Widespread panic and free-falling stock prices. Newspapers? Yep. Magazines? Not so much.
MediaPost shows that revenues were up 5.6% in the first three quarters of 2007 (a year old, yes, but still telling).
The New Yorker and other Condé Naste publications continue to dominate the magazine space by spending ridiculous amounts of money and relying on their stable subscription rates to bolster high revenue ad-sales.
Some magazines are even seeing online ad growth at levels that newspapers can’t seem to reach.
Why aren’t magazines suffering the way newspapers are suffering?
Brand Engagement
Magazines carry a lot of identity with them. Do you read The Atlantic Monthly? Do you read Cosmo? Do you read Esquire? Do you read PC Gamer?
People identify with their magazines, and use magazines to identify other people, in ways that newspapers have never been used. With a few exceptions, your newspaper subscription has historically been tied to where you live.
As a result, subscribing to a newspaper is less about defining yourself than it is about getting the news. That makes a newspaper subscription a lot less sticky, because subscribers don’t have to feel like they’re giving up a part of who they are.
That’s called brand engagement, and it not only helps you keep your customers, it also allows you to charge more for your advertising because advertisers get to be associated with the strong positive feelings your readers have towards your publication.
Lean-forward, lean-back
The other reason why magazine executives aren’t shaking in their boots is that magazines are still a lean-back product.
When I sit down to read a magazine, I’m often planning to spend several minutes or maybe an hour to read through some longer-form articles. I want to lean-back in my chair and enjoy it. I’ve made time for it.
News is entirely the opposite. I want to hear my news on-the-go. I want to know what’s happening and then move on.
Most of the time, I don’t sit down to read the newspaper (who has time for that?). Instead, I’ll pull up nytimes.com and glance through the headlines, checking to see if anything new catches my eye. If it does, I’ll read it, then move on.
I’ll probably do the same thing on my phone an hour or so later.
News is lean-forward content. Consumers are increasingly taking their news like cigarette breaks—a few minutes here, a few minutes there—and then moving on. The large, paper newspaper is a terrible way to puff news.
Build for reader habits
Magazines won’t have to be worried until reader habits change. As long as they preserve the magazine is a lean-back product, they will do fine.
Newspapers need to adapt to the lean-forward world, and they are already doing so. The internet and mobile devices are far better places to interface with news consumers than the classic wad of paper.
On-the-go mediums that let people read, pause, and resume are going to be key for engaging with the younger news consumer.
Step one is realizing where your consumers are and how they want to use your product. Step two is figuring out how to meet them there.
Eat Sleep Publish is a Seattle-based blog that explores the difficulties and opportunities currently facing the publishing industry.
{ 3 trackbacks }
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Seth Long 08.21.08 at 11:44 pm
Brand engagement… a lot of Americans used to identify with one of their local papers (a dozen or more in some cities). You were either a P-I man, or a Times man, Tribune or Sun-Times. This most often had to do with the paper’s point of view, which modern American journalism schools have beaten into our heads is something just short of Satanism. I’m not suggesting that newspapers need to go back to Col. McCormick’s style of ownership, but giving readers something with which they can identify - a personality of some sort - would be a good start. Magazines have that in spades.
Jason Preston 08.22.08 at 10:13 am
#Seth - you’re right that what’s missing from newspapers, in some sense, is personality.
I think that we’re heading inexorably in that direction, led by widespread cynicism about the reality of journalistic “objectivity.” I don’t know if it will be better or worse for journalism in the long run, but we’ve definitely been there before, and if it keeps newspapers alive…
We’ll see, I guess.
Curt M. 08.22.08 at 9:42 pm
I agree: Newspapers need to have more of a point of view. What happened in the last 60 years or so was that newspapers made themselves respectable under the guise of “objectivity” … and they lost their edge.
Having a point of view doesn’t mean making things up or slanting the news. It does mean being up front about your biases and telling readers what you think about a particular story or subject. Reporters have done the research, what do they think? Who’s telling the truth and who’s full of bullshit?
With point of view will come brand loyalty. Maybe.
On a sidenote, see this recent Washington Post article about how British tabloids are losing their place as status indicators to free papers.