3 Solutions to Save the Publication Industries

We have all seen or heard about the terrible state of countless newspaper and magazine publications. Every week some journal or glossy is shuttering its doors, succumbing to dwindling ad dollars. Just last week I picked up a few of my favorite magazines and I could feel a noticeable decrease in weight from so many missing pages.

Many people are quick to blame the advent of search and online media. While this may account for some of the advertising exodus, I don't think it is the only problem.

People still love the hard copy of their newspaper or magazines. While there is much to be said for the feel, and convenience of print, its usefulness is being quickly outstripped. People are so accustomed to the portability, sharability, saveability, and not to mention mostly free info online, they are willing to strain their eyes and backs reading articles at their computer.

I have one suggestion and three solutions for the publication industry that could save its hemorrhaging readers, revenues, and writers.

Suggestion: The entire newpaper and magazine industry should band together and form a Pub Council.

1) Newspapers and Magazines are suffering from a major image crisis. As a unified group they should hire an advertising agency to re-brand, re-image, and relate the benefits of print and reading the news or magazine articles.

2) As a unified group they will also be able to decide upon industry ad standards and streamline the entire ad buying system. Part of the headaches of advertising in various pubs is that every single publication has completely different standards for buying and placing the ad. Running a national campaign can be headache, from purely a management point of view. Streamlining the order process, some ad sizes, and measurement standards (for crying out loud!) would greatly reduce needed manpower and reduce costs of this sort of advertising. And, if this were standardized could you imagine a single Media plan building software that had all the vital info automatically incorporated and could find any publication no matter how obscure based on certain search criteria?

3) Finally, there has to be a more complete embrace and seamless weaving of print and online. As a unified industry it would be possible to develop an application that people could use to save and share any articles a reader chose to mark using their cell phone or computer. A person at the beach, for example, could read an article, enjoy it, and decide to text a certain number or use a certain code in a cell phone app that would send the digital version of the article to their personal online binder. This would help publications become more dynamic, saveable, shareable, as well as increase trackable eyeballs to articles. An entirely new metric could be implemented, measuring the amount of times an article is saved and passed along. (solving the lack of trackability often reported in magazine/newspaper advertising)

While my suggestion and consequent solutions may be easier said than done, these steps that are necessary if the industry at large hopes to succeed or at least remain in existence.

What do you think the Newspaper and Magazine industries need to do to succeed?

If you are someone from these industries and would like to discuss bringing these solutions to life let me know.