Magazines For Grown-Ups

About 12 years have passed since the dot-com boom made businesses realize that it’s vital to have a Web site in order to stay fresh in consumers' minds. With a new generation of entrepreneurs ushering in “Web 2.0”, these companies are faced with the challenge of giving their old sites a facelift; sprucing them up in order to keep them up-to-date with the latest Web technology.
Magazines are no different. Most glossies have at least an accompanying Web site, usually displaying digital copies of features from their latest issue, lists of staff e-mail addresses, and sometimes message boards. As consumer preferences shift toward faster, more interactive sources of information and entertainment, some magazines have embraced the Web not just as a way of communicating with readers, but as a promotional tool.
It’s true that teens and young adults rule the Web. Magazines geared toward a younger demographic often have Web sites that are accordingly cutting-edge, providing exclusive content such as blogs and video. Most readers of print magazines are older, educated people with steady jobs and families. How are magazines aimed at more mature audiences utilizing the Web?
The general trend seems to be that they are not quite up to speed with their more youthful counterparts, but they are getting there. Most Web sites attached to established magazines that target adults have harnessed the power of blogs, offering articles similar to the magazine’s content, but not a carbon-copy of the latest issue. These sites run the gamut from the shockingly hip to the shockingly drab.
News magazines lead the pack when it comes to Web 2.0 sensibilities. Both Newsweek and Time offer sophisticated sites that are constantly being updated with articles, video, and op-ed pieces not offered in the magazine. Newsweek’s site is flashy and slick, with animated ads, video, and photo slideshows screaming at you from the front page. Time is a little more subdued, but if you refresh your page a few times in an hour, you’ll see that the content featured on the home page is constantly changing as blogs are posted and breaking news is gathered from all over the world.
Magazines aimed at women over forty are also fast embracing the Internet. Redbook magazine is the front runner, featuring blogs, user-submitted recipes, and how-to videos on hairstyles and party ideas. Another women’s magazine using these techniques is More magazine. More is aimed at a trendier, more chic set of women than Redbook is, so the site is clean and stylish in layout. More’s site is like a grown-up version of Seventeen, offering slideshows about Hollywood hairstyles, exclusive beauty tips, and even a “virtual fitting room” where users can create avatars and dress them in the latest fashions. Parenting magazines like Cookie and Parents have also made use of tools like videos and exclusive blogs.
Another magazine style with a stronghold on the 35-plus demographic is home and garden. Surprisingly, sites like goodhousekeeping.com and bhg.com (Better Homes and Gardens) don’t have much to offer, considering this genre is rife with possibility for things like step-by-step instructional videos, before/after slideshows, recipe forums, and message board interactivity. Goodhousekeeping.com has many of the same features that sites for women’s magazines utilize, including recipes, beauty tips, and virtual dressing rooms. The clear loser in this category is sunset.com, the online home of Sunset magazine. Though the editorial content is much more forward-thinking than that of either Good Housekeeping or Better Homes and Gardens, the Web site is a bore to look at and a bore to browse, offering hardly anything more than just digitally-regurgitated copies of articles from the latest issue.
One day we will live in a world where videos and slideshows are the norm in delivering the news online. Until then, it’s up to the tech-savvy 18-30-year-old set to lead the way, and their parents to catch up.