This may not be visible to those of you who view the New York Times Magazine online, but today the Times downsized the magazine’s print version in a big and ominous way. They’ve cut the trim size (the issue’s physical height and width) and, to accommodate the smaller pages, have switched to an eye-straining smaller font with display type that at one heading level looks weirdly smaller than the body type. The effect is…well, depressing. It’s another symptom of the demise of print journalism, a development that does not bode well for a healthy democracy.
They’ve also upgraded to a “brighter and more contemporary color palette.” {gasp!} I woke up this morning with the remnants of a migraine that started two days ago and is only just clearing. Today’s brighter and more contemporary cover consists of a stomach-flipping, brilliant, sulfuric ochre that bleeds off all four margins, with black type against a window of Day-Glo magenta: eyeball-grating! At first glance, it actually caused physical pain. No exaggeration: I still can’t look at it without making my head hurt more. In fact, as we scribble, I’m ripping off the cover, folding it so I can’t see it, and hiding it in the trash.
When a magazine starts out with a large trim size, shrinking it to the dimensions of an ordinary newsstand publication doesn’t sound, on the face of it, like a big deal. But lemme tell you: a publication like the Times Magazine builds much of its appeal through its visual presence and its tactile effect on readers. The magazine was physically pleasing to read and to handle, and that is why one is willing to pay to have such a thing delivered to one’s home. This fact is not understood by management, particularly when management has no comprehension of journalism or graphic design and is interested primarily—one might say solely—in the bottom line. These bozos fail to grasp the idea that when you diminish the magazine, you may save money on production costs, but you lose readers. When you’re already hemorrhaging readers, you can’t afford strategies that drive away those who have stuck with you through good times and bad.
While I was working for Arizona Highways, the publisher decided to save dollars by cutting the trim size and, worse, by going to a cheaper, thinner paper stock. Save money? Yup. Stupid move? Oh, yeah!
Highways was the pre-eminent regional magazine in the country. It also was one of the premier photography publications in the world. For a certain type of landscape photographer—the sort who hauls a hundred pounds of large-format gear 15 or 20 miles into the bush, eschews Photoshop, and rarely if ever does a set-up shot—it was a go-to market that could make a career. For readers around the world, it was a window to the American Southwest and a nice little dream factory. For the state of Arizona, it was the mother lode of tourism.
Cutting the trim size meant they had to cut the size of the photo reproduction. A spectacular scenic looks a whole lot less scenic when you shrink it a quarter-inch or so all the way around—surprisingly so. Cheesying down the paper quality meant ink on one side of a sheet would show through to the other side. This annoyed the photographers, so much so that the real heavy hitters, who did not need Arizona Highways to make or break their businesses, quit submitting their work.
Overall the magazine’s quality dropped markedly: markedly enough to be noticeable to readers. Circulation, which at one time reached every country on the earth but one, went into free-fall. It had been dropping; now it plummeted.
Two editors in a row walked or were fired. The second, who pretty clearly was hired to ride the publication into the ground, fled before it could crash. Highways is still being printed, but no one understands why. Its days may be numbered in the single digits. They were numbered in the first place, but the numbers were surely reduced when management decided to cut production quality.
Hey, guys. Give us NEWS! Give us QUALITY! Real readers don’t want infotainment. We don’t want Play-Nooz. And we’re not gunna pay for junked-up products. If journalism were still journalism, maybe it would survive a little longer.
Great article. So sad to hear about Highways and realize that this is representative of so much of our journalism these days.
I guess great blogs like yours and mine will eventually have to save the day 🙂
My experience matches yours in that the first thing that a publisher attacks is the look and feel of the publication by reverting to standardized (smaller) trims, cheaper bleeds-through paper, and less frequent mailing. And that’s just hastened the demise of a once-premier publication.
It seems to me that publishers should consider that there are two gold standard tenets of saving money: don’t just cut costs, earn more! Don’t slice and dice the reason you have readers [aka: income] without considering how you might boost sales or advertising dollars or any other possible revenue-generators.