Tag Archive for 'magazines'

Thoughts On The State Of Magazines

Published
by
Matt
on Jan 28, 2009
in ideas
. Comments
  • Has anyone seen the new (starting in January on) issues of a lot of national magazines? It blows my mind to see how small they are. Wild to see how many ads were pulled after their year contract expired. The December issue of GQ is almost twice as big as the January issue.
  • I still love magazines. There’s something about the physical aspect of them that’s a refreshing change from the web. Also, to me anyway, the content seems one more step “finished” in the great writing spectrum. Which possibly looks like this Post-it Note >> Twitter >> Blog Post >> Magazine >> Book.
  • What’s the problem with magazine advertising? Can they not lower the prices to lure advertisers back? Is it just a “dead medium”? Are they stubborn, stupid, or just handcuffed? I’d really like to talk to someone at a mag who could explain this to me.
  • Will e-book readers, like the soon-to-be announced Kindle 2, “save” magazines? Digital essentially nullifies printing costs. And the e-book format wouldn’t entirely kill the physical/tactile thing.
  • Magazines should include unique URLs at the end of each article saying something like “Continue the conversation” or “Learn more” and then include a simple web address that hosts the article or discussion for the article. Also, advertisers who have ads near the print version can continue to run ads on the article page. Would this work?