Recession Gossip: Luxury vs. City magazines

If you didn't already know, I have a scholarly interest in city magazines. Fair warning that if any conversation veers into the realm of "Gee, I really enjoyed reading X city magazine when I lived in X city" you will probably get a long and detailed response back about that magazine's success, circulation rate, and possibly even a critique on their design and how cool their art director is (from my personal experience, city magazine designers pretty much kiss ass).

There's a big debate (in my head) between city magazines and their evil twin, luxury titles. While city magazines theoretically delve into investigative features at least once a year on problems facing an area, luxury magazines tend to focus more on specific area or zip codes. Content in luxury titles will remain strictly fluff, usually because these magazines are focusing all their attention on nabbing the Nordstrom and Porche advertising market. Circulations are met by sending the magazine free to specific neighborhoods--and these magazines can easily become thinly veiled marketing tools for advertisers to reach their specific audience.

The question that has been on the minds of magazine folk lately (okay, it's prol just me and people like Samir Husni worrying about this stuff) is whether or not luxury titles will thrive or fail with the coming recession.

The scholarly rule of thumb (i love sounding all expert) is that city magazines are by definition, 'luxury' expenses that are usually the first thing to be cut when a reader starts budgeting. The genre continually goes through periods of growth (the last ten years) and decline (the 90s). Lately cities have been flooded with the luxury titles, creating an illusion of competition even though readerships and advertisers are usually entirely different. You would assume, though, that once this recession hits, these titles will close up shop because no one is buying diamonds and fancy cars....but what's even more depressing than a bear market in the magazine industry is that financial worries will have absolutely no effect on luxury titles:

For those that are accepted as leaders in whatever luxury category they happen to be pimping, they should be able to ride out the wave just fine, because a rich person losing money can still afford a magazine, while a poor person can't. [Gawker]

It doesn't help matters that more traditional city titles are closing up shop, either. Good thing I didn't apply for that job there like I was thinking to.....