Newsweek Will End Print Magazine in 2013

[BeyondGeography]

13. It comes down to the owners

Print can still turn a profit in many cases, but the margins are unacceptably low for many owners. So they jettison the whole deal, getting rid of many talented journalists and artists in the process, or slashing their pay and benefits.

There are deeper issues. Publishing is one of those businesses that often starts out as a labor of love at the ownership level, with direct engagement by the owner(s) in content or sales (i.e. selling the value of the content). When they care more about the product and the prestige associated with it than financial metrics there are few more enjoyable places to work. When this generation of ownership tires or moves on, they sell out and trouble begins. This happened all over publishing in the 80s and 90s, but print was still the only option back then. Now the twin pressures of digital and financial ownership are wiping the rest of it out, except in those increasingly rare cases where emotionally-invested owners still want to find a way to make it work.