Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Press Gazette on the brink

Greenslade has a gloomy but well-informed account of the financial prospects of the Press Gazette.

It will be a great shame if this informative and well-written magazine ceases publication. And if it does, it will be the first time that this has happened to one of 'our' magazines.

One of Greenslade's comment-makers has this opinion:

Funnily enough your blog has helped kill it Roy - people in the media want online news about the media and they want it cheap. Guardian Media plus media blogs = death for UKPG, despite it being a v good product.
{Posted by POLIS on November 21}

This seems harsh. The Guardian is after all a succesful commercial enterprise. Magazine journalism about journalism can surely survive in a digital age. But it is a tough assignment when half the audience are actively blogging and the other half spend much of the day consulting free web resources. It can only be done if multiple revenue streams are properly aligned: advertising revenues, subscription income, trade show or 'awards ceremony' profits (this has been important for the Press Gazette for some years) and digital income. One of the challenges of magazine publishing today is that all these revenue streams can appear to be under threat from web-based services. So discerning and embracing the appropriate web strategy is clearly imperative.

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