Following the feedback from the World Magazine Congress in Beijing last May, which is held every two years, one could learn a lot about the trends in the press and how this industry is influenced by other types of media such as internet and TV.

While special interest magazines seem to be the lucky fellows in the press business, newspapers are the jinx. But how can we explain this? Magazines are the winner of two strong trends in the global communication world. These are the changed way of how we use media and an increased specialization in terms of topics. But what happens nowadays? Consumers spend less time on a particular lecture. The time spent on press media is decreasing compared to other media such as TV and Internet. And what happens if we read less in general? Well, we only read what we are really interested in. So if one is interested for example in fashion, home improvement or engineering, he will use his reading time, which comes in short supply, for just those subjects. It is called special interest. And readers really like special interest magazines.
Newspapers, however, need to be general and that has turned out to be their biggest problem. They have to write about the new Ukrainian government, recently launched space rockets, stock markets and who won the figure ice dancing. But readers are starting to ignore general information because altogether it is just too much information to deal with. And honestly, when was the last time you really read at least 20% of your daily newspaper? So newspapers are not just suffering a cut in circulation, but also advertisers are moving more and more to special interest magazines. In such magazines there is no spreading loss. If one places a fashion ad in a fashion magazine, the readers are likely to connect to it, while the same ad in a newspaper, may have a very small audience.
Magazines have also a much better chance to benefit from globalization by looking at new markets such as East Europe, India and China. They can either license a magazine concept to be published in another country or try to attract an English speaking readership in a particular market.

All this is really excellent news for MFN and for many reasons. MFN is very specialised. Even looking at the surface industry in general, our magazine just covers the peening, blasting, cleaning and vibratory finishing processes. So that is special interest. And by distributing our publication to 64 countries, we certainly benefit from globalization. So analyzing the growth of MFN in the last few years, we probably made the right decision of how to position our magazine within the industry.

Best Regards
Andrzej Wojtas (Ph.D.), Chief Editor MFN

andrzej@mfn.li

Author: Andrzej Wojtas (Ph.D.)