6 ms·

Ten years ago or so, I'd occasionally read the print version of Time. It was a serious magazine full of in-depth articles. These days, from looking at their onl

by msvan 8y ago

Ten years ago or so, I'd occasionally read the print version of Time. It was a serious magazine full of in-depth articles. These days, from looking at their online presence, it seems to have mostly devolved into BuzzFeed and news spam for social media. What happened?

ipqk 8y ago
Well, you and everyone else stopped reading the print edition 10 years ago. That's what happened.
- rusk 8y ago
  Somebody actually got me a years subscription to Time magazine about 10 years ago. I never read it. It was awful.
  - vidarh 8y ago
    The thing is, lots of magazines have fantastic content. They just don't have it at a volume sufficient to fill a whole magazine every month. I have a stack of Wired for example - early Wired in particular every now and again had fantastic articles. But the ones I've kept are from many months apart, and each one of them I've kept for one article. A magazine like Time with the reputation time has, tends to have that reputation because of the occasional articles and images that are outstanding enough to be remembered, and because their baseline quality is high enough not to detract from the successes, not because everything is consistently good. In print publishers got away with that. People would read it because they often had no competing content available pre ubiquitous internet (most of my remaining paper magazines were bought for transatlantic flights). Online, if the articles don't draw in enough eyeballs, it serves little purpose.
    - rusk 8y ago
      Maybe once upon a time but I feel increasingly that online competition is increasingly being used as a scapegoat for declining editorial standards. The rise and fall of publications is a natural cycle. There’s no reason at all why Time should continue immortally, it’s just a trademark at this stage.
    - samstave 8y ago
      If i were a billionaire who was interested in magazines, i would buy up as many as possible and have the staff write in the genres they want to write in about each topic and then just let people to subscribe to each vertical channel they want...
coltonv 8y ago
What happened? The economics of media we're reshaped entirely by the internet. In print, people buy your content and adds in a giant bundle. You get money upfront AND you sell dozens of ads all at the same time. You can produce diverse content because there's plenty of room in that magazine, so have some in depth thought pieces, some witty stories, and some pretty ads and everyone will be happy. On the internet there's a ridiculous amount of content available completely for free. You don't ever buy content because why would you? All you have to do is click on what you want to read and it appears in front of you with some ads which you'll ignore 99% of the time. That 1% is significantly less valuable than what that old print ad space was worth, but it still has value. So the entire game becomes centered around that click. So the company tumbles in value because no one will buy print and no one clicks on headlines which don't indicate something that will absolutely captivate their attention. So the company is steadily becoming worth less and less, and in order to squeeze out some revenue and stay afloat you have to target those clicks, or should I say, bait those clicks. I know you probably asked "What happened?" rhetorically, but this is what happened and if you were in the same position running the company, you'd probably make the same decisions or go out of business 6 years ago. I agree that it's unfortunate, and we all need to find a way to support in depth journalism.
umichguy 8y ago
The ONLY time I ever pick up a print of anything (newspaper, magazine etc.) is while traveling, if I don't have enough juice on my devices, or don't have wifi etc. And if the mags/ papers are free. That said, I do prefer reading printed versions of text books and maybe some novels.
- rusk 8y ago
  There’s a couple of magazines I pick up every month purely to support their journalism. Paying for news is kind of like Patreon at this stage, but it’s also nice to have something in the canteen for us to lead through over lunch.
  - masonic 8y ago
    You would support them a lot more by subscribing.
    - rusk 8y ago
      I do subscribe to one or two actually.
werber 8y ago
I thought it became BuzzFeed for baby boomers stuck in medical(ish) waiting rooms? My 70 something year old dad gave up his subscription a while ago
InclinedPlane 8y ago
That's hardly a fair comparison. Buzzfeed news is a legitimate news organization that often performs highly valuable investigative journalism, whereas Time is for kids: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TT81o4hL4c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TT81o4hL4c
- justtopost 8y ago
  Until BuzzFeed News differentiates themselves from their vile clickbait roots, they will continue to not get respect. I am not sure this is unfair, even if it is unfortunate.
Bahamut 8y ago
I’d argue even 10 years ago the quality of Time was questionable. One of my friends was interviewed on chiptunes by Time at around that time due to a success of a Kickstarter for a Miles Davis chiptune album he did, and the editor twisted his statements of love for creating songs with that production quality into something he disliked - he contacted Time about the mischaracterization and they refused to change it until he started a Digg posting blasting the atrocious journalism, upon which they agreed to change the article...which still contained the writer’s clear bias against it, but not as insidious as was originally written. Ever since that incident, I’ve been very skeptical of Time articles, and if I do read them, I read them very carefully with my friend’s experience in mind.
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
  "skeptical of Time" Time? This is how the entire media works. Some are credible, some are not. They all spin. It's a rough game for them, there aren't enough interesting things going on frankly. The world would be fairly boring were it not for the 'adaptive' way in which we tell stories.
scirocco 8y ago
Just reading their Google headline proves your point - looks more like CNN or Fox News: TIME | Current & Breaking News | National & World Updates
jondubois 8y ago
Now with their new subscription model, publishers like the New York Times are getting more money directly from regular people instead of corporations, so they no longer have to please their corporate masters. The past 10 years were some of the darkest years in the history of the media because publishers were totally reliant on corporate funding. Now (very recently) what we're seeing is a reversion to the old model of newspapers being paid for by the people who read them. This is actually what news is supposed to be but we forgot because the past 10 years have messed with our heads.
- justtopost 8y ago
  I am not sure that helped in this case. Hyperbolic "fake news" claims aside, I have observed a marked, and downward, shift in nuance when NYT covers most hot-button issues. I find myself looking for other sources first now. They just seem to have created a self-funding bubble. I find it unfortunate, as a majority of their reporting is still stellar.
  - jondubois 8y ago
    All news is fake to some extent. I think that so-called 'fake news' is good because it allows people to expose themselves to two extreme opposite views. If people want to live in a filter bubble then they can go ahead and do that but it's nice to at least have the option to see alternative views. I think that there is often a grain of truth behind fake news. If people feel that they're getting screwed over by the system and then an article comes along and tells them "you're getting screwed by the system, this is why...", even if the reason is a poorly researched guesstimate, it's still much more useful in terms of driving social change than articles that just say "the economy is booming, low unemployment all around, everything is great...".
  - turtlecloud 8y ago
    Nytimes has gotten too liberal. They are alienating all the Americans that don’t live in big cities. Their anti Trump agenda is also too obvious.
    - deleted 8y ago
sonnyblarney 8y ago
The other thing that has changed in 10 years is that you are 10 years older and 10 years wiser. Time was always kind of populist. It's a picture/newsmag. Essentially credible? Sure. But not exactly highbrow. Try reading the articles from 10 years ago again see what you think.

by msvan 8y ago

ipqk 8y ago

Well, you and everyone else stopped reading the print edition 10 years ago. That's what happened.

rusk 8y ago
Somebody actually got me a years subscription to Time magazine about 10 years ago. I never read it. It was awful.
- vidarh 8y ago
  The thing is, lots of magazines have fantastic content. They just don't have it at a volume sufficient to fill a whole magazine every month. I have a stack of Wired for example - early Wired in particular every now and again had fantastic articles. But the ones I've kept are from many months apart, and each one of them I've kept for one article. A magazine like Time with the reputation time has, tends to have that reputation because of the occasional articles and images that are outstanding enough to be remembered, and because their baseline quality is high enough not to detract from the successes, not because everything is consistently good. In print publishers got away with that. People would read it because they often had no competing content available pre ubiquitous internet (most of my remaining paper magazines were bought for transatlantic flights). Online, if the articles don't draw in enough eyeballs, it serves little purpose.
  - rusk 8y ago
    Maybe once upon a time but I feel increasingly that online competition is increasingly being used as a scapegoat for declining editorial standards. The rise and fall of publications is a natural cycle. There’s no reason at all why Time should continue immortally, it’s just a trademark at this stage.
  - samstave 8y ago
    If i were a billionaire who was interested in magazines, i would buy up as many as possible and have the staff write in the genres they want to write in about each topic and then just let people to subscribe to each vertical channel they want...

coltonv 8y ago

What happened? The economics of media we're reshaped entirely by the internet. In print, people buy your content and adds in a giant bundle. You get money upfront AND you sell dozens of ads all at the same time. You can produce diverse content because there's plenty of room in that magazine, so have some in depth thought pieces, some witty stories, and some pretty ads and everyone will be happy. On the internet there's a ridiculous amount of content available completely for free. You don't ever buy content because why would you? All you have to do is click on what you want to read and it appears in front of you with some ads which you'll ignore 99% of the time. That 1% is significantly less valuable than what that old print ad space was worth, but it still has value. So the entire game becomes centered around that click. So the company tumbles in value because no one will buy print and no one clicks on headlines which don't indicate something that will absolutely captivate their attention. So the company is steadily becoming worth less and less, and in order to squeeze out some revenue and stay afloat you have to target those clicks, or should I say, bait those clicks. I know you probably asked "What happened?" rhetorically, but this is what happened and if you were in the same position running the company, you'd probably make the same decisions or go out of business 6 years ago. I agree that it's unfortunate, and we all need to find a way to support in depth journalism.

umichguy 8y ago

The ONLY time I ever pick up a print of anything (newspaper, magazine etc.) is while traveling, if I don't have enough juice on my devices, or don't have wifi etc. And if the mags/ papers are free. That said, I do prefer reading printed versions of text books and maybe some novels.

rusk 8y ago
There’s a couple of magazines I pick up every month purely to support their journalism. Paying for news is kind of like Patreon at this stage, but it’s also nice to have something in the canteen for us to lead through over lunch.
- masonic 8y ago
  You would support them a lot more by subscribing.
  - rusk 8y ago
    I do subscribe to one or two actually.

werber 8y ago

I thought it became BuzzFeed for baby boomers stuck in medical(ish) waiting rooms? My 70 something year old dad gave up his subscription a while ago

InclinedPlane 8y ago

That's hardly a fair comparison. Buzzfeed news is a legitimate news organization that often performs highly valuable investigative journalism, whereas Time is for kids: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TT81o4hL4c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TT81o4hL4c

justtopost 8y ago
Until BuzzFeed News differentiates themselves from their vile clickbait roots, they will continue to not get respect. I am not sure this is unfair, even if it is unfortunate.

Bahamut 8y ago

I’d argue even 10 years ago the quality of Time was questionable. One of my friends was interviewed on chiptunes by Time at around that time due to a success of a Kickstarter for a Miles Davis chiptune album he did, and the editor twisted his statements of love for creating songs with that production quality into something he disliked - he contacted Time about the mischaracterization and they refused to change it until he started a Digg posting blasting the atrocious journalism, upon which they agreed to change the article...which still contained the writer’s clear bias against it, but not as insidious as was originally written. Ever since that incident, I’ve been very skeptical of Time articles, and if I do read them, I read them very carefully with my friend’s experience in mind.

sonnyblarney 8y ago
"skeptical of Time" Time? This is how the entire media works. Some are credible, some are not. They all spin. It's a rough game for them, there aren't enough interesting things going on frankly. The world would be fairly boring were it not for the 'adaptive' way in which we tell stories.

scirocco 8y ago

Just reading their Google headline proves your point - looks more like CNN or Fox News: TIME | Current & Breaking News | National & World Updates

jondubois 8y ago

Now with their new subscription model, publishers like the New York Times are getting more money directly from regular people instead of corporations, so they no longer have to please their corporate masters. The past 10 years were some of the darkest years in the history of the media because publishers were totally reliant on corporate funding. Now (very recently) what we're seeing is a reversion to the old model of newspapers being paid for by the people who read them. This is actually what news is supposed to be but we forgot because the past 10 years have messed with our heads.

justtopost 8y ago
I am not sure that helped in this case. Hyperbolic "fake news" claims aside, I have observed a marked, and downward, shift in nuance when NYT covers most hot-button issues. I find myself looking for other sources first now. They just seem to have created a self-funding bubble. I find it unfortunate, as a majority of their reporting is still stellar.
- jondubois 8y ago
  All news is fake to some extent. I think that so-called 'fake news' is good because it allows people to expose themselves to two extreme opposite views. If people want to live in a filter bubble then they can go ahead and do that but it's nice to at least have the option to see alternative views. I think that there is often a grain of truth behind fake news. If people feel that they're getting screwed over by the system and then an article comes along and tells them "you're getting screwed by the system, this is why...", even if the reason is a poorly researched guesstimate, it's still much more useful in terms of driving social change than articles that just say "the economy is booming, low unemployment all around, everything is great...".
- turtlecloud 8y ago
  Nytimes has gotten too liberal. They are alienating all the Americans that don’t live in big cities. Their anti Trump agenda is also too obvious.
  - deleted 8y ago

sonnyblarney 8y ago

The other thing that has changed in 10 years is that you are 10 years older and 10 years wiser. Time was always kind of populist. It's a picture/newsmag. Essentially credible? Sure. But not exactly highbrow. Try reading the articles from 10 years ago again see what you think.