Subscribers are noticing that magazines are arriving later and later
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Zach Smith loves his magazines. The musician with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra subscribes to a variety of weeklies, as well as monthlies such as Bon Appetit and Smithsonian.
But last fall, he noticed the weekly delivery of The New Yorker to his Mt. Lebanon home was becoming erratic: "In the good old days, I'd get it on Thursday or Friday, maybe the following Monday," he said.
Now, it might arrive a week late, bundled with the next week's issue. When his NFL playoff preview edition of Sports Illustrated, with Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger on the cover, arrived well after Pittsburgh had been beaten by Denver, he was steamed.
He's not alone.
It should come as no surprise to anyone with a mailbox that the U.S. Postal Service's vow for "swift completion of their appointed rounds" has become more a suggestion than a motto when it comes to timely delivery service.
For readers, it's an annoyance. For magazine publishers, it's a growing problem as the industry faces a stagnant rate in subscription sales and intense competition from the Internet.
"There has been a definite falloff in service," said Lisa Goren, New York magazine executive director of manufacturing and distribution.
"Not every single article is about current events, but certainly a good chunk of the magazine is devoted to timely material."
According to a recent Audit Bureau of Circulations report, paid U.S. magazine subscriptions grew less than 1 percent in the last six months of 2011, from 261 million to 262 million.
"If you are getting time-sensitive material later and later, you might begin to think 'I can get a version of that content in a lot of different places. So if it's late, I'm going to search it out on the Internet,' " said Jeff Inman, an associate professor of magazine journalism at Drake University.
First Published February 22, 2012 12:00 am
