Doom-meister Jarvis is hopeful for (some) magazines

Frequent blogger Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine, the Guardian and the City University of New York is best known for his rather doom-laden posts about the bleak future for newspapers. The author of What Would Google Do? pulls no punches in that department. So it was with some trepidation that I approached his post headed Are magazines doomed too? and found he didn't think so. Though in typical fashion, he puts a sting in the tail of every positive thing he says. Bullish he's not.

As the person who came out of magazines (he founded Entertainment Weekly and was a critic for TV Guide and People magazine) Jarvis knows the business and his view is that the days of investing $100 million (as with the late Portfolio) or $200 million (as with EW's estimated cost to reach profitability) are probably over. His further view is that it's not magazines that are doomed, it's magazine launches. And he doesn't think magazines are doing a very good job of metamorphizing themselves into community platforms they need to be for the future.