By Jon Gingerich
U.S. newsstands aren't seeing many new magazine titles, but at least they're not folding like they were in 2009.
While only about 90 new magazines opened during the first half of 2010 – down from the 187 new titles to launch during the same period in 2009 – magazine closures only affected about another 90 titles this year, a big improvement from the 279 magazine titles that shuttered their pages during the first half of 2009, according to recent data published by MediaFinder.
The study also found that only six major U.S. print magazines restructured their publication to an exclusively online format during the first half of 2010, as opposed to 43 for the same time period in 2009.
According to MediaFinder, leading the gains in new titles were magazines that specialize in food, with 10 new titles appearing during the first half of 2010. By contrast, home improvement magazines were hit hard, losing a total of 10 titles so far this year and gaining five. Business-to-business magazines fared worst, losing 35 titles while gaining only 17.
The slow rebound for magazines may be global. U.K. publishing company United Business Media – which owns PR Newswire – added one magazine to its publication roster and shed four titles this year, which is a vast improvement from the 15 it killed during the first six months of 2009 alone.
First-half revenue for the company was essentially flat, falling 0.2% to £434.3 million (about $690 million compared with 2009, but revenue at its distribution and monitoring division rose 7.4 percent during the period to £91.2 million ($145 million) in 2010. Overall profit at UBM had been down 5.2 percent over the first half of 2009 to £45.4 million.
The same can't be said for newspapers. U.S. weekday newspaper circulation fell nearly 11% in 2009 and lost another 9% between Oct. '09 and March '10 alone, according to data released by the Audit Bureau of Circulations. According to an annual survey published by the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, the U.S. newspaper industry has lost a third of its newsrooms jobs – or $1.6 billion in reporting editing capacity – since 2000.
Ball State Journalism professor David E. Sumner argues that magazines have a better chance of survival than newspapers due to their niche agility and historic adaptability.
In his new book, "The Magazine Century: American Magazines Since 1900," which charts decade-by-decade growth of the print periodical industry, Sumner claims that while total circulation of the top 50 leading consumer magazines fell 6% from 2007 to 2009, 32 of them saw circulation gains during the same period.
Magazine growth was also surprisingly strong during the Great Depression, Sumner claims.
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