In 'Digital Distraction' Age, Magazines No Longer Information Providers

Living in an age of "digital distraction," magazine-based media companies need to come to terms with what they're becoming, and whether they're doing it by default or design, said Roger Fransecky, CEO of the corporate-consulting firm Apogee Group. The powerful metaphor going forward is "conversation," Fransecky said, and media companies can create a path to the next one.

"You're no longer information providers, you're in the conversation business," he said. James G. Elliott, CEO of an eponymous media sales and consulting firm, noted that the recession has hit all media, not just print media and not just magazines. High unemployment in the upper middle class, he said, has caused a dramatic falloff in subscriptions and newsstand sales. Magazines, Elliott said, are too magazine-centric. "The thinking is isolated and inbred," he said. "We allow folks in other industries to define us or ignore us."

Circulation consultant Baird Davis said publishers were caught flat-footed by the recession. There are, Davis said:

• Too many marginal publications
• Too many "over-circulated" publications
• An over-abundance of "leveraged" companies
• Too many "lightly" qualified CEOs
• A lopsided concentration on advertising
• A fragile newsstand channel and diminished consumer value of subscription files
• Diminished circulation staffs with reduced consumer-marketing skills
• Companies improperly organized and staffed to meet demands of the new digitally driven consumer-centric market