The publisher of a Quebec-based motorcycle magazine has asked for bankruptcy protection, according to a news story in a publishing industry magazine.
Auto Journal Group, which publishes Motomag as well as five car magazines, including Driven and Auto Passion, made the move last Friday because a faltering auto industry and competition from the Internet has strangled advertising profits.
Motomag, the French-language motorcycle magazine, has been losing money for two years and has stopped publication. Publishing group owner Michel Crépault says he has worked out a deal with competing publisher L.C. Media (which produces Cycle Canada as well as a number of car magazines) to send their French-language motorcycle magazine, Moto Journal, to Motomag subscribers.
He is working on an on-line version of the motorcycle magazine.
Automag, the company’s most broadly-based title, is suffering because its readership turns increasingly to the Internet for information, says Crépault. Other magazines could survive being sold off, however, because their readerships are more tightly focussed — Auto Passion, for instance, which is sent to doctors and other professionals throughout Quebec.
Crépault says the magazine industry is not dying, but needs to change with the times. For more, see the article in mastheadonline.com.
This should come as no surprise. These magazines that haven’t even attempted to figure out the Internet or how to make it work for their business plans are doomed, and I think a lot of them know it.
I still do value print, but eventually someone’s going to come up with a convenient way to put the Internet, or at least print-like magazines, into a nice method of electronic reading format so that you can read comfortably in bed or exercising at the gym… and then print will be over. Vive la CMG.