The Future

I just watched a fairly interesting episode of 'Bottom Line' the Radio 4 discussion program. One of the guests this week was Stevie Spring, chief executive of magazine publisher Future Plc, and the basis of a lot of the discussion was the move of magazine publishing into the digital world. Evan Davis, presenter, made, I have to say, a bit of a shit effort trying to place her position in relation to the other guests, an outsourcing firm executive (obviously relevant) and the chief exec. of O2 mobile phones (completely unrelated). For some reason he was making a string of facile comments and questions about mobiles being able to provide magazine services, and the potential for magazines to be a completely online phenomenon in the next decade.

Stevie made a rather stoic effort to answer the questions, I thought, but really the idea that magazines will go out of print is absurd. The whole beauty of online media is not the ability to buy whole publications every week or month and read them cover to cover. Everyone hates reading things on a screen. If publishers aimed for that, sales would plummet. What Davis didn't seem to grasp was that the beauty of the internet is that it's an easily navigable research library. Magazines are moving online because it's easy to search for specific articles that you want to read.

The other important thing is that you need not charge for viewing on the internet, as direct marketing is so much easier. Being a business affairs program he seemed intent on pressing on the revenue from online sales - I think really the only effective way to make money from online publishing is specific and appropriate advertising. This is obviously something that free publications embrace fully, but with online media it is hugely easier. As Spotify has worked out, the internet being the internet, the effectiveness of any marketing campaign can be completely and accurately be understood, as viewing, search optimisation, and follow through can all be exactly measured. Of course the other very important factor is that almost all of the outsourcing related to publishing vanishes when you take printing and distribution out of the equation. Costs plummet. Why this did not come up I cannot think.

Online publishing is growing, and I'm very thankful for it, and as much as I hate to so mercilessly be a part of such a disposable capitalist society (that's a lie, I love it, I'm not a hippy), viewing adverts is, I think, a small price to pay for having a world of opinion and dubious fact at your fingertips.

By the way, Stevie is actually a woman with a huge mouth. Surprisingly.

That is all.