My original headline was, "The magazine industry predicts the end of the magazine industry through a frustratingly obtuse ad campaign designed to dispel rumors about the end of the magazine industry which they just started." Confused? Yeah. Me too.

Here's the description for the YouTube video below:

"The leaders of five major magazine companies—Charles H. Townsend, Condé Nast; Cathie Black, Hearst Magazines; Jack Griffin, Meredith Corporation; Ann Moore, Time Inc.; and Jann Wenner, Wenner Media—talk about the vitality of magazines as a medium.

The 'Magazines, The Power of Print' campaign will launch in nearly 100 magazines, reaching 112 million readers per month, to promote the strength of—and consumer commitment to—magazines."

You have got to be kidding me. Even Saturday Night Live wouldn't make a parody commercial about out-of-touch magazine executives this over-the-top.

My first thought was, "That's weird. I don't recall a mob of bloggers or pundits ever predicting the impending death of magazines." I don't work for a magazine, but I've been a passionate observer and student of media for over a decade. Right away the basis of this entire campaign seemed fishy. I did a little digging. You know, using the power of the Internet.

Here are links to the articles and posts cited in the video:

• "Magazines are dying and so are their readers." This is from a very brief AdFreak article published last summer about a Vermont Department of Health campaign against teen smoking. It sounds like they weren't fans of this particular anti-smoking campaign. The article had nothing to do with the future of magazines. [Link]
• "End of the written word?" This appears to be a speculative piece written in The Futurist back in 2007. I can't tell you more because it would seem the article is only available, ahem, in the print edition.
• "The end of magazines as we know them?" This comes from a Huffington Post article written by Cable Neuhaus in 2005. In this speculative piece, Neuhaus spends time explaining he's a "magazine nut", then ponders a possible grim scenario for the future of magazines. Please note that it was written five years ago. In Internet years, that's epic. That was before Twitter, iPhones, Kindles, and iPads. Facebook was a little over a year old. YouTube was three months old. While an interesting thought-piece in its time, this article has little contextual relevance in 2010. [Huffington Post]
• "Days growing darker for media." This is an Advertising Age article that appears to be available only in the print edition. A Facebook conversation seems to indicate that this article was published in 2008.
• "Magazines are over." Does anybody know what the blog 4 Inch Heels Only is? This is the first I've heard of it. The full title of this post is, "Who cares? Magazines are over" and appears to be a poorly-written, catty, vitriolic, uninteresting gossip post about the inside workings of the magazine industry, posted in March 2009. It's completely irrelevant to the above campaign. [Link]

That's it? Three irrelevant or outdated articles and two that are only available within the pages of print publications? That's what has these magazine executives so frightened and is the basis for this $90 million dollar campaign? (Actually it's estimated at over $90 million worth of ad space, according to the Wall Street Journal.)

"We felt it was time to replace the myths with what lies at the core of all great journalism: the facts." For journalists, they sure didn't check their sources on this one.

Not only is the purpose of this campaign mystifying, but its entire basis lacks credibility. These publishers should be embarrassed. The only thing they've done is reveal themselves as staggeringly out-of-touch. It's a baffling misstep.

The problem at the heart of their "Internet vs. magazines" argument is that they've incorrectly labeled the Internet as a medium. The Internet is a delivery tool for media, like the printing press. Twitter and Facebook have been dubbed "social media" which live under the larger umbrella of blogs and Internet news networks known as "new media". But the Internet itself is simply a tool to transmit the information.

To think of the Internet simply as a new medium is to completely misunderstand what the Internet is. It is a vehicle that re-defines all the parameters of publishing. Magazine industry leaders appear to not understand the gravity of that idea. You can hear it in the first few seconds of the video.

"Heard about the Internet? Google? Facebook? YouTube? Twitter?" Yes, but those are example of things you can find and interact with online, not a description of the Internet. The things you could find on the Internet were very different ten years ago, and I'm sure they'll be very different ten years from now. But they are not the Internet. The Internet is the method by which those services are delivered. The examples they give happen to be delivered through a web browser. The scope of the Internet is much larger than what the execs in the video seem to grasp.

The real discussion is this: In order to stay competitive in a digital world, magazines are going to have to find a way to deliver the immersive experience of their analog versions on digital platforms. That means using the Internet as a delivery tool. But the technology hasn't completely arrived yet. Apple's iPad is the first step into a new generation of digital publishing platforms, but it's still mostly untested terrain. The Kindle works well for black-and-white text-only books, but full-color magazines don't translate well.

As long as digital publishing is in its experimental phase, print magazines are safe. I don't think anyone has seriously argued against that idea. Suggesting that there is an army of smug "magazines are dead" bloggers is more than a gross over-simplification, it's simply untrue. Just look at the sources this campaign chooses to quote.

Here's the print ad, featuring Michael Phelps.

Making sense of the copy in this ad is frustrating. Let's explore a few items.

First of all, this "surfing" vs. "swimming" metaphor is absurd. It would seem that nobody involved with this campaign has ever been surfing or seen someone surf. There's a great deal of swimming involved.

"A new medium doesn't necessarily displace an existing one."

Okay, I could agree with that. We still have theatre, radio, books, movies, and television coexisting side by side, just like the above video says. Books are just beginning to enter the digital realm. But what do the other examples have to do with print media? Are magazines competing with movies, TV, and radio? I don't understand the point this ad is trying to make.

Furthermore, magazines are a subset of print media, alongside books and newspapers. Videos, news, photos, music stores, social networks, and blogs are subsets of digital media on the Internet. This ad compares magazines, a particular kind of print media, to all digital media. No, the Internet hasn't disrupted magazine sales, nor was it designed to. So, what exactly is the point here? Why is the magazine industry trying so hard to defend itself when it's not even under attack? Bloggers and pundits with even a little credibility (not to mention common sense) predict the evolution of magazines, not death.

The assertion that bloggers "continue to predict the death of the magazine and any other media to anyone who will listen" would be outrageously silly if I could figure out what it means. Bloggers are predicting the death of all media? Is that what you're trying to say? How does that make sense? It's ominous sounding, but frustratingly vague.

"Even in the age of the Internet... the appeal of magazines is growing." Well, yes. Why wouldn't it? The success of one is not necessarily tied to the other.

I don't understand the goal of this campaign. Why is there a need for magazines to assert their strength? And why now?

It's clear that these magazine industry leaders are frustrated and scared over something they don't completely understand. But how could they have missed the mark so badly? Why didn't they hire someone to explain the situation to them better? Were they purposefully mislead?

How can they not understand that their future includes a place within digital media? Television has a place. Movies have a place. Music has a place. Books have a place. Newspapers have a place. Guess who else has a place? Can you guess? If you can't, you're probably running a major magazine publishing company.

I love magazines. Most everybody I know loves magazines. I get a fresh stack each month. I read them over lunch, in waiting rooms, and take them with me when I travel. I've learned about new places to visit, new authors to read, new movies to see, new albums to buy. I've stumbled into many of my passions because of magazine articles. It's crazy to think magazines are dying. You can take one look at a newsstand in any major city and know that. But would I subscribe to twice as many if they came to me electronically, just like the rest of my information? You bet I would. In a heartbeat.

In the next few decades, more and more of our "traditional" media will move to the Internet, and they'll all coexist in the same digital ecosphere. We will still have physical books printed on paper and movies in theaters. We will still have printed magazines. But I also think we'll have digital options and alternatives we can't even imagine right now.

So, what does a $90 million ad campaign asserting your already well-established relevance get you? A silly, poorly-written, baseless, out-of-touch two-minute video. Apparently, fact-checking costs extra.

To Charles H. Townsend, Cathie Black, Jack Griffin, Ann Moore, and Jann Wenner, I say this: Relax. You've got this all wrong. You're jumping at shadows. Bloggers are your friends. We buy and subscribe to your magazines. We write about articles we read. We promote you through social channels. And when you adopt new technology, we celebrate you. In short, we're your biggest fans. I don't know where you got your information, but it's incorrect.

We're on the cusp of a whole new generation of publishing. It's clear that magazines are here to stay, but you need to get a better grasp on the digital tools at your disposal. Now is the time for innovation and experimentation. If you're too busy asserting yourself for unclear reasons, you'll miss out on all the fun.