The Economy is Killing Off Magazines
by Judy Bachrach
DECEMBER 17, 2009 TAGS:
I’m kind of slow about picking up on bad news when it comes to economic crises (Don’t Acknowledge and Especially Don’t Tell has always been my motto, which applies to nationwide bank and brokerage failures as well as what I spent last month at Loehmann’s). So it wasn’t surprising that two years ago – long after practically everyone else in the world had figured it out and also after quite a number of articles had been published on the subject – I realized maybe something was seriously awry with the magazine biz.
That’s because most of my salary comes from the magazine biz. Who wanted to know something so depressing?
The precipitating cause for the epiphany was an item in the New York Times, which came battering into my consciousness one morning like a rogue elephant with a bad case of intestinal flu. “U.S. News & World Report Editor Resigns,” it read – which wasn’t in itself really surprising. U.S. News editors often left, mostly because of issues with Mort Zuckerman, who owned the weekly, as the magazine then was, and also because its circulation was pathetic: about half of Time’s.
Because of budget constraints, almost 25 percent of the staff had disappeared since 2001. Only cost-cutting, according to the article, was not why this latest editor, Brian Duffy, was leaving. He just wanted, as the newspaper explained, “to complete a book on the American Revolution….”
Nobody trades in a fine-paying executive job for yet another book on the American Revolution.
After that, U.S News declared it would publish twice a month. Then, last November: once a month. Then it said it would concentrate on its online site which might get ads. So that’s when it hit me. We are living in an era of magazine mortality. The shiny fat gems on the newsstands behind the gum and the batteries: So many appear to be going on crash diets. OK! Magazine, In Touch, People and Star, all down at least 10 percent at the cash register. Jon and Kate on the cover can’t compensate for a universal ennui.
So it’s not that the publications actually have to die to qualify for the epidemic. Some are doing OK; others (like Vanity Fair, which -- full disclosure -- pays a chunk of my salary) actually find their paid subscriptions going up. But many are like a forest of old trees. Their limbs are being lopped off at a pretty fast clip.
By the end of this year, up to 500 more people will vanish from Time Inc., where third-quarter ad revenues plummeted $129 million – that’s in addition to the 600 employees who disappeared from its premises last year. Forbes is dismissing up to 60 of its editorial staff. Newsweek, down 160 employees, has decided to scale back on circulation. Reader’s Digest has sought bankruptcy protection, and five Conde Nast titles bit the dust – among them Portfolio, its business magazine, and Gourmet. Earlier this month Nielsen Business Media folded Editor & Publisher and Kirkus Reviews.
Of course one could argue – and believe me I do – that you can’t gauge an entire industry by the vagaries of one magazine. Or even 10. But you can figure out what’s happening, who will survive and who might die, by examining certain trends.
Here’s the obvious one: If there are too many of a certain kind of magazine, that spells trouble for at least a couple of them. That’s why Business Week was just sold to Bloomberg and why Fortune Small Business disappeared.
Here’s another: No matter what the readership, aspirational or inspirational, people aren’t snapping the magazines off the shelf. Town & Country, which targets people with horses and penthouses: down 20 percent at the newsstand; Ladies’ Home Journal, which courts women who cook everything with Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom: down 46 percent; Gourmet, which, until its recent demise, craved those who make their broth from actual meat bones: down 25.4 percent; Architectural Digest, which has a fan base of people with decorators, down 21.2 percent; Better Homes & Gardens, whose readers sew their own curtains, down 35.5 percent.
Money, which appeals to readers who don’t have enough of it: down 33.9 percent on the newsstand. Fortune, which wants those who are on their way to amassing it: down 29 percent; Sports Illustrated, which is still under the illusion it can woo back Internet-addicted teenagers with photos of emphatically bosomed models in (painted) bikinis: down 24.8 percent.
What has happened here? Well, for one thing – fewer people these days want to shell out 5 bucks for an impulse buy on the supermarket checkout line. For another, it’s just as everyone says, a perfect storm: The dual depredations of a terrible economy and lots of free content on the Internet have knocked out a number of magazines.
But in a larger sense, and this is the part no one’s discussing, what’s happened recently to the glossies is indicative of yet another national wave, similar to the one that sent brokerage houses and banks crashing a year ago: fear and financial incomprehension. Nothing makes sense any more. Publishers don’t have to suffer a decline in circulation to see their ad revenue vanish. And conversely, certain magazines don’t have to be especially successful to see an increase in ad content. Family Circle and Ladies Home Journal, both rejected by the public on the newsstands, got a recent jump in ad pages: 12 percent and 5 percent respectively.
Why them? For the same reason Real Simple, Glamour, Good Housekeeping, O, and Southern Cooking are currently the modest beneficiaries of the new economy. Because they hold out the promise of easy solutions in brutal times: uncomplicated menus, clutter reduction, budget paring. All the dilemmas that the four H’s -- Heinz, Hellmann’s, household detergent and hairspray -- can fix.
Once upon a time in the old economy, the secret to a truly great popular magazine was its ability to dig up what we didn’t know, the dirty secrets of politicians, captains of industry, and rock stars. What we used to call the Holy Shit factor. Meaning someone would pick up an issue, read amazingly detailed revelations about a provocative subject -- and those would be the first two words out of the reader’s mouth. Holy shit was the cornerstone of great journalism – and even great newsstand sales. It was the guarantor of a publication’s success over 100 years ago when muckrakers were in fashion. And it has remained so for a very long time.
Now we may be heading for a period where we want H.S. to stay hidden. There’s so much of it around – not just on the Internet, where it costs us nothing, but in our daily lives, our dwindling bank balances, our vanishing jobs, where it costs us dearly. Readers are beginning to see there’s nothing holy about it.
Judy Bachrach, a contributing editor for Vanity Fair, is the founder of thecheckoutline.org, an online advice column for friends and relatives of the terminally ill.
That’s because most of my salary comes from the magazine biz. Who wanted to know something so depressing?The precipitating cause for the epiphany was an item in the New York Times, which came battering into my consciousness one morning like a rogue elephant with a bad case of intestinal flu. “U.S. News & World Report Editor Resigns,” it read – which wasn’t in itself really surprising. U.S. News editors often left, mostly because of issues with Mort Zuckerman, who owned the weekly, as the magazine then was, and also because its circulation was pathetic: about half of Time’s.
Because of budget constraints, almost 25 percent of the staff had disappeared since 2001. Only cost-cutting, according to the article, was not why this latest editor, Brian Duffy, was leaving. He just wanted, as the newspaper explained, “to complete a book on the American Revolution….”
Nobody trades in a fine-paying executive job for yet another book on the American Revolution.
After that, U.S News declared it would publish twice a month. Then, last November: once a month. Then it said it would concentrate on its online site which might get ads. So that’s when it hit me. We are living in an era of magazine mortality. The shiny fat gems on the newsstands behind the gum and the batteries: So many appear to be going on crash diets. OK! Magazine, In Touch, People and Star, all down at least 10 percent at the cash register. Jon and Kate on the cover can’t compensate for a universal ennui.
So it’s not that the publications actually have to die to qualify for the epidemic. Some are doing OK; others (like Vanity Fair, which -- full disclosure -- pays a chunk of my salary) actually find their paid subscriptions going up. But many are like a forest of old trees. Their limbs are being lopped off at a pretty fast clip.
By the end of this year, up to 500 more people will vanish from Time Inc., where third-quarter ad revenues plummeted $129 million – that’s in addition to the 600 employees who disappeared from its premises last year. Forbes is dismissing up to 60 of its editorial staff. Newsweek, down 160 employees, has decided to scale back on circulation. Reader’s Digest has sought bankruptcy protection, and five Conde Nast titles bit the dust – among them Portfolio, its business magazine, and Gourmet. Earlier this month Nielsen Business Media folded Editor & Publisher and Kirkus Reviews. Of course one could argue – and believe me I do – that you can’t gauge an entire industry by the vagaries of one magazine. Or even 10. But you can figure out what’s happening, who will survive and who might die, by examining certain trends.
Here’s the obvious one: If there are too many of a certain kind of magazine, that spells trouble for at least a couple of them. That’s why Business Week was just sold to Bloomberg and why Fortune Small Business disappeared.
Here’s another: No matter what the readership, aspirational or inspirational, people aren’t snapping the magazines off the shelf. Town & Country, which targets people with horses and penthouses: down 20 percent at the newsstand; Ladies’ Home Journal, which courts women who cook everything with Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom: down 46 percent; Gourmet, which, until its recent demise, craved those who make their broth from actual meat bones: down 25.4 percent; Architectural Digest, which has a fan base of people with decorators, down 21.2 percent; Better Homes & Gardens, whose readers sew their own curtains, down 35.5 percent.
Money, which appeals to readers who don’t have enough of it: down 33.9 percent on the newsstand. Fortune, which wants those who are on their way to amassing it: down 29 percent; Sports Illustrated, which is still under the illusion it can woo back Internet-addicted teenagers with photos of emphatically bosomed models in (painted) bikinis: down 24.8 percent.
What has happened here? Well, for one thing – fewer people these days want to shell out 5 bucks for an impulse buy on the supermarket checkout line. For another, it’s just as everyone says, a perfect storm: The dual depredations of a terrible economy and lots of free content on the Internet have knocked out a number of magazines.
But in a larger sense, and this is the part no one’s discussing, what’s happened recently to the glossies is indicative of yet another national wave, similar to the one that sent brokerage houses and banks crashing a year ago: fear and financial incomprehension. Nothing makes sense any more. Publishers don’t have to suffer a decline in circulation to see their ad revenue vanish. And conversely, certain magazines don’t have to be especially successful to see an increase in ad content. Family Circle and Ladies Home Journal, both rejected by the public on the newsstands, got a recent jump in ad pages: 12 percent and 5 percent respectively.
Why them? For the same reason Real Simple, Glamour, Good Housekeeping, O, and Southern Cooking are currently the modest beneficiaries of the new economy. Because they hold out the promise of easy solutions in brutal times: uncomplicated menus, clutter reduction, budget paring. All the dilemmas that the four H’s -- Heinz, Hellmann’s, household detergent and hairspray -- can fix.Once upon a time in the old economy, the secret to a truly great popular magazine was its ability to dig up what we didn’t know, the dirty secrets of politicians, captains of industry, and rock stars. What we used to call the Holy Shit factor. Meaning someone would pick up an issue, read amazingly detailed revelations about a provocative subject -- and those would be the first two words out of the reader’s mouth. Holy shit was the cornerstone of great journalism – and even great newsstand sales. It was the guarantor of a publication’s success over 100 years ago when muckrakers were in fashion. And it has remained so for a very long time.
Now we may be heading for a period where we want H.S. to stay hidden. There’s so much of it around – not just on the Internet, where it costs us nothing, but in our daily lives, our dwindling bank balances, our vanishing jobs, where it costs us dearly. Readers are beginning to see there’s nothing holy about it.
Judy Bachrach, a contributing editor for Vanity Fair, is the founder of thecheckoutline.org, an online advice column for friends and relatives of the terminally ill.
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