Magazines must find a niche to survive

Editors and journalists talk about how the magazine industry can survive despite fall in sales and publications migrating online.

Can they survive in print for much longer?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Every February the Audit Bureau of Circulation releases the circulation data for magazines and magazine publishers in the UK over the July to December period. A glance at the data for February 2011 consumer magazines shows that the year-on-year percentage of sales by publishing houses has been falling drastically.

Only four out of the 12 publishing houses have registered a year-on-year percentage increase in sales, the highest being 0.7% (BSkyB and Dennis Publishing)

The reality is that, like newspapers, magazines sales, too, have dipped massively in the last few years. Computer Weekly and Accountancy Age join the list of magazines that have migrated to online-only magazines in the recent past.

Chris Wheal was the former sub-editor of Computer Weekly. He says that people misunderstand what the product is in a magazine:

Migration happening, but slowly

According to Wheal, ‘The biggest effect the internet has had on this is that it helps the advertiser reach a larger audience for the same amount.’

Gareth Weekes was the former news editor of Accountancy Age and spoke about how it relied entirely on its revenue for client advertising. He points out that today you can walk into any big company and get a customer loyalty magazine for free. But he reckons that for some publications the allure of multimedia works better to entice viewers online as opposed to the physical copy.

Clare Hopping, editor of Know Your Mobile, an online website owned by Dennis Publishing, agrees with Weekes, saying, ‘With digital, you can do micro-sites and resource centers. It can be produced instantly, so you can get there a lot faster than you can with print.’

But she doesn’t believe that online titles have an advantage over their physical counterparts, mainly because people still get attracted to glossy magazines, especially on journeys where internet access is a problem.

‘People want something to hold. You can’t access websites on a train or when there’s bad signal. Five years ago everyone was talking about how print will die out and how websites will take over but we haven’t seen that at all or as much as everyone’s been saying we’re going to,’ says Hopping.

Online blogger, journalist and author, Paul Bradshaw, says, ‘Though the audience and advertising for magazines is going online, readership has not been affected drastically because magazines are a more luxurious, higher-end product.’

Finding a Niche

Wheal agrees that magazines still hold an advantage, which they need to use wisely. He says that magazines can still survive, provided they carve a niche for themselves in the market.

He uses the success of The Economist as an example to prove that magazines can survive both physically and digitally so as long as you ‘have a strong brand and a niche audience that have a good excuse to invest time and money in your product.’

Before he became a best-selling author, Andy McDermott, worked as an editor for DVD review. He reiterates the importance of standing out from a crowd:  ‘Games and entertainment magazines will suffer because that’s exactly what you can find online. If you’re too general you stand the risk of losing out too quickly.’

Wheal’s solution is for magazines to clearly separate their online and print audience. He says that only the analyses, features and big discussions should be saved for the print magazine.

Though it clearly seems that magazines hold an advantage with their glossy formats and alluring headlines, they need to reinvent themselves and find a niche they can specialize in. Otherwise browsing speeds and 3G may eventually catch up with them.

Did the internet kill the local newspaper?

Was it just the advancement of the digital age or were local newspapers suffering even before that? Senior journalists and editors describe what went wrong and how.

Two former journalists from the Bournemouth Echo talk about how things have changed with regard to local journalism and the power of the internet:

While doing my work experience at the Bournemouth Daily Echo, a senior journalist told me to hold the local newspaper. ‘You see this paper,’ she said, ‘It’s only a skeleton of its former self.’ A few months later Hattie Miles, who spent 22 years working for the Bournemouth Echo, was made redundant by the same newspaper.

Local newspapers all over the country face the same problems: pagination and redundancy. But why is this happening? Has the internet really eaten so deep into its pie?

Gareth Weekes, former editor of the Bournemouth Echo, said: ‘The internet caused our (newspapers’) downfall. The internet was just starting when I left (The Echo) in 1997. We didn’t have a website. Emails were only just starting. It’s undoubtedly the effect of the web.’

Newspapers were never only about news and editorials. Advertising always played a big role in newspapers. When the internet came along, advertisers saw the trend of people migrating online. They wanted to be where the action was. It was much easier for them to migrate online and meet with success.

‘Our papers sold in abundance because people bought it for three reasons – property, jobs and motors advertising,’ said Weekes, who blatantly admits that even he doesn’t think twice before visiting the internet for all three fields today.

Former editor of Insurance Times and media lecturer, Chris Wheal fondly remember how, as an avid sports fanatic, his only update of the Saturday night football games was the 10p (pink) sports paper that was produced on Sunday morning. Today that information is available live – in an instant.

Lead Picture Block from Bournemouth Evening Echo; circa 1992

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Case of Unrealistic Expectations

Wheal believes that local newspapers have shrunk because they have set the benchmark so high for themselves that they are virtually chasing unrealistic profit-margins.

‘If newspapers were prepared to face the same profit margin as Tesco’s, most of them would not have needed to cut jobs. Newspapers need to look at their turnover and income from advertising; if they made 10% profit and they could have 90% of that as cost, they could have carried on employing the same number of journalists, producing the same quality product.’

He adds, ‘They cut costs, which made the product worst, which means people stopped buying it, which means advertisers stopped advertising. Its just a downward spiral.’

Online Journalism Blog founder and journalist, Paul Bradshaw, agrees with Wheal, but he believes that the internet did not kill the local newspaper; it merely rubbed salt into its already bleeding wounds.

Bradshaw explains how in the 70’s and 80’s, the newspaper industry was thriving, which in turn attracted shareholders who expected the same profit margins every year. This led the industry to expand, buy buildings and printing presses and, in the process, accumulate debts so large, it is still suffering from its impact.

‘It’s easy to blame the internet, which is just a technology which is changing consumption. The lack of the local newspaper to compete with that is a better question to ask,’ concludes Bradshaw.

Click here to hear how he describes the floundering local print industry in the United Kingdom.

So while digitisation has taken the printed text onto another platform, it looks like the local newspaper industry was already in a fragile state much before that. In some ways, the internet may actually have resuscitated it, instead of killing it.