Web 2.0, the magazines that will win are the ones who can show advertisers that print offers true value that digital sites can not.

In the Changing Media Landscape, Will Magazines Become Extinct?

Following last week's Politics 2008 event, PRSA posted a great summary of the Keynote Roundtable discussion, entitled, "The Changing Face of News: The Power, The Influence and the Challenge of the Future."

In recent conversations, many have cited increasing online readership and decreasing revenue as evidence of the fall of print... but what about the magazine industry? (In fact, the above noted PRSA article mentions an interesting point: During the panel, Time magazine's Richard Stengel has become "a digital publication that puts out a weekly print publication" in efforts to adapt to new media.)

As more readers turn to the Web to get their daily dose of news, one might expect that magazines would be forced to adapt too. However, Graydon Carter, editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair noted that magazines and the new digital news are nearly completely separate industries. He said, "The one thing a monthly magazine can do is be slower and tell a story because there is so much information and everything's so fast, that if you compete with the notions of speed or immediacy or just information, you lose to the Internet." Interesting, but a great way of viewing the situation.

Looking at my own media consumption, I realized that I, too, use new and traditional media for different purposes - I like receiving up-to-date news via my RSS, and I like the opinionated slant some bloggers take, but nothing will ever take the place of a good "old-fashioned" eight page spread in Newsweek. Fear not, my friends - magazines are here to stay.