The Housing Chronicles Blog: "House Porn" in decline

Monday, January 21, 2008

"House Porn" in decline

I'd never heard the term "house porn" before reading an article in the San Francisco Chronicle on the rise and decline of magazine titles oriented towards housing. Yes, it seems that an advertising slump has impacted not just building industry titles -- which are soldiering through with thinner editions and fewer issues -- but also consumer titles, many of which are simply folding:

The publishing industry's once white-hot "shelter" segment - those magazines covering home design and living - also felt the reverberations of contractions in the economy, with Condé Nast's venerable House & Garden ceasing publication after 106 years. Martha Stewart's Blueprint magazine, with its "Design Your Life" tagline, ceased production of its print edition and moved to a less-expensively produced online version...

Shelter magazines really came into their own in the post-9/11 environment. Gayle Goodson Butler, editor in chief of Meredith Corp.'s Better Homes and Gardens magazine, summarizes the lure of glossy home-design magazines at a time of national insecurity: "People wanted to create comfort and order in their lives. They might not have been able to control the world outside, but they could control their own home environment."

The availability of low-cost mortgage loans over the past five or six years, which made home ownership attainable for many for the first time, also broadened the potential readership. And with housing prices on the rise, it made sense for existing homeowners to seek ideas for keeping properties in tip-top condition.

But can titles which cease print publications succeed online?

While shelter magazines are reassessing their print publications to respond to a changing marketplace, their online versions have also come into their own in the past few years. Part of it is a chance to reach a different readership; Butler estimates that there is only a 13 to 15 percent overlap between readers of the print magazine and users of the Better Homes and Gardens Web site.

It's also true that evolving technologies allow magazine Web sites to provide content and draw in reader participation in ways that improve upon print versions...

But there are certain aspects of browsing through a print publication that simply can't be replicated online, such as the ability to easily tear out a full-color page to share with others away from a computer or a printer.

Despite House & Garden's demise, there continues to be a market for shelter magazines aimed at professional interior designers and the clients they serve...

But for those publications who aim to make design more accessible and affordable for the rest of us, evolution is the name of the game.

As it will be for all publications in an Internet age.

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