A Look Back at the Trials and Tribulations of 2009 and the Future of Print Media in 2010

In 2009, the media bled as reporters from all four traditional parts of the industry found themselves jobless, while predictions of its imminent demise blared from headlines. According to Vocus Media Research Group, approximately 293 newspapers folded, with nearly 100 of those shuttering in the year’s first quarter alone. Meanwhile, eight magazines with a circulation of 1 million or more ceased publication, and 600 staff members were laid off from top tier publications. Including print and online, a startling number of magazines shuttered this year, totaling 1,126. Newspapers Back in the late 1990’s and continuing into the early part of the decade, Web sites and the Internet were considered a “fad” – a place where editors could post a story for early morning viewers. In their minds, nothing could replace the feeling of having an actual newspaper in your hands, and as a result the newspaper business was late to the party when it came to taking advantage of the Internet for news distribution. Ten years later, it is obvious that digital is the future. In 2009, the Seattle PostIntelligencer dropped its print edition entirely, while the storied Christian Science Monitor went primarily online. Advance Newspapers shuttered the Ann Arbor News and in its place launched AnnArbor.com. Meanwhile, the blogosphere swelled. Blogs offered more opinions and provided more water cooler discussions. Never mind that the skill of reporting quickly became a lost art. Once, three or four sources were required for a newspaper to go with a story, now just one source is enough for a blogger to put it on the Web site and spur a heated debate. In 2009, newspapers dropped like flies as corporate-owned community newspapers folded – many of them Journal Register Company-owned – while the Rocky Mountain News and Baltimore Examiner said their final goodbyes. Approximately 293 papers folded and 45 launched – nine of those being online or Web-first. Meanwhile, major newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and Houston Chronicle, had a combined number of approximately 421 layoffs and buyouts in the newsroom alone. Will the gutting continue? Papers can’t afford to. The major newspapers have cut as much as they can cut and they need to figure out what to do with what they have. As it is, many journalists are performing dual roles, splitting up the duties of a person who was laid off and adding extra duties to remaining staff. And while jobs on the print side will continue to be low in 2010, editorial job openings on the digital side may become more common. Looking ahead to 2010, we will probably see large papers continue to form content sharing partnerships like the Dallas Morning News and Fort Worth StarTelegram, which began sharing sports coverage at the onset of 2009, and the Tulsa World and The Oklahoman, which share selected stories and news content across both print and online mediums. The Washington Post and Baltimore Sun also formed a similar agreement in late 2008/early 2009 when they agreed to share suburban coverage. While combining resources cuts costs for an ailing industry, there is a breakdown in competition. Propublica, Chicago News Coop, Voice of San Diego, Voice of the OC, and the Seattle PostGlobe are just a few examples of the nonprofit, investigative journalism sector of online journalism gaining popularity. In December, the Illinois Statehouse News launched, and in early 2010, another nonprofit called Bay Area News Project is slated to debut. Paywalls will continue to dominate headlines and more newspapers will join that model, but while the controversy among analysts and industry heads continues to be split down the middle, it will not stick, at least not for general news outlets, because people are used to getting things for free. For instance, Newsday went behind a paywall in October and by November had seen a drop in unique users to 1.7 million from 2.2 million. Meanwhile, niche products utilizing paywalls may have a chance since their content is more audience-targeted. Magazines A decade ago, journalism was a profession where media professionals could make a living. Today, it’s an unstable environment where more than 600 reporters from the magazine industry alone can find themselves jobless in a matter of a year. Just between Newsweek and Bloomberg’s BusinessWeek, hundreds were laid off in 2009. Meanwhile, approximately 1,126 magazines folded and publishers took a hard look at the figures, eliminating magazines that just weren’t making the grade. Among those to go were Condé Nast’s Gourmet, Cookie, Elegant Bride, Modern Bride and Domino. One magazine tragically slated for closure was the illustrious Editor & Publisher, which ceased to be at the end of 2009. Only two weeks later, it was brought back from the abyss when California-based Duncan McIntosh Co. Inc. purchased the publication from Nielsen Business Media. As the economy recovers, it will be hard to believe the magazine industry will do the same. The current recession was like a naturally occurring brush fire. It got rid of dead wood. The green shoots we’ll see will be from online trade and association publications. Ad revenue bled while publishers selling titles became a common theme. The Washington Post Company recently announced that it would sell Budget Travel magazine, while Nielsen’s Business Media sold off Adweek, Backstage, Billboard, Brandweek, The Hollywood Reporter, and Mediaweek to e5 Global Media, a company formed by Pluribus Capital Management LLC and Guggenheim Partners. BusinessWeek became Bloomberg’s BusinessWeek as it underwent new ownership. Meanwhile, Playboy joined the chopping block but was saved from purchase when the deal between the magazine and Iconix Brand Group Inc. fell through. In the coming year, duplicate or competing consumer titles that cater to similar audiences will most likely fold, while online magazines will continue to launch but will not have the staying power to outlast the three-to-five-year magazine mortality rate. Many magazines will decrease their publication frequency and more will develop editions “reimagined” for digital distribution, such as electronic readers, which will continue to launch in 2010. But in this medium the magazine tablet will tank because the technology is not ready, but iPhone versions of magazines will do well. Magazines that struggled in 2009 will cease to be in 2010. While the online sector of magazines will continue to grow, it will not be sustainable because getting profitable advertising on these sites is not easy. Publishers will continue to try to grow readership. Only brands that figure out how to package themselves will thrive, becoming the new industry giants. There will be no in-between; all other publications will struggle to keep afloat. Meanwhile, printing on paper beyond 2010 will be a luxury many publishers cannot afford. However, for many magazine brands, printing will be totally unnecessary in order to provide in-demand content their readers want. The question will be whether that content is strong enough to now compete against brands that were “born” on the Web. What still belongs in print is long form journalism and tactile graphic experiences. Kindle didn’t kill book publishing; it made it smaller. Ereaders just provided an alternative. With more alternatives come more fractionalizing of audiences. Because these audiences are fractionalizing, it is becoming harder to reach ‘the masses.’ In a sense, this is actually good news for magazines because they are better at targeting ‘niches.’ As the media struggled to survive during a tumultuous year, business models were experimented with and new marketing endeavors were undertaken. In print, industry heads and analysts debated over the effectiveness of paywalls, while a slew of ereaders geared at books, newspapers and magazines were set to release in 2010. In the case of magazines, almost all the top publishers are launching an electronic tablet meant for reading their content – Time Inc., Hearst and Meredith included. In addition, some publishers have advertised phone applications for about $2.00 a piece. Each company needs to really brand themselves as a content company – then go back and realize the best medium through which to distribute their content to be successful. InStyle and Esquire magazine delved into “augmented reality” as a marketing gimmick. If you hold the magazine cover to your computer’s Web camera, the computer screen will read the bar code and launch a flashy video clip. Some magazines even have a bar code on advertisements that allows you to order it instantly just by taking a picture with your camera. Anything that takes their print product and brings an ‘immediacy’ factor to it has been very popular in 2009. However, other than receiving a lot of press, there’s no proof this has increased subscriptions or newsstand sales. In a drastic departure from the traditional newspaper business model, the Dallas Morning News announced in December that section editors would start reporting to the paper’s sales managers. In addition, newspapers continued to outsource staff, including copy editors, to cut costs. The nonprofit, online news source rose in popularity, based on the Voice of San Diego model, which was a pioneer when it launched back in 2005. Since then we have seen the rise of MinnPost, ProPublica, Investigative Voice and the Seattle PostGlobe, as well as the Texas Tribune, which launched in November and provides research and statistics for reporters and the general public interested in information from Texas. Slated to launch in coming months is the Bay Area News Project and the Voice of the OC, also nonprofit ventures that tout a focus on investigative journalism. These news organizations will continue to pop up, not replacing metro dailies, but supplementing the void left as those dailies cut staff and publication frequency.