Creating Tomorrow: Why the middle ground is killing magazines
It was appropriate that I heard the news about the UK edition of Marie Claire closing via Instagram. A friend I’d met when we both worked at the title ten years ago tagged me in a post on her stories with the news. Maybe it says something about the state of the media landscape that it didn’t even warrant a main feed mention.
Instagram didn’t exist when we both worked there. In fact, Marie Claire didn’t even have a website when I arrived, just a holding page selling subscriptions to the magazine, a miss I was brought in to fix as their first ‘online editor’. (On my first day, someone asked me if I could mend the printer, and I had to explain I was still an editor, just one who would be editing in a digital world, not a print one.)
If it had closed five years ago, I’d have probably heard the news via Twitter, but Twitter wasn’t the replacement for magazines. Despite headlines at the time, bloggers weren’t either. Instagram is, but not for the reasons lots of people think.
It’s been death by a thousand (glossy) paper cuts.
Yes, plenty of us get our fashion cues via the platform and our beauty recommendations from the influencers who populate it, which has most certainly contributed to those nose-diving sales figures. And then there's the swerve of ad dollars onto the platform, alongside the eyeballs, quite literally sucking the lifeblood from print.
Two years ago it was the same story when Glamour UK announced it was axing its regular monthly print edition. That time I was at a wedding in Portugal, alongside more than a handful of London beauty PRs. Everyone had their Glamour story or connection. Mine, a three-and-a-half-year stint on glamour.com, back when the magazine team lived in a separate building and probably only a third of them even knew they had a dotcom version. I permitted myself a wry smile that, like Marie Claire, its digital presence that I’d nurtured many years ago, would live on.
You don’t need me to list the other magazines that have folded recently. I mention the two above simply because of my personal connection to them.
There’s just not enough ad money left in the print world to sustain the number of titles out there. But the world wide web isn’t to blame for that. If that was the case, the number of TV channels would have decreased, when quite the opposite has happened, and billboards wouldn’t exist either.
The real reason magazines are dying is down to our expectation of what’s entertaining or informative. We have come to appreciate the very short – the YouTube video and the Instagram post – alongside the long and in-depth – the binge of an entire boxset, a Netflix documentary. It’s the stuff in the middle that has been edited out.
It’s why we snack on news headlines online during the week, but still buy the Sunday papers for leisurely browsing at the weekend. A lifeline, albeit one that won’t in all likelihood last all that much longer, for the broadsheets.
It’s why Apple TV+ has snapped up feature-length documentaries like The Elephant Queen to stream, but why the soon-to-launch, short-form mobile video platform Quibi raised $1 billion at concept, and has almost as many star names attached as Apple.
Mark my words, the middle ground is nowhere to play when it comes to entertainment today.
Destination of the Week
On home soil again this week, or home water at least. The Isle of Wight where the 6, 9 and 11-year-old were in charge of the schedule, which included a visit to a toy shop, a bus ride to a llama farm and finally a restaurant where you cooked your own food. Thankfully there was wine available at two of the three and a beautiful sunset to sail home to.
Product of the Week
I mentioned a few weeks back that while I flirt with other foundations I always come back to It Cosmetics’ CC Cream. Well, I’ve found something to rival it in my affections, although for reasons that will become clear quite quickly, I will be back to my regular fairly soon. The Japanese skin and beauty brand Clé de Peau is launching in the UK this month and I managed to my hands on its Radiant Fluid Foundation. It is exquisite, and I’d quite like to write that in caps. It honestly felt like I was smoothing water onto my skin. Unfortunately, it also costs £105, so I am choosing to wear it selectively. That I tested it out on a day I went to visit a herd of llamas not withstanding.
Great read! Do you think that we'll eventually grow bored of the two extremes of 'snackable' and longform, and turn back to the middle ground? Or is that gone for good?
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5yGreat piece. I’d be very curious to hear your thoughts on why new media like Refinery 29 are growing, while the old glossies are failing.
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5yCarla Buzasi This is a great analysis. Although you'd think Marie Claire, with its love of the "long read" would have been more resilient to the fading of the middle ground! Clearly not. For me, magazines started to lose their way right back in the early days of the web because they didn't adapt their editorial voice. Digital came along and changed how we speak to readers, but magazines stuck with their tried and tested print voice, which was often slightly aloof. Younger readers have become accustomed to feeling included by influencers/vloggers etc. They also get to experience those people directly at events and meet-and-greets. Perhaps (and this is just an idle thought not a tested theory!) if they had made more effort to build real-world community and speak at the same level as their readers, had real people in their photographs, felt like part of that world, they might have been able to evolve into something that felt vital.
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5yGreat piece Carla. The middle ground is indeed a dangerous place to be. The level of engagement is key; at one end there are brands with such a high number of those engaged that it can be ignored (but you call fall from grace quickly - as Glamour proved) or at the end there are brands that can encourage such a strong level of engagement and in turn value to peoples lives, there is almost an emotional connection. It is here where so many magazines use to live and some niche brands still thrive.
Senior Communications Consultant
5yBringing back Offord Rd memories. Sad times for MC but then I can’t remember when I last bought a magazine. Good points well made x