With print revenues in steep decline, Time Inc. should be commended for trying anything to buoy the industry. Its latest stab at keeping Fortune subscriptions up is Maghound, the Netflix-esque service that lets users subscribe to a fixed number of magazine each month, but swap out those subscriptions for other titles at their convenience. The service has its critics, who say the model for this sort of thing — media on demand, like iTunes, TiVo, and even Netflix — are banking on digital products, not print, which is how they're succeeding. But publishers are likely to still sign on, since it's one more chance to generate subscriptions, or, at the very least, paid circulation, since each copy they move through Maghound will count as a single-copy sale, or the equivalent of of a newsstand sale. (Even though the prices will be deeply discounted.) So we should all be singing the praises, then, of Time Inc. for so selflessly coming to the rescue? Ehhh, not equite.

There's also a question of whether publishers should be wary of handing over a portion of their sales to a rival. [Maghound president Dave] Ventresca insists that his unit won't discriminate against non-Time Inc. titles—mostly.

"In a jump-ball situation, then yes, Time Inc. titles would get some preference" when it comes to, say, promotion on Maghound's website, he says. "But Maghound will be trying to maximize Maghound's revenues, not Time Inc.'s revenues," he adds. "We're viewing this very much as an industry initiative."

[Portfolio]