The Magazine Struggle and a New Attempt

Today in the business section of the New York Times, an article entitled “In a Troubled Time, a New Business Magazine” managed to capture my attention. Even though the subject matter relates more so to what we talked about at the beginning of the semester, I still felt that it was interesting to see the problems that magazines are facing from the business world perspective. The piece addressed a daring move to introduce a new business magazine called Portfolio by the company Conde Nast that will take an innovative approach to presenting business focused stories.

One manner in which they choose to change the media medium was by adding a huge amount of advertisements. According to the article, out of the 335 pages that make up Portfolio, 185 of those pages are filled by advertisements. I know advertisements are vital to the survival of magazines, but I become incredibly discouraged when I find that a magazines mostly consists of ploys for selling material instead of actual stories, therefore I tend to not buy those types of magazines. Yet, this mass amount of advertisement is what has the editors of the paper so incredibly excited. Compared to other business magazines, Portfolio has managed to grab a large number of interested investors, many of whom would not typically buy placement in a business magazine. It seems that they hope this surge of investors will breathe new life into the magazine industry, especially in the business sector.

This new interest has the editors changing the formatting of not only the magazine itself, but the website as well. The site has interactive features, streaming videos, blog spaces – many attractive features that will enrapture a widespread online reader community. Since the magazine is focused on groups of individuals with large amounts of money and possible investment opportunities, they are bound to be technology savvy and apt to use the online version of Portfolio. Through the use of their internet site, I agree that these editors have found the key to magazine success. Through this new media, the magazine staff expands itself past the simple paper world, touching with a base in the business sphere who may feel they do not have the time to flip through paper magazine version, but are more than willing to infosnack on the website which contains the same exact material as the paper version – for free. In the long run, mastering online as a media medium will help save struggling newspapers, giving them a second chance.