Magazine industry stabilizing?

In a sign of stability, MediaDailyPost reports that the magazine industry has reached some sort of equilibrium with a net gain of three magazine titles last year (measured by subtracting the 87 titles that folded from the 90 new ones). Significantly, those numbers are both way down from the previous year, which saw 187 new titles but 279 folding).

Meanwhile, magazine ad pages rose in the second quarter, a decided improvement over their big tumble a year earlier. Sure, it was only a 0.8 percent gain, but that beats the heck out of the 9.4 percent decline in the first quarter. This was the first increase in more than two years.