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Image by Steve Buissinne from Pixabay |
“Q magazine to fold after 34 years”
This wasn’t what I had expected to read on The Guardian’s webpage first thing in the morning. Now, I am not an avid reader of this magazine and generally, I couldn’t have cared less, however, this incident only solidified the claim that this pandemic has made the survival of print industry on the market hellish, forcing many publication houses, especially magazines, to shut shop. Thus began my pondering.
Magazines have been seeing a decline in publication and sales. This is because of several reasons, one of which could possibly be the larger readership for newspapers. Newspapers have adapted to look and function like magazines, providing flashy entertainment news or sports updates like magazines in their supplements and special weekend editions, along with their usual 18 to 24-page copies. What is published in five magazines that cover different fields of interest, is published in one 8-page supplement in a newspaper. And although that is just an iota of what is published in a 700-3000-word article in a magazine, it is enough for a person who just wants to obtain information about a variety of subjects. People may see no need to subscribe to several magazines to obtain the information that the newspapers they are already paying for can provide them.
Problem of Cost
Magazine production involves high costs due to the expensive glossy paper and equipment used for printing. Newspapers, on the other hand, make use of cost-effective newsprint, which is recyclable and reusable, hence making them cheaper to produce and purchase as well as environment-friendly. And because magazines cater to a select group of readers that are interested in the area that the magazines cover, the only way they can compensate for the high costs of production is to increase the prices of the magazines, making it less accessible to the middle-class and lower-middle-class sections of the population. This leads to a lack of readership, which is another challenge.
Due to the outbreak of COVID-19, magazines that publish content about fashion or sport or politics - just about anything but healthcare - face two challenges: lack of content and lack of readership. They do not have much information to publish as there isn’t much happening in the world of sport or fashion today. There is also a change in the public’s interest today in healthcare and wellbeing. People, consumed by fear and heightened anxiety about the pandemic, would prefer reading articles about updates related to COVID from around the world. This shift in interest leads to people not following news that is not related to the pandemic. In that sense, one will realise that magazines that cover any field besides healthcare are slowly losing their readers solely because they aren’t publishing content that people are looking for.
This, however, does not mean health magazines are doing any better. They might lose readers too due to a powerful competitor – the all-knowing internet. Since every piece of news is now accessible to everyone, thanks to the internet, people may see no need to wait for a magazine that comes out much after the news is out. Here, time itself is a challenge to magazines, especially during this pandemic.
Writers' dilemma
The imposition of multiple lockdowns has led to another challenge – writers cannot venture out and gather information for long-form stories that magazines are known for. Since magazines are all about detailed news stories, interviews and features with a subtle personal touch, restrictions on movement can pose a serious problem to journalists and feature writers.
While magazines might have prepared content months before the outbreak of the pandemic, if this situation continues for a couple of months, eventually they will run out of content to put out. Many magazines are afloat today solely due to prepaid subscriptions by their loyal readers and their advertisers who invest in them. With no content to put out, however, they will eventually lose this reader base as more and more people will stop subscribing to magazines. Investors and advertisers may back out from investing in the magazine because there is no new content to attract them. Post the lockdown, magazines will have trouble securing advertisers - one of the major sources of funding that they require to function smoothly.
Moving on to brighter prospects
Many magazines and news-producing organisations have therefore shifted to digital platforms, taking on the form of online magazines by asking readers to subscribe digitally. This is so that they can keep running and continue putting out news which can be accessed by everyone. This digitisation has led to a serious downfall in the publication and distribution of physical magazines as nobody wants to walk out and pick up a magazine anymore. Since door-to-door delivery of magazines has also been prohibited in several states, the purchase of magazines has only declined further.
After the global pandemic broke out, undoubtedly, all social and public life has been brought to a standstill, it has, however, hit the magazine industry especially hard, an area that had already been facing a slump. Production has become more expensive than ever, and circulation figures have dwindled to unimaginable lows, making it harder and costlier for them to remain afloat. Magazines rely heavily on advertising and content, along with a niche audience, and COVID-19, by directly or indirectly causing a lack of advertising, funding and content to report about, has contributed to the gradual death of the industry itself.
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