Who reads actual magazines anymore? An honest view on today's publishing industry

Avant Garde
26 sep 2019
3 minuten om te lezen

A decade ago, there have been a lot of predictions that the newspaper and magazine industry will diminish due to digitalization. However, as we can witness, this has not happened in the present. Yes, there has been a huge fall-out on newspaper and magazine paper subscriptions. Nevertheless, the consumers didn’t diminish, it has been manifested that they have just shifted to other channels but still seeking the same content from the traditional channel. As publishing companies struggled on their huge customer fall-out, there has been an obvious increase in their digital subscriptions. With that, the producers need to find their way to follow their audience and keep-up the strong ties.

There are various advantages and disadvantages of paper publications. A lot of which can even be a strength that will be beneficial in the development of the industry in the future. There is just one principle that we must be aware of, that is humans have to make use of the technology and not the other way around. There are a lot of emerging technologies that will be very advantageous for the growth of the publishing industry. If people will just rightfully use it, it will surely lead the industry to have a good stand in the market in the future. For this blog, let us tackle the factors that publication producers must retain to keep their stand in the market for the next decade.

Credibility

Retaining the credibility and integrity will be its greatest edge to keep the industry alive as they battle with the challenges of digitalization. Nowadays, fake news, scamming and marketing frauds have been the rampant challenges in digital marketing. Millions or even billions of dollars have been wasted because of this reason. There are a lot of things we see and hear from the internet that were just produced by bots, even to the extent that it can sometimes manipulate the most powerful tool of technology development, the human brain. However, the traditional method of reaching people by paper still strongly supports the trust of giving value to the information that your target audience deserves. With that, it creates a more personal connection with the consumer and make them trust a channeled story that adds value to their life, thus making the human element more valuable.

Run by Professionals

We all know that the publishing industry is run by professional journalists or creative writers. They are the ones who have studied the field before they can actually start working in the industry. They are experts in relaying valuable information and they know that we deserve stories that helps us make better sense of the people around us. The readers can be at peace thinking that what we get are produced out of human intelligence and not auto-generated through an artificial intelligence bot. Unfortunately, there are a lot of online content creators all around the globe with not enough knowledge on the field. With not enough knowledge and expertise, this may cause consumers to be misled with wrong information and practices. For sure, we don’t want to live that uncertainty in the future. So let’s preserve the human capabilities in the publication industry!

Conveying not annoying

Yes, newspapers and magazines in the marketing channel may sound like we are still in the previous century, but the physical proof is evident when it reaches the target audience and that is still its advantage. Most paper publications are availed voluntarily, consumers usually get it out of subscriptions or directly buying it from stores and kiosks. Unlike the digitally published media nowadays, they may pop-up wherever and whenever. In some way, they may tend to annoy consumers in so many ways. It may incline to disrupt somebody’s activity and that may cause to create a negative impact between the producers and the consumers. There may be a smaller market for publication production nowadays, but the personal connection and trust they have with their loyal customers should be preserved because this will be a very essential principle to strengthen the future of media as newspapers and magazines jump on digitalization era.