You're getting into some really sketchy territory though.
For it to be a sign, it has to be consistent. The vast majority has to follow the rule. Exceptions need to be rare.
Otherwise, it's pretty much just anti-survivor bias. Yes, all failed magazines did these things, but doing that thing doesn't mean your magazine is failing if all magazines do it. Or if enough successful magazines do it.
14 years is a long time. It would be like saying water is deadly because everyone alive who has ever drank it has died or will die in about 100 years or so. Or everybody who has ever gotten divorced was married at one point. So marriage is a sure sign of an inevitable divorce.
>For it to be a sign, it has to be consistent. The vast majority has to follow the rule. Exceptions need to be rare.
Exceptions are rare. Flaying outlets invariably go through those moves.
>14 years is a long time
"long" makes sense only relatively. For some things the time from writing on the wall to dying off is in that order, and media outlets are one of those things. I already explained how a SV startup for example can die in 1-2 years (because VC money dry off etc), but established news outlets die much more slowly, in the span of a decade or more.
It's something I've witnessed unravel from inside and from friends inside with dozens of outlets in my country, and I've seen from afar the same path followed in several others in the US and elsewhere.
>Yes, all failed magazines did these things, but doing that thing doesn't mean your magazine is failing if all magazines do it.
Well, all magazines don't do it. Few do it without such reasons.
The distance between cause and effect is great. 14 years is long enough for a child to be conceived and start attending high school. That's not insignificant.
My points were:
That on a long enough timeline, everything fails. Which I illustrated by showing that everyone who has drank water has died or will die in a specific time frame.
You need to see where you're wrong as well as where you're right. Which I illustrated by pointing out every divorce begins in marriage. It's technically true, but marriage holds no predictive power because plenty of marriages succeed. For something to be a sign, it needs to be common in one group and rare in another. So giving up horoscopes needs to be common in failed magazines and rare in successful ones.
And something I didn't really illustrate too well: it needs to have a strong correlation both ways. In other words not only do the vast majority of magazines that give up horoscopes need to fail, the vast majority of magazines that fail need to give up horoscopes.
And the lifespan of the average publication must be far greater than 14 years. Or even a decade using your timetable. Because if most publications fail within that time, then you could literally point to anything and call it a sign.
For it to be a sign, it has to be consistent. The vast majority has to follow the rule. Exceptions need to be rare.
Otherwise, it's pretty much just anti-survivor bias. Yes, all failed magazines did these things, but doing that thing doesn't mean your magazine is failing if all magazines do it. Or if enough successful magazines do it.
14 years is a long time. It would be like saying water is deadly because everyone alive who has ever drank it has died or will die in about 100 years or so. Or everybody who has ever gotten divorced was married at one point. So marriage is a sure sign of an inevitable divorce.