In for the long haul
Chairman Simon Hung of the Magazine Business Association of Taipei feels that print magazines must shift gears to deal with the challenge of today’s digital readership.
“Big magazines that focus on the business world and general news still account for the bulk of magazine sales in Taiwan, but their sales are falling,” says Hung. He argues that in the Internet era, when information is ubiquitously available, general interest magazines may gradually be driven out of the market.
He points out that 56 new magazines were launched in Taiwan in 2011, while 15 others were closed down, and almost all the new magazines were characterized by a small staff and a tight focus on health, food, fashion, lifestyles, photography, or some other such interest with a close connection to the individual’s everyday life.
Chan Wei-hsiung, for his part, uses a metaphor about “being in the sun” versus “being in the moonlight” to describe the difference between digital reading versus print media reading. He points out that people involved in online publishing realized long ago that online readers are an impatient bunch, and that any given news article is best limited to 800 Chinese characters or fewer. When people read something on a light-emitting screen, they tend to absorb information quickly and depart quickly. That is why Facebook and Twitter, which cater especially to short-form communications, have proved so popular.
Reading print media, on the other hand, is like being in the moonlight, where a person can relax and appreciate subtleties. Reading something in print is a much different experience. “Similarly, digital music is everywhere, but a live performance is just so much more powerful, because our eyes and ears are not our only sensory organs. We still have to use our tactile sense to feel the power of music.”
A print magazine can be quite subjective and idiosyncratic. It can be full of passion, with a feel of youth and the sweaty pulse of life present in every single line. Or it can be quite literary, and lure the reader imperceptibly into an entire universe created by the written word. The success of mini-magazines in a down market has not come at the expense of the mainstream. Rather, it is simply a reflection of the contrast between “analog versus digital” reading styles.