UK: As newspaper sales drop, "cerebral" magazines flourish

As newspapers and celebrity and male-oriented magazines experience economic losses, "cerebral" weekly and monthly magazines grow, reported The Independent's Stephen Glover.

"These cerebral magazines provide more considered, and sometimes longer, articles, than are available in most quality newspaper supplements. Some are wittier, others simply more authoritative. They tend also to have a better sense of their readers," said Glover.

During the first half of 2008, (monthly) The Oldie had a 15.5% increase in circulation to 28,862 since the same time last year. The figure for The Spectator was a 5.1% growth to 76,952. The Prospect's circulation jumped by 10.7% to 27,552.

Glover wrote that these surges in circulation happen at a "time of belt-tightening". However, he pointed out that professional marketing schemes are not necessarily the reason why weeklies and monthlies are selling more copies.

"The vast marketing budgets of newspapers have not prevented their slide. These magazines are evidently providing what many readers want, albeit in a smaller market than the newspaper one, and their success shows that the negative trend against the printed word on newsprint is not a universal one," Glover said.

He wrote that although some of these magazines have an online presence, they haven't been destabilized the same way as daily papers have been. Furthermore, these cerebral magazines may be less time-sensitive and readers may not gain more from reading them online.  

Source: The Independent

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