Ironic Sign of the Times

You may have read recently about the death of print – especially the newspaper.  It seems like every day there is a story about a newspaper going bankrupt, advertising shrinking and companies canceling print ads.  I therefore found a recent New Yorker cover quite ironic:

New Yorker Cover - The End is NearOstensibly, it’s a comment on the fact that all we’re hearing about is the collapse of economic life as we know it, and that it’s reflected in the fact that everything in New York is for sale right now.  However, it could equally be a plea by the New Yorker’s editors to have someone – anyone – please buy some ads in the paper or they’re going under (the New Yorker is owned by Conde Nast, which is in turn owned by the private Advance Publications, so they can probably sustain a loss for a long time before going bankrupt).

The entire issue was 76 pages long (79 potential pages of advertising including front & back covers) and had only 6 (!) paid full-page ads and 8 single column paid ads (it’s a 3 column layout).  To masquerade this, they added 2 full-page house ads and 4 single column house ads.  Subtracting out the 4 pages of ads associated with the front cover/first page, that’s only 4 full-page ads in 75 pages – or about 5% ads.  I don’t think I’ve ever read a magazine with less advertising in my life.