Not dead yet

The world of magazines and newspapers is being crushed under the light weight of online journalism, but the outcome is still far from certain

by Chad Christie

Awhile ago, the world was set alight because of a magazine article. Newsweek reported that US authorities had, on more than one occasion, desecrated the Koran in prisons in Cuba. They immediately retracted the story claiming insufficient evidence, but that did not stop protests breaking out internationally. Nor did it save at least 17 people from dying and hundreds more from being injured in the ensuing Middle Eastern riots.

The story was dropped like a match into an already blazing forest of east-west relations. It burnt as copies of Newsweek itself burnt, adding a literal kindling to the flame. Nonetheless, while such political and religious tensions will not soon subside, publications like Newsweek may burn out.

Once upon a time, magazines and newspapers ruled the information roost. Now they attract attention only when they are, like Newsweek, the centre of some controversy themselves.

Saturday Night magazine is suddenly at the top of many people's minds, but only because it is dead again. Conrad Black may have run into troubles selling his own papers, but the corruption scandal surrounding the publisher has certainly not hurt newsstand sales. The venerable New York Times has been forced, as have many others, to apologize for printing either outright lies or hearsay. Perfidious press regarding Iraq's supposed mass stockpiling of banned weaponry may have helped lead the US into a seemingly interminable war, but in the end, what has become more the focus are the stories about the stories.

In this, the internet is again taking over. Where analog media once defended itself against the first wave of virtual media by claiming accountability and professionalism, now such paternalistic claims only succeed in undermining them further. Public trust and interest in journalism has strayed. Blogs, for one, are perceived as bastions of the post-institutionalized perspective, both for the political left and right. Earlier this year, CNN chief news executive Eason Jordan was forced to resign when un-American comments he made at the World Economic Forum regarding the death of journalists in Iraq were posted on a blog.

But moralizing aside, the biggest threat to traditional media is not accountability but rather affordability. Skepticism and convenience have colluded against the lumbering tactility of magazines and newspapers. A virtual media has virtually no overhead, at least compared to the production of an actual object. Time and space are not constraints to new online presses.

Timeliness is everything to a story and scoops are everything to a paper. But, as Globe and Mail editor-in-chief Edward Greenspon was reminded this year, scoops are a loose lot, especially in this digital age. He found himself supplanting his love for the printed word with his love of employment. Not wishing to take the risk that an NHL player settlement would remain secret until the next paper was published almost 24 hours later, Greenspon allowed the story to appear online first. The scoop thereby remained theirs and was referred to by almost 138 other sites internationally, as well as by radio stations and other newspapers. Globeandmail.com became a point of interest no less than the settlement itself. The site has grown from 25,000 to 250,000 visitors a day.

A paperless society may never fully arrive, but pulp sales continue to decline in North America largely because fewer and fewer newspapers are being printed. The eyes have it: as consumers veer focus, the money follow. The venerable Wall Street Journal, a paper with the second-highest weekday print circulation in America, has recorded a drop in advertising revenue for each of the last four years. As a result, Dow Jones, its owner, listed a loss this quarter in its print division of $7 million. Business magazines like Fast Company and Inc., which sold for half a billion dollars four years ago, now "have a value of zero," according to the New York Times. 

Last year, both Newsday and the short-lived Rosie magazine attempted to compete with new media by overstating their circulation numbers to the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC). Since circulation is directly tied to advertising rates, they were sued by advertisers. Newsday staff were employing a computer program entitled "Fudge ABC." They were also requiring their distributor to inflate draws in an attempt to procure bonuses.

Magazines can't even sell sex anymore. Penthouse went bankrupt last year, and once-crushingly popular "lad mags" such as Maxim and Stuff, are themselves being crushed.

The National Directory of Magazines reported that there were nearly one third fewer magazine titles being published in 2004 than there were in 1999. The trend is an international one, affecting Europe, Korea, and Japan as well. Reuters claims, "Investors have . . . been unloading the biggest names [The New York Times, The Washington Post and USA Today] in the newspaper business, driving down shares of the group by about 10 percent this year."

By contrast, according to the World Association of Newspapers, the audience for online newspapers has grown 350% in the last five years. Statistics like these prompted media baron Rupert Murdoch, head of News Corporation, to exclaim, "I believe too many of us editors and reporters are out of touch with our readers."

The more traditional media try to compete with digital media, the less unique and more insignificant they become. A survey conducted by Folio magazine found that "Publishers have cut staffs, paper quality and more in their ongoing quest to squeeze out profits. . . . Print journalism is becoming increasingly visual, with shorter stories . . . and more art on a page. These two trends . . . dramatically affect what journalists do: Communicate through the written word."

The internet, by contrast, is engaging with clicks and chics. But initial attempts by print media to transfer their materials in situ to the web fell flat. Yet the crossover conflict follows a classic pattern. Moveable type originally imitated calligraphic script; photography imitated painting, and film, theatre. Ironically, digital media tout "3D interactivity" as proprietary, but only magazines and newspapers are actual three dimensional objects. The internet wants to be like the real world, and yet the real world wants to be like the internet. 

Many people still read publications like the New York Times, but from their computers. Moreover, readers seldom read any single publication in its entirety, but rather create a collage of content. Accordingly, print media wed their articles to websites, while the websites themselves strive to bind us to their printed materials.

But if traditional media is doomed, will the online media fare any better? While some publications have died on the rack only to reemerge as spirits of their former selves online, others—like Nerve—have gone from the web to the rack and then back again. Some magazines, however, neither entered nor entertained an analog existence and are doing quite well. Salon.com is one, but then again, its online popularity has not been hurt by traditional media often making reference to it, either by addressing Salon as phenomena unto itself or by quoting its materials directly.

The main object for both sides of the journalistic divide are advertisers. The media cannot control us, but they can draw our attention. And this is all that has ever mattered; after all, remember that the consumer is the product, not the paper.

So the strategy might be, if you can't beat them, buy them. According to the Financial Times, traditional media corporations have so far this year spent nearly $1 billion acquiring internet rivals. Rupert Murdoch himself recently spent $580 million purchasing Intermix Media, the parent company of Myspace.com. Murdoch claims his site will "appeal to young people who are watching less television and reading fewer newspapers."

It is misguided to think the decline of the newsstand rag is largely the fault of an non-reading young, for theirs is the most text-dependent generation ever, what with all the e-mail, blogs, and so on that they engage with on a daily basis. Although some readers are loath to distinguish the medium from its message, others are more concerned with meanings than methods. The problem is not readership, it is salesmanship, and this has always been the game. Gutenberg himself went bankrupt, twice. Besides, is it really so awful that titles like Teen People have recorded a 43% drop in newsstand sales?

Magazines aren't dead, yet, but great print journalism may be. It is the popular consensus that the concentration of media ownership has worked to the detriment both of concept and content of the popular press. Media barons are perceived as a paranoid lot working as sedative, not incentive, over minds and money.

The internet is here to stay, but it too still struggles for stability. Print media may survive beyond all the apocalyptic hype if only to live on in specialty stores like vinyl records do now. But what future unfolds for the tactile press depends in large part on what format of this article you yourself just consumed.

****