Magazines attempt to win back control of their digital editions

LET it never again be said that old-media firms are slow to deal with new technology. On December 8th Conde Nast, Hearst, Meredith, News Corporation and Time Inc invested in an as-yet-unnamed venture that will create and sell digital magazines and newspapers for the new generation of e-readers that is likely to succeed Amazon’s monochrome Kindle in the next year or so. It was as if a group of explorers had announced plans to settle a country that had not yet been discovered.

Consumers can already get hold of many publications on smart-phones and e-readers. But smart-phones have small screens, and e-readers render magazines as crudely illustrated black-and-white books. They cannot reproduce magazines’ distinctive fonts or elegant graphics. Worse, they are unsuited to advertising, on which most magazines depend. In the year to June, Meredith’s publishing arm, which produces Better Homes and Gardens among dozens of other titles, made almost twice as much from advertising as it did from newsstand sales and subscriptions. …