Wednesday, January 22, 2020

Pat Ganahl's blog entry on the recent killing off of 19 magazines

https://patganahl.com/2020/01/06/the-magazine-massacre/

He doesn't have a comment section, so, there's no reason to react to his post.

Seems like a rip off to read that much and not get the opportunity to respond. Damn, I'm spoiling you guys!

Anyway, my take on his post is that magazine makers mostly aren't taking the hint, and getting better at keeping their subscribers.

When new subscribers get a cheaper price than renewers? Well, that's simply showing the ones you already had that you don't appreciate them, and that sentiment will be returned.

When all the examples of magazines that went out of business do nothing to teach a lesson to the people that currently make magazines, that indicates that the people making them aren't alert, and are not paying attention to reality.

Go ahead, ignore why the others that failed couldn't make a magazine anymore.... and you'll have no clue why it's suddenly impossible for you to keep making yours.

Either learn from what's happened to the competition, and why some succeed and why others fail, or be blindsided when your attempt to do business hits a wall.

Pat doesn't get analytical as to what caused success or failure in car magazines, but he points out that in the last 9 decades, about 200 have tried, and went out of business.

My reply? Quality. It's the key to success, and mere quantity is not. No matter how many titles a company was publishing, the ones that died probably did so from lack of qualities that could be identified by the average publisher (Which I consider myself to be, after 13 years and 41,500 posts on this blog)

Ignoring that the people that cause a success in the magazines are the key to making the magazine a success, and not focusing on working on keeping those people encouraged, motivated, and inspired... because Hot Rod took a nose dive when the core people took off for video work. David Freiburger put something great into Hot Rod, but when he split off to do Roadkill on Motor Trend? There was a noticeable lack of life in HRM. After all, what the fuck does Motor Trend have to do with Roadkill? Nothing. It was simply making a new successful thing by taking the talent from one company and letting him do a new thing. Sure it's going to be successful, but it shows that management is fucking clueless about recognizing that they have to keep the talent working at the already in progress endeavor, or see it lose steam pressure after the talented people leave for new things to do.

Elena left Hot Rod, and now is freelancing.

Shit, for that matter too many freelancers, and not enough emphasis on a core talented group of people that make a magazine happen successfully. Teamwork makes the dreamwork.

But fucking Angus MacKenzie killed off Motor Trend Classic and went on to more Porsche focused directions https://www.motortrend.com/staff/angus-mackenzie/  and no matter how many magazines that company had in 2007, here 13 years later, he's still got a job while being on the advisory board that kills off 19 magazines this year.

https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2007/02/king-is-dead-etc-etc-etc-dorks-killed.html

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