Magazines – Online Versus Print

by Abhinav K. Digital Marketing Expert, Freelance

Fondly remember those pre digital days when we would run to the newsstands around the end or beginning of a month to look for the latest edition of our favorite magazine. It was thrilling to go through them and uncover a new story in each page. The images were all unseen and unknown, how we devoured them. I especially remember some of the women magazines my mother use to subscribe to. Femina, Stardust, Savvy, Cineblitz namesthat take us down memory lanes. To flip through the pages admire the celeb pictures, read the gossips, scoops and not to forget the various beauty and lifestyle tips. Oh and the endless glossy advertisements.

Then there were the Illustrated Weekly, Outlook, Sunday and other more serious ones which dealt with politics, finance, market matters and other social issues. These were considered as some of the best magazines in India and the content they published had a huge credibility and some of the best names in journalism were associated with these magazines.

Somewhere around the end of 80’s some of the international magazines were launched in their Indian version. That was another surge of excitement, especially the international modern woman magazine like Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Vogue and Good Housekeeping. Of course they were very expensive but they provided content and images very different from what the average Indian readership was used to. Images were awesome, bold and beautiful. With the advent of these foreign brands, the Indian readership quickly changed loyalties and the best magazines in India slowly started seeing a dwindling in their subscriber numbers.

The final blow came once the online magazines were launched and we became digital.

Slowly and steadily most magazines are moving towards being online magazines only, except for some of the very bigones. Most magazines are completely free online others have a subscription fee policy. Understandably in this era of digital media, print magazines cannot get the required volume of subscribers and considering the costs it’s not a profitable business anymore. Just the other day I was talking to a journalist remembering the good old days. She was telling me how one after the other print magazine was shutting down one of the recent being Good Housekeeping.

Nowadays everything is at our fingertips thanks to the internet; we have all the news instantly, even the gossips and maybe much more than we ever had in print. But I am nostalgic. It is never going to be the same, as it was waiting for a new edition, leafing through the glossy pages and sometimes saving a special edition or cutting out an article for keeps.

At the doctor’s, dentist’s or the beauty salon I make it a point to pick up a magazine and leaf through no matter how old the edition and how stale the news.