There is a future for magazines

So again we get used to every pundit forecasting that whatever direction we are currently heading, we will go even further. Remember those who said that petrol would reach $2 a litre. Now that the US version of PC Magazine has announced that it will soon go entirely digital, we are having the "experts" say that the printed magazine is doomed. I don't think so. Things will get harder, but magazines in the computer world are a special case with their readership of computer aware readers, who know what a PDF file is and know how to handle one. PC Magazine had steadily built up an online version that is already absorbing most of the costs, particularly wages costs so the planned staff cuts are just seven print production staff while 140 remain. In 10 years the circulation had halved from a peak of 1.2 million to 600,000. That is still a lot of copies. Consider that when I worked on TV Week and New Idea, those magazines were just under and just over the million copies a week; since then they've gone to less than half that, but they are still doing well for their publishers in that they sell for higher prices and have just as many ads and smaller staff numbers. Most magazines will be facing a decline in ad revenues and will be thinking about the future. But I'd suggest that most of those without a connection to the electronics and computer fields will either fold or, more likely, cut their spending to suit their revenue and continue in printed form. There have been new print publications: consider The Week which started an Australian edition late last year. It is thin, and comprises summaries of what is being written in newspapers and magazines here and around the world, plus just a couple of what are called "good reads", comparatively longer articles of a page or two pages. Almost everything in The Week is available on line if you like to search for it, but it sells at the pocket money price of five cents under $5 (half that if you take out a subscription to receive it by mail). It seems to be doing quite well here after making a success of itself in the UK and USA.