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YahooBitch magazine is in trouble. The feminist favorite needs $40,000 to stay in print, and they are appealing to readers for help. It's not alone.
In fact, you find yourself around a group of print journalists these days, you're likely to wind up in a conversation about which newspaper's just had a layoff, or which magazine is on the verge of closure. It's old news that many news organizations saw their ad revenues slide as they moved online, and that web-based competitors such Monster.com and Craigslist siphoned off advertisers that had been the lifeblood of print.
But this year has been something special: so many newspapers and magazines are in crisis now that there's even a blog called Newspaper Deathwatch. What's worse, some of the publications that are in critical condition are not only vital to their loyal readers, but to the health of the democracy they serve.Here's the appeal from the folks at Bitch:
One thing Bitch has going for it is a group of supporters who blog, such as Christine C. at PopandPolitics, who urges readers to donate because:
In a sea of mediocre media, Bitch consistently and forcefully rises above the fray.
The folks at the Newark Star-Ledger would likely be thrilled by that kind of grass-roots support, although they need a lot more than $40,000. Check out this excerpt of a memo sent to staffers at the Pulitzer-winning Star-Ledger announcing that because of a failure to reach an agreement with the paper's drivers:
[W}e will be sending formal notices to all employees this week, as required by both federal and New Jersey law, advising you that the Company will be sold, or, failing that, that it will close operations on January 5, 2009.
The Star-Ledger's sister paper, the Times, which serves New Jersey's capital city of Trenton, faces a similar fate. The Bergen Record, another New Jersey paper known for its hard-hitting investigations announced in June that it was closing its headquarters and requiring reporters to work from home with laptops and cell phones. According to an article in the New York Observer last month, Record editor Frank Scandale is worried:
“Can you cover the big stories that really mean something to people—how taxes are spent, projections for jobs, stuff you just need to know if you live here—if you have too few journalists?”
For a number of years, ethnic news organs had been one of the few growth areas in the industry, but there's trouble there too. BlogHer CE Nina Moon directed me to KoreAm.com, a magazine for Korean Americans, which is posting this appeal:
KoreAm is not immune to what’s happening in our industry and this economy. If anything, we are more vulnerable as the betwixt-and-between underdog magazine trying to serve the betwixt-and-between bicultural generations who find exploration of our unique identity and stories worthwhile. If you believe in what this community magazine stands for and the service it provides, you need to support it in concrete ways.
If this was just another industry, we might be content to throw up our hands and accept that the market gives and the market takes away. But journalism is more than just another industry -- its an institution vital to sustaining democratic government. And millions of people will continue to need a physical copy of their news, as opposed to an online product.
If print journalism is to survive, it may have to embrace the online revolution that contributed so heavily to its near-fatal wounds. Don't be surprised if some newspapers and magazines start using a web-based print-on-demand service such as MagCloud to distribute and sell their products.
Here's the way it works, according to their website. A publisher uploads .pdf files of the publication. MagCloud allows subscribers to buy individual stories or subscribe to the whole magazine, then splits the revenue with the magazine publisher. The model is attractive because it eliminates two of the biggest obstacles in print publishing -- the high costs of postage and paper.
I learned about MagCloud via internet strategist Jeremiah Owyang. I don't know many print editors or publishers who know what a web strategist is, or about technologies such as MagCloud. These days, however, they are scrambling to learn.
This is Tough
Tacomamama September 17, 2008 - 8:50am
Sadly, I am not sure new media is the answer, either. To be really successful with online advertising, you need the kind of numbers local or niche news just can't support. It's very sad. I'm not sure what will be left of the "news" when all this plays out.
We've been talking about this a lot in Tacoma, with the News Tribune offering buy outs to over half of their staff and cutting back drastically on their print publication. There's a lot of talk that the blogosphere will step in and fill the void, but I am a skeptic. I put a lot of time into my blog but probably only really do a thoroughly researched, journalistic piece about once a month. With revenue in the "hobby" zone, it's very difficult to do much more. For the sake of my family's well being, I need to begin to look at national interest writing more seriously, but I've definitely been going through a grieving process.
Tacoma Mama