To Boldly Grow...

2006 saw the very definition of newspapers and magazines irrevocably changed, as the ubiquitous surge of digital and social media rocked the twin boats of readership and revenue like never before. The attendant collapse of the traditional interface between writers and readers into multi-platformed dialogue has also uprooted the tenure of the conventional journalist. It’s suddenly all to play for, but the future of traditional media still lies very much in its own hands.

A new year, a new chorus of concerns over self-preservation. Middle England sweats over Polish annexation; the BBC finds itself in tooth-and-nail territory over licence fees; Gordon Brown, finally on the home straight, furtively scans the horizon for any sign of a last-minute derailment; Celebrity Big Brother contestants fret over the gameplan-ending arrival of the Goody clan. You name it, it’s in the balance.

Business as usual then, really – only where newspapers and magazines are concerned, it is business that is precisely the problem. Not so much the lack of it – the UK market for magazines, at least, continue to boom – but its increasingly migratory nature. With readers and classified revenue absconding to online vehicles at a frightening pace, newspapers find themselves stemming the steady decline in circulation figures with TV promotions for lavish monthly supplements and free DVDs. In other words, “wearing magazine clothes,” says Nicholas Brett, Deputy Managing Director of BBC Magazines.

By the same token, storytelling techniques on the web are being reclaimed by magazines, their pages sporting graphic-happy, chunked-up copy – cementing the imperative to court the image-rich, fee-negating oeuvre of the digitalised media reader. Naturally, as Brett notes, to fully “monetise eyeballs” is the next considerable challenge in this transformative epoch; but in the meantime, as previously-wedged doors to vast flows of capital are refitted with online-friendly locks, the sovereign digital reader will continue to play an itinerant Pied Piper – literally directing the traffic.

When advertising guru Marian Salzman speaks of the “very different, very customised, very personalised, very intellectually robust relationship between media partner, advertiser and consumer” that will characterise the landscape of the future, she summarises the sea changes in the industry that it is no longer optional to ignore. And yet, while most magazines and newspapers have added a complementary click-sibling, the labyrinthine new battleground of online offers only moderate gain for the maximum effort it demands. Advertising itself needs redefinition, and a new cache of intelligent models to match.

All the while, traditional territories dwindle. Cutting back on giveaway material saw national frontrunner The News of the World drop 300,000 copies in November alone, while in global torch-bearer South Korea — the most digitally advanced country in the world — only 2,200 magazines remain of the 6,243 that existed in 1998. The fulcrum of the modern digital climate is coined starkly by The Word editor Mark Ellen: “People don’t read anymore”. The Word, for its part, will no longer commission any articles over 2000 words.

While there are few reasons to doubt that 2007 will see no reversal of the gradual waning of traditional media’s stomping grounds, Nicholas Brett remains decidedly upbeat: “Magazines have always been at their best when they let the reader in. They are tremendously adaptable.” His ebullience is well-founded. Online, it is brands which matter, and magazines have always had impeccable brands. A former Radio Times editor, Brett’s baby is still the UK’s most profitable magazine brand “by a country mile” because it has transcended mere ink and paper. The essence of Radio Times’s success is in its relationship with its readers; accordingly, the magazine’s website boasts 1.2 million unique users.

Fostering an identificatory, familial pride retains readers for life: a multi-layered playing field is no less conducive to the idea of community than a singular one. Publications, then, need to create a digital virtuous circle around their brand – a strategy of which the BBC’s Top Gear magazine, with its live shows, funky site and planned radio ventures, is a shining example. “One shots”; licensing the brand overseas; podcasts; innovative reader participation online – the scope for lateral expansion is burgeoning, and magazines, and newspapers, must eagerly assume an eternally malleable template.

Yet despite the glass being distinctly half-full – and bubbling – the self-defeatism of apprehension still lingers in some quarters. In bemoaning the “the once-proud newspaper industry” and castigating “internet-fearing editors”, LA Times columnist Joel Stein invites the destruction of that which he seeks to recoup. Digital fluidity is there to be coaxed, not yoked, else it will slip through the fingers – along with everything that went before it. There is no option but to go forward; self-preservation, ultimately, will come from willing self-transformation. “If newspapers are prepared to galvanise,” says former Guardian editor Peter Preston, “they do have a future. It’s a time for opportunity, not doom and gloom.”

The line which glisters off into the distance, then, is precarious yet captivatingly plural. Magazines and newspapers must employ a certain brinkmanship in relaxing their grip on the twin reins of format and tradition; their future calls, brightly, from fluid and brand-anchored archipelagos – complementary families of community-fomenting publications which will both envelop, centralise and retain the reader across all media platforms. Now that would be a party not even the Goody family could poop.