The Survival of Magazine Businesses - Essay Example

Surviving in the Magazine Industry Today: Is Quality Journalism Obsolete? Introduction If start-ups in the magazine business entered quality journalism rather than business investment, they would have been successful. However, they are not and it is not. Rather, magazine companies went bankrupt. Their shareholders were removed; their employees dismissed; their creditors mostly unpaid; and a massive amount of investment lost. Several people in the media industry have referred to the predicaments of magazine businesses today an experiment to determine whether quality journalism can survive in the contemporary media industry (Jacobi 1991). I think they are focusing on the wrong issue. The real problem is quality journalism, but the media business itself. For instance, under discussion is whether the World Wide Web can help major, independent journalistic organisations. The Internet—the greatest medium ever created for information dissemination and news transmission—already provides a plethora of quality journalism and constantly will, from small-scale magazine organisations to the online expansions of large-scale newspapers and networks (Cook 2008). However, can new magazine businesses—organisations which are formed external to and in competition with the giants of the old media—survive through quality journalism alone? Can and will the prospective counterparts of today’s major magazine companies penetrate the current media barrier, emerging as strong national magazine brands above the debris and dissonance of the current magazine industry? Magazine Survival vs. Quality Journalism In a study examining the disparity between professional magazine editors and journalism educators, Dickson and Brandon discovered that there were considerable disparities between the educators and editors in their belief of what comprises the survival of magazines today, specifically what media-related skills or advantages are vital (Lepre & Bleske 2005). The researchers discovered that educators ranked theoretical knowledge in mass media and society, communication theory, and media history, and professionally focused skills in media management, media ethics, and media law, higher than professional magazine editors did (ibid, p. 190). Technical skills in language arts were ranked the highest by professional magazine editors. The group of journalism educators was the only one which ranked another category, skills in journalism, as being the most contributing factor to the survival of magazine businesses (Lepre & Bleske 2005). Generally, the findings of this study demonstrated that even though there were considerable disparities between the groups of professional editors and educators, the groups were in common agreement regarding the comparative significance of quality journalism in the survival of the magazine industry. With regard to quality of journalism, the professional editors were more likely than instructors to rate practical job abilities, such as writing and reporting, as the most vital, and editors were more likely to prefer community-focused reporting abilities (Lepre & Bleske 2005). The researchers concluded that, with the persistent discussion over the importance of quality journalism to the survival of magazine businesses nowadays, it was not especially unexpected that the largest difference between magazine editors and professors was over the significance of theoretical media knowledge and practical media skills. Comparable findings have been reported emphasising journalism educators and magazine professionals. Bales discovered, in a survey research conducted by magazine editors, that editors with degrees in journalism were more likely to believe that journalism courses were doing a satisfactory job of training individuals for jobs at magazines than practitioners with non-journalism degrees (Lepre & Bleske 2005). He also discovered that editors with degrees in journalism were more likely to view skills in journalism as vital to the survival of magazine businesses. By now the pattern is evident and not a great deal of news. Traditional magazines are failing in its advertising efforts and losing readership. As aforementioned, they are discharging employees, cutting costs, and merging magazine departments. This has been a somewhat discouraging pattern for journalism, which has constantly been a mixed package (McLoughlin 2000). At present magazines are giving up their professional writers, such as article journalists, and assigning magazine articles to general writers. The outcome has been a general decline in the quality of magazine journalism (Morrish 1996). The reason is the internet. The general public is currently used to reading magazines for free online. Magazine articles on the internet is also more prompt, more engaging, and it’s hyperlinked to sources—it is a reservoir of information (Cook 2008). It is a timelier, more practical, more cost effective, and better medium of information. The issue is that the Internet is negatively affecting the magazine industry before it is completely stable itself. It is not conclusive how to monetise journalism in the Internet. How will magazines survive the shift? Should it stick to quality journalism for its survival? This has encouraged some people to be discouraged about journalism’s future. Nevertheless, Steven Johnson is hopeful. Johnson is a science author who, at a lecture recently, revealed that he believes quality journalism still exists, it is merely in transformation (Biagi 2006). He states, the solution is the problem itself, the Internet. Magazines have to formulate a new business approach, and a requirement of that will be channelling the printing costs of replacing inefficient magazines (Biagi 2006). Moving to the digital world is the solution, and numerous magazines have already done so. Johnson is quite correct, to a certain extent. There is an unavoidable massive transition to online content, due to the benefits abovementioned. The job of print publications is definitely declining as well, but they will disappear completely in the near future (Biagi 2006). The actual solution will be to discern which form of content is optimal online, and which are still effective in print—and how to merge the two in a manner that maximises delivery of magazine articles and formulates a successful business approach. Magazines need professional journalists, which imply that there has to be a business approach that permits journalists to live on their reporting. Without professional journalists researching and narrating the story, what magazine articles will bloggers, for instance, examine? Bloggers will constantly have the professionally written review. There is an actual risk to the shift that quality journalism is experiencing. If journalism as a professional occupation, particularly magazine journalism, cannot be financially maintained, a good deal may be lost. In due time, it would be better to mix print and online magazines. Trials will examine different approaches and eventually we will have a much better magazine industry. Advertising gives most of the profit for magazine businesses and traffic is crucial for optimising those advertising investments (Cook 2008). No debate there. The size of audiences, assessed by ratings and surveys of readership, has constantly been a major factor in establishing advertising profits. The difference at present is that the profit generating potential of individual magazine articles, and the journalists who make them, can be evaluated exactly in real time (Biagi 2006). Magazine editors can write, advertise and remove articles relying on the traffic they are generating—and the marketing investments they are gaining. The temptation to select and manipulate articles to optimise profit may be irresistible, particularly when majority of media sites are still failing or going bankrupt, merely surviving on marginal profits. The internet offers the system we all employ to search and locate information. As time passes by, people are increasingly making use of new system to locate magazine articles. While media sites in Australia gain approximately 30 percent of traffic from Web engines, Britain’s Times Online states it is approximately 60 percent (Cook 2008, para 18). All over the UK, magazine companies have increasingly made use of SEO-friendly titles to gain a sizeable readership (Cook 2008). The Internet persuades a distinct audience. They are ordinary consumers of magazine stories drawn by specific themes and issues, usually containing lifestyle and celebrities (Biagi 2006). They do not care about the quality of journalism, bylines, or mastheads. They are capricious. However, they are the single growth market obtainable to magazine organisations (Cook 2008). Some magazine practitioners refers to one of the most costly search terms in Google, ‘mesothelioma’, to show the possible misrepresenting impact of these new commercial facts (Cook 2008, para 19): In a world where advertisers pay more than fifty bucks for a click on the phrase ‘mesothelioma law firms’, Higgins asks, in the latest issue of The Walkley Magazine, “How tempting might it be to commission a few extra James Hardie stories a week or simply add a few pars about mesothelioma into existing stories?” (ibid, para 19). Thinking about the power of the search engine, magazines are currently advertised individually and immediately. In the near future, professional journalists will have higher participation or role in the activity of advertising their articles (Cook 2008). Search engines scan the title, headline and at least the first hundred words or so of news articles, which means some journalists, are urged to use online tools to research the key words most frequently used by people searching on the topics they are writing about. These words can then be strategically placed in the story (ibid, para 20). Moreover, professional journalists will also be assumed to persuade others, plus sources, to connect their narratives. Forced to its rational assumption SEO will merge marketing and editorial tasks in a single individual: the professional journalist (Biagi 2006). The professional and ethical concerns are intense and thus far they have been mainly taken for granted. Aside from issues regarding the probability of articles being preferred, written, and advertised with the worth of key words taking much precedence; there is also the anxiety that the increasing significance of ordinary readers will view quality journalism means be forced to transform into an Internet tabloid (Cook 2008). Jack Shafer, from the magazine Slate, has referred to the proof for this pattern in the dominance of madcap headlines at the website of CNN where reports about ‘babies being mauled by tigers and protests about ads that features nude nuns are’ (ibid, para 21), he observes, gaining excessive importance and headlines are turning out to be absolutely predictable; an excellent case is (Cook 2008, para 21) “Baby pandas! Baby pandas! Baby pandas!”. Conclusions A comparable pattern is obvious in the UK major media channels which presently provide far more importance to tabloid-form articles than their print renditions ever did (Johnson & Prijatel 1998). Proponents of SEO, outside and inside media companies, claim that the new strategies are merely updated renditions of what has constantly took place. However, the defects in evaluating the responses of audiences in the past facilitated a vigorous, if usually awkward, differentiation of marketing/advertising and editorial (Cook 2008). Professional journalists are proud of their lack of knowledge of advertising strategies, marketing, and profit; the room where in to conceal the commercial realities is drastically vanishing. We should greatly fear the increasing slight evaluation and disintegration of quality journalism. Something priceless will vanish when the revenue or loss is worked out on each and every article. And preferences of editors are determined accordingly. References Cook, T., 2008. The Death of Quality Journalism. ABC, para 1-35. Jacobi, P., (1991). The Magazine Article: how to think it, plan it, write it. Indiana University Press. Johnson, S. and Prijatel, P., (1998). The Magazine From Cover to Cover: Inside a Dynamic Industry. NTC Publishing Group.  Lepre, C. & Bleske, G.L., 2005. Little Common Ground for Magazine Editors and Professors Surveyed on Journalism Curriculum. Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, 60(2), 190+ McLoughlin, L. ,(2000) The Language of Magazines. London: Routledge.  Morrish, J., (1996) Magazine Editing. London: Routledge  Read More