Magazines Canada undertakes broad, strategic review

After a couple of years of rapid expansion and dealing with recession-driven tactical needs of its members, Magazines Canada is lifting its eyes and focussing on mid- and long-range strategies for the organization.

The year-long review, approved by the board of directors at its January 31 meeting, is intended to engage the member magazines, staff, its more than 20 committees, funders and its directors in discussion about where the increasingly broad organization should be going.

In a note to its members,it says

Magazines Canada is now a very broad multi-constituency environment serving the needs of consumer, B2B and cultural magazine media in both official languages from coast to coast. Expectations for association services reflect this view. Demand for new service has increased exponentially. Member surveys indicate that the association has responded well and within limited resources, in particular by exploiting non-member fee investments that focus on digital transitions.

 The organization has expanded from being strictly for consumer magazines to encompassing a large number of business-to-business titles as well as striking alliances with and providing services to the National Magazine Awards Foundation and the Kenneth R. Wilson trade awards.

The intent is to implement major initiatives from the review in the 2012 calendar year.

U.S. association publishers struggle with revenue decline and format issues

Only 8% of association publications in the U.S. said they expect publication revenue to increase in 2009, while almost half (49%) expect it to decrease.  This, according to the just-published survey by Folio:.

Advertising continues to be association pubs' largest revenue stream, and print advertising accounted for 68.8% for smaller associations (<25,000 members) and 62.1% for larger (25,000 +). Paid subscriptions account for 20.8% for larger associations, 13.4% for smaller. 

While many of the respondents are considering moving partly, or wholly, to digital publication, e-media revenues in 2008 remained a small percentage: 5.9% for smaller, 6% for larger, though they expect it to grow in 2009 to 7.5% for smaller and 8.2% for larger. The majority of respondents said that, while digital is gaining, magazines remain their top product -- 88% offer print titles. Most respondents said they offer between five and nine different publications, including print and electronic newsletters. 81% of the respondents offer electronic newsletters.

The role-altering challenges association publishers say they are facing include:

• Nichifiction ("people want more and more of less and less")
• Speed (something association pubs are not noted for)
• Peer-to-peer ("historically, associations have controlled the message -- now they are no longer in control")
• Data ("search engines are struggling with the amount of data out there and one-to-one databases are the key")
• Governance ("more boards are based on competence rather than tenure")