B&T switches to monthly format: ‘the age of news in print is dead’
B&T magazine is to switch to monthly format with immediate effect, the trade title has announced. The move comes about six years after it moved from weekly to fortnightly.
It also comes days after rival title AdNews switched to a new, smaller format, citing the redesign as a cost-cutting move.
In an editorial, B&T editor Alex Hayes today wrote:
“The fact is the age of news in the printed medium has long since passed. Why would you, or should you, be told to wait a fortnight for the best stories when the rest of the time you get them for free? We live in the age of Twitter, where people expect information to be beyond instant, and can literally bypass news outlets to get it straight from the source.
“Print is still viable, and valuable, as I think we prove to our readers time and again, but it needs to be treated very differently, with more in-depth content and analysis. Treat readers with respect and your numbers might hold up pretty well. Marry the content to something timely and topical and it can be brilliant.”
He added: “We already have the smallest editorial team in the industry, and for my money the hardest working because of it. But, sometimes we have to work smarter, and not harder.”
B&T is published by Cirrus Media, which rebranded from Reed Business Information Australia earlier this year after the company was purchased by private equity company Catalyst.
Update: A story published online by AdNews today about the content of the current edition concludes with the words: “Buy a copy of the magazine. Please. We’re so hungry.”
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I just read the article on B&T and Tweeted it. I agree with a lot of what they are saying.
One observation between your coverage of this and B&T’s.
Mumbrella links out to both the B&T and AdNews stories on the topic. I thought about Googling the links to review again when reading the B&T story, but this required extra effort and instead I headed back to my email. The Mumbrella newsletter had arrived in that time and here I am reading it here.
I have followed the external links to both AdNews and B&T.
It’s a small thing I know, but the reader experience because of that external linking is better here.
Perhaps that should be their next evolution?
I will post this on B&T’s story as well. But expect the conversation to be more lively here.
Perhaps the difference between a native online news outlet and a print publication shifting to online.
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The trees are the only winners in print’s demise. And, really, there’s probably not room for the three of you and let’s be honest you all pretty much publish the same content.
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Follow up on this.
Interestingly – B&T updated their article immediately after with the external links. They agreed it was the right thing to do. Hats off to them.
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sad – but inevitable.
What’s with this trend of editors talking down their own publication … surely they realise that negativity attracts … negativity and undermines confidence from advertisers and readers? Perhaps things are so bad they don’t care?
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It’s not like they just figured this out… most likely they haven’t got the ad sales to support a fortnightly edition.
Also +1 Matthew… unfortunately many at Cirrus are still struggling with the basics. Some of the older school think external links damage your reputation… but as you say it’s exactly the opposite.
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I sympathise with all journalists and printing workers who face an uncertain future when they have families, mortgages etc.
What I find disturbing is the almost uncritical support given by the same people to entities like Google, Facebook, Youtube and so on. They are basically the leeches of the publishing world that are hoovering up billions of advertising dollars , providing only a minimal of jobs (and destroying hundreds of thousands of jobs in the process) and invariably are cyber based (or the Caymans) for tax purposes.
Some win but the masses lose because of them, They are both exciting yet frightening because of their unchecked power and despite this journalists seem completely and uncritically in awe of them.
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