A Surprise in the Grocery Aisle
While visiting my local grocery store, I stopped dead in my tracks while walking down an aisle. There was a large magazine rack. And not only a large rack, but two people looking at magazines. The photo of the magazine rack reveals a new trend in magazines.
The first thing that stood out to me as I looked at this sea of covers is that there are more specialty interest or single-topic magazines. The general interest magazines have all gone from the shelves. There are also more magazines with longer shelf lives (3 to 6 months).
According to Pew Research Center, newsstand magazine sales have only decreased slightly over the last 3 years, while news magazine subscriptions and circulation are generally stable or slightly decreasing. Digital subscriptions are nearly impossible to track with apps, Next Issue Media and other digital services. Some magazines have grown digital single copies sales by 64% (New York Magazine), while there was a 30% increase for Vanity Fair Time and Fortune. Rolling Stone showed a 35% growth last year.
What’s not in these numbers are the specialty magazines for causes, nonprofit organizations and associations. Even though digital is a more economical way to communicate, it seems to still make sense to deliver a professionally designed magazine to a home or office rather than to an email account.
The news magazine world is shifting from print to digital in many ways, but if you’re shopping for food, you might find a new magazine that will catch your eye and interest.
Mark Mathis
Mark wrote his first direct-mail fundraising letter in 1981 for the University of Iowa Center for Advancement. The effort raised a few million dollars in undiscovered wills and legacy gifts. From that day forward Mark discovered a love of the big idea that moves the needle.
After 12 years at KWWL, Mark became a business owner as a co-founder of ME&V — rebranded as AMPERAGE in 2015. After 25 years of leading creative teams in video production, graphic design, PR, writing and web development, Mark transitioned out of ownership in 2021. Today he serves in an employee role as special projects consultant.
He is creatively ambidextrous — son of an artist and engineer — and famous for distilling complex ideas down to a few words and a few visuals. Mark is a writer. When he found that many nonprofits struggled with complex branding puzzles, he wrote the book, “NonProfit-NonMarketing .” He also wrote a novel called “Reenactment.”
Mark is an active blogger OneMinuteMarketer® with nearly 1,000 readers each week on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. One of his most popular YouTube videos is on “How to Look Good on Zoom.”
One of Mark’s fondest business memories was being named to INC 500 two times and attending the INC 500 conference with other winners. Mark is considered by some a Civil War expert (and that explains his novel). Mark also served as an adjunct professor in the business and in the communications departments at Wartburg College.
Mark is a graduate of the University of Iowa and is currently vice president of the University of Iowa Journalism and Mass Communications Advisory Board.
Mark is married to state Sen. Liz Mathis, and the two love to travel, even when it means being trapped by a volcano in the Czech Republic for three weeks.