Magazines
For magazines, the year of decision
By Louisa Ada Seltzer
Dec 29, 2008 - 8:59:18 AM

In many ways, 2008 was a seminal year for magazines, a turning point, in which events long predicted came to pass.

Ad pages tumbled, falling nearly 13 percent in the third quarter alone, and in the long-ailing newsweekly category, U.S. News & World Report dropped out, cutting its frequency to monthly, and Newsweek opted for a dramatic downsizing with a far smaller rate base.

A number of magazines folded, and the list of the endangered titles grew much longer.

The coming year promises more of the same, but likely much more of it, as the ad economy contracts further.

Magna forecaster Robert Coen is predicting that national advertisers will cut their spending in magazines by 7 percent after chopping 6 percent in 2008, by his calculations. Other forecasters see much the same, if not worse.

"Survival is the biggest issue in terms of what’s happening with magazines," says longtime magazine consultant Martin Walker of the coming year. "I don’t think we’ll see any meaningful turn in advertising. If we’re lucky we’ll see it turn in fourth quarter 2010."

With such a grim outlook facing them, publishers of a number of struggling titles will choose to shut down. Others will go online only, hoping for a better shot at survival.

But even there, though shedding the cost of paper and distribution, they will face whole new sets of challenges, competing with sites that have been online-only far longer and already have a firm footing with readers and advertisers. And there's no sure bet the editorial concept that worked in print will work online. Quite often they don't.

If 2008 was the year that kicked off the shakeout in magazines, 2009 will be the year that determines which sort of titles will survive in print and which will see their space usurped by internet competitors.

The titles most likely to survive, as Walker notes, are those that cannot be replicated online.

"The magazines that are less vulnerable are the ones that don’t translate well to the web, Vogue, for example. You can’t see the beautiful gowns and illustrations on the web," says Walker. Some home furnishings magazines will also hold on for the same reason.

Also less at risk are magazines that feature long articles, he says, like The New Yorker and The Atlantic. Few people will sit in front of a computer and read a 15,000-word article.

Walker also sees a decent year for the shelter titles because of the economy, noting that in bad times folks retreat to their homes to cocoon, cooking and entertaining and renovating.

The turmoil in the coming year will be concentrated in categories where the web does a better, faster job of getting the information to readers.

"The news categories are vulnerable," says Walker. "Any magazine or category that is essentially data-driven or news-driven, where the web can offer more current, more frequent access to information, is vulnerable."

That includes the newsweeklies but also the business titles and personal finance titles, all of which never fully recovered from the last ad recession, as advertisers shifted dollars to other titles and to the internet.

This big question in the coming year is whither the business titles in particular.

The Grim Reaper, the anonymous magazine-watcher whose web site magazinedeathopool.com tracks title closings, is predicting that either Forbes or Fortune will reduce its frequency, and he sees further cutting back by all three business titles, including BusinessWeek, which is believed to be losing tens of millions of dollars.

His other predictions:

* "One personal finance magazine will move entirely to the web. The most likely candidate will be Smart Money, since their internet strategy will continue to successfully bring in revenue compared to the actual magazine."

* "The newsweeklies are going to keep cutting rate base, and perhaps add a few more double issues to reduce frequency."

* "Two categories which will experience shrinkage (and not of the 'Seinfeld' kind, either): music, and boating and yachting."