https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/23/business/media/the-not-so-glossy-future-of-magazines.html
The Not-So-Glossy Future of Magazines
By SYDNEY EMBER and MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM SEPT. 23, 2017
One evening in mid-September, a gaggle of writers and bon
vivant editors gathered by the outdoor fireplace and ivy-covered trellis of a
West Village tavern. Steak was served, and the toasts lasted late into the
night, the revelry trickling out to the nearby sidewalk.
It could have been a scene from the Jazz Age heyday of
the Manhattan magazine set — or even the 1990s, when glossy monthlies still
soaked up millions of dollars in advertising revenue, and editors in
chauffeured town cars told the nation what to wear, what to watch and who to
read.
This night, however, had an elegiac tinge. The staff of
Vanity Fair was saluting the magazine’s longtime editor, Graydon Carter, who
had announced that he was departing after a 25-year run. In the back garden of
Mr. Carter’s restaurant, the Waverly Inn, star writers like James Wolcott and
Marie Brenner spoke of their gratitude and grief.
Mr. Carter has always had a knack for trends. Within two
weeks, three other prominent editors — from Time, Elle, and Glamour — announced
that they, too, would be stepping down. Another titan of the industry, Jann S.
Wenner, said he planned to sell his controlling stake in Rolling Stone after a
half-century.
Suddenly, it seemed, longstanding predictions about the
collapse of magazines had come to pass.
Magazines have sputtered for years, their monopoly on
readers and advertising erased by Facebook, Google and more nimble online
competitors. But editors and executives said the abrupt churn in the senior
leadership ranks signaled that the romance of the business was now yielding to
financial realities.
As publishers grasp for new revenue streams, a
‘‘try-anything’’ approach has taken hold. Time Inc. has a new streaming TV
show, “Paws & Claws,” that features viral videos of animals. Hearst started
a magazine with the online rental service Airbnb. Increasingly, the longtime
core of the business — the print product — is an afterthought, overshadowed by investments
in live events, podcasts, video, and partnerships with outside brands.
The changes represent one of the most fundamental shifts
in decades for a business that long relied on a simple formula: glossy volumes
thick with high-priced ads.
“Sentimentality is probably the biggest enemy for the
magazine business,” David Carey, the president of Hearst Magazines, said in an
interview. “You have to embrace the future.”
At a time of belt-tightening, celebrity editors, with
their big salaries and expensive tastes, are increasingly passé. Budget-minded
executives at publishers like Hearst and Condé Nast are looking more critically
at requests for six-figure photo shoots and $5-a-word writers.
“The timing doesn’t really surprise me,” said Tom Harty,
president and chief operating officer at Meredith, which publishes Better Homes
& Gardens and Family Circle. Magazines, Mr. Harty said, often circulate
upcoming budget numbers in September.
“When you start thinking about the revenue stream for the
following year,” he said in an interview, “it must lead to some cost
discussion.”
In some ways, the spate of departures was a coincidence.
Mr. Carter, 68, said he would have left earlier this year if not for the
election of President Trump, whom he enjoys covering. Mr. Wenner, 71, has been
deferring to his son, Gus, 27, who this year was named president of Wenner
Media. Nancy Gibbs of Time had worked at the company for 32 years. And Cindi
Leive of Glamour and Robbie Myers of Elle both served for nearly two decades.
Quietly, optimists in the business say that it may be
healthy for a younger generation of editors to take the reins. Older editors
are less accustomed to the rhythms and forms of web journalism; Jann Wenner,
for instance, famously resisted posting Rolling Stone stories online. Many of
the industry’s rising stars are finding ways to raise revenue and gain readers
on the digital side.
“If you want to do the same thing year in and year out,
you shouldn’t do these jobs,” Mr. Carey said.
Kurt Andersen, a former editor of New York and, with Mr.
Carter, a founder of Spy magazine, said that print magazines were still
breathing, but that the recent upheaval was a sign that the denouement might
not be far off.
“The 1920s to the 2020s was kind of the century of the
magazine,” he said, noting that The New Yorker and Time were founded in the
decade before the Great Depression. Today, he added, the industry was in “more
of a dusk, a slow dusk, and we’re closer to sunset.”
In his spacious aerie in Hearst’s Midtown Manhattan
tower, Mr. Carey displays trinkets of an earlier, more glamorous magazine age.
Behind his desk is a framed quote from Malcolm Forbes,
the exuberant late chairman of Forbes magazine, and a yellowing memo about Tina
Brown from Mr. Carey’s days as publisher of The New Yorker. His 43rd floor
office overlooks the Hudson River and Central Park.
But as the executive leading Hearst’s magazine business
into an uncertain future, Mr. Carey said that he was focused on identifying new
ways to increase revenue and trim expenses.
“We know that we have to constantly force ourselves to
shake things up,” said Mr. Carey, dressed meticulously in navy pinstripe. “All
media companies are going through a period of change, and we’re not immune from
that.”
Hearst, like Condé Nast, is privately held, so the
details of its financial performance are unclear. But recent earnings reports
from Hearst’s publicly traded competitors provide a glimpse into the magazine
industry’s falling fortunes.
Revenue at Time Inc. has declined every year since 2011;
the company, which recently took itself off the market after speculation about
a potential sale, is now aiming to cut $400 million in costs over the next 18
months. Although the print business still accounts for roughly two-thirds of
Time Inc.’s $3 billion in annual revenue, the company is shifting resources to
video and television.
Meredith, whose headquarters in Des Moines has test
kitchens, craft studios and a wood shop, is doing comparatively better than its
more glamorous rivals based in New York. Its magazines, which focus largely on
perennial topics like decorating and recipes, remain popular with the company’s
mostly female readers. Still, Meredith reported a slight drop in revenue for
its magazine business in its most recent fiscal year, which ended in June.
A flurry of recent sales also suggest that smaller
publishers are having trouble surviving on their own.
Before Mr. Wenner put Rolling Stone up for sale, Wenner
Media sold Us Weekly and Men’s Journal to American Media Inc., the owner of The
National Enquirer. Johnson Publishing, which is based in Chicago, sold the
magazines Ebony and Jet last summer to a private equity firm. Rodale, whose
titles include Bicycling, Runner’s World and Men’s and Women’s Health, recently
said it, too, was for sale; a deal is expected to be announced in the coming
weeks.
“There have never been brand names like that that have
been sold in such a concentrated period,” said Reed Phillips, a managing
partner at the investment bank Oaklins DeSilva & Phillips. “That alone
indicates something is going on.”
The financial outlook remains bleak. Analysts and
executives expect double-digit annual declines in print advertising to
continue. The ad buying firm Magna projects print magazine ad sales to fall 13
percent this year, with a similar rate of decline in 2018, according to a
report released last week.
Mr. Phillips said it was only a matter of time until
these trends were felt at the industry’s highest levels. “In the past,
magazines could support celebrity editors, but it’s becoming harder and harder
with the revenue declines to do that,” he said. “This is really not about
making the numbers in 2017, but making the numbers in 2018.”
One day after the fete for Mr. Carter at the Waverly Inn,
Time Inc. rolled out a major initiative: PeopleTV.
A new iteration of a streaming video network that the
company introduced last year, PeopleTV will feature pop culture programming in
conjunction with Entertainment Weekly, another Time Inc. title. Among the shows
on offer: “Paws & Claws,” which, according to a news release, will feature
“all of the adorable, viral and buzzworthy animal stories of the week.”
Pet videos are a favorite on social media, so it is easy
to see why Time Inc. wants to jump on the fluffy bandwagon. But that material
is a far cry from the award-winning journalism that filled once-thick issues of
Fortune, Sports Illustrated and Time, where Mr. Carter got his start in New
York journalism.
These experiments are part of an industrywide race to
find some way — any way — to make up for the hemorrhaging of revenue.
Hearst recently introduced The Pioneer Woman Magazine, a
partnership with the Food Network host Ree Drummond that was initially sold
only at Walmart. Its new travel publication, Airbnbmag, is geared toward
customers of the do-it-yourself online rental site, with distribution at
newsstands, airports and supermarkets. Meredith has started a magazine called
The Magnolia Journal with the HGTV stars Chip and Joanna Gaines.
Even Condé Nast, the glitzy purveyor of luxury titles,
has recognized the advantages of outside partnerships. In recent weeks, the
company debuted a quarterly print title for Goop, Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle
brand, with a cover featuring a topless Ms. Paltrow submerged in mud from
France.
At Vanity Fair, Mr. Carter resisted efforts by Condé Nast
executives to shift his design, photo, research and copy teams out of the
magazine’s purview, a move required of nearly every other title as part of a
companywide cost-cutting effort, according to two people who spoke anonymously
to describe private discussions. Mr. Carter was reluctant to make additional
cuts that may be forced upon his magazine in the future, the people said.
Some veteran editors rue the trend toward corporate
metrics in the industry.
Terry McDonell, a former top editor at Sports Illustrated
and Rolling Stone, said that celebrity editors of the past embodied and defined
the magazines they ran. “Now that is being replaced by people who believe that
you can, in fact, engineer creativity and quality journalism,” he said.
Mr. Andersen, who now writes books and hosts a public
radio show, said that magazines might eventually gain a cult following akin to
the interest around other obsolete media, like vinyl records.
“Eventually, they’ll become like sailboats,” he said.
“They don’t need to exist anymore. But people will still love them, and make
them and buy them.”
A version of this article appears in print on September
24, 2017, on Page BU1 of the New York edition with the headline: Where the
Future Isn’t So Glossy.
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