Recession may be looming, but now is a great time to start a magazine
July 16, 2008
Of course, financially it is a bad idea, as most of them fail, but, despite the current sense of doom on the stock markets, it appears now is the best time in years to start a magazine.
Just this morning I was reading about the collapse of Spain’s biggest property company Martinsa Fadesa, and thought to myself: my, this doesn’t bode well for Schibsted and Metro International, especially seeing that this probably won’t be the last such collapse we’ll se in the Spanish property market (if you wonder why Schibsted and Metro should be worried about this, have a look at their portfolios).
However, chance would have it that the next post I read in my newsreader was one by Swedish media blogger Vassaeggen, aka Olle Lidbom, who presented the rather counterintuitive argument that now’s a great time to start a magazine (I’m paraphrasing his conclusion in the intro).
The gist of his argument is that innovation is at a low-point in the big publishing companies after the massive wave of consolidation we’ve seen in
Lidbom pointed to this fascinating article in The New Yorker, Let the Bad times roll (2001), to support his argument. The article looks at several magazines and companies that saw daylight during very hard times indeed, including Business Week which was founded in September 1929, six weeks before the Great Crash. Two key points jumped at me in the article:
- During a boom, it's easier to raise money and easier to sell products. You'd think that would be a good thing if you were trying to start a business. The problem is that everyone else thinks so, too; when the economy is hot, everyone's an entrepreneur. The more companies there are, the less likely it is that one of them will be able to sustain a lasting competitive advantage, no matter how flush the marketplace is. Starting a business is like investing in stock: you want to buy low and sell high
Now, I must admit I have my doubts about magazines, partly because, if they’re not related to my beat, I only find time to read them on flights. I’d rather put my money on a new e-zine, news site or something: lightweight, low-cost, the only overheads would be salary - but then, I don’t have any money to gamble with, so that’s all theoretical.
Talking about investing, a property in
As for light-weight, am travelling at the moment and the new composer editor in Typepad may be a lot fancier, but hardly light-weight enough (yet) to make it an agreeable travel companion (this may effect the formatting of this post)
Hi Kristine, on your TypePad point I'd go plain text it's so much easier and not a drain on your browser.
Or try the iPhone app in your browser, that works very easily as well.
Any questions just shout.
Craig
Posted by: Craig McGinty | July 16, 2008 at 12:49 PM
Thanks, Craig. I wanted to shout THANKS when I was in the countryside, but typepad was just too slow and deadlines too plentiful (not that I should complain about the latter:-) )Not sure if I get this, have to use html mode, not rich text, always in order not to get all sorts of strange formatting, but plain text? Anway, will try to have a look around in composer this wknd
Posted by: Kristine | July 19, 2008 at 05:31 PM
If you start a new post and head to the bottom, click on 'Customize the display of this page'.
You can set it for plain text and whilst you'll still have basic formatting tools such as Bold, different fonts and colours won't be available without hand coding.
But considering most of the articles you write are text based it might prove easier.
You can always go back if it doesn't suit.
Using one of the mobile versions may prove useful when out on the road, slightly fewer options but lightweight, more:
http://www.typepad.com/features/mobile.html
All the best, Craig
Posted by: Craig McGinty | July 19, 2008 at 10:06 PM