The four horsemen

Abstract

"In no way do I imagine myself to be a clairvoyant or a man who can see further than others into the future," writes magazines publisher Dennis. "Nevertheless, the news I bring from our industry is not what I would wish it to be. Frankly, it is not good... It is my belief that four major forces are converging on the magazine industry. These four threats, which I refer to as the four horsemen, pose a grave menace to the magazine industry's future growth, and perhaps to its very survival... We have lived, all but the youngest of us, through a golden age of magazine publishing... But I predict that we have already unknowingly entered the autumn of ink-on-paper periodicals after a glorious summer that has lasted for nearly 50 years. I fear that the four horseman are the harbingers of a long, slow, inevitable and, to me, immensely sad decline in the fortunes of newspapers and magazines; as our readers mutate into viewers; as our distribution, sales channels and margins shrink; as the environmentalists batter us with claims of social irresponsibility and as our advertisers, slowly at first, but in growing numbers, migrate to the electronic sea."