The Death of the Magazine

The article argues that magazines, unlike comparable companies, have steadily shrunk, and that the magazine as a business is in terminal decline. It contrasts 1960, when the five largest Fortune 500 companies grew and the top magazines were Reader's Digest, Life, Ladies Home Journal, Saturday Evening Post and McCall's, with today's outcomes. National Geographic, which lost 13% of its headcount in recent layoffs, is cited as a case study: its staff writers were all fired in June of last year, and its US newsstand sales were terminated. The author also says readers are increasingly loyal to individual writers rather than periodicals, and that legacy media's reluctance to pay for good writing is the biggest warning sign of its decline.