Top 5 Ways Your Magazine Can Succeed in 2009
Friday, December 19, 2008
Steve Cohn, Editor-in-Chief, Media Industry Newsletter

Comment Print Email Article Database Del.icio.us Digg   Reprints

With the holiday season in full swing and the end of the year rapidly approaching, now is the time to think about what happened to the media industry in 2008 and what can be done in 2009 to prevent more of the same. Predictions are not optimistic, but I challenge readers to consider other periods in American history when magazines flourished despite tough times.

Sounds like The Impossible Dream in this tanking economy, but if that negativity had existed during the Great Depression, BusinessWeek/Fortune/Esquire/Family Circle/Newsweek and U.S. News and World Report would have been impossible dreams because each launched between 1929 and 1934. Then and now, produce a product that that the public wants, and they will respond.

Perfect example was the November 4 election of Barack Obama. Demand for supposedly “dying” newspapers’ November 5 reporting of this historic moment produced sellouts nationwide. And Newsweek and Time, which are supposedly now redundant next to the Internet, had their biggest newsstand sellers since the September 11, 2001, attacks. And while consumers certainly flocked to Web sites, they were not enough.

That is because magazines are an integral part of Americana. That in itself is not a guarantee for prosperity in 2009, but comfort, as former Country Living editor-in-chief Nancy Soriano proved with Come Home to Comfort following the September 11 attacks, strikes a chord with all of us in difficult times.

I expect advertising to remain awful in first-half 2009, and hopefully rise a bit in the second half because the numbers were so poor this year. That will further hurt bottom lines, but editors and publishers who connect best with readers and the marketplace will be hurt the least. And when conditions do improve (remember: the media business is cyclical), they will be off to the races.

Here are my Top 5 guidelines to producing success in tough times:

1. Build the brand. The more visibility, the better, be it as magazine, Web site event partner, and tv show. But don’t compromise the magazine’s raison d’être—its reason for being—to do so.

2. Spread the good word. Sounds rudimentary for editors and publishers to publicize, but they will have to do it more on their own when PR departments are decimated by the recession.

3. Stick to “core values.” From Halloween to Christmas to Fall Fashion, Best Doctors, Person of the Year, and Dubious Achievements. They are standards that people look forward to.

4. Be positive. If frequency is reduced because of economics, let readers know that the 10 issues will just as informative—and valued—as 12.

5. Sympathize and empathize with readers. It is less of a Jimmy Carter “I feel your pain” than not to wear blinders. Making readers feel like they are part of the magazine is valuable 24/7, but especially so in a bad economy.

Here’s to a Merry Christmas, a happy 2009—and to a much better economy.

Post a Comment

Name:

Email:

Comments:

Please enter the letters or numbers you see in the image.

Features Archives

Comment Print Email Article Database Del.icio.us Digg   Reprints