John Koblin at The New York Observer reports that several magazines — including Forbes, Conde Nast Portfolio and Fortune — are cutting back on their websites in order to focus on the easier to monetize print business –
The Web team at Fortune has been all but disbanded. There were roughly a half-dozen layoffs at the Web site, and now it’s left back in the hands of the good people at CNN Money, the parent Web site that fortune.com used to be folded into… There won’t be any more fortune.com original content in the near future.
Portfolio, a magazine that had one of the boldest Web sites in the Condé Nast empire, let that experiment go two months ago when it dismissed 25 of the 30 people who worked full time and as freelancers for the magazine’s Web site.
“We work in the high-end market,” said our Condé Nast source. “We’re going to stick to it and we might be the last one standing, but that’s our philosophy. The Web isn’t really a priority.”
Jeff Jarvis wonders if the magazines will learn anything about how the internet has changed their business from the newspapers or, for that matter, from the entertainment industry –
I’ve long believed that magazines should have great potential online because they already have communities of shared interest. And though magazines still – today – have franchises and value in print, it would be foolish, even suicidal to ignore other media already overtaken by the internet tidal wave. Music drowned. TV learned from that and started streaming online. Newspapers are going down for the third and last time. Magazines haven’t learned from that. The glossy monthlies may think they’re safe because they’re glossy but Time Magazine used to be huge and now it’s so thin I could use it to cut cheese. The weeklies, with their high costs and general interests, are dying just behind newspapers. Will the monthlies be next? I wouldn’t gamble against it, as some magazine publishers are doing.
By the way, David Carr at the NYT (via Silicon Alley Insider) has found a the perfect digital business model for newspapers: ignore the web and brag about it. Brilliant!
