“The Internet is not a problem for magazines and newspapers.
It is a problem for the paper industry.”
Emilio Arzcarraga Jea, President of Televisa, Mexico.
This Friday, BusinessWeek will present its new graphic design.
My reaction is WHY?
This is one of the most successful weekend reads in the United States.
The current design is strong, clear, well-organized and easy to read.
So … I am worried about any cosmetic lifting.
This magazine was redesigned four years ago, and in my opinion as a regular subscriber, BusinessWeek doesn’t need any makeup.
A brilliant design parody of a VOGUE magazine without ads.
The reality is quite different.
Vogue is fat.
Vogue is difficult not only to read but just to look at.
Vogue becomes a coffee table book every month.
Too much for too little.
The Chicago Tribune interviews some of the leading editors of American magazines.
Some quotes:
“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,” Time managing editor Richard Stengel said by e-mail.
Here are some of the things Stengel and other top editors told us in e-mail responses about trends, the Internet and other influences in the world of print magazines.
-Bob Cohn | Executive editor | Wired
PRINT VS. ONLINE: “First, we’ll watch and learn from the newspaper industry, which faces much more serious and imminent competition from the Web. Beyond that, magazines have at least three things going for them: The marriage of design (lush photography, cool typography, inventive illustration) and words is much harder to capture online; your screen – whether it’s a cell phone or a desktop or a tablet – is a lousy way to read long-form journalism; [and] the magazine is the ultimate form factor – portable, rollable, tearable. Physicality is good.”
-Richard Stengel | Managing editor | Time
TRENDS: “I think we’re exemplifying one trend, which is a cleaner, more navigable design, and a more premium feel. Magazines go into people’s homes, and, at least for a newsmagazine, it needs to feel timely and timeless – in a sense, it’s like doing a monthly that comes out weekly.”
MORE TRENDS: “Of course, the other trend that is ubiquitous is how to transition magazine content online. I more and more think that online readers don’t want print translated into digital content – they want content unique to the online medium. So, for us, it’s how do you translate the qualities of the brand … into unique content for our Web site, which is now 24/7.”
-Janice Min | Editor in chief | Us Weekly
INFLUENTIAL EDITORS: “One of the most influential editors – and I’m not just saying this because I work for him – is [Rolling Stone founder] Jann Wenner. … And secondly, I’m just going to say a name everyone else says: David Remnick. Even if you aren’t reading his magazine, the New Yorker is so well-regarded that it’s the only magazine where intelligent people feel deep, existential shame if they don’t have a subscription.”
PRINT VS. ONLINE: “Online will eat into print, but it will never destroy it. Until people want to take laptops to the beach, there will always be room for magazines.”
-Will Dana | Managing editor | Rolling Stone
TRENDS: “To me, the big rule right now is that you can’t be bland and you can’t suck. There is a huge rush in the industry to think of your publication as a brand, and then extend that brand onto platforms. This is obviously a crucial thing to be doing, but in all this thinking about how you are going to reinvent yourself, you had better not forget about what got you established in the first place.”
PRINT VS. ONLINE: “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
TRENDS: Shorter stories, especially in the front of the magazine. More emphasis on perspective and commentary, and less on original reportage, scoops , and long-winded essays. Downsizing of staffs.
PRINT VS. ONLINE: “Readers still find print magazines more convenient, more portable , and more pleasurable to read. At The Week, we recently found this out the hard way, when we ran an online-only issue as an advertiser-driven promotion to coincide with Earth Day. I was inundated with angry e-mail from subscribers who said they loved reading The Week while commuting, in bed or on the toilet.”
-Cindi Leive | Editor -in chief | Glamour
I got the last issue of Monocle in the mail today.
210 pages with a lot of “caviar journalism.”
This magazine is becoming like a sushi publication.
The 5th issue (July-August 2007) ranks the World’s Top 20 Most Liveable Cities.
With Munich, Germany as the best.
As a Catalan, I will dispute that Madrid deserves the 10th position while Barcelona is only 13th, but this is not mathematics.
There are many great stories:
One about The Perfect High Street with a selection of the ideal stores that you and I would like to have just around the corner.
From an Apple store to a Danish Emmerys deli.
And another one about City Slickers, with the best in urban design.
From the Tokyo police boxes to the Athens cinemas.
I don’t know about circulation figures, but the only thing that matters to me is that as soon as I open the envelope, I sit, I read, I enjoy and I start to count the days until I get the next issue.
My renewal is going to be easy.
Many newspapers publish their front page as a PDF on their Web sites and many even publish the entire newspaper’s content.
iTunes’ capability of downloading and presenting PDFs next to podcasts makes it a great delivery mechanism.
Some publications are taking full advantage of the combination of audio and print materials.
Make magazine has a good list of Podcasts which have exploited this opportunity.
This may become more relevant in the near future as portable devices become increasingly capable of reading PDFs (most smartphones do currently).
Apple’s iPhone will include this capability from the beginning.
Why not create PDF versions of certain stories and attach them to the podcasts?
Users want print products?
Newspapers can certainly shine here.
Technorati Tags: Apple, iTunes, Podcast, RSS
Car and Driver has made a mayor redesign. They realize that 80% of their readers don’t subscribe to the magazine and thus have increased their online offerings, including the complete migration of some columns from print to the Web. This with the objective of liberating valuable print space to make the magazine more graphically rich. I’ll love those bigger pictures of my favorite cars!
To complement the strategy, Car and Driver will also introduce a sponsored mobile site.
Now, this is just what magazines and newspapers need to be doing, exploiting each medium’s advantages and providing users a complete multiple-media experience.
Now, the next step should be Video and Audio subscriptions. How about videos taken during test drives pushed directly to my portable player?
Read more about this in Advertising Age.
