What Happened To The New Economy Magazines?

from the dead-dead-dead dept

So, it's no surprise to most of us that all of these "new economy" magazines are merging, dead, or struggling. We've discussed it many times before. Here, however, is a good look at exactly what happened to destroy all of these new economy magazines. With tech companies rolling in venture capital dollars they all wanted to advertise anywhere that would take their ad. All of these new economy magazines loved it, and took in all the advertising they could. To make sure their magazines didn't start looking like (and having to pay the additional postage of) a catalogue, they hired additional editorial staff to fill the magazines with more "news". The sudden collapse of venture capital and ad spending, left a hugely bloated infrastructure, that the magazines couldn't support. Of course, the smarter decision would probably have been to refuse a certain amount of advertising, bump up the advertising rates for the rest of the magazine, keep the infrastructure small, and save up money for the coming bubble burst. But that would have taken foresight and planning... The article says that there's probably still a market for "new economy" news. I'm sure that's true, but I don't think anyone ever really thought we needed eight different magazines that basically took turns covering the same subject.

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