Latest print media victim: Blender

http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=135539

by ksvs • 17 years ago

6 4 17 years ago

blhack• 17 years ago

I hate seeing these print publications go, but I can't say that I'm going to do anything to stop it...

They're just too expensive. $6 for a magazine (or more)? When I can get the exact same thing (or a better alternative) online for free so long as I am willing to lend my eyeballs to some advertisers, I am not going to cough up my hard-earned cash just so I can get that joyous tactile feedback of a magazine.

If these magazines want to differentiate themselves from their online counterparts they're going to need to show us, their consumers, that they can do a better job than the bloggers. That is a huge task when you're competing against bloggers who are living the life that they're writing about (I'm looking at you, Bruce Schneier).

Look, a magazine is a delivery mechanism. If you want to start a magazine you have to create your content, then find a publisher to publish it and distribute it, you (or your publisher) have to eat the cost of magazines that don't sell. You need to fill a whole however many pages long your magazine is.

The internet is also a delivery mechanism, the difference is that if you build the content and put it on the digital newstands like reddit,digg, or gibsonandlily.com costs you absolutely nothing, infinitely less than it would cost to put it on its real-world counterpart.

Print media is dying, or is already dead.

Things like Communication Arts, or Print (these are both graphic design magazines) can, I think, remain in business, but the bubble-gum poppy trip such as 17 magazine, or Cosmo are going to disappear shortly (if they haven't already).

Note...me mentioning 17 and Cosmo isn't because I'm a male chauvinist bastard, it's because I grew up in a house with 5 sisters...the house was littered with these magazines.

pchristensen• 17 years ago

I think that, like newspapers, the value is in the content more than the presentation. So magazines with excellent writing (New Yorker, Vanity Fair), better information (Economist), that nail a niche (National Geographic), or that have a positioning value (celeb mags at the checkout isle) will be much better off.

An interesting example of where the magazine format matters is Seed magazine. It's not particularly special content (kind of midway between Popular Science and an academic journal) but it is well designed and beautiful from front to back. I doubt I'd ever read it online but I love the mag. Ditto for National Geographic.

plaes• 17 years ago

Phew... when I saw the headline I thought someone is screwing with the 3D graphics application Blender .

tipjoy• 17 years ago

Why is the first comment on all blog posts about magazines folding something along the lines of "oh no! I just paid $9 for a two year subscription!" $9 is less than most people pay daily at starbucks. No wonder magazines can't stay in business. The perceived value of print magazines has fallen to near zero.

Latest print media victim: Blender

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