Magazine Revenues Take a Long-Term Vacation

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Mid-summer is almost always a slow period for magazines — ad revenue takes a seasonal dip right along with many magazine readers, though the latter are having more fun

The second quarter revenue figures are out today from the Magazine Publishers of America (MPA), and those magazine editors not at the beach may be breaking out in a cold sweat. The more than 250 major titles listed in MPA’s report lost on average 7.4 percent in ad revenue through the second quarter of 2008 compared to the same period last year.

But for many prominent titles, the news is far worse. Take a look at this list:

Business Week (-14%)
Entertainment Weekly (-16.8%)
Forbes (-12.6)
New Yorker (-20.1%)
Newsweek (-22.4%)
Rolling Stone (-24.7%)
Sporting News (-30.9)
Time (-21.1%)
US News & World Report (-30.3%)

Most of these publishers can sustain operations for a while bleeding this much red ink, but unless there is a turnaround fairly soon, expect some dramatic changes in the months and year ahead.

A bunch of magazines have failed in the past year, among them Business 2.0, House & Garden, Jane, Stuff, Premiere and Life. There’s no reason to think some of the magazines listed above may eventually cease publication as well.

The fundamental question facing publishers is how to effectively migrate to the Web. They all have Web sites of varying quality, and some of them are collecting significant online ad revenues. But the imbalance between their huge print operations and their relatively small digital products is an indication that change comes hard to the magazine industry — almost as hard as it comes to the newspaper industry.

And we all know what’s happening to the newspapers.

Tags: Revenue, Magazine, Online Advertising, David Weir

In addition to serving as a BNET Media analyst/blogger, David Weir is a veteran journalist and the author of several books. Weir is a co-founder and vice-president of the Center for Investigative Reporting, as well as an editorial board member of The Nation.

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1

macnamband

07/21/08 | Report as spam

Magazine Reviled

And so one wonders how much (20.1) might have been behind the decision to launch the New Yorker's Obama cover, which, Obama aside, was not well conceived by the cartoonist or considered by the magazine. It would be a terrible shame to lose The New Yorker, and it probably would never happen, but if it did happen, one reason transcends economics: the office is too far above the street and too many of the editors have lived only in ivy-oried towers... All the most respected publications are failing... Just look at David Shipley's decision to reject John McCain's editorial for the New York Times. Shipley could have saved himself such grief if only he'd said, "Thank you for your submission, Senator, and of course we accept it but we'd like you to consider a few refinements, one being how you define 'victory." Instead, the piece was, if reports are accurate, rejected outright, with the caveat that McCain could try again. This is not a subtle difference. How can there be journalism without editors. Now there are only arbiters. Now there's no opportunity to collaborate; merely the dictum, the piece works or it doesn't. Hence these decision seem arbitrary and unfair. The pubs are killing themselves from the inside, quite apart from the economics.
2

danogram

07/21/08 | Report as spam

NYT Seems Headed for a Long Term Vacation

The New York Times is not a government agency and can not, in deed should not, be compelled to print anything they do not wish to print. But it does amaze one to think that the words of the presidential candidate of one of the 2 primary political bodies would not be offered up to your readers. I would believe that NYT truly did shoot its own foot again; as a reader, I should feel slighted that the value of that John McCain piece was denied me, regardless of political persuasion...

Do you suppose the good Mr. Shipley cares more about servicing a personal agenda than he does the NYT readership?