Magazine Industry Whores Itself Out In Various Ways To Try And Stay Alive

With the magazine industry in a state of crisis, ad revenues down, and even veteran publications like Arena finally moving down the corridor towards the light, the question seems to be: how does one finance a magazine in the days of economipocalypse? It seems odd to resurrect a newer magazine that has succumbed to the crunch, and even more outrageous to launch a brand new magazine. But as crazy as it sounds, JPG Magazine that collapsed last month is to live again, and the latest Condé Nast publication, Love, has just hit stands. 

JPG is a photography magazine, launched in late 2006 with the innovative idea of accepting user-submitted photography as a way of cutting back costs and incorporating readers into the project, bringing print and the web together. It was composed of user-submitted photographs but crumbled last month, despite its popularity, when its parent company 8020 Media’s wells ran dry thanks to inflated salaries and overambitious expansion plans – get the full story from ValleyWag here.  

The rebirth of the company has been possible thanks to an undisclosed price by a joint venture between Adorama Camera (a camera retailer) and an anonymous investment group. 8020 will re-hire some former staff members that were lost in the collapse, and they say that next issue should hit stands in two months. Adorama will become the site’s e-commerce partner, and photos and advice from JPG members, will appear on Adorama’s site. This venture seems suspiciously like a way for Adorama to promote their company and for the magazine to run a slew of advertorials for their Daddy Warbucks. So there you have it – one way for a struggling magazine to turn a profit is to whore itself, to become one of the branded.  

If being in a love nest with a brand doesn’t appeal to you, or if one doesn’t want you, another way to finance a magazine is to be a massively respected style maven with a heartfelt pitch. It worked for Love, the creation of Katie Grand, who was fashion director of The Face before starting POP… enough said.

The magazine is supposedly an edgy take on the traditional fashion magazines currently being churned out. To accentuate just how edgy and out of the box Love is, it placed Beth Ditto, the voluptuous front woman of a band that had a good song out a couple of years ago, completely nude on the cover. It’s not often that the NME can claim to be ahead of the curve, but I think they’ve got an opportunity here. The cover also trumpets the “icons of our generation”, like Iggy Pop and Courtney Love.

Grand has promised a ban on size zero models and a shift away from overly airbrushed images, saying in her editorial: ”Everything about the way that Beth looks reminds us not of her imperfections but our own. She is happy with who she is and the way she is. Don’t we all wish that we woke up in the morning and felt like that?” The utopian statement pairs well with the magazine’s blog, which opened with a magazine employee getting a boob job: “Miss O’Neill will be having her blossoming bosoms enlarged. From the meagre double A you see before you to a whopping great 32C!” 

But if you haven’t got a decades-long track record in the upper echelons of successful mags, yet you have loads of your own money, you can be set anyway. We saw recently how Buck magazine was funded from the editors inheritance and former life as a KPMG exec. Rather more respectable is FUN magazine, which is free, has no advertisers, and generates no revenue, and on its third issue; the founders are bankrolling it through their other ventures as promoters Real Gold, who put on club nights Rich History, Cough/Cool, and The International Amalgamation Of Champions. Co-founder, Ben Freeman, 30, said, “If you want to do something, you can’t sit around and wait for it to come to you,” in The Independent. “Rather than worrying about demographics, target audiences and business plans, we just got on with it.” Fair enough, as it’s funded from their other business ventures.

It seems that in a recession, niche magazine business plans seem to be just as varied as their content…

Posted by Trista Orchard in Creative Economy | March 4, 2009 2:42PM |