Magazines Running Out of Ammo

Grim economic news is not confined to newspapers alone. At the midpoint of 2009, most magazines have experienced a seismic decline in ad pages and shrinking readership, according to the Media Daily News (www.mediapost.com).
The drop in ad pages and audience is across the board in periodical categories. Among women's lifestyle books, for example, Vogue, Lucky and Allure are off more than 30 percent in ad pages, while W plummeted 44 percent, as Madison Ave. reacted as negatively to the name as Pennsylvania Ave. On the men's side, Power & Motoryacht ad pages sputtered by 63 percent, Automobile was stripped by 43 percent and Boating sank 49 percent. Among lifestyle publications ad pages, Maxim shed 33.5 percent and Vibe was all bad by 39 percent. (I can do this verb thing all day.)
Media Industry Newsletter (MIN) online tracked 118 titles and found an overall 23 percent decline in ad pages in the first six months of 2009 compared to the same time period in 2008. Circulation fell more than 10 percent among pedigree periodicals such as Readers Digest, Ladies Home Journal, Entertainment Weekly and Redbook (or in-the-Redbook, as the case may be).
So newspapers and magazines are on the skids. Fess up people--are you reading the side of your cereal boxes at the breakfast table?