Magazines need to build greater reliance on value of content to subscribers

The euthanizing of Portfolio magazine may have had a salutary effect if it makes publishers confront, at last, issues of pricing and value. A good deal of commentary in the wake of the magazine's announced closing last week, concerns the ludicrously low pricing of the title -- albeit consistent with the way most mainstream magazines have been, and are, priced. An article in Newsweek quotes Samir "Mr. Magazine" Husni, chairman of the journalism department at the University of Mississippi :

"We don't value our content anymore. It was a crime to sell a subscription to Portfolio for $12 a year." Even though Portfolio targeted well-heeled readers, it sold itself cheap on the newsstand and cheaper in subscription, and gave away its content online. When the economy soured and advertisers turned away, the magazine came up short. In tough times, Husni says, a greater reliance on subscription revenue is a safer bet than advertisers. "The chances of, say, a half-million subscribers going bankrupt and canceling subscriptions is far less than 50 major advertisers going bankrupt or cutting their ad budgets," he says.