By Alice Hill
RealTechNews
I’m re-printing a CNET column I wrote nearly 10 years ago where I had the nerve to ask “?” at the time, I received so many scathing emails from writers and editors at various publications calling me self-serving and stupid and so on. And yet over time, the inevitable happened. Print magazines about computing are hitting a wall.
Today, my favorite of favorites – PC Magazine announced it was in January 2009. The mag will continue on online, but take a moment to wish it well and to consider some of the reasons why it happened. If you think it was just the recession doing the deed, read what was said 10 years ago:
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Alice Says
By Alice Hill
VP, Editorial Director, CNET Online
(11/18/99)
Are Computer Magazines Dead?
This is an especially hard column to write, because I wouldn’t be sitting here saying much of anything if it hadn’t been for the computer magazine. Computer magazines in their heyday were not only a collection of product reviews and in-depth looks at emerging technologies, they were also a place where writers and editors carefully steered millions of people to the right products and away from the chancy dead ends that could empty one’s bank account or drain a department’s budget. The five years I spent in publishing learning to decipher engineering white papers and lab test data gave me the ability to look at a new trend or product category today and tell almost instantly if it’s doomed or promising.
But somewhere along the way, the computer magazine began to fail its readership by sticking to outdated formats and refusing to fully leverage the Web. Computers themselves became less risky to buy when their price tags shrunk from $3,000 to $300, and yet magazines have continued to apply the same heavy-handed approach to this very different buying decision. Meanwhile, as more and more gadgets make up a corporate purchase list, as well as the personal wish list, the PC magazine with its strict system-benchmark focus has lost out by making these important devices little more than gee-whiz curiosities.
This week at Comdex I toured many of the top-tier computer magazine booths and was appalled by both how thin they’ve become in total page count, and how formulaic and boring they are at a time when computers and technology are electrifying the world. Worse still were the knee-jerk attempts at change, such as the desperate last-minute retooling of the venerable PC Computing into an uneven “business” magazine, with no change of staff or magazine title, and a name-only switch from its testing lab to a “business lab.” What on earth is a business lab, anyway?
Some of the impending destruction is also happening behind the scenes. Computer publisher IDG was recently thrown into utter chaos when it planned a massive new technology portal and then abruptly changed its mind–leaving many editors who committed to the project feeling like gullible buffoons. I should point out that CNET and other online sites won out by being able to snap up some top IDG editors, but the move left the star IDG magazine PC World adrift and desperate for leadership. The editor in chief was allegedly so thrown by the implosion, she literally moved to Maine to sell lobsters.
Selling lobsters may make more sense than what has happened to my old alma mater, Computer Shopper. Once the granddaddy cash-cow legend of the computer publishing world, Computer Shopper is also supposedly retooling to take advantage of the boom in Internet shopping. A fine idea, but why on earth did they wait until nearly 2000 to spot the online trend and react? Once a 1,200-page, phone book of a magazine, Computer Shopper is now almost the size of any other mag, a shrinkage of near anorexic proportions that says it all.
The number one computer magazine, PC Magazine, occasionally deigns to review Web sites, but a tour through the magazine reveals that it looks basically the same as the copy of a 1987 issue I have on my bookshelf. News and previews in front, columns next, and then some labs-based round-ups, and so on. With so much riding on this franchise, you would think that publisher Ziff-Davis would spend a moment reflecting on what has happened in the last 12 years and come up with a format that showcases the changing trends, the increased need for services, and even the new players who are shaping this market. Out of touch will mean out of business, if someone at Mag doesn’t take their head out of the golden early ’90s era and wake up.
Saddest of all are the bottom-tier magazines like PenComputing, trying so hopelessly to carve out a tiny niche that doesn’t compete with PC Magazine that they miss the fact that people don’t really want or need a separate magazine for every computing device they may use. The greed to get into the high-margin world of computer publishing spawned a nightmarish legacy of one-trick pony titles dedicated to everything from laptops to databases. It’s time to say enough already and let them die off once and for all.
The bottom line is that the approaching demise of a very lucrative and powerful industry doesn’t have to happen. Online computer journalism like what we do at CNET, or at ZDNet and the like, is a competitor to the computer magazine precisely because the magazines refused to change. Let the Web take care of covering more products than could ever be bound in an issue, and break stories faster than a magazine hampered by a three-month lead time, but let the computer magazine focus on the commentary, people, and well-needed above-it-all perspective on this very crazy time. That’s why the new industry mags such as Industry Standard are getting all the print ad dollars. Why pay to advertise your product three months too late in a magazine of readers who already know about you? One thing is certain: it’s going to take more than a “business lab” to refocus this aging genre, or there are going be a lot more lobster farms opening up in the year to come.
Source:
I welcome the move away from dead tree publishing. Its wasteful as all get out, expensive and unnecessary in this day and age of electronic communication. Though I admit to still liking to read an honest to goodness paper every now and again.
Yep, they’re all doing down… Infoworld, PC Magazines, and there was a few others as well in the past year..
You were a visionary Alice
It’s too bad print-on-demand never took off. It would be great to print out an issue when you are heading to the beach or at an airport, instead of stacks and stacks of wasteful newsstand copies or simply not subscribing for 12 months.
Netbooks, notebooks, pdas everywhere now and paper printing is really wasteful. Still anybody can read their favourite magazines anywhere.
” Lobsters Anyone” With the price of lobsters down to what ham and cheese costs, Im suprised anyone is moving maine to sell lobsters. I am just finishing my new book, ” The lobster and the chicken” a fairy tale for adults in search of enlightment. Any time I get a google “lobster alert” I have to put in my two cents. Thanks Herb Palmer Jr author ” The lobster and the chicken”
I gave up on PC magazine for lack of content. Any story I read was very superficial if not downright wrong.
I just read Dvorak’s column. He must be almost single-handedly carrying PC mag.
I agree with Jim, Dvorak’s column is the reason I read PC Magazine. Unfortunatly for them, that reading has been done at the supermarket rather than at home for the last couple of years.
I guess it will be on the web from now on.
I was a former PC Mag columnist (online) and Dvorak’s editor when he wrote a column for Computer Shopper. I have to say, people love him or hate him but I always loved his writing style. It inspired me when I was learning how to do columns of my own. Working with him was great and he was always prompt.
WOW- Sorry it see it go, I always enjoyed seeing it in the mail box and sitting down for a read- the old fashioned way- away from the computer!
I miss the old Computer Shopper magazine. At the height of the boom the magazine was about the size of a NYC phone book. Last time I saw it on the stands it looked about the size of a Reader’s Digest. I could spend hours going through all the ads in the back for small companies catering to tinkerers. I used to run an Apple ][c plugged into my cigarette lighter with a 5 inch B/W TV. 128 Kilobytes with a 5Mhz upgraded CPU…man I thought that was hot stuff back in 1986.
I always looked for the Alice and Bill stuff in Computer Shopper. Missed it if it wasn’t there.
Time marches on, I guess.
Alice, you were truly prescient in your prediction of the ultimate decline and eventual extinction of computer magazines. A lot of things have changed in the 20 or so years that I have been in the technology business. Most important was the commoditization and consumerization of technology. This arguably began with the introduction of Windows 3.1 and the Intel 386sx processor. Windows allowed computer access to a huge market that had been previously put off by the steep learning curve of the DOS command line operating system. It created a system of graphical metaphors that even the limited intelligence level of the average Joe Six-pack could begin to assemble into a rudimentary experiential learning knowledge base. You could point and click at things, experiment with what happened, thereby learning what your computer could do without an understanding of the complex fundamentals involved in knowing exactly how it did things.
The 386sx processor was Intel’s first successful attempt at a truly mass-market part and they hit the ball out of the park. The 386sx did a good job at doing what the average Joe Six-pack wanted to do. Namely, balance the checkbook, write a few documents, send some email, and of course (though few would come right out and admit it) play “some of them-ther com-pu-tor gamesâ€. This was when the computer magazine world had its first mini-surge. About 20% of the population could both afford and actually use there computer. They were also hungry for knowledge. The computer magazines on the newsstand rack would also become the default advertising venue for most manufacturers of computers, accessories, and software.
Ironically, the catalyst for the subsequent, and final publishing boom for computer magazines would also herald its extinction. I am speaking, of course, of the explosion of the Internet. This technology, more than any other, is what finally got another 60% of the population to go out and buy a PC. The comuter magazines fed this buying frenzy with all sorts of comparative product issues, as well as a LOT off issues on “who has the best most useful web site.
Publishing information about computers on the Internet was a no-brainer for most computer magazine companies, but it would ultimately kill the need for the dead-tree version. After all, if I wanted the most up-to-date info on new technology, I didn’t wait for a print edition that had a 60 or more day lag time. And it was THAT simple logic that killed the need for computer magazines.
You know, when they first came out, there were magazines devoted to microwave ovens too.
Aw jeez. Now where am I going to get my bubble sort source code listings?
I quit reading pcmag because of the ads. Nobody really talks about the ads here, but they were what killed it for me. Not just pcmag either. I swear they took up three quarters of the space, at least by the time I gave up paper mags. Ok, three quarters is exaggerating but I can’t be too far off.
It would be great to print out an issue when you are heading to the beach or at an airport
[...] top IT news story of the day is the demise of the print edition of PC Magazine. I stopped subscribing years ago when it lost focus but I resubscribed last year to the digital [...]