Where is the Magazine Industry Headed?

Teen Vogue was my magazine of choice in those wonderful middle school years (HA!). But really, I loved coming home from school to find a Teen Vogue on my bed, placed there by my mom when it came in the post that day. On Nov.2, Condé Nast announced they will be canceling the print version of Teen Vogue, much to the pain of my middle school heart. Thankfully, they will not be completely canceling the magazine. But instead, just moving to a solely digital outlet. With the announcement of the print cancelation, they also laid off 80 workers (Ember para. 2).

What does this mean for print media? Condé Nast, the powerhouse publisher of some of the biggest names in the magazine universe, also announced their reduction in the number of print issues of some of their other popular magazines like GQ and Glamour. The way people access their daily, weekly, or monthly dose of reading is changing. There seems to no longer be the excitement of receiving a magazine in the post. People are looking to applications like Snapchat and Amazon Kindle to read their favorite magazines. Snapchat offers an interesting take on the magazine industry. Under their Discover page, they have little daily and weekly snippets of some of the biggest names in the industry, like Cosmopolitan, Vogue, People, WSJ, The Washington Post, Seventeen, Teen Vogue, and many more. A lot of these Discover stories are indeed Condé Nast publications.

Accessibility and connectivity are the names of the game. People want to access easily, for FREE, read daily updates and stories from their favorite pop culture outlets, and another key aspect: share them with their friends. Personally, it saddens me that print magazines are becoming a dying art, quite like newspapers. I think there is something about physically flipping and feeling the glossy pages of a magazine, that a 2×4 in. screen cannot replicate. I am curious to see if, or when, other publications will follow in the steps of Teen Vogue. Will this movement hurt the magazine industry as a whole? We shall find out.

Reference – https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/02/business/media/conde-nast-teen-vogue….