Magazine Article Analysis

The magazine industry has been around for over a century now. During this time, on the surface there has been small amount of change to the main concept of the magazine. Yet, in the modern era and the ever expanding sophistication of technology, the magazine industry is becoming under increasing threat. So what does the future hold for the magazine industry?

With the growing market for tablets and smart phones, magazine publishers need to make the decision of whether or not they want to make the digital switch - do they want to make their magazine solely an online read, or do they want to continue printing hard copies? Are they going to keep their company one step ahead of the game? Will they come up with the next unique selling point (USP) or will they fall behind with the times? 

With all of the growing changes, just how is everything effecting the audience that purchase magazines? 






From the diagrams it is clear that the digital market isnt affecting the sales of magazines, and they are still being bought - just not digitally. If anything, through the introduction of digital applications, magazine sales have increased and will continue to increase as the new media has begun to interest and entertain people in new ways - unlike the original paper back copy.

The article that I decided to analyse was taken from the Guardian's Magazine section on their website.
The article was published on 24th January 2013 - so the article is very current.
The article was written by Stuart Dredge who works as a freelance journalist and editor specialising in mobile apps and mobile content.
Stuart started The Guardians App Blog on February 2011- so it is still a fairly new area for The Guardian paper. However, the fact that Stuart started this blog and over the years has posted over 800 times in it, suggests that he knows what he is talking about and is going to write a fairly accurate article that should have a high level of reliability.

In the article that I read, Stuart is summarising how Magazines are being careful about how they approach the app market and are not rushing into anything too fast - they are experimenting by 'spin offs' hoping to find a new revenue. These experiments will eventually help the publisher decide wether or not they think they are ready to take their magazine fully digital.

The key quote that I feel summed up the article was:

'This all makes logical publishing sense: take a supplement or one-shot magazine that's already been designed for print, and turn it into a digital version for the app stores. It's a good way to test the app waters.'

This quote is backing up the path that publishers are choosing to follow.

In small groups, a number of us shared our own quotes and took notes on each of them. 
One of the quotes that was discussed was 'Ebooks and tablets are rapidly changing the distribution' 
The source of this quote is Englishandmedia.com/articles - a specified website that purely focuses on publishing magazines that talk about the future of the magazine industry and what the future holds for it. 
The article that this quote came from is about how the ever growing market for apps could effect and eventually kill the magazine industry. One of the areas that it focuses on is how the consumer is said to be too lazy to go out and buy a magazine - when they know that it is available for them in their tablet at home. With nearly of the magazines revenue coming from print, with the decreasing demand for paper copies, magazine industries need to reconsider the way that they distribute their products.