Although newspaper magazines have historically been well-received by readers, Frédéric Filloux, writer of The Monday Note, believes that specialty magazines may disappear as newspapers evolve.

"From a pure editorial perspective, the "magazinification" of dailies make more sense than ever," he writes. "Breaking news and even developing stories have been captured by the web and by the mobile internet," so newspapers can offer unique content by producing more in-depth, magazine-style pieces.

But considering the economic input needed to create even the slim magazines that accompany daily newspapers a few times a week, this model may not be economically viable.
Filloux cites the fact that newspapers require such a vast crew of round-the-clock staffers to produce high-quality content at a speedy pace as an argument against magazines.

"Since the hot stuff is on the net and on mobile phones, what is the justification for this technical profligacy if it results in a news product increasingly disconnected from the notion of urgency?" he asks.

Filloux adds news consumers have less time than ever to read long-form journalism, often spending only 30-40 minutes on newspapers that take five times that amount of time to be fully read. And the magazine industry has taken as hard a hit as the newspaper industry in the past year, with magazine sales falling 9.1 percent in the US during the last half of 2009 alone, and magazines losing an average of 25-30 percent of their revenue over the course of that year.

Additionally, Filloux explains that editors too stuck in their ways to support innovative, risky ideas from the younger generation tend to bring magazines and newspapers down. These negative trends will come together to create a perfect storm that will eventually derail magazines and newspapers altogether, resulting in the reduction of issues to one or two each week, Filloux believes.

But Portuguese publication i seems to offer a contradiction to Filloux's prophecy. The magazine-style newspaper, launched in May of last year, was successfully holding its own among two of Portugal's top dailies, with a circulation of 16,000 just three months after its creation. According to editor-in-chief Martim Avillez Figueiredo, i works because it caters to its audience.

"We've created a product that goes directly to the way they think and interact with news," he said.

But i remains one success story in a far larger batch of failures. Economic viability will continue to compete with reader interest to decide the fate of magazines, though they, along with news media of all kinds, will continue to develop as journalism's future takes shape.

Sources: The Monday Note, The New York Times