The Press Gazette reports that “young people have no interest in magazines and cannot see the point in them”, according to Ashley Norris of online publishers Shiny Media.
Death of the magazine: Goodbye to all this?
Very depressing, but I disagree (well I’d have to, otherwise why would I be doing the course). Magazines have a brigher future ahead of them than newspapers, not that that’s hard. A beautifully designed magazine is a treat, and more of an aesthetic pleasure than a newspaper. People may want their news on the internet in bite-sized form, but magazines can go into subjects far more in in-depth, long features. Magazines must of course interact with multimedia, but they should also produce great content, such as longer features, that cannot be replicated that easily on the web. And as Mike Soutar of Shortlist says, new business models must be explored.
Of course, I am biased towards magazines, but I hope they have a long future ahead of them. I’ll certainly keep buying them in obscene quantities. Mainly so I can get a job.
Student Journalist, Magazine Fancier 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/mar/03/mens-magazine-arena-to-close
And Arena has gone (sad face)
I’m not too worried yet, apart from the fact that Tell! and XCity seem to be the only magazines that aren’t having recruitment freezes at the moment.
Sunday mornings, I much prefer coming back home to a big glossy magazine with huge pictures, rather than having to stare at a glare-y computer screen…
Agreed. Magazines are so aesthetically pleasing and lovely and shiny… Plus if you spend all day every day looking at a computer screen for work it’s the last thing you want to do in your free time, although that may just be me.
I know they’re maybe not as aesthetically pleasing as higher-end glossies, but women’s weeklies have a certain fast food charm to them, I wonder whether Love it! et al are doing well out of the recession? I’m still buying them and I’m only barely employed.
According to the latest ABC figures, women’s weeklies are not doing so well. Overall their sales have dropped by 8%. Love It! is down 7.6% and poor old OK!’s lost a massive 25.6%. Ouch.