The death of the newsstand and the decline in magazine editorial quality
I found this comment by Jerry Johnson buried in all the squabbles on James Howard Kunstler’s doomsaying blog:
Playboy itself, in my view, went down once they embraced forced circulation. In the days when it was very relevant, 80% of the circulation was newsstand. That is readers consciously chose to buy it each month: they were interested in what was presented. This was exceedingly important to advertisers because they knew their message would be read by someone timely interested. Today, barely 10% of the circulation is newsstand. The culprit has been the fundy attacks on local newssstands. They barely exist anymore compared to forty years ago. Who buy’s it? Basically long time readers. It has been overtaken by senility yet still has the same class it always had. Hef refuses to compromise with reader value.
Editors lead their audience. This was the story behind all the major mass market magazines with a message. That ended with the advent of formats like People Magazine. So today, we have mostly specialty magazines like Classic Toy Trains. Hef was the last great editor. Even great newsspaper editors are gone.
Subscriptions killed the magazine as an important information venue. You are muzzled because leading your audience does not increase circulation. It takes the newsstand to get the leadership to generate increased circulation. On the other hand, you only lose circulation via subscriptions because you piss off some percentage every time you take a stance. There are now so few newsstands that critical mass can no longer be generated. You will buy one issue for a hot subject. The same is not true for a subscription.
So, we are stuck with TV and radio.
…well, and my employer’s line of work, relevant internet advertising. I thought it was interesting because I hadn’t thought much about how magazine advertising related to distribution patterns before. Certainly, most of my magazine reading in recent years happened because I got a ridiculously cheap subscription through something like a frequent flyer point offer—and at those prices, you don’t really care if you let them pile up on the coffee table.
Thinking back, I probably did most of my magazine reading in my youth, leafing through the pages of GamePro and Electronic Gaming Monthly in Waldenbooks while my mom did her mall shopping. That seems to be a pretty hopeless segment of the magazine sector these days, where the the internet is now more timely and richer (you can now get HD clips of game footage for free online instead of squinting at screenshots on paper). From what I’ve seen, Ziff Davis Media is doing a good job of developing a portfolio of experiments around their 1up brand, particularly in developing a cult of personality around their writers through blogs and podcasts. When up-to-the-minute raw news is everywhere, commentary from trusted names is a more valuable commodity.
These days, magazines seem best suited for cases where the paper format is really more handy (airplane trips, beauty parlors, reading in bed), and where the content isn’t particularly time-sensitive. O’Reilly has taken the latter in an extreme direction, treating Make magazine like a collectable series of books—you can still buy the first issue new on Amazon.
In any case, Jerry Johnson’s thesis about newsstands is interesting (and credible, since he worked in circulation). While he blames “fundies” for the death of the newsstand, I wonder how much of a role suburbanization played—the withering of walkable areas meant that more people were going to supermarkets (and eventually Wal-Mart) for their magazines, which certainly created larger targets for puritanical pressure. (And since magazines are probably a minor revenue stream for grocery stores, it’s not worth their time and space to have an employee controlling access to more risqué or edgier titles, like you have with newsstands.)
I wonder how different the situation is in Europe? At least in the larger cities, I’ve still seen quite a few newsstands on the sidewalks there.