Newsweek goes digital: How will it affect print news mags in India?

“Newsweek, one of the most internationally recognised magazine brands in the world, will cease publishing a print edition after nearly 80 years. The decision to go all-digital, disclosed in a blog post on its companion website The Daily Beast, is indicative of the shift to media consumption on digital devices such as tablets and mobile phones and underscores the problems faced by newsweeklies in an increasingly commoditised, 24-hour news cycle. The final print edition of the weekly current affairs magazine will hit newsstands on 31 December,” Firstpost wrote yesterday.Well, it sounds like the end of the world, at face value, but hang on. “We are transitioning Newsweek, not saying goodbye to it,” Tina Brown, editor-in-chief of Newsweek Daily Beast Co, and Baba Shetty, chief executive, wrote in a post on the Daily Beast website Thursday.”To carry on believing that print has a future in the face of overwhelming pointers to the contrary makes for poor business sense — but to believe that the title dies when the print edition shuts down is equally poor business sense.[caption id="attachment_496583" align="alignleft" width="380"] The time has come to ‘transit’ as far as the business plan and form are concerned, even as the core business, content, remains the same.[/caption]What are the implications for print news magazines in India?They need to accept that print magazines are on the wane in India as well (India Today and Outlook, India’s leading weekly news magazines show declines in readership)They need to be acutely aware of the growth in the penetration of mobile phones and tablets. “We are transitioning Newsweek, not saying goodbye to it,” said Tina Brown — and there is so much Indian news magazines can learn from these nine magic words. Accept that you must ‘transit’ and not say goodbye to magazines that have been built on solid foundations and enjoy both brand equity and trust.News magazines in India already have one thing going for them. Considering all the print products, they are, by their high cover prices (India Today and Outlook have cover prices of Rs 30), the least dependent on advertisers. Revenue from circulation, in most cases, will just about meet their paper and printing costs (even taking into account 50 percent of the cover price as a distribution cost) — and the advertising revenue is jam.But, the writing on the wall is that readership of the print edition will head south. As a consequence, pressure from advertisers to lower yields will increase.It’s time print publishers got together and began selling the quality of their readers rather than the quantity — and focus circulation, subscription and retention efforts on quality readership. Perhaps it’s time to fund the booster sample needed to measure the super-rich. Perhaps it’s time to forget about increasing circulation (in print) and focus on revamping the digital editions of the magazines – and start figuring out ways to monetise these offerings.About a decade ago, one of the worthies in the business, Aroon Purie of India Today, told me in an interview (when I was editor of Impact magazine) that he believed that the group was in the content business, and not the magazine/TV business – and that they would continue, in the future, to stay in the content business.But, as Tina Brown says, the time has come to ‘transit’ as far as the business plan and form are concerned, even as the core business, content, remains the same.