It does not surprise me that we are seeing more magazine launches. The poor economy is flushing out the niche markets that don’t drive new readership growth and advertising revenue. However, technology, business, and consumer products are changing at the fastest pace ever! Both business and lesiure activities of interest just 2 years ago, last year, and last month are changing more rapidly for each of us.
The specials is of particular attention in these stats for magazine newsstand titles. It’s time for all publishers to test their niche and consider new growth based on a changing audience.
Earlier in the week Folio magazine reported on the increase of the pulse of companies bringing new titles. Today, the early statistics of August 09 show that there were a total of 75 titles launched, almost double the 43 ones in August 08 and even higher than August 07 with 61 new titles.
For new magazine startups, there are now digital media tools that have dramatically reduced the cost to launch. I hope we see this magazine growth trend continue!
Print newspapers have learned many lessons in the new digital information age. Some print news industry leaders have also come to understand how the “Wisdom of Crowds” and social media networks will be critical to their future. Individuals, groups, and social platforms now facilitate story advancement and exposure. So we must understand how crowds will drive our published stories. But it will be how we design that determines or success in the last published mile to the readers.
The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations, published in 2004 Wikipedia – The Wisdom of Crowds
But to reach a mass audience, we still depend on a mass media channel. Magazine publishers own this niche. The periodic cycle afforded to magazines allows for the organization and graphic presentation of a proven popular or developing story.
Publishers must be more focused on the graphic presentation of the news than creating the news. The news will be created and promoted without you in the future. Have you ever seen the EPIC 2014 and update EPIC 2015 video by Making IT Happen UK? This 1990′s video is a ficticious prediction that provides insight about several corporate and technological events (Googlezon excluded) that have paralled reality.
In the year 2014 the New York times has gone offline. The Fourth Estate’s fortunes have waned …What happened to the news? …and what is EPIC: Launch Video EPIC 2015
Understand as a publisher that your job is to design and present interesting information. Provide visual communication that makes any other news source or medium (including newspapers) pale in comparison to your presentation.
Magazine publishers must learn what newspapers have done right and wrong. Publishers must adapt their digital and web brands to functions as the online newspaper equivalent for their niche even if they focus their main revenue and media deliverable in print format.
We continue to watch and learn. We must adapt more quickly than those publishing mediums that don’t act quickly enough. We must understand both our readers and advertisers needs.
Newspapers are dying for a few reasons. Readers don’t want to pay for yesterday’s news, and advertisers follow them. Your iPhone, your laptop, Is much more handy than New York Times on Sunday. And we should save trees in the end. So it’s enough to bury any industry. So, should we rather ask, “Can anything save newspapers?”
Jacek Utko is an extraordinary Polish newspaper designer whose redesigns for papers in Eastern Europe not only win awards, but increase circulation by up to 100%. Can good design save the newspaper? It just might.
We must not be so proud of our content that we decide it’s only available to the elderly, affulient, and elite -EPIC reference. We must be taught the value of web traffic and how long term dividends from SEO can greatly exceed the short term paid content wall.
We must learn that if we are designing truly great graphical information communications, the more people that we can expose to our creative work will always outproduce micro-payments results for individual access or short term subscription.
It does not surprise me that print media (and even print mail) will increase in price. We can only hope for enhancements in value and that the high cost print media that reach our porch or mailbok will impove in quality.
The NY Times on my front proch should not contain any section I “never” read. It should be colorful and have simple icons to show me where to go online for more engagement.
“Dear Home Delivery Subscriber,
“Effective Monday, June 1, there will be an increase in the price of the home delivery of The Times…We regret having to raise rates at this time of financial challenge for so many cross the nation. It is, however, one of a number of steps we must take in order to secure the core qualities that define The Times and make it so highly valued buy the most discerning readers.”
![Falling leaves... [explored]](http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6231/6383173405_42abd50959_s.jpg "Falling leaves... [explored]")
