I've been meaning to send Ryan Avent a congratulatory note on his move to Portfolio for weeks now (though I really should have been sending that note to Portfolio for snagging Ryan.) Alas, instead, I had to send him condolences this morning: Portfolio is shutting down. There will be a lot of retrospective quarterbacking, but in the end, launching a $100 million magazine into the teeth of a recession is a dicey project. Especially when it's launched the Conde way, with high-gloss finish and an all-star cast of thousands.
Most readers don't notice, but it's on the top of every journalist's mind that every publication we pick up these days feels nearly emaciated. That's because everyone's losing ad pages--and editorial pages, because the ad pages pay for the content between them. It's a rare publication where the revenue from subscriptions and newstand sales exceeds the cost of printing and distributing the paper. All the costs of producing the content are paid for by advertising, and companies aren't doing much of that these days.
Not much comfort to Ryan, though, or the 84 others who have to look for jobs in a very tough media market. Speaking from my own household experience, I think journalists are going to be very leery of getting involved with media startups for quite a while.
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I bought the first copy of Portfolio a couple of years ago. I liked it, but wasn't impressed enough to buy another one or subscribe. I just bought the latest copy, but haven't had a chance to look at it. I wasn't convinced there was a need for it. For a magazine to really catch my attention, it has to have information that is unique, not retreads of stuff I see on blogs and nytimes.com.
This also makes me think of Wired, which was once a great magazine, and is now basically Vogue for men. Lots of nice pictures of accessories and playthings, with some occasional content. I still remember the Hacker Tourist article in Wired from at least 10 years ago. It was incredibly long, but memorable. Neither Portfolio nor Wired says great things about Conde Nast.
I'll stick with Monocle. It's insanely expensive, but I find information there that I don't get anywhere else. And I have a subscription to the FT.
For some reason I keep reading Tyler Brûlée's Fast Lane columns in the FT, in which he mentions his magazine Monocle. His column just seems to be the diary of an independently wealthy, globe-trotting metrosexual with a particular interest in critiquing hotels and airports. Is there more to Monocle than that? How much does it cost? Can't seem to find a copy of it at Barnes & Noble.
The weekly TB columns are the worst. I have no idea who this guy is, or what is magazine is about but I ever since his recent column about the difficulties in getting a good $30 club sandwich at global 4+ star hotels I've written him off as a navel-gazing, pompous clown.
I remember that one. There was also a recent column about how he lost his wallet at some fancy hotel in Switzerland and didn't realize it until he was in Paris from where he was going to fly to Japan or somewhere. So sent an intern to fly from London to Switzerland to pick his wallet and then take the super train to Paris to bring it to him.
Another favorite was the column which just consisted of him describing his morning routine at a Hyatt in South Korea: first he ordered a cappuccino and a glass of mandarin orange juice from room service, then he ran on the treadmill in the hotel gym (who downs an orange juice and a cappuccino before running?), and then went to the spa where he could sit in a special chair in the shower and scrub himself with a brush. What editor at the FT decided these would be a good edition to the paper?
Yeah, Tyler Brule is probably an acquired taste. I think you have to know when to take him seriously. My favorite column featured him wondering which version of a boat to buy to get to his cabin on an island in the Baltic Sea. There were two options: one had been tested by the Swedish Navy, one by the Norwegian Navy. One had a machine gun, and one had a missile. He wanted the one with the missile to enforce his "no jet ski rule." I think that's hysterical.
He takes a lot of very frivolous things seriously in his Fast Lane column, but he does have a point: he has very exacting standards for things like customer service, good design, etc. Somebody has to take these things seriously.
Monocle is, in fact, a serious magazine. One article I remember was about the prince of Bhutan, and his ceremonial dress. I learned more about Bhutan in one page than I have from any other publication.
I enjoyed the articles in Portfolio, but I never bought the magazine. Why, when I could read them free online (or in Barnes & Noble)?
There seems to be a real lack of business savvy among those who run high-end journalism businesses. I'm no expert on this, but it seems that there are two mistakes struggling papers and magazines have been making:
1) Offering too much content for the price.
2) Offering everything online at no charge.
Re 2), they don't seem to have a lot of choice. The New York Times' experiment with a paywall evidently didn't work out for them-- apparently there's not a lot of content so compelling that it can compete with free-- people will just look elsewhere. And any individual compelling item will wind up quickly getting copied outside the wall, widely enough to make takedown notices too little, too late. (My wife mentioned a Wall Street Journal piece she'd read a few days ago. Rather than wait to read it at home where I could log into a subscription database, I googled for terms in the article using my Kindle. Sure enough, it was on a public site.) A few publications are managing to make a go of it so far, but it's not clear that the model can be generalized.
There's still the problem of how to get content paid for, if online advertising can't generate enough money-- whether or not information wants to be free, writers sort of want to eat. (And while it's possible to get a surprising amount of writing done for free if you're willing to compromise on depth and/or breadth and sacrifice reporting on boring-but-important issues, more thankless jobs like editing and proofreading are an even bigger problem.)
But stating the problem doesn't necessarily provide an obvious long term solution. Not putting out free content in the current market tends to marginalize a publication aimed at a mass audience, which presumably doesn't do wonders for increasing subscription or advertising revenues.
Sure there are choices re: #2. You just mentioned one example of a paper that keeps much of its online content behind a pay wall, the WSJ. Another is the FT, which, like the WSJ, makes some stuff available free online and requires a subscription for the rest. The FT and the WSJ also offer high newsstand prices for relatively little content (e.g., as compared to the NY Times -- compare the thickness of a typical midweek edition).
As for #2, I like City Journal's model: put the content online eventually, but not until a month or so after the issue has shipped. My local Barnes and Noble doesn't stock CJ (do any?), so I need to either subscribe or wait if I want to read Heather Mac Donald's latest.
Personally, after reading the beautifully-produced print copy, I really can't imagine going back to reading it online.
Most readers don't notice
I noticed the radical thinning of Dr. Dobbs Journal about a year before that one shut down. PC Magazine was also getting thinner. Linux Magazine got bought, or something, and is now a more business oriented publication. Newsweek has also gotten much thinner. I've declined to renew all of them.
The Economist seems to be holding up. Cook's Illustrated as well (it doesn't accept advertising.)
Are any magazines available on Kindle - by subscription? It seems an ideal medium for them, if/when there are enough of the hardware devices in readers' hands.
There are. But while web browsing on the Kindle itself is slow and inconvenient enough that subscribing to a well-formatted e-journal would be more convenient, by the time e-readers hit high levels of penetration, that many more people will have good wireless web access. Will they pay a subscription price for a slightly more readable version of the same content they can read on their phone (or on the Kindle 2015's own web browser, which will presumably be that much faster and more full-featured)?
I don't get it. Some newspapers and magazines can publish on most any controversial subject and not be scathed, while others who print the same thing are harmed by it.
This post sounds like a thinly veiled subscription pitch to me....
Tyler Brûlée's... mentions his magazine Monocle: I had assumed the whole thing to be a parody until I saw the aforementioned on sale at Waitrose (British supermarket). I glanced at it; I think it's a parody too.
The WSJ and the FT have an audience in common, more or less, that has been more willing than others to pay for content. (Though it'll be interesting to see if that remains true in the wake of the financial crisis.) For that matter, I'd guess that for the foreseeable future there will be some subset of publications able to charge for content.
That doesn't mean that every publication will, though, and general-interest journalism is probably one of the worst positions to be in. It's too fungible, and there are too many sources trying to serve that market. (And the Times Select experiment suggests that high-demand columnists, at least, weren't enough to draw subscription dollars in an era defined by an explosion of opinion journalism.)
But maybe I'm wrong. Given the number of newspapers and magazines in trouble, I'm sure if emulating the WSJ will save them, some of them will try it. Whether they'll find enough readers who consider them indispensible as the WSJ (thus far) has...