Print Is Not Dead

I've just published the following article which appears in The Capitol Communicator at http://www.capitolcommunicator.com/

The obituaries for print magazines seem to be everywhere. Fueled by the shift to electronic media and the decline of advertising revenues, it seems that not a day goes by without hearing about the shuttering of a print media product. But, as the saying goes, don’t believe everything you read. Print is not dead and there are publishers who are going against the trends and increasing their investments in ink-on-paper products as a way of cementing their position in the markets they serve.

Hearst Magazines, a division of Hearst Corporation, the well-known publisher of a number of popular magazines including Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan, and O, the Oprah magazine, has launched Food Network Magazine with much success. Originally planned to have a paid circulation of 300,000, the publisher has just reported circulation of over 900,000 and is on track to surpass the one-million mark before the end of this year. Published in collaboration with the cable TV channel, Food Network and its popular website foodnetwork.com, the print product offers unique content available on neither the television shows nor its website and is delivered in a format that can easily be used by its readers in their kitchens. A recent article in the New York Times quotes Samir Husni, chair of the journalism department at the University of Mississippi: “I give a lot of credit to Hearst for being willing to go in one direction when everyone else is going in the other direction. They’re doing well in a tough time, and Food Network is the big success story of 2009.”

But large publishers are not the only ones enjoying success with recent launches of print magazines. Numerous niche publishers, fueled by the success of their websites, have launched print products. Heather Vreeland, publisher of newly launched Atlanta Occasions Magazine, saw the print product as a more direct way of reaching her customer base than she was able to achieve with her company’s website. Focusing on the bridal industry in the greater Atlanta area, she was having difficulty selling advertising space on the website because of low traffic and strong competition from the national websites serving the bridal market. So, rather than wait for customers to find her, she determined that with a print product she could go to the places her customers visit by distributing the magazine at wedding gown stores, bridal shows, and other locales where the customers of her advertisers were congregating. The result: the print magazine is generating significantly more revenue than her website and has served to increase her company’s visibility within the market it serves, something that would not have happened if she continued to rely on just her company’s website.

These cases are not unique. Although costly to produce, print products continue to deliver value to readers and advertisers when they are positioned to complement the content offered by a publisher’s electronic media. Unlike websites, which require a computer to view, magazines are portable, can be more readable, and can deliver a verifiable readership of purchasers than can most websites. Print is alive and well and will continue to be so as long as publishers view them as an integral part of a multi-media mix of content delivery products.

For more, contact Robert Silverstein, principal, Advertising Sales Experts, Inc. (http://www.adsalesexperts.net/)