The threat of the Internet has forced magazines to get smarter

“PRINT is dead” was a common refrain a couple of years ago. The costly print advertisements that kept magazines and newspapers alive were migrating to the web, where they earned only pennies on the dollar. To publishers, it felt as if a hurricane was flattening their business. But as the storm has cleared, a new publishing landscape has emerged.

What was once a fairly uniform business -- identify a group of people united by some shared identity or passion, write stories for them to read and sell advertising next to the stories -- has split into several different kinds. Hard news is perhaps the hardest to make profitable. It is increasingly instant, constant and commoditized (as with oil or rice, consumers do not care where it came from). With rare exceptions, making money in news means publishing either the cheap kind that attracts a very large audience, and making money from ads, or the expensive kind that is critical to a small audience, and making money from subscriptions. Both are cut-throat businesses; in rich countries, many papers are closing. But among magazines there is a new sense of optimism. In North America, where the recession bit deepest (see chart), more new magazines were launched than closed in 2011 for the second year in a row. The Association of Magazine Media (MPA) reports that magazine audiences are growing faster than those for TV or newspapers, especially among the young.