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Originally Posted by vaughnmr
I'm not sure I completely agree with that, although there are definitely some that are not doing too good (in either camp).
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Yes, that would be the overwhelming majority of magazines. Unfortunately they are getting creamed. Ad revenues down by 17% in 2009, newsstands sales are down 9%, the number of people working at newspapers is literally down to 1950's levels, and Internet ads are not making up for the other losses....
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Originally Posted by vaughanmr
The polls seem to indicate that the pay walls are going to fail big time, but only time can tell. I suspect too many people think they really know what's good for the rest of us.
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Well, think of it this way. There is a certain unknown number at which lower circulation, but higher revenues per reader, is going to generate more revenues overall for the periodical. The key question is whether a magazine like GQ, for example, can hit that number after putting up a paywall. It's also possible that demographics will skew towards a more affluent group, thus balancing out some of the raw numerical reductions.
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Originally Posted by vaughnmr
Instead of monthly "commentary", you might see more of weekly or daily "blogs", for example.
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Blogs are mostly commentary and opinion; afaik there is very little true investigative journalism, or routine coverage of the nuts and bolts of government and economics, done by blogs. I.e. it's relatively cheap to run a a blog, and very expensive to hire a roster of professional journalists who assemble all the information the bloggers bloviate about.
This doesn't mean blogs are "bad," only that they are not a viable substitute for actual reporting.
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Originally Posted by vaughnmr
I think you are premature in predicting what's going to happen with media in the next few years.
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Yes, that is entirely possible. But the same for anyone who dares to issue predictions. And I don't mind being wrong, probably because it's such a rare occurrence.
I will agree there may be other models, but my understanding is that the free web thing just isn't working. Periodicals just cannot raise enough revenue via web ads to provide the type of articles as they do now. They're already giving away the product for free, and most forms of additional marketing or increasing the frequency of publication costs money; so whatever change comes about is likely to involve extracting money and information directly from the readers.