Conde Nast Folds Four More Magazines

The media bloodbath continues as Conde Nast announces it's folding Gourmet, Cookie, Elegant Bride and Modern Bride. [Gawker]

The big cuts in magazines began in Fall 2008 and continued into 2009 (including my layoff in January 2009, along with 250 people in my company--all of us on the same day) and the cuts are continuing across the industry more than a year later.

We all know the heyday of magazines as they existed at the end of the twentieth century is never coming back. The real question is what the mag industry will look like once the economy begins to (supposedly) truly stabilize in the third quarter of next year.

I don't think the outlook, however, is particularly rosy.

Comments

[Chrystal K.]

This is so sad. not only for the readers of those magazines, but for the writers/editors that now have to find new jobs. I really hope everyone of them finds a place to work that they really love soon.

[Giuseppe]

Like past 90's tv shows making a come back, so will many magazines in the next couple of years...we're just going through a cycle.

[cheap]

I love cooking and Gourmet is so helpful for me... I'll miss Gourmet..

[Christopher™]

Yes, it sucks when your favorite magazine goes belly-up. However, the paradigm for the publishing industry has changed, much like for music, TV and film.

While the internet has changed everything, we can also thank Apple for understanding the future of digital entertainment. They were the first to realize that it takes more than a great product to capture a market... it takes a great *ecosystem.* And now iTunes is the biggest music retailer in the US, and people are paying for music even though a few years ago, the music industry believed that would never happen.

Now, thanks to iTunes, TiVo, Hulu.com and dedicated websites for all the major networks, you can watch whatever TV show you want, whenever you want, with little to no commercials. Pretty soon, Blockbuster will go bye-bye as people will choose access to easier and easier digital downloads. DVDs will also be extinct in the next 10 years as all movies will be released on flash drives which are easier to copy-protect.

But what about newspapers and magazines? No one's seemed to figure out the next step. Amazon's Kindle has done the best job of capturing the digital reader market, but it's only a black-and-white display. Apple's iPhone has been a hit, but have you tried to read a volume of text on that device? It's way too small. On top of ease-of-use issues, people have gotten so accustomed to reading free content on the internet, that making people pay for journalism again seems an impossible task.

But we're now at the same place we were years ago with the music industry and Napster. That can all change with the right new product combined with a well-thought-out ecosystem.

Rumors have it that Steve Jobs' last hurrah will be a new tablet device that is scheduled for release in early 2010. Why a tablet? Previous attempts have failed miserably, as those models have simply been designed to replace a legal pad and pen.

But that's the problem. Imagine a tablet (either from Apple or someone else) that is full-color, allows interactivity (either a virtual keyboard or finger gestures) and is designed as a reader for digital magazines and newspapers. But the future of magazines aren't just PDFs of existing print versions. No, these would be fully interactive, with audio and video. The digital version of "Gourmet" could include a trip to the opening night of a new restaurant in New York, a monthly cooking demonstration, and interactive recipes and charts linked to a subscriber-accessible blog that would allow interaction with either the editors or a famous chef. And all of it would be contained in a downloadable file that could be portable to other devices.

I believe people would pay for a subscription to that kind of interactivity, and the more content-rich it is, the more it will capture a particular audience's imagination.

If this is the new paradigm, then writers and editors will still have work, but in a more techno-savvy role. Which means if you don't also have digital content creation skills, then yes... you'll be out of a job. But carriage-makers moved onto building cars, so the opportunities exist for those willing to learn new skills.

The future is bright for the publishing industry since they also won't have to worry about overhead like destroying forests for paper, renting large warehouses for storage, and the costs of shipping. That alone will be more eco-friendly! But there will be growing pains before that happens.