Joined Sep 2007
2K Posts | 60+
here
That's why magazines are dying. Because they don't realize that having a great content-rich website will not kill off your magazine. Autosport has a very successful magazine, and a very successful website. The two work side by side because they have great writers and great content in both the magazine and on the website. In fact, they'd be even more successful if they removed the paywall for everything except their results database.
Excuse the rant, sore point.
To some extent I agree with you, but I must admit that I haven't bought a paper copy of Autosport in years. I buy several car and bike mags every month, so it's not a case of only getting net based info for me, but when Autosport hit £3 per week for very little content about 10 or 12 years ago I stopped buying it. No idea what they charge for it now, even.
I would agree about removing the paywall - the last paper based Autosports I bought did not have particularly good articles and so I don't worry about not being able to see the current articles behind the paywall. If, however, I could see articles from the mag after a week or two on the website and found them to be informative and well written (as is my opinion on AMCN) then I might at least find out what the current cost of the paper based Autosport is. Maybe even buy a copy or two....
Shows up the truism that it is very easy to lose customers and much harder to get them to come back, but that the internet is a possible way to improve that statistic if approached correctly. I used to read The Times Online. Now they charge I don't bother. Most news is available elsewhere for free. Same for the race newsy bike/car mags unless they do something different.