Conde Nast folding Portfolio isn’t a good indicator for the future of new magazines, and current ones shouldn’t be boasting either.
As magazines fold because of the recession and deteriorating ad market, it’ll become even riskier to start new publications, Jeff Jarvis, author of “What Would Google Do,” writes at BuzzMachine.
I’m not saying that magazines are going to start dropping like flies and newspapers. When the economy comes back, many will still be able to sell their targeted, engaged audiences to advertisers for a premium … at least for awhile. Some may even manage to pull off a metamorphosis into community platforms and a few high-value titles — see: The Economist — can even grow. But when the weak ones die, there’ll be none to replace them.
As for some of Portfolio’s peers, Peter Kafka at MediaMemo looks at the prospects of some of the magazine’s competitors. While none of them are suffering through a “Portfolio-like swoon,” they shouldn’t exactly be boasting about their future either, he says.
Portfolio’s ad pages dropped more than 60% in 1Q, whereas McGraw-Hill’s (MHP) BusinessWeek fell 39.8%, Time Warner’s (TWX) Fortune declined 26.3% and privately-held Forbes decreased only 15%.
“Bear in mind that the revenue numbers for each title are likely down much more dramatically,” he says, as financial services and autos are two of the biggest sectors upon which business magazines typically depend.
Ultimately, it’s still too soon to put magazines on the same death watch that newspapers find themselves. But they may be headed on the same path.
“The death of Portfolio doesn’t yet presage the doom of magazines,” Jarvis says. “It marks the doom of magazine launches.”
