EightBlack.

Tom Peters has this slide in one of his famous powerpoint “decks”.

It reads as follows:

“If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less!”

It sums up the fate of The Bulletin, Australia’s oldest magazine.

Apparently, it’s been around for 128 years. Which is a lot.

In an effort to shore up it’s dwindling circulation, the magazine went through an editorial shake-up and website re-vamp in 2006. Which is a bit like saying we’re going to make in transit repairs to the Titanic half way across the Atlantic ocean, after it hit the iceberg.

This has to be a wake up call to “traditional media”. That includes radio, (which the web blew past yonks ago in terms of revenues), press, and TV.

Let me ask you a question? When the news broke regarding the tragic death of Heath Ledger yesterday morning Australia time, where were you? And what medium did you turn to first? And second? And what about the stock market melt-down earlier this week - where did you go first for information?

Don’t buy into any of this nonsense that because something has managed to keep breathing for 128 years that it deserves eternal glory and the right to live. The audience and the way we consume media has changed. Forever.

You’re either going to watch what happened. Or you’re going to participate.

The article in The Age today went on…

“It’s not just a great magazine. It’s part of Australia’s history, so naturally I’m sad it’s not going to be there. It’s a terrible thing to kill off an institution like The Bulletin.”

ACP chief executive, Scott Lorson, blamed the closure on recent circulation figures of 57,039 - about half the sales from the mid-1990s - and “the impact of the internet” on the current affairs magazines.

“This is a sad day for all of us at ACP Magazines. The Bulletin has been an institution in Australian publishing and has provided its loyal readers with the best quality, in-depth news and current affairs analysis in the country,” Mr Lorson said in a statement.

“We have invested heavily in the title with top editorial, photographic and design staff who have been devoted to making The Bulletin the best of its genre. However, despite our best efforts, the magazine has simply not been commercially viable for some time.

Scott Lorson, the embattled editor blamed the recent poor circulation on the internet. What I perhaps think is more appropriate is that the blame lay on the management for not embracing the digital medium when it arrived. They should have dominated the RSS space, built the most content rich site in the country, built an email database that delivered the most relevant content weekly.

To say that the publication deserves to survive because its an institution is a croc. After all, the so called “loyal” readers voted with their mouse and their keyboards and ACP has no one else to blame but itself.

Is it a sad day? Perhaps. And I do feel sorry for the people whose jobs have been affected.

But ACP had plenty of warning. As did everyone else.

Hollywood is next on the web’s list of heavily entrenched, “that’s the way we’ve done it for years” type mentality. It won’t last. Just wait and see.

My final question is this. Do you think that The Bulletin deserved to live?

I for one, (and I know I sound like a heartless bastard), would have shut the thing down years ago if the editorial team refused to embrace the digital medium. Kerry Packer may be rolling in his grave, but I suspect more so out of anger with the incompetence of his senior team rather than the fact that the magazine won’t be published ever again.

*Image courtesy The Age 

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This entry was posted on Thursday, January 24th, 2008 at 6:11 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.