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The Paperless Utopia

I RECEIVED MY FOURTH COPY of the magazine AGL this week. If you have not yet seen this magazine, I urge you to get a copy as soon as possible. It is the first magazine truly dedicated to tower owners and the site development industry. The man in charge of the magazine is Don Bishop , formerly the editor of MRT magazine. He is among the most experienced and knowledgeable journalists in our industry today.

While I love reading AGL and look forward to receiving my new issue every month, I don’t know if a magazine tailored to our small niche of the industry can be successful.

AGL comes at a time when the Boston Globe is announcing steep overall declines in circulation. The New York Times, otherwise known as the Gray Lady, is also seeing declining growth. Circulation of the Los Angeles Times has plunged 5.5% in just one year. And Dow Jones & Co. reported that earnings fell 54 percent this year as its online operations earned more than the Wall Street Journal newspaper and Barron's magazine.

Earlier this year the Carnegie Corporation of New York released a report that shed some light on this very issue and the future of how news and information will be delivered to consumers. The report showed that 18 to 34 year olds are increasingly retreating from newspapers and magazines to receive their news. More and more adults are looking online for their information. All of this will have a huge impact on trade journals, too, and especially those just starting.

Few of us can forget how badly the wireless telecommunications industry was hurt a few short years ago after 9/11. Telecommunications companies slashed budgets and advertising sales at trade journals slumped. I can remember Wireless Week going on a brief hiatus and only publishing once every other week until it could reorganize itself. All trade journals and magazines that cater to our industry were affected just as much as the wireless carriers and vendors.

Perhaps AGL should consider publishing its product exclusively online and delivering it to its readers via E-mail instead. The cost of printing a four-color magazine and sending it out to subscribers (often free of charge) can not be cheap. This is superb magazine and I hope it is available to read for a long time to come. Using the wonders of technology to do so seems like a good way to accomplish that...especially when covering an industry already comfortable with technology. ■

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