Editorial Notes
From a conference paper I’ve been working on
The Crisis of Progressive Periodical Publishing
You’ve heard it all before. Print periodicals are in deep crisis. Whether they be newspapers, magazines or home-produced ‘zines, each year, the circulation for nearly all American print media continues to decline. With increasing self-righteousness, analysts predictably respond to this situation with an “I told you so” kind of smugness, proclaiming this change to be part of a larger, evolutionary process that publishers must either adapt to or die.
Thirteen years after the web first emerged as a viable publishing platform, no one questions this wisdom. In every sphere of the publishing industry, the question is not “when?” but “how?” Do we simply recreate our print editions online, or are we to innovate a wholly new form of periodical that commissions every kind of media for publication? If we do so, can we still call what we’re doing a magazine or a newspaper, or are we all now television stations like Justin.TV? No one quite knows yet.
Unfortunately, its uncertain as to whether there will ever be a comparable level of revenue generated online as there once was by print fulfillment and advertising charges. For example, the Internet’s flagship periodicals – Salon and Slate – despite increasingly successful ad policies, still struggle towards profitability, while only one newspaper – the Wall Street Journal – has generated a discernible profit offering online-only subscriptions.
Clearly, despite the immense number of schemes being toyed with to raise money, most are not working yet. So why do pundits continue to make such a convincing fuss about a medium that has yet to prove itself? Is it that we’re still in a ramp-up period prior to the emergence of a new set of mechanisms to accrue revenue? Or is all of the hope expressed by the move online a reflection of how publishing is losing its economic value, and that most periodicals are increasingly supported by patronage, not sales?
Lets assume the worst: that the push to move online is because it’s a cheaper and easier place to publish, which, under present circumstances requires less staff, less marketing, and thus less investment. Just a one time-set up fee for a technologist, a design team, the creation of a posting script, and enough capital to cover minor, ongoing design work and a small commission for authors. Like print, the test of the magazine’s success remains squarely on its content, and how it’s subsequently ranked and circulated.
