What Does the Future Hold for Newsstands in a Post-Pandemic World?

The newsstand industry has not surprisingly been ailing even further in the wake of the pandemic. In New York, at least, newsstands are “faring poorly,” said Max Bookman, counsel for the New York City Newsstand Operators Association. “Like all street-level retail, it was challenging before Covid,” noted Bookman. According to Bookman, there are approximately 316 active sidewalk newsstand licenses in New York. “Sidewalk newsstands depend on street traffic and are primarily located in business areas, in Midtown and lower Manhattan. The amount of office worker foot traffic is nowhere near what it was. These are extremely challenging times for newsstands,” he said, noting “a large percentage” have not reopened since the pandemic began. Bookman said he suspects newsstands in other U.S. cities are facing the “same issues” as those in New York with the decline of foot traffic in business districts. Travel woes extend to commuter hubs Even newsstands in major transportation hubs operated by industry heavyweight Hudson Group have not been immune to the pandemic. Hudson occupied a 2,327-square-foot space off the main concourse of Grand Central Terminal (GCT) in Midtown Manhattan from 1997 until last spring, when its lease with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) expired, according to minutes of the MTA finance committee meeting on Jan. 21, 2021. Per the minutes, “the pandemic created adverse conditions that necessitated the closure of the store in April 2020, upon its agreement’s expiration.” According to Steven Bloom, managing director of enterprise partnerships and published media at Omnicom Media Group, “the hardest hit portions” of newspaper and magazine retailers in the past year have been located in transit terminals like this, as well as airports and bookstores. In addition, Bloom said there has “definitely been a drop-off in [print] newspaper circulation,” because many subscribers who once read newspapers in their offices, or bought them at newsstands, no longer frequent either. Meanwhile, Samir Husni, a professor of journalism and director of the Magazine Innovation Center at the University of Mississippi, said the pandemic has affected magazine sales at newsstands at airports and train terminals, bookstores and “ma and pa operations.” “The only place you can buy magazines has been at supermarkets and grocery stores that have not closed,” he said, adding publications such as Woman’s World and special interest magazines like Magnolia Journal, The Mindfulness Journal and Mindful Magazine continue to be sold there. Bloom noted magazines experienced a “short-term bump in subscriptions” last spring, when the pandemic began, in part because people were opting to read them to escape from omnipresent pandemic news. According to a February 2021 Gallup report, the percentage of employed adults in the U.S. “always” or “sometimes” working remotely hit a high of 70% in April 2020 and declined each subsequent month before leveling off at 58% in September 2020 before falling again to 56% in January 2021. Glimmer of hope in glossy magazines As people start to travel more and possibly return to work in their offices, Bloom expects a good portion of sales of newspapers and magazines at newsstands in transit hubs will come back, reaching people on the go. He also predicted newspapers “could be more challenged, since newspaper circulation has been going down for a while.” Encouraging for both magazines and newspapers—though not for newsstand operators—is the growth in digital audiences, which Bloom described as “growing exponentially.” For example, according to media company Meredith, the digital percentage of the total subscriber base for its Eating Well title jumped from 7.5% on June 30, 2020 to 8.8% on Dec. 31, 2020. These statistics were, respectively, 5% and 6.2% for Food & Wine, 4.8% and 6.8% for Travel & Leisure and 6.7% and 7.4% for People, other Meredith titles. Bloom also said media company Bauer Media Group, which publishes Woman’s World, confirmed it had seen an increase in digital subscriptions “as a mechanism to balance out any newsstand softness.” Husni believes magazines can be an impulse buy for some readers, but most are more of a habitual buy. Magazines’ average cover price is now $9.99. Publishers, he suggested, “now have to sell content to readers rather than sell readers to advertisers.” Husni predicts “once the vaccine takes hold and we go back to normal life, you will see new types of magazines come into the market.” That includes specialized titles such as Justsmile, a magazine launched in December that celebrates Black and POC creativity, and Men’s Adventure Quarterly, which debuted in January and “celebrates rip-snorting Western stories from vintage men’s adventures magazines … and jaw-dropping cover and interior artwork.” Husni believes “people are rediscovering print, they’re reaching the stage of screen fatigue, the stress level is too much, there’s nothing but negative news. Glossy print magazines can tell you everything is going to be OK, give you a glimpse of hope.” Magazines, he added, will continue to be “traffic generators” at grocery stores and at newsstands at train stations and airports, by word of social media. The future for urban newsstands In January, the MTA approved a new five-year lease on the GCT space for Hudson, which it said would “undertake a cosmetic refresh of the space.” It is not clear when the newsstand will reopen, nor is it clear if or when Hudson will reopen its much smaller retail operation on the lower level of the terminal, which also closed in April 2020. According to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, Hudson operates 13 newsstands in the Eighth Avenue bus terminal in Midtown Manhattan, ranging in size from 100 to 2,080 square feet. The Port Authority declined to provide additional information about Hudson’s operation at the terminal before or after the start of the pandemic. Newsstands, added Bookman, “are an iconic part of the New York cityscape that have been reinventing themselves to suit the needs of on-the-go New Yorkers for over a century.” What’s more, they’re not strangers to reinvention. “They haven't sold only newspapers since the 1950s,” he added. “Every decade or so, the New York City Council has expanded the types of items newsstands may sell. These now include lottery tickets, items under $10 such as umbrellas, lighters and phone chargers, prepackaged foods and beverages.” In the 2020s, Bookman said City Council will have to expand the list to include items like bagels and coffee “so newsstands may continue to serve New Yorkers.” Hudson declined to comment on any specific newsstand operations. Neither Amtrak, which operates the new Moynihan Train Hall at New York Penn Station, nor Vornado Realty Trust, which manages Penn Station retail, replied to a request for information on Penn Station newsstand operations, which had been run by Hudson.