In a recent interview with AdAge, Jann Wenner of Wenner Media, the publisher of Rolling Stone, US Weekly, and Men’s Journal, opens up about his opinion on magazines moving to the digital platform. Wenner believes print is the most important part of the magazine industry today, and that it will survive, despite challenges from digital platforms. Referencing magazines’ movement to the iPad and other tablets, Wenner said, “I think that [publishers are] prematurely rushing and showing little confidence and faith in what they’ve really got, their real asset, which is the magazine itself, which is still a great commodity.” He said it will take decades or at least a generation for tablets to be the new main source of business for magazines, not months as many believe.
Appropriately for the publisher of a music magazine, Wenner compared magazines’ transition into digital to that of CDs. Wenner said the music industry is at fault for not doing what Apple did sooner and for refusing to embrace internet technology. He said magazines should learn to not rush into the digital world like the music business should have because magazines and music are different products. Music can be easily reduced to the digital, Wenner said, while magazines take more effort because it is essentially creating a different product.
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