It would be wise not to read too much into those McKinsey numbers, however: virtually all of the available evidence shows media consumption in print continues to decline, particularly with younger audiences, and as a result advertising revenue is disappearing as well. Media companies need to adapt to that fact, rather than trying to pretend it isn’t happening.

According to a post by Rick Edmonds at the Poynter Institute, the research came from a presentation by McKinsey principal Michael Lamb at a recent conference of the International News Media Association in New York. Lamb said that based on data from a number of sources, about 35 percent of the time consumers spend on news consumption is devoted to newspapers and magazines, while TV accounts for about 41 percent and smartphones and tablets account for only about 2 percent.

In other words, the research seems to show that while digital devices account for more than half of the total time that consumers spend with media in general — and about 10 times more than the amount of time they spend with newspapers and magazines — the amount of time they spend with “legacy” platforms expands dramatically when looking specifically at news consumption.

Time spent is not the only important metric

Although Edmonds notes that there isn’t much research out there to confirm McKinsey’s conclusions (apart from a Nieman Journalism Lab post in 2009 that saw Martin Langeveld try to dig into some readership numbers for newspapers), he says that other researchers he contacted thought that the numbers were probably “not far off” — in part because of the “lean back” form of consumption that print media involves, where users often spend hours with a cup of coffee and a paper.

Edmonds also argues that encouraging advertisers to look at these kinds of time-spent numbers might help newspapers and magazines improve their appeal, since time spent is a big factor in where advertisers spend their money. As he puts it:

“The time-spent metric suggests that there is more life in legacy formats than raw audience numbers and falling print ad revenues would imply. Since the ‘dying industry’ meme is part of print’s problem with advertisers, this could be incorporated in a case for the medium’s continued relevance.”

Unfortunately for publishers who might see this as reason for unbridled optimism, however, Edmonds goes on to note that the time-spent numbers “do not solve the basic advertising problem of vanished monopoly pricing power and strong competition from a wide range of targeted digital marketing options,” and that while users may spend less time overall with digital platforms when consuming the news, these shorter digital sessions “may be a more efficient way of consuming news.”

For most, the news occurs elsewhere

I think Edmonds puts his finger on one major problem: namely, the fact that for many news consumers, the “lean back” experience simply isn’t necessary any more. As research from the Pew Center has shown, large numbers of consumers are getting their news from aggregators such as Google News or Yahoo News — or possibly from newer solutions such as Prismatic and Circa and Flipboard — because they don’t have either the time or the inclination to go to a single newspaper source, or read in print. Is a lack of efficiency really a selling point for legacy print publications?

That’s not to say the “lean back” experience doesn’t still have value for many news and media consumers, but the other painful fact is that most advertisers aren’t specifically looking to advertise to news consumers — they want specific demographic segments or topic-specific shoppers, or other kinds of targeting that legacy publishers can’t offer, and they want engagement or “time spent” across a range of content types, not just news.

As Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker has repeatedly suggested in presentations about the evolution of the digital-media marketplace, advertisers are moving to where the puck is going to be — not where it is now. And according to virtually all of the available evidence, even from McKinsey itself, that means mobile and social and other platforms, not print. Publishers can either try to convince advertisers that they are wrong about this move, or they can try to adapt to it.

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user Arvind Grover

Friedman is no stranger to the vicissitudes of modern media — she was laid off as the editor of GOOD magazine last year, after the publication decided to pivot and become a kind of social network for user-generated content. But in her CJR piece, she describes how on a recent speaking tour she grew frustrated with the numbers of people complaining about a lack of jobs, a lack of money and the rise of short-attention-span media like Twitter:

“Again and again, I found myself playing the role of cheerleader, trying to convince tired and broke journalists to get excited about the future of media.”

There is far more good than bad

As the CJR columnist acknowledges, it can be hard to motivate journalists — or anyone in the field of media — when reports from research outfits like the Pew Center lay out in bald detail how the business model for much of what we think of as the mainstream media is rapidly disintegrating, with nothing obvious to take its place, and when the number of journalists employed in newsrooms is lower than it has been at any time since the 1950s.

But Friedman argues — I think fairly persuasively — that there are far more benefits available to journalists now than there have ever been, if they choose to see and make use of them. Among other things, she lists:

Reporters have more access to sources: Thanks to the web, social media and other tools, “it’s never been easier to find and reach out to anyone.” This is unequivocally true, especially with the number of potential sources who have their own blogs, Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, etc.

Consumers have access to more media: Your job may have been more secure in the past, Friedman says, but now if you have something to say you have the ability to reach a much larger group of readers, and they have much more choice (this is also one argument against paywalls, she says).

Journalists get more engagement: Reporters used to work for years with little or no response from or engagement with readers (which some no doubt preferred), but now you get more feedback than you could ever want. Says Friedman: “I know a lot of journalists hate this, but it’s a good thing.”

Chaos promotes creativity: When traditional paths to professional success are closed, Friedman argues, “those of us who love journalism so much we’d never give up are forced to redefine success – and our methods of seeking it.” And there are more routes to success than ever before.

Disruption also produces opportunity

To some, this may all have a certain Pollyanna-ish feel to it, but I think Friedman is right — and in many ways she is saying something similar to what Matt Yglesias at Slate argued recently, when he responded to the Pew Center report and said that in his view news consumers were better off than they had ever been (although many disagreed). Jay Rosen made a similar case for why the internet is good for journalism in a debate hosted by the Economist in 2011.

Yes, much of the traditional media business is in turmoil, and the road to profitability — or even survival, for some — is far from clear. And it’s easy to look at the chaos of social media and “citizen journalism” during something like the Boston bombings or Hurricane Sandy and assume that we are much worse off, both as journalists and as news consumers (an argument I have tried to counter). And there is no question that many bad things come with the good.

But as Friedman argues, that same chaotic environment is what produces new things, many of which may grow to become powerful and positive tools for journalism — in some cases better than the ones we have. It’s easy to succumb to the gloom, but the reality is that while disruption of the kind the media world is experiencing creates great upheaval, it also creates great opportunity.

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user George Kelly and Shutterstock / Feng Yu

When a user clicks on the News heading in their LinkedIn toolbar, they now get a splash screen that outlines the different categories or channels of news they can subscribe to. There are some fairly obvious examples such as Economy, Entrepreneurship and Leadership, as well as broader categories such as Healthcare, Technology and Social Media — and a few somewhat more unusual channels too, like “Things I Carry” and “My Best Career Mistake.”

Once you pick your categories, the site shows you a redesigned LinkedIn Today page that looks very much like the front page of a magazine website: there is one larger story with a big image at the top, and then smaller stories by category. But the biggest difference between a traditional magazine and LinkedIn’s offering is that the stories on LinkedIn Today come from everywhere — hundreds of different sites and publications, from Wired to the New York Times. In other words, the site is acting more like a Flipboard-style aggregator, which probably isn’t surprising since it recently bought Flipboard competitor Pulse.

Whether or not this is just another attempt by LinkedIn to make the site more “sticky” and get users to spend more time there, it has the potential to become a real competitor to other news aggregators and providers. As I mentioned in a recent post about why it would make sense for LinkedIn to buy Pulse, one of the tools the site has going for it is an understanding of a user’s “interest graph” as it pertains to their business and/or professional life. That’s a valuable commodity.

Under former Fortune magazine editor Dan Roth — who talked about LinkedIn’s media ambitions on a panel at our recent paidContent Live conference in New York — the company has been expanding its reach for some time, including the launch of the Influencer program. That involves bringing in prominent personalities like Sir Richard Branson and giving them a place to host their writing, something that is similar to what Evan Williams is trying to do with his new company Medium (although it is focused more on literary content).

LinkedIn may not have created a “massive media empire” — as one rather breathless piece posted (on LinkedIn Today, of course) described it — but there is no question the site has media-related ambitions, and it is following through on them. And its ability to target specific users based on their interest graph gives it a potentially powerful weapon that other media entities lack.

“We’re going to be a great place for professional writers to write,” Williams told Wired senior writer Steven Levy at the Wired Business Conference in New York on Tuesday. “The magazine is the analog for what we’re doing.”

Williams noted that he doesn’t think professional writers will be the majority of Medium’s users — “we’re going to be a great place for everyone” — and that he wants to be “careful” about using the word “quality,” since “Medium is actually easier than blogging if you want to write something short.” Nonetheless, Medium is still not open to everybody. The site has five editors who are working to “get great content on the system and help curate what’s there,” and Medium is paying some writers.

Medium recently acquired the Kickstarter-backed journalism startup Matter (cofounded by former GigaOM writer Bobbie Johnson), which publishes long-form science and technology stories, and Williams said that Matter will be a home to other long-form stories as well. “We’re not focused on news,” he said. “We’re focused on ideas and stories that have a longer shelf life, [whether it's] short opinion pieces or long-form investigative journalism. We want that to thrive.”

In a recent interview, CEO Steven Kotok explained how The Week has bucked the fate of the troubled magazine industry, and how the publication plans to stay relevant in the future.

An American Aggregator

The idea of a “weekly” news magazine seems quaint in the age of the internet, but The Week has carved out a niche by distilling current events into a smart bundle of excerpts and opinions. It aspires to provide tight writing and snappy headlines that let readers feel in-the-know about news, culture and policy.

According to Kotok, this style of curation was considered a “weird thing” when The Week launched and the site had to persuade advertisers it was viable. Now, nearly publication does it one form or another  – a situation that would seem to erode The Week’s strategic advantage. But Kotok says the publication is still growing its subscription base by catering to a distinct “psychographic” (read: affluent, educated folks) and by promoting a left-right political discourse.

“Kids buy it for their parents and vice versa. You might buy it for your conservative uncle or your liberal nice – it’s a way to get the other side in.”

The pitch appears to be working. The company says it has a rate base of 550,000 readers and annual revenues of about $50 million. It says it has had annual profits of between $4 million and $5 million in each of the last three years.

Most of that profit is coming from home subscription sales (fewer than 1% of its readers come by way of a newsstand) but, increasingly, The Week is looking to the web to make money.

Building the digital domain

With a few exceptions, like the Atlantic, legacy print titles have fared badly online – slow starting and caught between two worlds, they lose to digital natives.

In the case of The Week, Kotok admits it was late to develop a web strategy, but says its site is now profitable. Citing February comScore numbers of 2.3 million unique visitors, he says The Week has surpassed the Economist in two of the last three months.

The Week’s website doesn’t reproduce the magazine’s content but instead offers a stream of smart, snackable news bites along with “Guilty Clicks” from around the web (“Do we really need a drone hoodie”, Ke$ha, etc). The online fare is produced by a separate group of writers that represent about half of The Week‘s 29-person editorial team.

The site earns its keep by selling advertising to major companies like IBM, Xerox and Zurich Insurance but also serves as a vehicle to heavily promote its print cousin. Kotok credits the site with bringing in $1 million a year worth of magazine subscriptions.

On the tablet front, Kotok says iPad advertising and subscriptions (access is free for print subscribers) are producing almost $1 million in sales but that the Apple relationship is difficult. “It’s hard because we’re used to having a reader relationship but Apple controls that. Sometimes they promote you and sometimes they don’t.”

The future: commerce not a tin cup

Having discovered that readers are not put off by price increases — The Week‘s average annual price has risen from $30 to $50 in the last six years — Kotok says he is now focused on revenue rather than subscriber growth. Gift subscriptions, which are a big part of The Week’s business, will be an ongoing source of income but, in the long run, the company still confronts a magazine business that is in wide and permanent decline.

The Week also faces a more immediate challenge in the Post Office’s plan to end delivery on Saturday (the day the magazine arrives in readers’ mailboxes). Kotok says he can meet the Saturday challenge by shifting production schedules, but that the publication is also focusing on developing other revenue streams – a tactic that is becoming necessary to media outlets of all kinds.

For now, he says, that will not include a paywall or donations experiment of the sort being conducted by Andrew Sullivan. Instead, The Week is betting on ecommerce to compliment its editorial strategy. “We won’t put out a tin cup. Many of our subscriptions are gifts so our ecommerce will be too,” Kotok says, suggesting that The Week fans will buy each other t-shirts, books and more.

The Week’s ecommerce experiment will be helped by its 2011 acquisition of Mental Floss magazine, which has an online store that brings in 30% of its $10 million. Items for sale include smart people t-shirts (“Pi Hard,” “Spell Czech”) and quiz books. In its push into retail, the company will be joining the likes of Gawker Media and Thrillist, which are likewise trying to leverage content into ecommerce.

Chief technology officer Eric Feng said in an interview prior to the launch of the new version that this is much more than just an evolution of Flipboard — it’s a major push into a whole new area, namely curation and publishing of content by individual users. “It’s one of the most ambitious efforts we have ever undertaken,” said the former CTO of Hulu. “It’s been more than 18 months since the inception of the idea, so this is a pretty big deal for us. We were originally focused on discovery and filtering of content, but now we are moving into curation in a big way.”

Flipboard has always had curated topics such as technology and sports, where the service uses a combination of human editors and algorithms — based on frequency of sharing and other metrics — to highlight specific content. In effect, the new tools allow any Flipboard user to take on the same role as an editor and create their own magazine around a topic, and share it with other users.

Reader magazines get promoted in Flipboard

In a nutshell, users with the new features (which are available only for iPhone and iPad currently, but will appear in an Android version soon, according to the company) can simply click a “plus” sign next to a blog post or article they are reading — as well as any video or audio content that appears in their stream — and add that piece of content or “flip it into” to a magazine, which will then be available to them or any other user who searches for that topic.

And Flipboard isn’t just giving users that ability within the app: the service is also launching a bookmarklet that will allow users to pull in content from anywhere on the web — whether it’s a blog post, a news website or Twitter and Facebook — and add it to their custom-created magazine. In a sense, Flipboard is trying to capitalize on the same curatorial impulse that makes people create collections about specific topics on Pinterest or re-blog photos on Tumblr, and in many ways this move is a shot across the bow of those other services.

It’s also clearly a threat to the existing publishing industry, since a Flipboard user can now create their own custom publication using the content that comes from dozens of different magazines, blogs, websites and other sources. So Flipboard is trying to bring publishers in as well and get them to create their own custom magazines — such as a magazine about the Beatles created with archival content from Rolling Stone. It has even built e-commerce functionality into the app so users can click and buy directly from within an article or ad.

But the most subversive aspect of the new features from a media-industry point of view is that they can be used by anyone — including advertisers. If an advertiser can create their own magazine by pulling in their own editorial content as well as content from other sources, and build e-commerce functionality into it, then it gives new meaning to the idea of brands as publishers and media entities.

Bringing users into the editorial process

The new version of the app will have a section called “By Our Readers” in the table of contents, which will include a mix of magazines that have been created by users on a variety of topics — a small group of beta testers (including GigaOM) have had access to this function for several months. As with the other Flipboard sections, some of the magazines that are highlighted will be chosen based on the number of times they have been shared, and others will be chosen by editors.

Like most news-aggregation and recommendation apps such as Pulse and Zite (which is owned by CNN), Flipboard users have always had the ability to share specific stories or items, but the new magazine-creation features effectively allow a user to spend some time creating a collection of content they can then share all at once. Feng used the example of an editor who is getting married soon and created an entire magazine with content about weddings.

In a way, the new version of the app also picks up where Google Reader and other RSS services left off. Instead of just passively consuming text and photos in a chronological timeline or series of folders, Flipboard turns everything into part of a magazine-style experience. According to Feng, many users have already imported their Google Reader feeds into the app, and those feeds will be available once Google sunsets the service in July.

The move comes on the heels of earlier news that a rumored sale of Time Warner magazines to Iowa-based Meredith has fallen through. Under the terms of that proposed deal, Meredith would have acquired lifestyle and women’s interest brands like People.

Instead, Time Warner’s magazines will be slotted into a stand-alone corporation last year. In the company’s news release, CEO Jeff Bewkes said the move would be similar to earlier spin-offs involving Time Warner Cable and AOL.

“After a thorough review of options, we believe that a separation will better position both Time Warner and Time Inc. A complete spin-off of Time Inc. provides strategic clarity for Time Warner Inc., enabling us to focus entirely on our television networks and film and TV production businesses, and improves our growth profile,” said Bewkes, adding that current Time Inc. CEO Laura Lang will stay on in the short term for the transition but will soon step down.

The spin-off is likely to mean layoffs or closures at the newly independent magazine entity. In recent years, Time Warner has reaped large profits on its TV content but the magazines, despite their iconic status, have struggled in the face of an ongoing secular decline.

The split also mirrors what took place at media giant News Corp., which last year announced plans to move its publishing assets into a separate company.

According to New York Times sources, the Meredith deal failed to come through after Time Warner could not agree on money nor on what to do with four core titles — Time, Sports Illustrated, Fortune and Money — that Meredith did not want to take on.

Time Warner has not indicated how much equity it will retain in the newly spun-off corporation nor whether it will keep the “Time” in its name in the future. Not long ago, the company was known as AOL Time Warner; now, the Warner part is all that is left.

According to the Fortune article, which cited unidentified sources:

In one scenario, most of the company’s publishing titles, such as People, InStyle, and Real Simple, would be carved out and rolled into an independent company and sold to the undisclosed buyer. Under this plan, Time Warner would maintain control of at least three titles – Time, Sports Illustrated, and Fortune – according to the sources. A Time Warner spokesman says, “We never comment on speculations of this nature.”

The New York Times, also citing unidentified sources, elaborated that “Meredith did not express interest in purchasing Time Inc.’s sluggish news titles.”

In 2012, Time Inc. contributed $3.4 billion in revenue to Time Warner’s total revenues of $28.7 billion — a decline from 2011, which the company attributed to lower subscription and advertising revenues. The publishing division laid off about 500 people — roughly 6 percent of its global workforce — in January.

It’s unclear who a potential buyer for Time Inc. might be. BDT Capital, the bank that Fortune reports is involved in the deal, has ties to Warren Buffett, leading AdAge to speculate that Buffett could be involved in the deal.

This story was updated at 5:00 p.m. ET to reflect reports from the WSJ and NYT that Time Inc.’s potential buyer is Meredith.

This might not be easy to do — especially since many media outlets seem to have their hearts (and wallets) set on paywalls as a solution — but the industry is in such dire straits at this point that almost any reasonable idea probably shouldn’t be ruled out. Some publications are betting on sponsored content, some are relying on real-world events and others are looking at affiliate links or “brand journalism.” Why not personal paywalls? (Note: We’re going to be talking about alternative monetization strategies at our paidContent Live conference in New York on April 17).

Why personal paywalls? Getting to know readers

I’ve tried to argue in the past that one of the biggest weaknesses of traditional paywalls or subscription plans is the undifferentiated quality they bring to a newspaper’s content: everyone hits the same wall and is asked to pay the same amount, regardless of their interests. This reinforces one of the overall weaknesses many traditional publishers have, which is that they know virtually nothing about their readers — or at least not enough to take advantage of that knowledge in any meaningful way. They are about as personalized as a street-corner newspaper box.

This is important because advertisers in particular are looking for personalized targeting, which is one of the reasons they are looking to new providers such as Facebook and Twitter for their business — those outlets can give them targeting based around an almost infinite number of variables, from income and geographic location to voting behavior. In other words, newspapers and other traditional outlets would benefit from getting to know their readers better in just about any way they possibly can.

One of those ways is to take advantage of the increasingly social nature of media in a digital age, and build monetization strategies around individuals rather than the artificial package of news and other content known as a newspaper. Many readers — particularly younger ones — consume media based not on corporate brands but on individual writers that they feel a connection to, and I would argue that is becoming the norm. We read the New York Times as much for Tom Friedman or Nick Kristof as we do because it is the NYT.

Five ways to create a personal paywall

Not all of these will apply to every writer at every publication, but many will. The overall idea is to take a lesson from the music industry in how to make money from content — the music business has spent a decade figuring out (painfully) that the songs themselves are not what people want to pay for. What they want to pay for is access to artists, both virtual and physical, and for ways of deepening that relationship. So here are some ways newspapers could take advantage of the same principle:

1) Allow readers to pay for an all-in-one package: If what readers identify with is Nick Kristof at the New York Times or Walt Mossberg at the Wall Street Journal or Felix Salmon at Reuters, then give them a way to get that writer’s content — in whatever form — in one easy package. Maybe they blog, write news stories, do video interviews, post on Twitter, etc. Provide all of that for a fee, and make it as appealing as possible and as easy as possible for readers to find and consume it.

2) Create new forms of specialized content: Maybe your wine correspondent is the star attraction for many readers — so why not provide early access to their reviews for readers who sign up for a membership in a personal paywall plan? This is also a model that many musicians have used to their advantage, by providing early access to music (or to better quality files) for members of a fan club.

3) Host live events featuring your writers: Plenty of publications, including The Atlantic and the Texas Tribune, are looking to monetize their content by putting on events that appeal to readers. But not everything has to be a 500-person conference — why not have smaller events that cater to a more exclusive reader group, where they can listen to an interview with a prominent figure in a particular area, and then mix and mingle with other readers who share their interests?

4) Create a virtual community worth paying for: Plenty of newspapers have topic pages or even author pages, but they do little to develop a real feeling of community for readers that justifies an extra fee. This is about more than just content — it’s about providing user forums, or wiki pages about a topic that readers (who pay a membership fee) can contribute to, or a chance for a one-on-one discussion with the writer. In other words, a real community that the writer in question is a part of.

5) Provide access to your writers’ expertise: If you have a writer who has some specialized expertise, whether it’s financial analysis or political savvy or technological knowledge, why not let them provide some of their professional advice to paying customers? This would be similar to a service like Gerson Lehrman or a startup called Clarity, where people buy a specific amount of time to ask an expert questions. Some might see this as a conflict for journalists, but it doesn’t have to be if it’s handled properly.

Offer your core readers more, not less

The bottom line with all of these suggestions is to look at membership or a subscription as a way of offering your readers more than just the regular news and content that you publish — an approach similar to the “reverse paywall” model that Wall Street Journal deputy managing editor Raju Narisetti and journalism professor Jeff Jarvis have both suggested in the past. This bases the monetization on a relationship with readers that is focused on rewards, not just putting up a paywall that everyone runs into after a certain number of pageviews.

Will this prevent some star writers from doing what Andrew Sullivan did and going solo? That’s not guaranteed, but if a writer sees themselves as being in partnership with the newspaper or magazine they write for — something that might even include a share of the extra revenue from the personalized-rewards model — they might be less likely to consider setting up shop on their own, especially if they saw a benefit from the marketing muscle that mainstream publications can provide.

Post and thumbnail images courtesy of Flickr users Mark Strozier and Christian Scholtz, and Shutterstock / Daniilantiq

Thompson said he wants to “dramatically expand” the number of blog posts that the site carries with the upcoming launch of a Science and Tech section, which will feature contributions from magazine regulars like Columbia law professor Tim Wu and author Ken Auletta as well as new writers. One of those new writers is former BuzzFeed staffer Matt Buchanan, who announced his move to the magazine on Wednesday:

Thanks everyone! I'm going to miss @buzzfeedben and @jwherrman BUZZFEED a lot, but I'm preeeetttty excited to be going to the New Yorker.

—
matt buchanan (@mattbuchanan) January 30, 2013

Until now, The Atlantic has been the poster child for the brainy traditional magazine that has succeeded at the new digital-media game. Owner David Bradley and president Justin Smith gambled heavily on an online strategy — one that included hiring strong writers like Alexis Madrigal and Ta-Nehisi Coates, among others, and online-first properties like Atlantic Cities.

These and other moves have driven large amounts of traffic, and also boosted digital revenues to the point where they now exceed print (Note: We’re going to be talking with Justin Smith about these and other topics at our paidContent Live media conference in New York on April 17).

The magazine has also put a substantial amount of resources into the new arena of “sponsored content” as a replacement for traditional advertising, although that has not come without controversy: a recent sponsored feature on the Church of Scientology drew a substantial amount of criticism, and the magazine said it has re-evaluated the way it handles such content as a result.

The Atlantic‘s moves have made others such as Time Inc. (which is facing some major cutbacks) look like they are stuck in neutral. Only Forbes has arguably equalled the Atlantic‘s progress, with initiatives like its “Brand Voice” platform (chief product officer Lewis D’Vorkin will also be joining us at paidContent Live). Now it seems that both could be facing some competition from the New Yorker, which is encouraging to see.

Image courtesy of Flickr user Rebecca Chatfield