'Gourmet' Demise: What Causes Magazines to Fail?

Much coverage of folding publications seems to focus on the editorial: They didn't do this, they made that mistake, they didn't really embrace the Web, etc.

This puzzles me: Is Conde Nast's Gourmet being folded because subscribers were fleeing? I didn't see that data point in any of the coverage so far. Because readers are unhappy? Not mentioned either.

Because advertising revenues fell 25% at the beginning of the year, and continued in freefall for the rest of this year? That is what I do see. As with almost every publication dying off, the abrupt loss of ad revenue seems to be the fatal bullet. What has this to do with whether you enjoyed reading it, or whether the right editor was in charge?

It's true that if one shifts the editorial mix with the intention of shifting the mag's demographics, that affects how ads are sold, for better or worse; publishers make those tweaks all the time, especially when the market makeup changes, and if they are lucky they find a way to adjust.

But with every single print magazine and print newspaper losing advertising revenues at shocking rates and bleeding red ink like they've never seen before, focus on the editorial or even the business management seems to be missing the point. Even Conde Nast's famously spendthrift ways aren't what's killed its pubs: Having your revenue drop in half in a very short period is hard to manage, even if you cut costs like mad.

As for the "failure to embrace the Web," no print publication has successfully shifted its center of gravity to the Web with consequent Web-derived revenues that adequately replace the former print revenues. As far as I know, none. I'm not counting pubs like InfoWorld, whose revenues in print dropped so precipitously over a few years that they finally dropped below the very slowly rising online revenues -- so IW is now a formerly $100M print pub that is now a $10M web pub.

As far as I can see, nobody has resolved the economic crisis represented by the Web, not even those who have enthusiastically embraced it.

And as far as I know, nobody has come up with a successful business model for the print publishing world yet. Or for print-Web as a combo business. Not even those criticizing the management, the editorial team, or the oldfashioned love of print publishing.

Michael "Mac" McCarthy
mac.mccarthy@gmail.com