Day 10: Industry Changes

Day 10 (skipped a few days but this is a no pressure project, and so on I blog):

What industry changes have you noticed in the brands you are fond of?

I'm pretty loyal to my various brands. I mean, not in a Coach bag kind of way (my Coach bags are fake, anyway). I've been a subscriber of 'Everyday Food' since the first issue and 'Whole Living' since I canceled my subscription of 'Living.' Recently, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia decided to end the paper version of 'Everyday Food'. And for those of you that think, "ugh Martha recipes are too hard" I'm telling you we've never had a difficult horrible recipe from 'Everyday Food.' So that brand new year subscription paid up (thanks for the poor timing) was applied to 12 issues of 'Living' and 4 "special" 'Everyday Food' supplements. Weeks later I get the news from a friend that 'Whole Living' is going the way of the dinosaur. {speaking of dinosaurs--Jurassic Park is coming to IMAX in the spring? woooo!}

It turns out that 'Whole Living' was bleeding $4M per year (what?!?). The reason is because there's something like 750,000 subscribers and that's expensive to print. So, MSLO raised the advertising rates and effectively priced out the former small businesses that advertised in the former 'Body and Soul' magazine. This means that 16 editorial staff members lose their jobs (many in the Boston area since that was a Watertown, MA based publication). And now, Boston loses another locally produced publication ('Darwin Magazine', anyone? Dating myself there...)

So my question is: Did technology (iPads in particular) kill the magazines mentioned above? I sure do use my MacBook as a cookbook several times per week. Do I want to read these magazines on my MacBook? No. Do I want to print the recipes and put them in a binder? No. So, in replacement of 'Whole Living' I got 'Yoga Journal' and we'll see how that is.

What industry changes for any industry or brand that you follow have you noticed in 2012? Another for me is Victoria's Secret. The quality of fabric has gone way down. I might be done with VS in fact!