Despite the growth of online news and failure of some established trade journals, there is still a proliferation of titles. So what has happened?Before the Internet, the trade press played an important role in publishing news about a company and its products. Generally speaking editorial content was published on the merits and news interest of the story and not, in an ideal world, by the advertising spend of the company in question. The aim was to produce a quality, interesting, relevant, informed and trusted magazine. Companies wanted their news published because of the credibility and apparent independence of appearing in a respected and well read journal. Because there were often many titles, company strategy was to place display advertising only in the leading books and use PR to gain mention in the rest. Most employed a PR agency to cosy up to editors and get their press releases published.
Even before the Internet the trade press landscape was changing. Publishers were experiencing cost pressures and many looked to increase revenue by effectively charging to publish press releases. Of course it was not presented like that, the requests were along the lines that the editor had selected the news item for publication but would you mind contributing towards the cost of colour separations so the text could be illustrated and be more effective? Agencies initially resisted these charges but over the years and the disappearance of the excuse to pay for 'colour seps' many trade journals simply charged to print press releases. Some appeared as 'advertorial' to identify that the content was paid for but others simply published press releases collated together in product or company news sections. Because of publication dates most of it by the time the magazine lands in the letter box is not news anyway, or at least has been available online for at least a month. The willingness to print anything also ensured that there were always plenty more stories than the magazine could publish.
So other titles started - effectively product 'books' - no editorial just a magazine full of product press releases creating a different business model, one that didn't need to hire journalists, just space salesmen. And based on this model publications come and go that just publish press releases often scavenged from other publications and web sites - a weird collation of news stories with no obvious target audience and published simply because someone agreed to pay.
Of course news publication is a very effective marketing tool, but one that calls for expertise in ensuring the most effective use is made of the PR budget.
