The September 2009 cover fo Gourmet.  Photo Credit: Gourmet.  Story Credit: Guardian.co.uk

With the recent demise of 4 big name titles from the Conde Nast magazine line, and recent closures of newspapers across north America, there is much debate about the magazine and newspaper industry.  There is no question that these are tough times in the hard-copy publishing industry.

The Conde Nast titles slated for closure include two bride magazines, indicating a serious problem with ad revenues for paper publications.  The wedding industry is huge, with many billions of dollars exchanging hands each year through marriages.  The death of two high profile magazines because of a lack of ad revenue, even in this recession, signals a major problem for a section of the industry that, till now, seemed to have a very solid ad/customer base.

When you add the venerable Gourmet title to the death-watch, the extent of the problem becomes more clear.  Gourmet has a long history and an impeccable pedigree behind it ... if they can't make money in the paper publishing world with a food magazine, then it signals serious issues in the  industry as a whole.  Selling a name like "Gourmet" to advertisers in the food industry SHOULD be a no-brainer ... if those revenues are drying up then, to me, it's very bad news for any other magazines trying to make money in the food industry.

Something is clearly afoot here.  Bride magazines have long been a staple of solid advertising revenue for the periodical business ... people are always getting married, and especially in recent years, marriages have become more and more commercial.  Around the country, millions are spent on wedding shows to advertise new products and trends.  Bride magazines have long been a staple of that commercial cycle.  With the closing of Modern Bride and Elegant Bride, 2 huge names in the business of getting new marriage trends to new brides are closing down.

It's a very serious situation.  These weren't start-up mags that were testing a new market, or targeted magazines that have a limited audience.  These were large, general purpose magazines with well established revenues and circulation, and with reputations that were impeccable.  If Gourmet can't sell food ads, and Modern/Elegant Bride can't sell bridal advertising, then that marks a serious seed change in the industry.  These weren't fly-by-night operations ... these were tested, venerable products that SHOULD have advertisers beating down their doors.

There is no question that big changes are afoot, but I wonder if there is really anything we can, or should, do about it.  Without question, new innovation brings new opportunities, but it also destroys existing business.  When cars were developed, there were multiple industries dedicated to the business of moving people around with horses ... buggy and accessories makers, saddle makers, tack providers, riding clothes makers, and many other industries were dedicated to the idea that people got around with horses.

The car changed all that.  No doubt there was significant carnage in the buggy whip industry back at the beginning of the 20th century.  Humans were moving from one mode of transport to another, and businesses that didn't adapt died.  If buggy whip makers morphed into auto accessory companies, they perhaps survived, but as long as their business focus remained buggy whips, they were doomed to death, not because they ran bad businesses, but because they supplied product that humans no longer wanted to buy.

That is the situation in the magazine world today.  The online world has radically changed the way humans get their information, and glossy magazines and newspapers are the buggy whips of the modern publishing industry.  They are a product in search of a market that has abandoned them.  They represent the old way of disseminating information, while the world has moved on to an online model.

Like the buggy whip makers, big paper publishing firms face a difficult choice in today's world.  They are watching old, solid businesses dry up in front of their eyes.  They no longer have the choice of continuing to do things the way they always have.  No one wants their buggy whips anymore because the world no longer rides in buggies.

So what to do?  Conde Nast has made one possible choice ... closing down venerable titles because of declining ad revenue and circulation.  They chose, simply, to stop making buggy whips.  That was a valid choice, but was it the best one?

Back in the day, there would have been certain companies that serviced the horse transport industry that could well have serviced the new car industry the same way.  One example that comes to mind would be a maker of riding gloves ... develop a market for driving gloves, and you can use many of the skills and processes that made you money in the old model, to fuel a new model.

In this case, that would have required Conde Nast to move these publications online, and, at first glance, it would seem Conde Nast has many of the tools necessary to do that successfully.  Gourmet, especially, is a venerable name in food magazines, and it carries significant name recognition, both for advertisers and readers.  That name would easily translate to the online world, and combined with a sold web model, would have a natural leg up on any other web-based food industry offering.

The publishing industry is facing some difficult choices today.  Like makers of buggy whips a century ago, they are watching long-standing markets disappear in the face of innovation.  They have some choices in all this, though none of the choices are "good" ones.  They can choose, simply, as Conde Nast has done, to stop making buggy whips, and that's a logical choice.  Alternately, they can try to find a new way to market or produce their product that fits into the new model.  Wired Magazine might be a good example of this ... they have been able to straddle both the old world and the new one.  But the one choice that isn't rational, right now, is to keep on making product for a dying market.  We can mourn the demise of some long-standing names in the publishing industry, for sure, but we can't really blame Conde Nast for deciding that buggy whips are probably not a growth market in the future.