ABSTRACT
Over the past two decades, profound shifts in information technologies, economies, and markets have transformed the glossy magazine industry. Indeed, changes wrought by digitization have unsettled the very notion of what a magazine is and does materially. From a commercial standpoint, magazine publishers have had to contend with pressures to defend their authority as textual information providers against the encroachment of native new-media entities, such as blogs and online publications, as well as visual storytellers in the face of photo-based social media in the form of Pinterest and Instagram. In response to these and other sources of competition, most magazine companies have implemented sharp turns in strategy and corporate structuring. The organizational decisions that result from these negotiations are the signposts that industry watchers monitor to best predict outcomes in what remains a highly murky and speculative future, the relationship of print to digital production. However, the implications of these moves for individual workers and their professional identities demand closer attention.
