Innovations in Newspapers highlights quotes of interest from American magazine editors regarding the future of the medium. Some key excerpts:
While I do think online content could overtake newspapers, I believe that print magazines – because they are less ephemeral and more enduring, because they are more beautiful, because they offer perspective and amplify what people get elsewhere – will not be overtaken in the same way as newspapers,”
-Richard Stengel, Managing Editor, Time Magazine“Print will continue to be the primary engine of the magazine business, as long as we continue to offer great stories, great photography and great editorial packages.”
-Bill Falk, Editor-in-Chief, The Week Magazine
Though there is much discussion about the demise of the print medium, we believe that a considered approach to magazines will ensure they remain viable for years to come. Here are a few reasons:
1. Not many people seem interested in reading long-form journalism (The New Yorker, NYT Magazine, etc) in front of their screens.
2. Magazines are easily portable for a plane ride, or the commute home. Also, they can be a good weekend digest of the week’s events when you are away from the computer/PDA. Though digital books and interfaces for the consumption of media are emerging, none seem poised to make a significant impact.
3. The medium allows for deeper analysis and context of daily news.
4. The sensory experience that print affords — the feel of different paper stocks, glossy photos, beautiful layout, design — simply cannot be replicated digitally.
Rex Hammock says it best:
“Magazines that people display on coffee tables will exist as long as there are coffee tables.”
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I’ve wondered whether I’ll still be in business in the future!
June 29th, 2007 at 6:30 pm
There’s something in that last quote that reminds me of something I realized a few years back and wrote about on the Core77 design forum. We were discussing CD storage products:
Magazines on a coffee table are no different that easily viewed music collections. Sure, just like music they have a functional use, but they’re as much about branding the owner as the clothes on their back.
June 30th, 2007 at 6:50 pm
I agree with you (I guess I should since I work for a magazine publisher). There’s an intangible quality to the reader-medium relationship and to the medium itself that is unique and hard to replicate. Undoubtedly some genres will fare better than others so it’s an intriguing question to speculate about which ones (weekly, monthly, mens, womens, specialist, generalist). In a way, magazine owners have always been good at what web 2.0 is so good at – creating and nurturing communities of likeminded people.
July 1st, 2007 at 1:47 pm
A very interesting read! Despite the fact that I’m a magazine retailer myself, I hardly ever seem to actually buy a magazine for myself these days as it is!
May 26th, 2009 at 2:59 pm