I suppose it's unrealistic to expect Time or Newsweek in our little niche area, but we're getting something between Us Weekly and the National Enquirer instead. As mentioned above, if what they turn out is low-quality then they can't be surprised if people don't choose to buy it. A bit more integrity and higher standards could actually pay off for them.
Absolutely, Arni.
Think of the logic of the situation: the mags are basing their content primarily on pleasing their advertisers, by featuring those advertisers in the content text. After a while, there will be virtually no distinction between the advertising and the content. But the production costs of the magazine will not be reduced; the demand for very high quality production values will force these mags to ever higher prices. Would
you be willing to pay close to $10 an issue (because it's getting close to that) for a magazine whose content was 90% advertising or advertising tie-in?? Especially when you factor in the elephant in the living room: the availability of enormous amounts of online information, most of it free, and—in the case of
IKF,
TKDT, BB and several others—of at least as reliable quality, on average, as the high circ mags, and significantly
better in many cases. I don't know about KF, but for TKD there are whole textbooks and histories downloadable for free on the Web. For Karate, Iain Abernethy's website alone gives you access to just under one hundred extermely high quality articles on all aspects of karate, by people like Lawrence Kane, Jamie Clubb and Stuart Anslow, as well as Abernethy himself, along with several complete e-books on bunkai for the Pinan Kata, street-practical application of Karate, and on and on. Authors of books maintain blog sites and chat boards where often quite outstanding experts in the field post. Any form/pattern you can think of has been performed at several levels of quality on YouTube.... and then, of course, there's Martial Talk, the jewel in the MA internet crown.
So what incentive do readers have to go along with the crass output of short-sighted business models in magazine publishing that are twenty-five years behind current technology and ignore the gunbarrel pointing at their faces:
readers no longer need most magazines to get the information they want?? Sifting through the rubble piles on the internet for the good stuff is still way cheaper, and a lot more fun, than paying six bucks or more for what, more and more, amount to product catalogues.
Sure, run magazines as business, but be smart enough to realize that if you wind up publishing mostly advertising and contentless puff pieces,
no one is goiing to want your product.
