A few days back I wrote a post on how the traditional newspapers are losing out on readers and revenues by being conservative towards their approach on going online. Today, Don Dodge in his post asks if newspapers and magazines are indeed dying out pointing to an article by Editor and Publisher titled ‘The Winning Manifesto‘ calling upon newspapers to band together to achieve “the migration to common platforms, and the acquisition of the ability to sell top-quality online product to our advertisers.”
Don rightly says that the future of the magazines may be even worse because unlike newspapers who carry out daily news with local ads etc, magazines are periodical with outdated content lacking in local connection and with national brand ads.
Although he says that the decline in magazine readership is not what he expected, I would still differ in this. The trend of migration to online from traditional publishing is only going to increase. We are seeing a steep rise in user participation on news events in various Web 2.0 platforms like blogs podcasts etc. Even old and established blogs have taken shapes of daily news tabloids. The true magazines will not die down unless it is packaged like the Reader’s Digest (which too has an online edition).
In the end magazines will remain but people will only buy the collector’s editions just as I have been buying collector’s editions of various well-known magazines for the last 6-7 years or so. As far as the newspapers are concerned, well, they will shrink and shrink and shrink...
