Yesterday, JAM Magazine, a 15 year old print publication focused on the youth announced that it is suspending its print operations, to focus on online, events and youth research; it is moving out of its office, and looking to cut costs and staff. JAM currently has a perfunctory portal, a student internship portal, and forums. We spoke with JAM founder Rashmi Bansal on what the company now plans to do, and the circumstances that led to this move: Bansal said that the subscription business model hardly gets any money, and the advertising pie is now spread between many publications, and online. JAM was self funded, worked on annual advertising contracts, with subscription hardly getting any money. "When you're the single player in the category, people don't take you seriously. People don't even make print ads specifically targeting the youth. It's a fad to be on Facebook right now, and they're happy with 400 users." The annual contracts were getting difficult to renew, with advertisers now looking at shorter, three month contracts. Bansal believes that prints days are numbered, and (magazine) publishers are taking advertising at any rate. She does believe that JAM needs to do a better web property, hence the plans to restructure. "We have the DNA of a print mag right now, and that needs to change. When people are focused on the web, it's a different mindset. We've never had any issues with getting content - we get lots of contributions. We want to be a user…
