Print mag and website should play to their respective strengths, says Time M.E.

For those of us who have been counselling magazine editors to seek every opportunity to link the print magazine with the companion website, it is intriguing to read that Time magazine, an aggressive web player, is now downplaying the print-online relationship. According to a story in Folio: Richard Stengel, Time's managing editor, told Direct Marketing Association’s 22nd annual Circulation Day event in New York:

While the two products should be complementary halves, Stengel added that they nevertheless offer two very different perspectives on world news—and lately have been downplaying the opportunities of driving the audience from one platform to the other. Focus groups revealed that readers didn’t necessarily appreciate the callouts in the magazine to go to the Web site to see more information on a particular story, he said. “Why are we doing that? It doesn’t make sense,” said Stengel. “They should be two separate audiences. Someday there will be people who don’t know there’s a print product.”

Stengel's keynote related how, in the last year and a half, the magazine has redesigned, reduced its ratebase, come out on a different day of the week and expanded its website into a separate, 24/7 news source.

Broadly, Stengel said the magazine needed to regain its status as a vital read, in a way that vaguely echoed the luxe leanings of other high-end publications. “We have to become a more premium product with beautiful paper and photography,” he said. “Each medium needs to do what it does best. A magazine should be something you’re addicted to.”