A new chapter
A monumental year for the history books, the start of this new decade hasn’t quite begun like the roaring ’20s of a century prior. Fuelled by a global pandemic, disruption has taken a new toll across industries — magazines included.
The favoured “death of print” line has been rinsed and repeated during the years but with change and innovation underway across the magazine industry, it’s safe to say magazines won’t be going anywhere. In fact, they are just taking on new and diversified formats inspired by their audience preferences and the disruption that has been 2020.
One could argue that this has been one of the biggest years of change for the local industry with Bauer Media’s purchase of Pacific Magazines being approved by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) to form the nation’s largest magazine publisher. Shortly thereafter, Bauer was purchased by private equity firm Mercury Capital and later rebranded to Are Media in Australia and New Zealand.
Iconic titles including , , and were farewelled, while Are Media’s women’s fashion title and News Corp’s men’s lifestyle magazine, , announced they would move to a digital-first strategy and cease regular print publication.
