Take your pick

Here's an article where a puzzled writer talks to three experts and finds three different views of the current state and future of the magazine business.

• “Consumer magazines are being hit on all sides,” says Thomas Kemp, managing director at the Veronis Suhler Stevenson media investment firm. “A strong flight of advertising to online” poses one problem, he says, while “newsstand sell-through has been challenging at best, if not declining.” He adds: “It’s a very challenging time for the magazine industry.”

• Samir Husni, chair of the University of Mississippi journalism department and someone who closely tracks the magazine industry, says, “When you hear all the bad news ... it’s a market adjustment. Almost every 10 years we go through the same thing.”

• And Nina Link, the bullish president of the MPA, simply calls the current environment “a time of tremendous transformation.”