Print journalists: Your current careers are, or soon will be, over. Accept it
The sooner print journalists realise things aren't getting any better, and make the decision to move on to a new career, the better, according to Nigel Bowen. Because while the last stage of grief is 'acceptance', most of us are still caught up in denial, anger, bargaining, or depression.
Those acquainted with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ five stages of grief may have noticed something interesting in the recent commentary around – take your grim pick – countless newsroom closures, the swathes of job cuts at News Corp, the merger of the remnants of the once-mighty ACP and Pacific Magazine empires, or the consequential axing of Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, InStyle, Men’s Health, Women’s Health, Good Health, OK and NW.
That ‘something interesting’ is an acceptance that the print media jig is up.
Bauer Media’s suite of magazines, eight of which were recently axed
In an article following the Bauer magazine closures, long-time Vogue Australia editor-in-chief Kirstie Clements typified the new wave of clear-eyed commentary.
Rather than raging against the dying of the light, Clements – herself a casualty of Harper’s Bazaar shuttering – dispassionately noted the closures were “frankly unsurprising” then went on to observe “it doesn’t take a Boston consultant to see that it’s been increasingly difficult to turn a profit in magazine land, with falling circulation, slashed ad revenue, and an oversaturated audience that is now able to cherry-pick most of the information they want online, for free” and that “there have been very obvious signs that the demise was coming for a long time, mostly because although people claim to still love magazines, the figures say they don’t actually buy them”.
In mid-2020, Clements’ observations seem indisputable. But, with reference to Kübler-Ross’ framework, it’s worth recalling just how disputed they’ve been over the last 15 years.
Stage one: Denial
As Kübler-Ross would have predicted had she lived long enough to witness it, the initial response to the threat posed by the internet was to pretend it didn’t exist.
In 2004, Eric Beecher, then a Fairfax executive, gave a presentation to the Fairfax board warning its fabled rivers of gold would soon evaporate. In response, one board member held up the (then hefty) Saturday editions of The Age and Sydney Morning Herald and thundered, “I don’t ever want anyone coming into this boardroom again and telling us that people will buy houses or cars, or look for a job, without [these papers].”
Stage two: Anger
Media proprietors and senior management mostly directed their displeasure at the likes of Google, Facebook and, periodically, the ABC. Journalists and their editors mostly directed it at proprietors and senior management. Proprietors, senior management and journalists were united in directing it at members of the general public, who increasingly failed to buy – or even read – newspapers and magazines.
If you’re a print journalist who believes you’re not enraged by the short-sighted ingratitude of your fellow Australians, count up exactly how many ‘You’ll miss us once we’re gone’ articles you’ve written and/or nodded along to.
Stage three: Bargaining
Hey, how about governments directly or indirectly fund the print media? No? Maybe some noble philanthropists will step up to make sure the lifeblood of democracies keeps flowing?
Okay then, how about we try to encourage Generations X and Y to take out digital subscriptions or just straight out donate money? Hmmm, perhaps we should hand out free newspapers at train stations in the afternoon?
Listen, obviously the ageing arse clown running the show has no idea what they are doing. So, let’s punt the current CEO and bring in a digitally savvy go-getter who will turn things around, thereby securing ‘a path of growth in a multi-platform world‘.
Spoiler alert: always expect the new CEO of a publishing house to immediately defenestrate at least one senior executive. The replacement for the dispatched senior executive will then be expected to also get rid of at least one high-profile editor. None of this performative defenestration will arrest circulation declines, but it will create the impression Serious Action is Being Taken to Turn Things Around. As soon as it can no longer be convincingly argued a turnaround is imminent, brace for another blood-soaked iteration of the Corporate Circle of Life.
Stage four: Depression
“Nothing we’ve tried is arresting the accelerating death spiral? Jesus, we really are screwed!”
Stage five: Acceptance
Echoing philosophers through the ages, Kübler-Ross observed that those who make their peace with harsh realities are (eventually) happier than those who don’t.
Faced with the death of the print media, print journalists can pretend it’s not occurring, lash out at supposed villains, or talk themselves into believing there’s some way to magically turn back the clock. Alternatively, they can count themselves lucky to have been part of the print media in its glory days then work out how to leverage their journalistic skills set in today’s ‘multi-platform world’.
Are journalists the new vaudevillians?
Guy Rundle recently drew a parallel between vaudeville and newspapers. Hard as it is to imagine, vaudeville used to be big business. For half a century, people in Australia and throughout the Western world were happy to pony up to be entertained by strongmen, acrobats, burlesque dancers and minstrels.
As Rundle infers, it would have been reasonable in 1905 for a vaudevillian to assume they had a job for life and believe live entertainment would continue to prosper for many decades to come.
Yet from 1910 onwards, vaudeville began to be disrupted out of existence by a new technology. People wanting to be entertained increasingly headed to a movie theatre rather than visiting sideshow alleys to gawk at a troupe of female impersonators. Just as people wanting to be informed or amused now reach for their mobile phone rather than walking to the newsagent.
As Rundle argues, “The virus-led snapping shut of dozens of newsrooms … can be blamed on collapsing ad revenues and antisocial managements, but at the root of it is something that few in the industry want to admit: if the demand were there this wouldn’t be happening.”
Rundle ends his article on a downbeat note, observing, “For those of us who grew up on newspapers, loving them even as news lingered into the digital era, it’s sad beyond sad. But it just is. Time to sell the act. The carnivalesque is over.”
I’m more upbeat than Rundle. He fails to note that plenty of erstwhile vaudevillians – Charlie Chaplain, Sammy Davis Jr, Judy Garland, Cary Grant, Bob Hope and Mae West being some of the better-known examples – went on to do pretty well for themselves in Hollywood.
Likewise, hundreds of Australian vaudevillians went on to have glittering careers in radio and, in some cases, television. Others started bands, became ‘respectable’ actors, managed theatres and started touring companies.
Life after death
If you are a print journalist still trapped in one of the first four stages of grief, you may now want to consider accepting your career in legacy print media publications is, or soon will be, over.
That’s a bummer, but the good news is that a new career awaits. Once you stop clinging to false hope, you can set about reinventing yourself as an academic, account manager, agency owner, app maker, blogger, communications director, community manager, copywriter, content provider, e-book author, entrepreneur, ghostwriter, media adviser, playwright, podcaster, political staffer, proofreader, radio presenter, researcher, SEO expert, social media marketer, technical writer, trade mag editor, website designer or videographer.
Sure, it’s probably not how you envisaged things turning out. But there comes a time where you have to accept that the world is as it is.
Nigel Bowen is a print journalist turned content marketer
Indeed, the print media is dead.
It’s gone the way of vinyl records.
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I accepted this truth a while ago and since then it has only got tougher. Flexibility and resilience as the tools we need to survive in this new world. I’m mastering the pivot.
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Great article – thanks Nigel. So glad I got out of journalism and moved into marketing 6 years ago. Better pay, less hours.
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A curious article. If the writer is so pleased to have escaped the print apocalypse, then why does he feel the need to hark back to his old career? Could it be that he himself is struggling with the fifth stage of his own “grief”?
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The only way print can survive is to massively promote subscriptions, delivered to the door ahead of newsagent and heavily discounted. Works in the USA where newsagent distribution was never great. Automatic renewals at the end of the sub duration.
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There are of course very few words written for money these days that are only printed on paper and not available digitally.
The challenge of being able to get people to pay for journalistic content is not entirely a lost cause. But it does seem that there are no paths as lucrative as newspapers and magazines once were.
Oh, and mX was great for years – it was widely read by people on trains. A creature of a twilight perhaps, but still well adapted to it’s environment.
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Digital, TV, print media, all have broken economic models. All journalists face this issue.
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A cheap and disparaging industry headline Mumbrella. A parochial opinion piece. Quality journalists are storytellers whatever the platform. The global publishers from traditional print mastheads still lead the conversation, breaking news, and have new record audiences across the globe with people seeking them for trusted information news and analysis.
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A very engaging article. There isn’t time or space to comment in detail, but the vaudeville ( music hall or variety) comparison is a good one, the art form was established and performed as easily digestible entertainment, it was never intended to educate or to push psychological or moral opinions.
Today the social media has allowed itself to become “tribunalised” and along with cancel culture and political correctness, the ability of entertainers or audiences to enjoy a broad spread of humor and joyful entertainment has been hampered.
As for journalism, I lament the fading of the great craft of the fourth estate, and I sincerely hope that the skill will be transferred someday soon to the many lacklustre and motley individuals who present themselves as digital copywriters, and that some of the skills of the old vaudevillians find their way to their equivalent comperes, interviewers, and front persons on all forms of electronic visual. media.
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Completely agree, Sally. I don’t know why the writer has chosen to stick the boot in to his former colleagues like this, unless it’s because he’s struggling to come to terms with the fifth stage himself.
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I’ll tell you what else is on its way out
Content marketing
Built on foundations of paper and soon to collapse under the weight of its ineffectiveness
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I recently went to my local newsagent and purchased Womankind, Wild and Marie Claire – not because I think my purchasing will save the industry (it won’t) but I think I’m the last generation that remembers buying her favourite glossies every month without fail (90s kid, 00s teenager). When I was a kid it was mags like Total Girl, then as a teen I never missed an issue of Dolly or Girlfriend mag – then onto Cosmo/Cleo but as I got to my early 20s the impact of the internet revolution on the industry was apparent as the mags got thinner and the content more irrelevant than ever.
I know the generation that came after mine were the true digital generation and likely can’t remember the last time they bought a magazine.
I accept I’m a dinosaur but I still buy a few magazines today because I still love sitting down with a good mag that’s filled with insightful feature articles and a cup of tea – I keep buying them because I honestly don’t know how long I’ll be able to have that experience for.
One thing I think may save the mag industry – when I look at the Editorial credits in Wellbeing and Womankind magazine, you see a very short staff list – an editor, a sub-editor and maybe someone to do the graphics. The rest of the team are all contractors/freelance writers.
Look at a Marie Claire Editorial credits and there are 12+ names of different roles within the magazine – this to me is what is unsustainable. Gone are the days where magazines make enough money to have a full time team of dozens of journalists and photographers and sub-editors, paying them full time salaries, plus super and benefits. Not a pretty picture for print journalists but the uncomfortable reality, that the medium is a business model that is not profitable enough to offer these types of roles anymore.
If there is a future for magazines, it’s the ones that keep the absolute essential staff on payroll, have the vast majority of writers as freelancers/pay per gig and produce content that is not valued by today’s consumer – i.e. celebrity tabloid news that is out of date by the time it’s published, makeup tutorials that I instantly get on Youtube etc. But instead articles that suit that mindful, reflection ‘on the couch with a cuppa’ experience – insightful interviews with inspirational people, discussions on politics, environmental issues of the day, psychology and life coaching pieces.
This means to be a print journalist is to become a freelancer/gig economy writer – if you don’t like that reality, then get a day job in comms or marketing and do your freelance journalism for print mags on the side.
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That may work in the USA where there is a population of 300+ million people, not very comparable when you’re in a market with less than 25 million people.
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Thanks for the thoughtful response to my article, Samantha. I think most mags (and newspapers) did long ago move to the skeleton-staff approach and a lot of journalists who were made redundant continued to contribute to print publications on a freelance basis and/or do casual subbing shifts, but even that strategy only seems to have delayed the inevitable. On a more positive note, I suspect it’s entirely possible that a smart operator could turn a profit with a print publication packed with well-researched, elegantly written, insightful and/or inspirational content. I’ve got no idea what, if any, profit she’s making but Claire Lehmann seems to have done this with Quillette in the digital space.
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That may be true Sally, but those readers don’t want to pay for it. They expect it for free and the majority won’t pay to go past those firewalls – they may value the content but not enough to pay the people who created it.
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Thanks Nigel! I really enjoyed your piece.
I dreamed as a teenager of being a glossy magazine writer, spending my days writing feature stories – unfortunately I graduated from my journalism degree circa 2010, and although it was awful at the time discovering that there were not many paid jobs in my idea of a dream job, but hindsight being 20:20 – I’m so glad I didn’t get a full time job at a magazine, where I know I’d just be overworked, depleted and preparing myself for the inevitable redundancy.
So I have a soft spot for magazines, even if I don’t want to work for them – but I do have some hope, noticing that there seem to be some more niche magazines like Wellbeing, Womankind, Nourish etc. that appear to be doing ok – when I purchase them I get a nice, thick tome of insightful feature articles to enjoy not a glorified catalogue (as what Cleo became in the last few years it was being printed my opinion).
These magazines appear to be highly niche – i.e. Nourish is for the plant-based community, Wellbeing for the holistic health and wellbeing readers and are also bi-monthly. Does this allow to put more budget into 6 better quality issues a year, rather than trying to stretch that budget across 12 issues annually? I honestly was surprised that a lot of the glossies haven’t gone to the bi-monthly route – read the July/August issue of Marie Claire not the July and August issue, if it means 100 extra pages of content an issue I think I’d buy it more often.
What also frustrated me as a reader buying mags from the Bauer/Pac Mags crowed is that it was obvious the mags were shrinking – often by 100+ pages of content an issue within a few years, yet the cover price kept increasing. That to me is treating your reader like an idiot, we’re gonna give you a lower quality product but charge you an extra 50 cents? I’m sure the journalists at the publishing houses would agree with me and that decision was out of a lot of editors/writers hands – but surely making a lower quality product was never going to be the solution :/
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Yes, unfortunately you were born too late to enjoy the glory days of mags, Samantha – even back in 2010 (if you had got a job) you would have found yourself overworked, underpaid and at constant risk of being swept up in the next round of cost-cutting redundancies.
The technical term for businesses serving up an increasingly substandard product is ‘harvesting market position’. For a time, loyal consumers continue to buy the product out of habit, which keeps the budget-slashing beancounters happy for a little while. But ultimately it results in the brand being trashed beyond repair.
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Better pay, fewer hours.
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Except vinyl records continue to grow and had a great year last year. Vinyl is back in the chain stores and specialty shops. The last time I was at Walmart they had nearly a dozen different turntables to choose from.
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