5.7 Influence of the Internet on the Magazine Industry

In March of 2010, Consumerist published a story titled “Print edition of TV Guide tells me to go online to read most of cover story.” According to the article, TV Guide printed a story listing “TV’s Top 50 Families,” but shocked readers by including only the top 20 families in its print version. To discover the rest of the list, readers needed to go online (Villarreal, 2010). As dismayed as some readers find themselves, this story reflects an ongoing trend in magazine journalism: the move toward online reporting.

Just like their newspaper cousins, magazines have felt the impact and influence of the Internet. With so much information available online, advertisers and readers have turned to the Internet, causing declines in both revenue and readership. These changes have forced magazines to adapt to an increasingly online market.

Online-Only Magazines

In 1995, Salon launched the first major online-only magazine. The award-winning news and entertainment website boasts that it “combines original investigative stories, breaking news, provocative personal essays, and highly respected criticism along with popular staff-written blogs about politics, technology, and culture (Salon).” Like many print magazines, the site divides content into sections including entertainment, books, comics, life, news and politics, and technology and business. With an average of 5.8 million monthly unique visitors, this online magazine demonstrates the potential successes of Internet-based publications (Salon).

Other online-only magazines include Slate and PC Magazine. All three magazines, like most online publications, support themselves in part through ads that appear alongside articles and other content. Founded in 1996, Slate considers itself “a daily magazine on the Web” by providing a “general interest publication offering analysis and commentary about politics, news, and culture (Slate).” The successful magazine has won numerous awards for its contributions to journalism.

PC Magazine differs somewhat from Slate or Salon in that it can trace its origins to a print publication. First published in 1982, the computer magazine published hard-copy issues for more than 15 years before announcing in 2008 that it would cease its print edition in January 2009. In an open letter to its readers, PC Magazine discussed the transition:

Starting in February 2009, PC Magazine will become a 100-percent digital publication. So, in addition to our popular network of Websites…we’ll offer PC Magazine Digital Edition to all of our print subscribers. The PC Magazine Digital Edition has actually been available since 2002. So for thousands of you, the benefits of this unique medium are already clear. And those benefits will continue to multiply in the coming months, as we work hard to enhance your digital experience (Ulanoff, 2008).

Though it sounds fitting that a computer-focused publication transitioned to one of the first print magazines to move to an entirely online form, it cited financial reasons rather than creative ones. In describing the decision, Jason Young, chief executive of Ziff Davis Media, said, “The viability for us to continue to publish in print just isn’t there anymore (Clifford, 2008).” Unfortunately for the magazine industry, Young’s sentiment reflects a trend building for some time. Several other publications have followed in PC Magazine’s footsteps, making the move from print to online-only. Print publications such as Elle Girl and Teen People now publish exclusively on the Internet. As printing costs rise and advertising and subscription revenues decrease, more magazines will likely make a similar shift.

Magazine-Like Websites

In recent years, websites that function much as magazines once did without officially publishing print editions themselves have become an increasingly popular online model. For example, Pitchfork Media debuted as an Internet publication focused on the music industry in 1995. The site offers readers criticism and commentary on contemporary music and has many of the same features as a traditional music magazine: reviews, news, articles, and interviews. Whether intentional or not, the site capitalizes on the success of print magazines by following their format. Of course, the website also has many features that print publications could never achieve, such as providing a streaming playlist of music, music videos, or a documentary decrying the brilliance of the Belle and Sebastian album “If You’re Feeling Sinister.” This hybrid of magazine-like content with new-media content offers a possible vision of the digital future of print publications.

Print Magazines With Online Presences

Indeed, most print magazines have created websites. Nearly every major print publication has a site available either for free or through subscription. Yet intrinsic differences exist between the print and online media. Bernadette Geyer, author of a poetry chapbook, What Remains, discusses the practical contrasts between online and print journals saying:

I will read a print journal cover to cover because I can bookmark where I left off…. Simply taking all of the content of what would have been a print issue and putting it online with links from a Table of Contents is all well and good in theory, but I have to ask, how many people actually sit and read all of the contents of an online journal that publishes several authors/genres per issue (Geyer, 2010)?

She asks a reasonable question, and one which most magazines have already asked themselves. In light of this dilemma, magazines with online editions have sought ways to attract readers who may not, in fact, read much. Most websites also include online-only content such as blogs, podcasts, and daily news updates that, naturally, they cannot make available in print form. The additional features on magazines’ websites likely stem from a need to attract audiences with shorter attention spans and less time to devote to reading entire articles.

Magazines can court online readers by offering back-issue content. Readers can browse old articles without having to remember in which issue the content first appeared. The cost for this varies from publication to publication. For example, CooksIllustrated.com reprints recipes from previous issues as part of a paid online membership service, while CookingLight.com offers back issues for free. Some magazines have online archive collections, though those collections generally do not print entire articles or complete issues. Time, for example, offers “hand-picked covers and excerpts from the best articles on a wide variety of subjects (Time).” Time suggests that one should “use them as chronological guides to Time’s past coverage of a person, event, or topic (Time).” Still, even without the entire collection online, people can benefit from having the capability to assess articles from 1923 on a computer.

Is Print Dead?

The question Is print dead? has dominated the magazine and newspaper industries for several years. In 2008, The New York Times printed an article titled “Mourning Old Media’s Decline,” in which author David Carr describes multiple announcements of job loss in the print industry. Thousands of individuals working at magazines and newspapers faced layoffs because of reduced subscriber and advertiser demand. “Clearly the sky is falling,” he writes, “The question now is how many people will be left to cover it (Carr, 2008).” At the same time, Carr articulates the shift in readership from print to web, saying, “The paradox of all these announcements is that newspapers and magazines do not have an audience problem—newspaper Web sites are a vital source of news, and growing—but they do have a consumer problem (Carr, 2008).” With a majority of magazines and newspapers now available for free online, one has to wonder how the industry will stay afloat. Although advertisements pay for a portion of the cost of running a magazine, it may not help enough.

The debate over whether print publications can remain financially viable has infiltrated the magazine industry. At a 2006 magazine editorial meeting, Glamour’s editor in chief, Cindi Leive, claimed that she “loves this question…. Is print dead? Discuss (Benkoil & Stableford, 2006)!” The editor-in-chief of More magazine responded to the statement saying, “It’s what we talk about all day long (Benkoil & Stableford, 2006).” But for as many people who fight for the print industry to remain profitable, an equally vocal group argues for the elimination of the print medium altogether. In a 2005 published debate on the topic, former print editor-turned-blogger Jeff Jarvis squared off against John Griffin, president of the National Geographic Society’s magazine group. Jarvis claimed, “Print is not dead. Print is where words go to die.” But Griffin countered, “Actually print is where words go to live—we’re still reading the ancient Greeks (Jarvis & Griffin, 2005).”

The fact that the print industry faces hardships remains unquestionable. Magazines continue to rethink their marketing strategies to remain viable in an increasingly online world. But many stay hopeful that journals will find a way to publish both in print and on the Internet. After all, “There’s something special and unique, even luxurious about reading a big, glossy magazine…. Or, in the words of Marie Claire editor Joanna Coles, ‘As long as people take baths, there will always be a monthly magazine (Benkoil & Stableford).’”