Magazines, Parcel Packing and a Bleak Future

The trend concerning the future of newspapers and magazines is even more alarming in the States than it is in Germany. Many magazines have already ceased production, with a few still fighting for their survival (Fortune, Forbes, Business Week).  Yet, their end seems to be inevitable too. The reason is given by the emergence of the internet and the subsequent shift of advertising from print into new media, resulting in a substantial loss of profits for publishing companies. The American market has unfortunately always dictated the trends that have reached continental Europe a few years later. I don't see why this should be any different this time. We will see the end of many established magazines who failed to reduce their costs to a level that would compensate for their losses in revenue caused by the reduction in advertisement. We must be aware that we can't reduce the loss of advertisement revenue to talks about the effect of the credit crisis. Even in an economic boom, advertisement revenue will never return to where it used to be. 

So what are we to make of this dusky and bleak future? We have to understand one fundamental fact. Journalism will continue. It's a process. Publishing simply is the wrapper that you put around it to make this process profitable. Put it another way. Putting books into parcels is a process. Getting orders from people and then shipping those parcels to them at profit - that’s a business. Amazon is the business. Packing books is the process. This process will continue in the same way that journalism will continue; even if Amazon dissapears. Hence what matters is finding the business model that fits this process.  The search for this business model will cause the removal of outdated and antiquated competitors whose strategy was inferior to the lightening pace that technology is moving at. 

Just as natural selection allows only those individuals with the most suitable traits to survive, only magazines with the right business model and strategy will champion the struggle for existence. Just like in nature, inferior competitiors will recklessly be driven out of the market.

So what will ensure the survival of a magazine the future? Many different oppinions exist upon this topic. Yet I believe it is vital to point out one definite trend. At this point I have to give credit to Michael Mendenhall, a managing director at HP, who I had lunch with last wednesday. Mendenhall pointed out to me the effect and significance that people like Paris Hilton or Ann Wintour, chief editor of Vogue, have upon their readers. The persistent success of these characters clearly shows one thing. If you really want to attract and interest people you have to start producing news that are opinionated and arbitrary, and might even contain a slight element of dogmatism. This will define your newspaper or magazine. There is no need to simply repeat news without adding value. Internet or television will always be much quicker in that respect. However, once you have something unique in your magazine, some editor or journalist who looks at something from a completely different perspective, or who portrays a situation in a different light, your provocative and unconventional approach will ensure the attention of your readers. If used thoughtfully, this represents a great advantage that newspapers can have over any form of media. Thus, I believe that that a magazine like FOCUS should dare to touch upon a variety of controversial topics, taking sides where necessary, in order to get a more charismatic image, an image that distinguishes the magazine from other competitors, making it a unique source of information. This in my oppinion, will inevitably increase its chance to survive. 

J