Chris , Friday, August 17th, 2007

I love magazines. I love the feel of print, the glossiness of the cover, the layouts, the typefaces, the images, the binding and the content. Its hard for me to come to the realization that that market is fading, fast. From the troubles at Red Herring and Business 2.0, to the recent merging announcement of Stuff and Maxim. Its true, when you want the most recent news and information, you turn to the online space and your favorite blogs. Magazines are quickly turning into media just for travelers and users who are not connected to the internet for but a brief moment. However, devices like the iPhone are changing that. What will become of the printed page? Advertising is expensive and hard to measure results from, unlike online where a visitors journey can be tracked down to a referring source as well as the street they live on.

Back in the day i use to thrive on the printed words in publications.

My magazine fetish began when I was a boy and bought my first car magazine, Car and Driver, to drool over some expensive luxury autos. Then it shifted to Cracked, a funny little Mad magazine competitor. Over the years my magazine purchases ranged from all sorts of Auto magazines from Lowrider, Sport Compact, Surfing, Surfer, Transworld Skate and Snowboard, Art and Design magazines like How, Create Online, and Computer Worlds vast assortment of graphic application specific titles. It didnt stop there though, I was deeply into business magazines such as Canadian Business, Forbes, Fortune, Robb Report, Business 2.0 and Red Herring. Then there was the fashion and home related magazine. After all, I am an artist and designer and I have to see whats going on in every aspect of the world. My budget was at least $40 a month, sometimes up to $100 depending on the good titles and articles for that particular month.

Readily available sources online with timely content made me give up some titles.

My purchases started slowing down in the early 2000′s, not because I calculated how much I was spending on the range of glossy issues, but because I started finding that the same, if not timely and better content was slowly becoming available online. By 2004 I was almost magazine free. I had my extra long list of bookmarks that I checked daily to find out what was going on. Ok, so the images weren’t entirely impressive, but at least I had the content and was able to save a few dollars each month.

Bye Bye magazines.

So its 2007, and I’m lucky if I get one magazine title every two months. I am much more environmentally conscious and realize that all the content I desire and more is available online, for free. Its far better, and far more attractive now, and I no longer have to invest in yearly subscription fees and pricey issues. Not only that, but I am introduced to whole new subjects that I normally would not have looked into if I had to invest.

The future of advertisers.

Advertisers are realizing that blogs and online publications are a viable option for spending ad dollars. Not just because everything can be tracked, but because readers can be highly targeted. Rates for online locations are also far less than newsprint and magazines. It all adds up for big brands, online publications are the future. So why aren’t magazines and newspapers investing more in this space? Some have, but the majority have not yet realized this, or are having issues developing plans.

The future of readers.

The future of magazine is up in the air. Sure they are good when you are not connected, but devices like the iPhone sure are changing that. RSS feeds are available to check content wherever you are, and its easy to set up notifications when a new story has been published on your favorite website. News is old by the time it hits the stands, whether its in magazine or newspaper form, and that is annoying. When the public wants news, we want it now, not when its one day or one month old. We want to stay current.