This is an interesting comment on the continuing print vs digital debate. Call me a luddite, but I don’t ever think that an iPad or a Kindle will replace a book or a magazine.
I consume a lot of digital media but I don’t consider that digital media (blogs, twitter, online news or fashion) cannibalises a valuable print product. I have four year’s (and counting) worth of British Vogue stacked neatly in chronological order in my front room. Being able to hold and keep (and refer back to) a print product is big part of why the digital age doesn’t spell the end for good magazine. (At the other end of the spectrum though, are the trashier gossip rags. I think you’ll see these publications going into rapid decline on the back of blogs that are less restricted by *ahem* lawyers telling them what they can’t write and websites that can be quickly updated.)
While in London I worked at IPC Media, right in the thick of escalating hysteria about the End of the (Publishing) World As We Knew It. I remember a recruitment agent telling me I shouldn’t take the job because I’d be out of work within a year. (Just one more reason, in case you needed it, never to take advice from recruitment agents).
In reality, a LOT of my work (well over 50%) was about driving our readership across multiple media platforms and leveraging the “anchor” brand of the print publication into the digital space.
Take NME - an iconic music title that now supports a tv channel, a radio station and Europe’s biggest commercial music news site at NME.com. Kind of to be expected I guess, with the Gen Y hyper-connected target audience?
Then you look at www.horseandhound.com.uk I doubt their digital readership is as high as NME’s. But they had a thriving and engaged online community. These people were horse mad and cashed-up - a saddle manufacturer’s wet dream, and an example of why maxing out the readership numbers isn’t always necessarily the be all and end all.
