My recollection from years in the business is that we ran the magazines because they offered cars, fashion, and jewelry advertisers a hi-talc paper, glorious photo reproduction, and no sad news. A much better window for their goods. Long form was invented to fill the space between the ads, not the other way around. When the newsroom got their hands on anything that long and dramatic they used it to write abut starving children in Africa, and we had trouble keeping the Mercedes ads on the books.
I agree. It's almost a relief to think that the magazine sections of the two newspapers I get (NYTimes, sunday only; LA Times 7 days a week) will disappear. They are filled with a lot of four color advertisements interrupted by the long form stories, most of which I don't read. Also, it's an over abundance of newsprint and we can lessen our carbon footprint by at least eliminating the heavy magazine sections.
At issue here, as Chris alludes to in his comment, is that the Sunday magazines are more than vehicles for long-form articles. For readers, they are an easy-to-handle multi-faceted publication that travels well, more easily than the broadsheet to beach, car, ski resort. They contain weekly features such as puzzles and columns such as NYT's "Ethicist." These the are features that draw the readers and the advertisers.
They also contain advertorials such as "Best Places to Work" that drive significant licensing revenue (placques / reprints).
Your case would be a stronger one if you were to consider these elements and weave them to support your conclusion. I don't think that you can.
Couldn't Sunday magazines be turned in to zoned editions, focused only on the highest earning zip codes (which is what advertisers generally want)? And highly educated readers are generally the ones that read the long-form stuff anyway... In short, I wonder if there isn't some middle-ground between killing a high margin print product and losing money on it.
Haven’t read about the dead cat bounce in a while! Thanks Dick!
My recollection from years in the business is that we ran the magazines because they offered cars, fashion, and jewelry advertisers a hi-talc paper, glorious photo reproduction, and no sad news. A much better window for their goods. Long form was invented to fill the space between the ads, not the other way around. When the newsroom got their hands on anything that long and dramatic they used it to write abut starving children in Africa, and we had trouble keeping the Mercedes ads on the books.
I agree. It's almost a relief to think that the magazine sections of the two newspapers I get (NYTimes, sunday only; LA Times 7 days a week) will disappear. They are filled with a lot of four color advertisements interrupted by the long form stories, most of which I don't read. Also, it's an over abundance of newsprint and we can lessen our carbon footprint by at least eliminating the heavy magazine sections.
Format and layout, plus the portability when compared with broadsheet.
At issue here, as Chris alludes to in his comment, is that the Sunday magazines are more than vehicles for long-form articles. For readers, they are an easy-to-handle multi-faceted publication that travels well, more easily than the broadsheet to beach, car, ski resort. They contain weekly features such as puzzles and columns such as NYT's "Ethicist." These the are features that draw the readers and the advertisers.
They also contain advertorials such as "Best Places to Work" that drive significant licensing revenue (placques / reprints).
Your case would be a stronger one if you were to consider these elements and weave them to support your conclusion. I don't think that you can.
Couldn't Sunday magazines be turned in to zoned editions, focused only on the highest earning zip codes (which is what advertisers generally want)? And highly educated readers are generally the ones that read the long-form stuff anyway... In short, I wonder if there isn't some middle-ground between killing a high margin print product and losing money on it.
Are Sunday newspaper magazines all that common?