How long will it be before traditional print magazines die off because of the internet?
Ed Bott poses this question, quoting commentary by Alan Meckler at Jupiter Media, specifically regarding PC Magazine and PC World.
It caught my attention primarily because I’ve been a PC World subscriber for a couple of years now. My subscription’s not due for renewal until May next year. If I were considering renewal today, I wouldn’t renew.
While it’s nice to get the magazine each month – glossy, high quality paper and printing, great content, super illustrations, good to look at the ads, too – I can find all the content I need in the online version of the magazine, and a great deal quicker than waiting for the postman. I could subscribe to the e-mag version instead, delivered via Zinio, but why?
Why pay for any of these things when I can access everything without cost on the PC World website? I can more easily access other content elsewhere via the links in the online magazine. I already subscribe to the magazine’s RSS feeds, so I get to know what’s in the magazine before I get my print copy (example: a couple of days ago I posted commentary re Google Desktop that will be in PC World’s January 2005 edition, that was an RSS news item the previous day).
It brings to my mind the recent Wired report that commented on a September survey carried out by the US Online Publishers Association (see my post) into changing reading habits which said, among other things, that “18- to 34-year-olds are far more apt to log on to the internet (46 percent) […] than flip through a magazine (less than 1 percent).”
That age range must be at the heart of PC World’s readership demographic (I’m guessing here). Surely a clear signal on where things are going.
So what if technology-focused magazines like PC World turned their web content into a subscription service, where you had to pay to get the magazine content?
That could work, but only if the content were so compelling – you couldn’t get it anywhere else – and you’d be willing to pay for it. I certainly wouldn’t pay for it and a print magazine: it’s one or the other.
By the way, I’m not suggesting that all magazines are facing such a dilemma. I can’t see Good Housekeeping, say, or Rugby World, having to worry. Not yet, anyway. But surveys like the one Wired reported on surely are at least an amber light for general magazine publishers whose readership counts on that youthful age group.
So for tech publishers at least, compelling content just isn’t enough, in my view. This is about understanding the needs of your audience and delivering content in ways that meet those needs.