The Future of Magazines

The always amusing New York Observer recently featured its magazine issue – a surefire way to sell copies in media-crazed Manhattan. Among the articles was a piece with several prominent editors like Wired's Chris Anderson and Esquire's David Granger about the future of magazines. Their conclusion: not much is changing except perhaps the technology that constitutes the flipable page. Vanity Fair’s Graydon Carter had visions of a flexible plastic screen to which magazines could be beamed that I’m sure I saw in Popular Mechanics 10 years ago.

But beyond the speculation about various whatsamagoogies that might make paper irrelevant, the rest of what constitutes a magazine will have the stability of the molecular structure of water. Long-form article? Here to stay. Glossy ads? Ditto. The magazine, you see, is well loved by millions and so is largely immune from the forces ravaging newspapers. At least according to these editors.

I am an old magazine guy myself. I’ve worked for them and been published in them. I love to read them. Magazines are like that old love you can’t help thinking about every once in awhile even though you are happily married and doing well, thank you very much. If I’m sitting with a buddy at a bar and the conversation turns to what we’d be doing if we weren’t doing what we are doing now, starting a magazine will always be at or near the top of myself. That will be met with a chuckle and a snappy retort along the lines of “Right, and maybe you’ll be Hillary Swank’s date to the Oscars next year, too.”

For as much as millions of us are in love with magazines, almost all of us know that the magazine business is right up there with buying a boat as a sure way to be relieved of a lot of money in a hurry. And there are lot more zeroes involved with a magazine.

The shift that these editors seem to have missed, as gauzy eyed infatuateurs might be expected to, is that the magazine is no longer the entity that matters. It is but one of many delivery vehicles for content in a world in which the audience likes to dictate its preferred channels for communication.

Vanity Fair – I’ll continue to continue to pick on Mr. Carter as I’m a happy and loyal subscriber -- is content that embodies and expresses a certain perspective on the world to readers who are intrigued, entertained, and engaged by that perspective. That it happens to occur on glossy paper is largely a result of the time at which it was relaunched.

Who gets this shift? The unsinkable Martha Stewart and Martha Stewart Omnimedia. Note that it is omnimedia. That may reflect her deep-seated desire to be the ruler of all she surveys, but is more likely a realization that you have to be able to deliver the goods to your audience in as many ways as they want to get them. One can no longer be a magazine with a web site (or a web site with a magazine for that matter). Martha’s presence on radio and television, in magazines, and on-line are extensions of a singular editorial point of view. There are experts at Omnimedia who know all about how to put out a great magazine, but they are counterbalanced by experts in flowers, cooking, and crafting who know how to best leverage all of their media options for maximum impact. Each piece is integral to the whole, not a second-tier appendage to a mothership medium.

Who else gets it? That other diva of the daytime, Oprah. She has branched out into multiple media and even pushes the envelope even farther than Martha. Who is trying to create the world’s largest online classroom? It ain’t Harvard, it’s Oprah.

Are magazines here to stay? I hope so and think that as long as there is a desire to curl up on the couch on a rainy day, read at the beach, tear out a cartoon to stick on the fridge, catch up on the news when all electronic devices must be switched off, and for a hundred other reasons, traditional print media will continue to exist. They’ll just occupy a very different part of the value chain for readers, editors, and publishers alike.

Fairwell to Motto

The magazine Motto has ceased publication. Started as Worthwhile, the magazine espoused a mission of "purpose, passion, and profit" and had a strong subtext of sustainability and social responsibility. I was a blogger for the magazine in its early days and am sorry to see it go.

I am curious about its demise given my own interest in both publishing and social enterprise. Though I can only speculate from afar, I see three reasons that Motto failed:
1) It was principally a print publication at a time when off-line media is having a tough time. A glossy magazine is an expensive proposition in the best of times; given the current climate, it would be tough to make a new entry fly even with deep pockets and an editorial focus on celebrity gossip never mind a niche focus like finding deeper purpose through business;
2) It was an advertising-driven business model. The magazine never had very many ad pages and ad dollars are shifting on-line (see item above). It is enormously expensive to get up to the circulation numbers that attract national advertisers. Given the niche market, I would have at least experimented with a higher subscription price to make the publication less dependent on space advertising;
3) They were under capitalized. The publication ceased operations after four years. It typically takes seven years for a magazine to reach profitability. Unless you have deep, deep pockets, it is difficult to survive that long. I would have started on-line and only gone to paper when I could demonstrate market demand for it.

Founders Anita Sharpe and Kevin Salwen may have been ahead of their time. Social enterprise is much hotter now than it was four years ago. They may also have cast their net too wide: they were about finding purpose in work no matter the type of organization for which one worked although they featured a lot of what one would call social enterprises. A tighter bead on being the journal for the movement might have helped.

I'll miss Motto and wish Anita and Kevin the best of luck in their next adventure.