Some positives for the magazine sector

Over at Paul Bradshaw's online journalism blog there is a guest post from Alex Lockwood who reports on a very upbeat "What happens to magazines conference in London."

You could call 2008 the Year of the Niche title as people look to do things at home, cheaply, or the things they love most during the economic downturn.

says Alex before giving six industry examples of how the sector can be positive:

1. Andrew Davies of idiomag, the music content personalisation site, emphasized the possibilities for each unique user building their own magazine of content through companies, like his, using software sophisticated enough to be ultra-niche; and the advertising opportunities that provided were unrivalled for consumer relationships.

2. Mike Soutar, founder of Shortlist Media and “pioneers” in quality free magazine content, was confident that print magazines had found a model (brand-to-hand distribution and outsourced costs, keeping magazine teams very small) that would mean print magazines could continue to be there where a screen wasn’t.

3. Sarah Clegg, chief executive of John Menzies Digital and provider of magazinesondemand.co.uk, delivering digital editions of top brands, believed they had passed the tipping point and, critically, persuaded publishers that they couldn’t charge their normal cover price for a digital magazine that had no transport, printing and retail costs attached to it.

4. Ashley Norris of Shiny saw a future of 20-30 blogs in a network doing the work–and replacing–the work of 2-3 magazines, and brokering creative sponsorship between brands and social media as central to the business model for producing great experiences online.

5. Simon Wear of Future, perhaps the most positive and persuasive, believed that his magazine company would be growing as they had a) remembered they weren’t software companies, and also b) had remembered how to write really strong, probing news around their niche interest sectors, which translates well online, and meant their nice-to-have content had found its way back to need-to-have status.

6. Finally, the most hopeful and most sceptical at the same time, Louise White of Incisive said their b2b titles were not magazines any more, but information providers that found their way into their audiences’ work flow–”platform agnostic” content that was as important to be on someone’s Blackberry than online or in print.

Of all the comments perhaps Louise's is the most potent in the current climate-information providers that found their way into their audiences' work flow is a very good description of the role of the B2b magazine.