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spitx

How bad do the finances of a visibly healthy publication have to be, to go down the path of advertorials?

Are things in print media that chafing?

NYT being bankrolled and drip-fed for survival, by a Mexican billionaire is one thing.

I was an avid reader of the Atlantic when David Brooks wrote for it. It was a fine publication back then.

I didn't realize things, lately, had gotten so dire.

This is just appalling.

Why aren't these print guys experimenting with alternate brick-and-mortar distribution models?

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I can say, having been on the inside of Atlantic Media a little over a year ago, people are running around like chickens with their heads cut off about revenue there. They've made it into the black through aggressive advertising sales and extreme cost-cutting/staff demands (trying to make "startup hours" the norm, like working to 10pm, letting seasoned journalists walk and replacing them with interns and recent grads), but they were still taking on water whether anybody wanted to admit it. I'm happy I left before it got this bad.

When I got an Android device, I discovered they are trying an alternative distribution model. This company Next Issue sells a subscription for $10/month that basically entitles you to read any of some ~50 magazines on your tablet. The thing that really rubbed me the wrong way is that I theoretically get the New Yorker electronic edition for free since I'm a full subscriber, but I'd still have to pay an extra $10/month to use the Next Issue app (unlike the New Yorker app for iPad). They also sell a "premium" subscription for $15/month that includes the New Yorker and some other "premium" magazines (like Sports Illustrated). Then I discovered the New Yorker restricts people to devices with particular resolutions, which my tablet didn't have.

So they're trying to figure it out, in fits and starts, but they seem to be aiming for Hulu, which doesn't strike me as the best model of success.

I, for one, think that print publications have left far too many revenue streams on the table when the going was good, before the advent of Craigslist & Google, even before the blogs of today - Huffington Post & the like - started robbing attention share away from established print outlets.

Print publications were and are notoriously stubborn in many ways. They could have done a dozen things to immunize themselves from the online entrants in the early days. They didn't. Now they're having to deal with the consequence of their arrogance and myopia in ways they've never imagined.

My city's main newspaper has been using more noticeably vague titles in their social media posts, presumably to gain more ad views. They have also been forced to stop publishing a paper on Sundays. Very sad.

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