The effort of a magazine company to create and distribute nice-to-have to need-to-have content is key. With ever more free content available through easier and faster routes of access, the strategy of publishing strong stories on niche topics sounds intuitively a good way forward.

The conception of b2b magazines as information providers that find their way into audiences’ daily grind is, and I speak from personal experience, right on the mark. I would not subscribe personally to some of the content I do at work, but would be considerably impaired without it professionally.

However, the role of the reader is not talked about at all strongly enough. Magazines are surely there to serve their customers – and to serve them well (and I don’t mean advertisers here). Magazines which put the reader front and centre of their content strategy are much more likely to have a chance to prosper.

Just because there is a long-term and pervasive trend towards digital does not mean that moving away from print is right for all magazines. Personally, I would much rather continue to buy some favourites in their print edition, so that I can read them away from the screen I sit in front of from 9 – 5.

The screen has its limits.

Free online magazine content should hurt this, shouldn’t it? People satisfying this need without paying for it? Or are they being introduced to this content and purchasing it in the near future?