Magazines and the Web

I’m in a wonderful class at CMC called “Women’s Magazines and the Female Journalist”, and yesterday our professor arranged a panel of speakers for a lunch at the Athenaeum. These four female journalists—the co-founders of Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture magazine, the editor of Ms. Magazine, and a graduate of Pomona who is a staff writer for the East Bay Express—offered great advice and insight into the world of journalism. They also (and here’s why I’m posting to this) replied to a question about the future of journalism in light of the popularity of reading blogs and news online. Almost all women agreed that they don’t necessarily feel threatened by the web. As one said, ‘I think the rumors of the end of the print word are ridiculously exaggerated.” Of course, it would make sense for them to feel this way because, although their publications have websites, their careers are reliant on print.

I’ve posting on this before, but the web does seem to threaten daily newspapers more than it does magazines. Some of the panelists pointed this out: It’s often easier to read a newspaper online, because of its constant updates and short articles. Yet something about magazines is different. (A funny part of the lunch included an editor saying, “Not many people want to take their laptops [to read magazine articles] to the bathroom. It just feels different.” And another added “And it’s unhygienic.”) So, if this is true, why is the web more of a threat to newspapers than it is to magazines? In my “Women’s Magazines” class we’ve talked about this, and we thought the differences rely on magazine articles’ length and their use of photographs. Also, because of their depth and analysis, they aren’t as reliant on timeliness. As an example, one of the editors of Bitch who is a New York Times subscriber even said that she would be happy getting only the New York Times Magazine in the mail and reading the rest of the New York Time online.

To add, many of them mentioned that the web can, in some ways, foster magazines through publicity of their pieces and of the ideas supported in their publication. For example, one woman promoted feministing.com as a great blog and urged us to learn more about The Center for New Words through their website. Finally, and I think this is an important point, one editor said she has no idea what will happen with journalism and the web. And, as much as I like to speculate, I don’t know either.