I am grateful to Mumbrella and James Manning for the opportunity to talk magazines, newsagents and Are Media. What a buyer needs to know about Are Media and the future of magazines canvasses these topics and more. I am particularly grateful for the opportunity to explore why we are seeing some newsagencies close.
The best person to speak about what any new owner of Are Media would need to grasp is Mark Fletcher. The industry blogger, retail newsagent, owner of marketing group newsXpress and retail software developer understands as much as anybody about the place magazines occupy in Australia.
Fletcher said that his former retail software business, where he still consults, has about 1,900 newsagents as customers. Although he couldn’t put a figure on the number of newsagency closures, he did say the rate of closures had increased in 2025.
“When a newsagent can’t sell their business they will often just close it,” he told Mumbrella.
Fletcher has long been an advocate for newsagents to be less reliant on newspapers and magazines. While they still bring valuable foot traffic, newsagents need other attractions.
“If you look at a newsagency that is relying on newspapers, magazines, stationery and lotteries as a big chunk of their income, those businesses are dead, they have no future.”
Fletcher has always been prepared to share learnings from the newsagencies he has owned over the years.
In addition to detailing how his newsagency at Malvern in suburban Melbourne performs, he collates industry data from a number of other retailers.
“Depending on where a retailer is, newspaper unit sales are down about 11% year-on-year. Magazines are having a good year, special interest titles are up 10 or 12%. The weeklies and the major monthlies are down, but we expect that.”
In his own agency, Fletcher reported magazine turnover of $400,000 a year in magazines. “It’s a very strong area for magazines.”
Many newsagents are putting magazines at the back of the shop because they only offer a 25% margin. Fletcher noted that doesn’t help their sales.
“Retailers that are closing are the traditional ones – places that have not transformed their businesses.”
Fletcher says these are newsagents who have not combined traditional newspaper and magazine sales with a broad range of products that offer better margins.
“The biggest categories of growth right now are coffee, books and games of all things — not things like Monopoly — but unusual games which are really having a moment in the sun.”
I am also grateful we got to talk about opportunities we could explore with a new owner of Are Media.
Culling Are Media titles, giving better retail margins
Fletcher said he understands why Are Media keeps a broad range of titles.
“But I would think that somebody acquiring the business would look across that portfolio and ask, is there a rationalisation we can go through here that creates a more efficient mix of products?
“Newsagents make 25% gross profit from every magazine title, but pretty much anything else in their business outside of lotteries has a 50% margin. Any new Are Media owner would have to look at the magazine commission structure.
“At present newsagents can’t control what they get. If you trusted a retailer enough to give them control over what titles they got and the quantity they got, you would see sales increases.”
Too often news outlets, I’m looking at you ABC news, Nine Media and News Corp, fail at basic journalism when writing about newsagents. James Manning did a terrific job here exploring the reality newsagents and print media folks face and talking through opportunities that could benefit all.
The reality is: engagement with print has changed and continues to change. Why people buy newspapers and magazines has changed. Whereas in the past people would buy newspapers and weeklies as their first source of news (hard and soft), today, such purchases are more likely to pass the time since the first source was available in their hands long before the print product started running off the presses.
Now, special interest magazines have never carried news as such, or at least news associated with urgency or timeliness. I think this is one reason sales remain strong for them. The other reason, of course, is that people are buying what they love and in engagement with special interest categories is rooted in passion.
I hope Are Media finds a good home that respects the committed and talented people in the business. If I was the new owner, that’s where I’d start – with the people, exploring with them new opportunities that leverage their expertise.
Now if you’re a newsagent and reading this – first up on getting this far. Second, don’t give up on magazines, don’t act to kill them off. rather, leverage what;s working and the success of others to find ways for magazines to be more valuable to your business.