Trends and Strategies in the Creative Industries - Final assignment

Dario Bonazelli

Exchange student (Ca’ Foscari University Venice)

Student n. 33518119

E-mail d.bonazelli@libero.it

THE FUTURE OF PRINTED MAGAZINES BETWEEN

SOCIAL MEDIA AND NEW DIGITAL DEVICES

15 February 2010

Management summary

Questioned by Sofie Spindler, I accomplished to determine some guidelines of evolution of the

press industry in the next future. In particular she asked whether social and interactive media

influenced the magazine’s structure; I preferred to turn a bit the question towards the new

challenges that printed editions have been facing. The impact of those digital media is really

evident on press industry: circulation and revenues of magazines, but especially of newspapers are

decreasing more and more that the end of printed editions seems arrived. Obviously unnumbered

other motivations play their role. However, as history shows, we often find new purposes for “old

tech”. Magazines are old new media that are going to be destructed creatively by digital

interactive media. While new devices like iPhone or e-books are put on the market, press industry

activates new niche strategies to permit magazines’ survival. Cross-media operations, co-created

contents and branding practices enable magazines to find new financial assets while the

contribution of designers could enormously improve the quality of the printed editions.

In conclusion I add couple of proposal for further empirical research. In brief, for a short term I

propose to conduct market research among other industries connected to publishing, in order to

implement strategies of partnership; for the long-term instead I suggest to investigate the

usability of an innovative device like e-books throughout practical tests and surveys on samples.

Research question: introduction.

Sofie Spindler is an independent art director engaged on the magazine industry. She addressed to

the research company that I lead some questions in order to solve some pressing issues. Standing

that the original format of the women’s glossy magazines is really conceived and invented for

printed press, she asked whether digital media and interactive media influenced, pushed and

reinvented the structure of classic magazine’s form and how the future of glossy magazines will be

like1. Concerning digital technologies evolution and giving response to such issues, my proposal

would prominently investigate the main guidelines of development that printed magazines will

follow in the next future.

1 Here the link of Sofie Splinder video: www.youtube.com/user/TRENDSCI2009#p/u/3/VYb7ndjPFXg2

I structured my proposal as follows: firstly a theoretical introduction leads us to the new

challenges that social and interactive media face to the publishing industry, notably focusing on

glossy magazine. Then I propose my responses by discussing the survival of magazines in the new

digital age. To conclude I add some proposal for further empirical researches together with an

estimation of the costs that would be involved.

Research proposal

As history demonstrates, new technologies never completely replace old technology. As Walter

Benjamin (1936) argued, the introduction in the early twentieth century of new techniques to

produce, reproduce and circulation works of art on a mass level (cinema and photography in

particular), has radically changed the attitude towards the art of both artists and the public2. But

photography did not replaced paintings, but rather other forms emerged like impressionism,

cubism and surrealism. We generally found new purposes for “old tech”. Digital media, social or

otherwise, will not completely replace printed media, they rather evolve. What will the future of

magazines be like?

From the invention of the print (Gutenberg 1440, the date by which we consider the launch of the

classic print) more than five hundred years are passed by and no new technological devices have

been replace books. We can then expect that such revolution will have a deep impact on our

living: it does not only regards reading magazines, newspaper or print in general, but rather our

perception of life and our social interaction and organization. According to Marshall McLuhan3 our

perception is deeply influenced once a new medium appears in everyday life and overcomes the

one already existent. For instance, the invention of the press brought the cultural dominance of

the visual over the oral. Is not the content in itself that matter, for example reading a crime novel

rather than sport news or a scientific research on earthquake in Middle Italy, but the way people

interact with this medium. Not whether television broadcasts a football match or Big Brother, but

rather how television as a medium impacts people that are (were) obliged to sit in front of and

passively soaks it. Books indeed seem to be one of the best inventions ever done because still

never replaced.

2 Walter Benjamin (1936), Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit.3 Marshall McLuhan (1964), Understanding media, University of Toronto Press.

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Nevertheless nowadays the developed countries are facing the turning point of the digital

revolution: the phase of “installation” where the old media are creatively destroyed appears

finished and we are slightly moving towards the “deployment” phase where production capital will

lead to innovations across all sectors and where social benefits are widely spread (Slot & Frissen

2007). “Barbara Maria Stafford observes that with the increasingly widespread use of interactive

computer graphics and educational software packages we are returning to a kind of ‘oral-visual

culture’ which was at the heart of European education and scientific experiment in the early

eighteenth century” (in Lister, 2009, p. 63).4

How the press industry face the new challenge of digital and interactive media.

The press industry is now at the core of such transformations. The whole industry goes through a

deep crisis both on revenues and audience’s interest. Despite that, magazines and newspapers are

differently facing the digital challenge.

On the one hand new technologies seem to have rendered obsolete newspapers in their

traditional format. As Clay Shirky5 explains on his blog, "Printing presses are terrifically expensive

to set up and to run. ... [But] the competition-deflecting effects of printing cost got destroyed by

the internet, where everyone pays for the infrastructure, and then everyone gets to use it.6" Why

people have to pay for news if they can find them for free by a mouse click? As a matter of facts,

newspaper circulation in U.S is down 7 millions over the last 25 years while in the last 5 years

unique readers of online newspapers are up 30 million7. Readers are not stopping reading; they

rather shift on the Internet. Moreover some American newspaper companies are going to

bankrupt while others switched off printer machine and now exist only on Internet. The

Associated Press (U.S.) on December 21 listed the newspaper companies that have declared

bankruptcy: Tribune, Freedom, Philadelphia, Sun-Times, Journal Register, Star-Tribune,

representing 66 daily newspapers among them8. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer now exists only on

the Web. Is quite evident nowadays those newspapers circulate less than the past, revenues are

lower and advertising is progressively moving on websites.

On the other hand magazine’ format fits better the challenge of internet. A primary motivation

certainly lies in the use that is made of the images when compared to newspapers. Our society is

4 Lister, M., J. Dovey, S. Giddings, I. Grant & K. Kelly (2009) New Media. A critical Introduction, London: Routledge.5 Clay Shirky is professor at New-York University.6 http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking-the-unthinkable/7 Source: Newspaper Association of America. http://www.naa.org/TrendsandNumbers/Total-Paid-Circulation.aspx8 To see the list: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jrsTgJuhJelkua1BPW92FjU7nK2gD9CNVBJ00

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still more “visual” than “oral”. Moreover magazine circulations are not declining as rapidly as

those of newspaper, although there are notable examples of companies that decided to produce

no longer print editions. Dennis Publishing indeed has announced on April 2009 that the UK

version of Maxim will remain only available on the website. “Actually, in the war of old media

versus new media, magazines could be said to occupy a middle ground between the two, which

puts them in an advantageous position. Newspapers are definitely in the “old” category, having

dominated the world of intensive mass literacy and political awareness that was born in the 18th

century, achieved its maximum reach by the mid 20th century and then began to

decline”(Dorfman 2008). Magazine can be considered as a medium halfway between the print

culture and the image culture. With the proliferation of niche titles, it could be argued that

magazines share some of the targeted quality of web sites. Magazines could in fact be called “new

old media” or “old new media.”9

Fig.1- 1897 Fig.2 - 1942 Fig.3 - December 2009

By those Cosmopolitan’ covers we can see how graphics changed overtime, notably under the influence of other

media. The first editions reflect newspaper front page at that time: old-fashioned title, no images and index in full

(Fig.1). Half century later, a romantic kiss image fully dominates the cover: it may be a consequence of the wide

diffusion of photography (Fig.2). A well-endowed model is the subject of the actual Cosmopolitan front page and

dazzling titles are putted at her sides in a non-linear order as the hyperlinks are arranged on the website (Fig.3).

How to save magazines?

The resultant frame appears to be very dramatic. Newspaper’ future seems to be traced: maybe

they will not completely disappear but they will not be the first source of information losing their

9 Ibidem5

primarily purpose. They need to be re-invented and other purposes set up. However my focus

there is on magazines and I prefer to leave the discussions on newspaper aside.

How can printed magazines instead survive? The problem concern both financial and content

aspects, intensely related each other. Prior the Internet, magazine incomes came from subscribers

and advertising: now readers are not willing to pay anymore to read whatever they like; at the

same time advertisers are moving to the Web because it offers more-efficient solutions than

printed paper. In order to make a breach in the interest of readers is in fact easier to customize

the advertising as Internet does through keywords and tags.

Publishers should reduce print copies and implement new strategies of distribution in order to

minimize such costs that are still very high. This may seems a contradiction in terms, but also

appears the solely way to maintain or increase their business. In addition the wastefulness of so

many editions that goes unsold can be avoided; advertisers can nimbly identify who really reads

their insertions. Therefore websites and printed version of the same magazine needs to provide

different services in order to avoid annoying repetitions and inefficiencies. They are two separate

outputs of the same firm and not two versions of the same output. Finally the consumer, or better

said prosumer, should have a clear distinction between the content of the website and the content

of the printed version.

A way to enhance the quality and consequently the sales is adding an artistic value to the content.

How? Designers can do that. “I want to make posters, not newspapers, not even magazines:

posters - assess Jacek Utko, an extraordinary Polish newspaper designer - We were experimenting

with type, with illustrations, with photos (…) and soon it started to bring results (…) The secret is

that we were treating the whole newspaper as one piece, as one composition- like music”10. The

reading would be perceived as an experience like listening a song, with the design that leads the

reader surfing through the pages. A magazine can then be intended as something unique and the

signature of a famous art-designer as a proof of quality. A top-level magazine with solid audience

could establish niche strategies of distribution, for instance by limiting editions and raising prices.

Interactivity, co-creation and crossing media.

The core of the challenge posed by new media is the interactivity. The term interactivity stands for

a more powerful engagement with media-text, because during the consuming of media text the

user is able to directly intervene in and change the images and texts that they access. One of those

10 Speech at TED. http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jacek_utko_asks_can_design_save_the_newspaper.html6

forms of new media and interactivity is cross media. Cross media is a term used for the integration

of different media types and the use of different platforms.” (Lister & Dovey, 2003: 9-44)

Actually almost all important magazines already function as multiple platform for reading, listening

and watching contents at the same time throughout hyperlinks. But few among them have taken

the further step by converging their publishing activity with other different ones like

communication companies, other cultural industries or even advertisers. Co-creativity developed

by crossing media operations may leads to important success and profitable source of revenue; it

enables to enlarge consistently the audience reachable and allow publishers to be more

independent from advertising. Maxim’, the biggest man’s magazine in the world, for example

started programming events together with the Ultimate Fighting Championship in Las Vegas, while

the publisher of Cosmopolitan, Esquire and other well-known magazines partnered with Nokia.

Maxim’ is also developing an in-depth understanding of readers preferences and interest by

researches and focus group as well by survey and reader reviews based on Facebook profiles.

Those publications are now more than simply magazines, they turned to be brands. “The future of

news is entrepreneurial” claim the American journalist Jeff Jarvish on his blog BuzzMachine.

Emerging practice of branding surely can be a suitable strategy for the survival of magazine.

As argued before we are now living a sort of “turning point”. The considerations proposed on the

future of papers are undoubtedly valid for the next future, but the implementation of new

interactive digital devices on the market is now opening new crashing scenarios. The Association

Press in collaboration with Esquire presents their latest findings on the future digital magazines by

some video uploaded on Youtube11. At the same time e-books like the ultimate Amazon’s Kindle

are already available on the market. Such transformations coincide with the passage from the

present Web 2.0, where consumer is producer together, to the next Web 3.0, where we can

imagine the prosumer and technological devices fully connected at any time and any place. It is

only matter of time, the time that “installation” phase will end, that such vanguard devices will

spread the world. “Over the next decade – assess Jason Pontin the Editor in Chief and Publisher of

Technology Review - they (publishers) should distribute editorial content to personal computers

over today's Web, to small devices like the iPhone, to larger devices like Amazon's Kindle, to

electronic-ink devices as they emerge, and to print publications (at least for a little longer).” To

conclude, will paper disappears from our daily consumption replaced by digital devices? Within all

11 See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8u3OfKG3tI or the Associated Press channel http://www.youtube.com/user/AssociatedPress

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those visions of the magazines of the future seems there is no space for paper. But printed

magazines and newspaper will not disappear: rather they evolve towards new utilizations.

Proposal for further empirical research

Here I would suggest two main directions of efforts for further researches for both short-term and

long-term employments. Firstly, an economic research could investigate the actual market of

media industries and communication agencies in order to implement new strategies for business.

The underlying goal is the transformation of the company into a brand easy to recognize and able

at the same time to offer multiple services and contents to readers. The focus are those

companies or agencies with similar or complementary business with publishing in order to make

commercial partnership. Then swot analysis can be used to compare the extent of agreement with

the companies founded. This research appears simple and quick. It involves one Senior researcher

that lead the teamwork and three Junior researcher. Two weeks is a reasonable period of time for

the work required (30 hours/week).

Besides that, I believe that digital consumption is going to overcome “analogical” consumption,

although the boundaries of this distinction become more and more thin. The examples cited on

last paragraph are only a few of the new devices put on the market. Others are probably in

construction or still to be invented. A long-term empirical research must focus on the potential

application of innovative digital devices because users are still not familiar with interactive tools,

touching screens and moreover with virtual reality simulators and augmented reality apparatus.

Human senses require time in order to be adapted to new technologies.

The research aim to investigate the usability of an innovative e-book throughout practical tests

and surveys. There are needed three targeted groups of at least 20 people each: schoolchild and

students (6 to 25), adults (25-59) and retired people (60+). The company can award the focus

groups with an annual subscription to his products.

To conduct this research the Senior researcher have to provide a least 10 prototype of the e-book

(at least one prototype per researcher is needed). This research is extremely more expensive than

the first one. It involves one senior researcher, two medior researcher and ten junior researcher

working intensively for one month (40 hours/week).

Financial proposal

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First research €

Senior researcher n.1 (100€/hour) 6000

Junior researcher n.3 (40€/hour) 7200

Tot. 13200

Second research

Prototype n. 10 50000

Senior researcher n.1 16000

Medior researcher n.2 (70€/hour) 22400

Junior researcher n.10 64000

Total 152400

Short critical reflection

Writing this paper I often felt on the mistake to address my attention to different topics related to

the one I have chosen. This is due partially to my curiosity or maybe to my difficulty to keep tightly

in mind the goal I pursue, but mostly because this topic is very actual and concerned everyday life.

You open one door and thousand others open at a time.

I selected many sources from some important blogs run by Illustrious personalities both from

academic and professional fields. Even if bloggers are not still considered at the same level as

academics (because we all are bloggers!), I thought that those references fit better on my purpose.

Probably I developed more some arguments than others: I could have dwell more on the

importance of co-creativity and consumer as a creator of content for instance, and less “on

medium is the message”. Synthesis is not my strong point, especially writing in a non native

language .

Finally I found difficulties on the financial proposal. Even if I have some economic background I

have never matched so deeply the theoretical work with practical on my academic studies before

(unfortunately).I am pretty sure that a realistic financial proposal covers dozens of entries.

References

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- W. Benjamin (1936), Das The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.

- J. Dorfman (2008), The Magazine Industry. Facing the challenge of internet, TransMedia Institute.

- M. Lister, J. Dovey, S. Giddings, I. Grant & K. Kelly (2009), New Media. A critical Introduction.

Second Edition. London: Routledge.

- M. McLuhan (1964), Understanding media, University of Toronto Press.

- Slot, M. and Frissen, V.A.J. (2007), 'Users in the 'golden' age of the information society',

Observatorio (OBS*) Journal, 3, 201-224.

- Newspaper Association of America http://www.naa.org/TrendsandNumbers/Total-Paid-

Circulation.aspx

- Jeff Jarvish’ blog, The future of news is entrepreneurial on BuzzMachine, November 1, 2009

(http://www.buzzmachine.com/2009/11/01/the-future-of-journalism-is-entrepreneurial/)

- Jeff Jarvis, How Bankrupt Newspapers Can Start Over — Before It’s Too Late on The Faster Time,

December 22, 2009.

- Jason Pontin’ blog, The new Commonplace on Technology Review, May 4, 2009

(http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/pontin/tags/newspaper/).

- Clay Shirky’ blog, Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable, March 13, 2009

(http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking-the-unthinkable/)

- Jacek Utko speech at TED

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jacek_utko_asks_can_design_save_the_newspaper.html

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