Adios, Ms. Reichl?
Condé Nast announced yesterday that they were closing four magazines, shockingly including Gourmet. (Click here for the NYT article on the subject.) Cookie? Never heard of it. But Gourmet? I was disappointed when Domino folded, but at least Domino was a relatively new magazine. Gourmet is practically a grand dame by magazine standards, in print for nearly seventy years. Wow.
Okay, maybe it’s ironic for me, a blogger and reader of blogs, to sit here marveling at the decline of print media. I get a lot more recipes from Smitten Kitchen and Epicurious than I do directly from any magazine. Still, the developments of the last year in the newspaper and magazine industries have shocked even me. I have to admit, I have not ever contributed any money to a newspaper subscription. I read a physical newspaper living at home during high school, but since then it’s all been my college’s free newsletters and the USA Today that the Best Western leaves outside my door when I travel. As must be obvious to any of our followers, I read the New York Times, but I read it online.
That said, though, magazines I pay money for. Magazine websites in general don’t seem to be anything like as good as the actual magazine — and they don’t need to be. Most magazines aren’t dependent on being the first with a new bit of news, required to get things out before a print cycle could possibly be completed like a newspaper. As long as they remain interesting, a little lag in the print cycle is just fine. I subscribe to several magazines, and regularly buy several others on the newsstand just for the pleasure of reading while I’m out. I know I’m not the only one; virtually every woman I know regularly reads at least one magazine. You’d think magazines wouldn’t be in so much danger of going under.
As we’ve all heard repeatedly during print media’s latest issues, though, the money isn’t made in the subscriptions or the newsstand sales. It’s in the advertising. That, sadly, puts this section of the publishing industry squarely with the rest of us in the amorphous world of our complex economy, where declines virtually anywhere can affect what happens elsewhere. It seems really perverse that a magazine with good circulation, a magazine that people are actually buying could close in the absence of mismanagement, but it’s clear that the current market is going to require more than just readers.
Hell if I know what do to about it, or what’s going to end up happening. But I have to say that much as I love the internet, if print magazines don’t find a way to make their way through this crisis, it’s going to be a real shame. Gourmet is not one of the magazines whose closure will reduce me to a gibbering wreck, but those magazines do exist. (If Scientific American goes under after all these years I might consider it a sign of the apocalypse.) If any of our readers have thoughts on whether the publishing industry has a way to get through this without a complete overhaul of how they do business, I’d love to hear them.
Hrmm. No good ideas on how the print mags should get through this, there is the oft-repeated mantra of putting more content online (which then of course puts you at risk of losing sub revenue since everything is freely available on-screen … NYT, anyone?) but I would like to point out that a few magazines (so far) seem to be managing it. The New Yorker, for instance, seems to be in OK shape, and from a purely casual reader point of view I venture to say this is due in part to universally praised, high-quality content, which people will, it seems, pay for, even though some (all?) of it is available online. (I think this is partly because the articles are so meaty and long and picture-less, the content doesn’t lend itself as well to an online read – much better to sit back with the real thing for an hour or two). Also, as is obvious from a casual flip-through, The New Yorker isn’t spending a ton of money on glossy photo spreads and high-concept visual imagery (see Vogue and, one guesses, Gourmet). I have no idea what they pay their contributors, but the prestige of getting published in the New Yorker might, perhaps, keep some costs low.
Anyway, I’d think that mags with a similar profile – revered content and lower costs – i.e. The Economist? – might do OK, while some of your glossier, younger, serving-a-less-defined-niche magazines might be suffering. I’d be surprised if there aren’t more cutbacks in some crowded categories like bridal, women’s beauty/health, and particularly home decor and furnishing. How many people are really fantasizing about new kitchens these days?
I think Vogue will be OK, but will Vanity Fair cut back visibly? And who knows, maybe New Yorker isn’t as healthy as I think it is. I also hear that Food & Wine is doing pretty badly. ??
Ha. Well, I am fantasizing about a new kitchen these days but only because I have developed a bad case of glass tile envy. Given that I don’t actually own my kitchen that doesn’t do much good for anyone.
I have to admit that though I have a lot of magazines I read, the mainstream mags that I would be most saddened to lose as individuals are the ones that are in much less crowded categories (e.g. Scientific American, Wired). With luck, those will be the ones hit least hard by this process? Aside from that, I’d be bummed to lose Harper’s Bazaar, as I tend to like its content best of the women’s fashion magazines (a little less high society-obsessed than Vogue), but if InStyle folded… well, I’d just read Lucky.