MAGAZINES GOING ONLINE: IS PRINT MEDIA DEAD?

I love reading magazines. Those exquisitely written articles that stretched my mind in many ways and made me curious of the world; emotionally stirring and thought provoking.

I remember saving some of my allowance to buy an issue. I would buy then Candy Magazine, Seventeen, Sparkling (most teens would buy back then), Starstudio (I love reading and following stories of my favorite artists), Readers’ Digest, even the New York Times magazine that I would usually get from the Bulletin Sunday circulation and many more.

How lovely it was to see your collection lining up on the shelf. There is luxury and satisfaction you get from flipping the pages and the smell of the glossy papers as you go through each leaf. If you are a bookworm, you know what I am saying.

I lost tract as to when I stopped doing it: buying the physical magazine. Maybe as I aged, I lost the time to grab one at the store; it is no longer convenient for me.

The interest of reading magazines, I am sure, is still here but it would be too much of a hurdle for me to buy every issue in the market and to keep piles of physical issues at my place, worth to mention also that it’s not healthy for the environment, imagining the trees to be cut for the papers.

Yes, I know. "Millennials" are often accused of these things, convenience first before anything else ( let’s just not make this the case when it comes to relationship and our values).

No one’s to be blamed. We are now at this time of modernity. The good and bad effects of it is another argument that we will not talk about here, not in this article.

The magazine publications saw their reader’s shift of demand when majority went online.

Recently added to the list is StarStudio, ABS-CBN’s most loved and widely circulated entertainment magazine, with a strong global reach via TFC community.

For 17 years of giving heartwarming and in depth exclusive features of the stars lives, the Kapamilya magazine has gone all-out digital on September 3, with its first story cover featuring the life journey of Maymay Entrata and Edward Barber which received an overwhelming response from the fans. Well, better late than never for StarStudio.

Indeed, most major publications has a site available for either free or for subscription. Yet, there are essential differences between the print and online media. In her book What Remains, Bernadette Geyer discusses the practical differences of the two:

“I will read a print journal cover to cover because I can bookmark where I left off…. Simply taking all of the content of what would have been a print issue and putting it online with links from a Table of Contents is all well and good in theory, but I have to ask, how many people actually sit and read all of the contents of an online journal that publishes several authors/genres per issue?”

That argument is surely one, which most magazines have already asked themselves. Magazines with their online editions have sought ways to attract readers who may not be reading much given that attention spans are getting shorter and time devoted to reading getting lesser. Most websites include online-only features such as podcast, blogs, news updates and exclusive videos.

Another feature of online magazine is the back-issue content. Readers can browse old articles without having to remember in which issue the content first appeared or going through the endless pages yourself.

Is print dead? is the question that has dominated the magazine, newspaper and book industries.

For years, we have heard of news announcements of job loss in the print industry where thousands faced layoffs because of drastic reduce of subscribers and advertisers.

The paradox of all these is that newspaper and magazines do not have an audience problem for in fact news and magazine sites are still vital source of information – it is more of consumer problem. How much the reader will consume? With the minimal payment of the advertisers and a lot of available free online magazines and newspaper, how will the industry stay afloat?

Regardless of your position in this issue, the print industry is facing hardships is a fact we cannot question. They are rethinking their marketing strategies to remain feasible and purposeful in a fast increasing online world.

Therefore, it is safe to say that the print industry is not dead but evolving.