BoSacks "Heard on the Web" - Media Intelligence

Forecast for 2009: It Could Have Been Worse

2008-12-09T00:19:00.000-05:00

Forecast for 2009: It Could Have Been Worse
by Michael Bush
http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=133067
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Considering the economic uncertainty that has gripped nearly every global market and the fact that a major U.S. industry may end up driving off a cliff, taking millions of jobs and billions of advertising dollars with it, it could have been a lot worse. At today's UBS Media Conference, ZenithOptimedia and Group M both forecast global ad spending on measured media will experience no growth in 2009, the first time in years, and will instead decline 0.2% compared to 2008.

ZenithOptimedia projects global ad spending will hit $490 billion next year, down from $491 billion. Group M's estimate is $458 billion for 2009.

Forecaster Robert Coen Sees a 0.3% Decline in Global Ad Spending U.S. looks worst
When broken down by region, the numbers are a little more worrisome. In ZenithOptimedia's report, North America is expected to decline 5.7%, with a 6.2% drop in the U.S., while Western Europe drops 1%. Asia Pacific (up 3.2%) and Central and Eastern Europe (up 1.5%) are still expected to grow, albeit at a slower rate than was previously estimated.

Latin America (14.9%), bolstered by very strong growth in Brazil (30%), as well as Africa, the Middle East and the rest of the world (11.2%) will not only show growth in 2009 but exceed the impressive numbers they posted in 2008, according to ZenithOptimedia. Like Brazil, the remaining BRIC countries of Russia (5%), China (9%) and India (13%) are also expected to post impressive growth numbers in 2009.

ZenithOptimedia projects a "very tough" global ad market for the first half of 2009 but is anticipating a "mild" turn for the better starting in the third quarter with year-on-year comparatives starting "to get a lot easier" in the fourth quarter.

Developing nations expand share
Throughout 2010, ZenithOptimedia predicts global ad spend will increase 5.5%, to be followed by 5.8% growth in 2011 with developing markets behind most of that increase. "We expect the sharp disparity of growth rates between the developed world (which we define as North America, Western Europe and Japan) and the developing world (which we define as everywhere else) to continue," it said in a statement. "We estimate developing markets will contribute 89% of all ad expenditure growth between 2008 and 2011, and increase their share of the global ad market from 30% to 36% over this period."

Despite all the talk about newspapers (23.8%) and TV (38.3%) losing their appeal as ad media, ZenithOptimedia expects both to still garner the lion's share of ad dollars in 2009. Not surprisingly, as marketers look for cheaper and more measurable ways to market, the overall ad spend against web advertising is expected to increase to 12.1% in 2009, up from 10.3% in 2008.

ZenithOptimedia believes the global ad spend on web advertising will jump to 15.6% by 2011. It's also forecasting "substantial growth" for cinema and outdoor advertising in 2009.

In its study "This Year, Next Year," Group M said the global decline in spending is the first since 2001. Its numbers for U.S. activity are less ominous at -3.2% growth, but its projections for Western Europe (-1.7%) are slightly worse than ZenithOptimedia's. Group M is also predicting a strong 2009 for Latin America (8.1%), though down from 9.9% in 2008. The Middle East and Africa are estimated to show 8.7% growth, but that is also down considerably from 2008 (15%), according to Group M.

Tight spending
"Advertisers are scrutinizing every penny," said Adam Smith, Group M futures director, who oversees all of Group M's "This Year, Next Year" reports. "The automotive and financial services categories have obviously seen weakness across 2008, and retail will be under pressure as we move beyond its busiest fourth-quarter into 2009. Among our own client base we are not seeing wholesale cancellations, but we are seeing migration from expensive and less-tried-and-true media to value and certainty."

While Mr. Smith called out internet ad spending as the only "significant growth area," at 5% for 2009, he added that spending is still down compared to the expected 16% growth in 2008. Group M expects global web ad growth to slow from 22% in 2008 to 10% in 2009, which represents $5 billion growth reaching $59 billion or 13% of measured media investment.

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Ad-Spending Forecasts Are Glum
Estimates Vary, but Economic Crisis Is Expected to Spur Cuts in U.S., AbroadArticle
Comments
By EMILY STEEL
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB122869451703086617-lMyQjAxMDI4MjA4ODYwOTg0Wj.html

For the advertising and media industries, the worst is yet to come, according to some of Madison Avenue's most closely watched forecasts.
Fallout from the global financial crisis will bring cuts in total ad spending next year both in the U.S. and abroad, though predictions vary widely. Publicis Groupe media agency ZenithOptimedia expects U.S. ad spending to drop 6.2% in 2009 to $161.8 billion. WPP's agency GroupM sees a decline of 3% to $157 billion.

Continued growth in emerging markets will help offset declines in North America and Western Europe, according to both firms, which predict that global ad spending will decline by 0.2% in 2009.

Both companies plan to present their forecasts Monday morning at the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference in New York. Their predictions have been keenly anticipated as industry observers seek signs of how severe an impact the economic downturn will have on the ad business.

Another high-profile forecaster, Robert J. Coen, senior vice president and director of forecasting at Interpublic Group's Magna, also plans to present his predictions at the conference Monday. IPG declined to release its forecasts ahead of time.

Forecasts from Zenith and GroupM represent differing views on ad spending in 2008. Zenith says the current ad spending downturn started in the third quarter and has accelerated through the end of the year, with U.S. ad spending down 3.8% in 2008 to $172.5 billion. Group M is predicting that U.S. ad spending increased 0.3% this year to $162 billion.
In addition to weakness in spending from automotive and financial advertisers, GroupM predicts that retailers will be under pressure following the critical holiday sales season. It says that while it has yet to see wholesale cancellations among its clients, advertisers are now watching every penny.

Spending cuts probably will be most severe for newspapers, magazines and radio as advertisers shift dollars to digital media. One bright spot continues to be Internet, which will keep on growing, albeit not as quickly as in recent years. Online ad spending is expected to increase 5% in 2009, down from 16% growth in 2008, according to GroupM. TV spending also should fare relatively well in the downturn. Advertisers are familiar with using that model to build brands, and TV viewing tends to rise in recessions because TV is a low-cost entertainment option, according to Zenith.

Still, these forecasts paint rosier pictures than recent predictions from Wall Street analysts, which also are split.

Just last week, Fitch Ratings cautioned that U.S. ad spending next year would drop between 6% and 9%, in line with the steep downturn experienced in 2001 following the bursting of the dot-com bubble and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. That year was the worst ad recession since 1970.
Fitch predicts that the current downturn will extend well into 2010, probably causing broad pullbacks in both the national and the local markets, pressure across a wide spectrum of advertising categories including retail, auto and financial services, and a glut of ad space thanks to the Web and other emerging media.

UBS is forecasting that U.S. ad spending will fall 6% in 2009 but doesn't anticipate the ad spending decline will be as steep as in 2001.

Magazine Shutdowns, Magazine Layoffs, And The Looming Pullback In Automobile Advertising

2008-12-01T14:18:00.000-05:00

Magazine Shutdowns, Magazine Layoffs, And The Looming Pullback In Automobile Advertising
Posted by Jon fine
http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/FineOnMedia/

In recent days, there have been layoffs at Forbes, Time Inc., Conde Nast Publications, Bauer Publishing, The Economist, and Hearst Magazines. In the past 24 hours, Time Inc's Cottage Living ceased publishing, and Ziff Davis Media's PC Magazine killed its print edition to become an all-digital publication.

This brings me to auto advertising. Auto advertising? Yes, auto advertising. Specifically: advertising from Detroit's Big Three. These tattered titans of America's industrial past still spend massive sums on magazine advertising, even after trimming their buys in recent years.

In 2007, GM, Ford and Chrysler spent $807.3 million on magazine advertising, according to the data-miners at TNS Media Intelligence, who provided all such figures in this post. In the first half of 2008-a year characterized by cutbacks in auto spending-Detroit still spent $306.4 million in mags.

Yesterday I appeared on CNBC to talk about the collateral damage that would ensue from Detroit cutting advertising further. Before I did, I called a senior-level magazine executive well-versed in the auto advertising world.

He told me he's expecting the Big Three's ad buys to drop by around 30% in 2009, across all media.

Assuming that the half-year figure for '08 represents half of the car guys' magazine ad spending this year-it may even underestimate it, given that the car companies spend more at certain times of the year-that means that about $183.8 million in ad dollars will disappear for magazines.

Potential complications loom, like, say, the prospect of an imminent GM bankruptcy, and there's a bit of a drama concerning the Big Three playing out in Congress more or less as I type.

(We can only imagine that this is why American Media Chairman and CEO David Pecker today gently nudged his employees to support a government bailout of the American auto industry. This is sort of funny. One of Pecker's great hopes for his major tabloid titles, The Star and nationa Enquirer, would be that they'd eventually attract auto advertising. But it never quite worked out that way.)

Thus, in the past few weeks we have seen severe contraction among magazines. And, while December's already reckoned to be a terrible month for magazines, much of the really bad stuff hasn't even started happening yet.

Sorta silver lining for magazines: TV gets much more advertising from American carmakers: $2.9 billion in '07 and $1.2 billion in the first half of '08.

This excellent Ad Age article--which, unfortunately, might be firewalled--goes into great detail regarding which media properties run the most auto advertising. Short answer: anything having to do with sports, but read the piece to get the full picture.

Time Inc. Ad Slump 'Like 1931' Just as Magazine Recalls Great Depression

2008-10-31T20:54:00.000-04:00

Time Inc. Ad Slump 'Like 1931' Just as Magazine Recalls Great Depression
CEO Ann Moore's downbeat forecast comes out as FDR cover on stands.
By Julia A. Seymour
Business & Media Institute
Time Inc. is facing an advertising ‘depression,’ which might explain its magazine’s recent obsession with the Great Depression and the 1930s.

Time’s Oct. 27 issue – the one with FDR, Abraham Lincoln and the two presidential candidates – was on newsstands the same week CEO Ann Moore told attendees of an Oct. 30 ABC Circulation Conference that, “By this October it was looking like 1931,” Foliomag.com reported. “[Time Inc.] has never had so many advertising clients in trouble at the same time. The declines are stunning.”

Moore’s speech came just two days after she announced “dramatic restructuring” and “significant layoffs” for the company, which owns magazines including Time, Fortune/Money, Sports Illustrated, Entertainment Weekly and People among a host of others.
Like the rest of the mainstream media, Time magazine has drawn many comparisons to the Great Depression this year. A “history” column by David M. Kennedy in the same Oct. 27 issue said, “Today’s crisis isn’t a repeat of the Depression. But we can still borrow lessons from the past.”

“What is now manifestly needed is a round of creative institutional invention like what the New Deal gave us,” Kennedy, a Stanford University history professor and Pulitzer-winning author, wrote. Like others in the news media, Kennedy’s call for a new, New Deal ignored economists who say that FDR’s policies actually prolonged the Depression – extending Americans’ intense suffering for roughly seven years.

Economist Roberts Higgs told the Business & Media Institute a new, New Deal would be disastrous. “I cannot imagine a worse course of action, short of outright socialization of the entire economy. The measures comprised in a new, New Deal will not hasten general economist recovery, but will only bulk up the power of government and transfer income to privileged interest groups at the expense of taxpayers and consumers,” Higgs said.

Yet, the mainstream media have promoted that by comparing the Great Depression to the 2008 economic downturn hundreds of times. On the networks (ABC, NBC and CBS) alone, there were 70 comparisons in the first six months of 2008. Since July 1 that number more than doubled to 157.

Readers feel the Pinch, but Glossies keep their Sheen

2008-10-20T09:19:00.000-04:00

Readers feel the Pinch, but Glossies keep their Sheen
By Stephen Brook
The Observer
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/oct/19/bauer-condenast

As the economic downturn slides towards a recession and magazine publishers peer into the abyss, fervently hoping that the credit crunch does not beget a circulation crunch, they pray that women will value their glossy magazines as much as they value their lipstick.

Advertisers are slashing their budgets more savagely in the third quarter of 2008 than at any time in a decade, with main-media advertising, including that of magazines, the hardest-hit. But it seems that glossy magazines are riding out the storm. Just as sales of lipstick are predicted to.

'There's a theory that in times of recession sales of lipstick go up,' says Alan Brydon, head of press communications at the Media Planning Group, which plans and buys advertising for companies. The theory is that women still want luxury and sales of beauty products are a convenient and satisfying way of getting that. He thinks that the top-end glossies such as Vogue, GQ and Elle will not be severely hit by a circulation slump nor a plunge in advertising revenue. Even though they will be premium products in a recession, their readers and advertisers will still want them.

'Monthlies are in a good place because they are hugely good value,' Brydon says. Women are not going to sever the special emotional connection that they have with glossy magazines, even if they are feeling the pinch, 'for the sake of £3'.

Across the industry there are positive signs. As a weekly glossy, Bauer Consumer Magazines' Grazia should act as a bellwether for the market. Circulation has been solid in October, despite the stock market shocks, and this month it has achieved a record amount of advertising - 80 pages in one issue. 'Money may be tight, but people can afford £1.90,' says managing director David Davies.

Over at the Wall Street Journal, WSJ., the glossy that launched in September, will bring out its second issue in December. There are plans to convert WSJ. from quarterly to monthly next September, recession or no recession.

But in harsh times such magazines are at risk of a backlash, particularly if they indulge in frothy consumer exuberance, such as this week's Grazia: 'Meet the fashiorexics - "I spend £3 a day on food - and £1,000 on dresses".'

Can you still be ostentatious in the middle of an economic downturn? Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee thinks not, and last week witheringly contrasted carnage on the stock exchange with the arrival of the Financial Times' very glossy and very profitable monthly magazine How to Spend It, which can rake in about £1m in advertising revenue per issue. 'The day there was cardiac arrest on the stock exchange, with carnage in every market, was also the day How to Spend It slipped out between the crisp pink sheets of the Financial Times. This was the magazine's well-timed Bonus Issue. Oh joy! Here is the zeitgeist publication of the last reckless decade,' Toynbee wrote.

Gillian de Bono, editor of How to Spend It for eight years, was not afraid to return fire. 'There are still an awful lot of people with an awful lot of money,' she said. 'People spending money is what is going to turn this economy around.' She pointed out that FT readers were high-end and not sub-prime and defended the 'perfect hi-fi' feature (price tag £200,000) that Toynbee took aim at. Anyone buying hi-fi at that price would be handing the government £35,000 in taxes, countered De Bono, which could only be a good thing.

But other magazines are altering their tone as the downturn bites. Elle, the fashion title published by Hachette Filipacchi, introduced a column called The Credit Crunch Shopper, for readers who want to wear the trends but save cash. This month it features a silk-chiffon blouse from K by Karl Lagerfeld at £190 a pop. 'The Elle reader will spend that money,' editor-in-chief Lorraine Candy says confidently. But she admits: '"Must have" or "it bag" we have to avoid now,' she says. Next year the magazine will feature more real-life stories about their readers, as a way of responding to circumstances.

A survey of 4,000 Elle readers found that they were determined to keep shopping. It showed that 33 per cent of respondents' shopping habits remained unaffected by the crunch. 'But they are being a lot more elegant in the way they buy. The huge flurry of instant gratification shopping in the lunch hour - I don't think they are going to be doing that anymore,' Candy says.

The advertising downturn has not hit Elle. Candy says that its volume of fashion advertising rose this year, although beauty advertising struggled. December's issue will be a robust 372 pages.

But the credit squeeze has already claimed its first glossy victim. Women's monthly Eve folded in September, just five months after a relaunch. Publisher Haymarket bought it three years ago from the BBC. The magazine employed 56 staff and most lost their jobs.

At the very top of the market the good times continue, with others set for bumper December issues and steady circulations. But next year is an unknown quantity, even though big luxury conglomerates including Gucci and LVMH plan to boost advertising spend.

At Condé Nast, the December issue of men's magazine GQ - a 20th anniversary special - will be a whopper at 584 pages. 'It will be the fattest GQ in any country ever,' says managing director Nicholas Coleridge. December Vogue will also be bigger than one year ago, at about 450 pages with 243 of advertising. But Glamour, the glossy aimed at the Cosmo generation, has been hit. Its ad volume fell after Condé Nast refused to cut its advertising rates.

'For us it has been a very confident 2008 that hasn't seen any erosion in the last quarter. Having said that, I expect next year to be more challenging,' Coleridge says.

Condé Nast is forging ahead with plans to launch not one but two high-end magazines next year, when Britain could be mired in recession.

The company poached Katie Grand from Bauer, which published her magazine Pop, to launch a twice-yearly fashion and style magazine. It will be called Love, and appear in February with a £5 cover price. The launch of a UK version of glossy US technology magazine Wired will follow months later. Coleridge says Condé Nast is planning for the long-term and the launches will be smart niche publications. 'It is not like launching a super-tanker.'

Coleridge is enough of a veteran to remember the last severe media recession of 1990 to 1992. Then advertising pages fell, but a big difference this time will be the strength of the luxury companies, which have grown into vast international concerns and should be able to weather the downturn better.

Brydon says the luxury houses are being careful, but they are not giving up their cherished positions in the front of book of high-end magazines. To do so could mean that they lose their slots for months, if not years. 'It is almost like a nuclear deterrent. You can't be the first to blink,' says Brydon.

There is still the risk that glossy magazines will leave a bad taste in the mouth of readers who lose their bonuses or, even worse, their jobs.

But Coleridge denies his stable of magazines is ostentatious and says they merely fulfil their journalistic duty to report what is out there. 'Readers always want to see the best of what's available.'

'A lot of it is about dreaming,' says Jeremy Langmead, editor of upmarket men's title Esquire, who predicts magazines will provide more of that next year.

'I am not going to rent Richard Branson's house on Necker Island, but for 10 minutes I am going to imagine I am lying on that beach.'

Slump spenders
A survey of 300 men by trend forecasters Future Laboratory for Esquire identified a high spending group the magazine dubbed Intelli-gents. 'These guys were prepared to spend more money at the higher end because they wanted to be connoisseurs,' said editor Jeremy Langmead. 'They want to own a wine library, not just a wine cellar.'

Elle magazine carried out an online survey of 4,000 readers aged between 18 and 55. It found 33 per cent were defying the credit crunch, saying their clothes-shopping habits had been unaffected. Forty-two per cent said they were prepared to sacrifice a night out in favour of shopping.

Grazia has reported on a new type of consumer: the fashiorexic. Tabitha Somerset-Webb, a handbag designer, confessed to spending £3 a day on food to fund her £1,000 dresses.

Lisa Burprich, who works in TV production, eats supermarket own brands and tinned food to afford £200 7 For All Mankind jeans every two months.

How's Media Doing?

2008-10-07T21:41:00.001-04:00

How's Media Doing?
By James Brady
http://www.forbes.com/media/2008/10/01/media-magazines-newspapers-biz-media-cx_jb_1001brady.html

Wall Street isn't the only hurting industry in town. Madison Avenue's annual "Ad Week" just ended, with media, clients and ad agencies confronting their own woes without a Washington bailout in sight.

Being a media lifer, I focus less on the markets than on the business I've been working in since 1948, getting myself through college by working until midnight as a copyboy at the New York Daily News, by far the biggest circulation paper in the country at the time. And since I've worked on TV and been an editor and publisher--and I'm still a magazine columnist and author and write for this Web site--I've still got a fair amount to worry about.

A couple of things got me thinking about all this. CBS selling Mel Karmazin's old radio stations, the 75th-anniversary celebrations of Esquire magazine, the layoffs of old daily newspaper friends, and an informative lunch at Le Bernardin with a former magazine colleague, during which we talked about his business and about other media, new and old, good times and bad.

First the layoffs, regrettably typical of recent consolidation and cost-cutting at American newspapers. At Mort Zuckerman's, and my old, Daily News, some 25 editorial staffers were said to have accepted buyout offers. They included my pal Faigi (pronounced "Fahey") Rosenthal--tall, attractive, the most competent librarian I worked with at the New York Post before she moved to the News.

In those days before Google, there were only keepers of the morgue, or the "library." You relied on magicians like Faigi to find just the obscure item you needed to nail down a story properly, from hard, upfront news to a tasty item for Page Six.

The other Daily News casualty was the drama critic: lanky, wise Howard Kissel. He covered theater at Women's Wear Daily in my time as publisher and was later hired away by the News, thereby providing an opportunity for a promising young man named Ben Brantley, who took the critic's job at WWD and eventually became the most powerful theater reviewer in town, at The New York Times.

Next, my chat at Le Bernardin with veteran magazine publishing executive Jack Kliger of Hachette Filipacchi. After nine years, Kliger recently handed over the reins of the Magazine Publishers Association (MPA) to John Griffin of National Geographic. I asked him for his thoughts on the magazine business today, a world of sluggish advertising and falling newsstand sales, with a number of magazines failing to meet the rate bases they promise to deliver to the ad agencies.

"This has been one of the worst down periods we've experienced in the magazine business," said Kliger. "I don't want to beat up on newspapers, but if magazines have been bad, newspapers have been worse. I remember 1997 and '98 being pretty bad as well, and we got through that. TV isn't having an easier time either. Cable is doing OK.

"For magazines, I think 'the recession' is short term," he continued. "But structurally things are now even worse than '97 and '98. The auto industry story, for example, is brutal. Magazines are down millions in auto advertising. Television must be down billions."

I asked if there were any bright spots Kliger could point to.

"I don't know if the magazine business will ever again be as robust," he said. "But ads will still be very important, the dominant revenue. Magazine advertising really works. And consumers like magazines. There's value to original and trusted third-party content. Young people may not like newspapers anymore, but they like magazines. And we really do have good print journalists and editors who can learn the new digital platforms.

"I love blogs, much as I love Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park," Kliger said. "But editors are still needed to separate the wheat from the chaff, as they do in magazines but don't on blogs."

Kliger's passionate on ad space pricing. "Magazines should charge more for audience reach, as all other media do," he said. "Circulation being down is not necessarily as difficult a problem in the long term. Circulation is still promising, but the consumer is getting used to the fact you can get things free on television and the Internet. The question is, Who's going to pay for what?"

The ironic thing about Kliger's handing over the MPA reins right now? Despite reports of belt tightening at Hachette, the company's American flagship publication, Elle, is booming. Elle was up nearly 5% in ad pages in August (Vogue, In Style, Allure and Cosmopolitan were all down that month) and even further ahead in ads in the traditionally thick September issue, while category leader Vogue was down.

This buoyant trend seemed to be continuing for October. According to Advertising Age, a tie-in with hit TV show Project Runway has Elle moving from No. 6 in the fashion category to No. 2, behind Vogue.

And Esquire's star-studded anniversary? The issue ran over a healthy 300 pages, while its gala party featured a speech by Bill Clinton, whom you'd think might have been out hustling votes for Barack Obama. That's got to be a sign of something.

'Life' Magazine Resurrected As Web Site

2008-09-24T08:19:00.000-04:00

'Life' Magazine Resurrected As Web Site
by Erik Sass, Tuesday, Sep 23, 2008 12:27 PM ET
Like a non-threatening zombie, Time Inc.'s Life brand is back from the dead again, this time as a Web site offering thousands of old photos from Life as well as new photos from Getty Images.

Set to debut some time in early 2009, the site will make the images available for free online for non-public use, including sharing the photos with friends. Visitors will also be able to buy photo albums created by other users.

Overall, Life.com hopes to publish 3,000 new images provided by Getty every day, executives revealed at the Interactive Advertising Bureau's MIXX Conference in New York. The new venture's CEO will be Andy Blau, the president of Life and a senior vice president with Time Inc. Interactive.

Catherine Gluckstein, vice president of iStockPhoto and Consumer Markets for Getty Images, will serve as CFO.

The Web portal has been a long time in the planning.

Time Inc. first disclosed plans for an online archive of Life's extensive collection of 20th-century photography in March 2007, when the company announced the closure of the Life Sunday supplement, a newspaper-distributed magazine.

Today, I Only Have Questions

2008-08-21T10:27:00.000-04:00

Today, I Only Have Questions
Posted by BoSacks
http://www.pubexec.com/pubtalk/pubtalk.bsp?sid=118726&var=story
Today, I only have questions. What is the difference between Europe and the United States when it comes to publishing and newsstand sales? Why are the newspapers in Europe not only doing well, but on the whole thriving and growing, while ours are gasping for air, with plummeting revenue and circulations? What does the "old" world know about publishing that we here don't?
Why? How? What is the difference?

A "cub reporter" of this newsletter, who is actually a worldly and knowledgeable publisher, recently argued with me on-line on a similar subject that seems relevant to my vent today:
"Professional circulators analyze reader acquisition costs in excruciating detail, with mountains of real-world data. No one can tell why a publisher picked a price, set a rate base, or chose a sales channel by looking at magazines on a newsstand . . . especially in today's incredibly complex and competitive marketplace . . . Publications with good strategies will prosper and magazines with bad strategies won't."

I generously offered to send him to Europe to find out the answers to these questions, but doubling his T&E budget from last year didn't seem to be enough to send him on the important investigative journey. (Last year his BoSacks T&E budget nearly topped $000,000.00)

So I'm forced to ask more questions:

Why are the last U.S. ABC figures reporting such dire domestic results while European magazines are on the whole doing better than we are? Why do European magazines charge almost the same for a subscription magazine as a newsstand title and we practically give away our subscriptions? Is this a holdover from better bygone days or a real, bona fide science that can actually work in the 21st century?

Let's remember that we are talking about the very same product, manufactured in the very same way, but clearly with a different business model. Why are the European sales numbers for magazines hovering around a 60-percent sell-through while we struggle with a low-to-mid-30-percent sell-through?

Let me move on. Why are the reading scores of our domestic youth plummeting? Is there any connection with the fact that text messaging is on the rise while writing skills are plummeting to unconscionable lows? Why is the biggest expense for so many businesses remedial writing for new employees?

None of these questions address the on-going digital dilemma the publishing world is facing. Clearly, we are going to have to remake our industry and redesign our business models including the circulation paradigm. These questions seem to me to be a great start and a part of that process.

There you have it: a dozen questions and not an answer in sight. These are the things that make me, well, wonder just what the heck is going on with our business-and reading in general?

Desktop Publishing's Legacy: 230,000 Fewer Commercial Printing Workers, and An Explosion in Content Creation Workers

2008-08-10T20:07:00.000-04:00

Desktop Publishing's Legacy: 230,000 Fewer Commercial Printing Workers, and An Explosion in Content Creation Workers
Dr. Joe Webb
http://members.whattheythink.com/allsearch/articleerc.cfm?id=35205&printer=pr

FREE Marketing, Management and Economic Notes from Dr. Joe Webb

08/07/2008 -- Everyone thinks that the Internet has been the cause of a decline in print; the real cause has been the lasting legacy of desktop publishing in the grander computer revolution.

Last month, U.S. commercial printing employment was below 600,000, which caught my attention. I went straight to my library of industry statistics. As best as I can determine using various government data, we're at levels not seen since 1986 or 1987. Commercial printing employment peaked in mid-1998, almost reaching 830,000. It's been quite a change from 1987 to now.

At that time, there were 70,000 employees in prepress trade shops (separators, platemakers, and trade typographers). Today, there are 25,000 with most of them are in some high-level publishing workflow, with nary a sense of what platemaking, separating, or typography was or might have been.

In 1987, there were 176,000 employees in book, magazine, and miscellaneous publishing; there are 300,000 today, augmented by another 50,000 or so micropublishing entrepreneurs.

Desktop publishing reduced the costs of production and stimulated the content creation process, and was a critical component of the march of new media. In 1987, graphic design did not even have its own industry classification code, as it was buried in something called "commercial art and design." Many of these workers referred to themselves as "illustrators." About 52,000 employees worked in graphic design firms then, with another 4000 or so as freelancers. Today, there are 73,000 employees in graphic design firms, plus another 90,000 freelancers, more than three times 1987's level.

Even advertising employment is higher. There are 40,000 more workers in advertising than in 1987.

Commercial printing employment is now at 1987 levels, while publishing, design, and agencies have added more than 250,000 workers in the last 20 years. Not all of them are creative workers, of course. Without the ability to create content efficiently, however, even those workers who are not in content creation or content production positions owe their jobs to the creation process that is the reason for their employer's existence.

The loss of prepress has hurt the printing industry's financial performance, especially its profitability. In turn, the technological changes that undermined our industry created new opportunities. "Creative destruction" is a phrase used by economists to explain how technology and other factors destroy old ways of doing things and replace them with more productive methods, new products, and sometimes entirely new industries. Your perception of the effect depends on whether your skills are the ones being replaced. There is no doubt that the technologies and entrepreneurs that coalesced around desktop publishing two decades ago are still having ripple effects in our industry.

It is curious that the 230,000 loss in print workers in the last ten years is almost the same as the 250,000 new workers in content creation industries, isn't it?

There is another important point. The new workers are more inclined to be freelance professionals, working as sole practitioners, than ever before. A $10,000 Mac workstation today is a powerful production tool, capable of producing sophisticated, high quality media in almost any format. They're not always working alone, however. These workers are more likely to be working on a project basis rather than with a single employer, linked with other independent professionals, each with a unique expertise. Modern telecommunications and the Internet are only a hint of what is to come. Printing organizations need to recognize this empowered freelance revolution.

I am often asked what would draw more young people to the printing industry. I have always heard the same tired recommendations in my 30 years in the business, and we know they don't matter. There is only one thing that does it: successful, dynamic, and growing companies that do interesting and exciting things. One of the attractions to content creation businesses is the newness that is the essence of their projects: there is always some aspect of the content that has never been done before. Creating content, even in its necessary repetitive production tasks, is more attractive to young workers. Working as freelance plays into millennial generation themes of independence, time flexibility, and geographic freedom.

Manufacturing by its nature may not be able to compete with that. Quality control programs, for example, are designed to create a repetitive and predictable sameness of results without regard to content. Small print businesses may not be able to compete with the attraction to the content creation businesses unless its owner or management is somewhat charismatic, emanating a sense that the risk of tagging along will be worth it in the long run.

In the end, falling under 600,000 employees is just a number. It's a reminder of where we've been, and what may come. It's a reminder of how much the communications business has changed, and will change. The question is whether our industry's entrepreneurial spirits will create, individually and collectively, that successful, growing, dynamic, and intriguing culture that attracts workers and capital for these decades ahead.

---------------------

For a look at what life was like at the beginning of the desktop publishing movement, this 1987 article from Money is illustrative.

Magazine Circulation Falls in First Half

2008-08-10T19:59:00.000-04:00

Magazine Circulation Falls in First Half
By Irin Carmon with contributions from Stephanie D. Smith Amy Wicks
From WWD Issue 08/08/2008
http://www.wwd.com/media-news/magazine-circulation-falls-in-half-1706249#/articlehttp://www.wwd.com/media-news/magazine-circulation-falls-in-half-1706249?full=true
The phrase "flat is the new up" became a mantra in recent years when it came to assessing newsstand sales. Well, as core fashion titles, women's service books and men's magazines have almost universally posted declines in their single-copy sales in the first half of 2008, how does "less down is the new up" sound?

To wit, Hachette Filipacchi Media's Tom Masterson, senior vice president for consumer marketing and manufacturing, pointed out that, while Elle's newsstand was down 6.3 percent in the first six months, "many of Elle's competitors decreased more."

That's true - Vogue was down nearly 15 percent, though it still outsells Elle on the newsstand by an average of about 50,000 copies monthly; Harper's Bazaar fell 8.3 percent, and W, which gets the vast majority of sales through subscription, was down 10 percent.

Or take Shape, which was down about 10 percent overall on the newsstand in the first half, but still averaged higher total sales than the troubled fitness category in general. (Self had the dubious honor of being less down, but is still smaller; Shape has beefed up its distribution at checkout and added 17,000 pockets nationwide.)

Growing market share might be the last remaining competitive advantage in an environment where nearly every editor in chief is seeing the kind of declines that once would have gotten them fired. The long-standing expectation that a healthy magazine is one that sees successive growth on the newsstand is in question - you can't exactly fire everyone.

Whether the change is cyclical (uncertain economic times that include high gas prices, fewer supermarket trips and less disposable income) or secular (consumer behavior is undergoing a fundamental change away from newsstand, or from print magazines themselves) depends on whom you ask. Editors and publishers would have it be the former.

"I don't think newsstand softness is systemic to magazines, but rather systemic to the economy," said O, The Oprah Magazine publisher Jill Seelig.

But some advertisers and observers are beginning to wonder whether the second diagnosis is upon us. As consumers' attention fractures, spoiled by choice and easy digital access, the culture and entertainment industries already have adjusted their expectations, counting smaller sales numbers than ever as blockbusters. The magazine industry might be falling prey to the same tectonic shift.

Several magazines, such as Glamour and Marie Claire, have seen disappointing sales for several periods in a row, even when the economy was flush, suggesting more of an overall move away from big women's titles. (Perhaps in reaction, Glamour unveiled a redesign this month.) Even newsstand stalwart Cosmopolitan dropped 6 percent in this period, a difference of more than 100,000 copies, after essentially flat newsstand sales since 2004.

The only source of growth across the board has been in total circulation, which, given the newsstand declines, usually means that publishers are spending more than ever to build and maintain their subscriber bases. And advertisers are traditionally more skeptical of that kind of audience-building, given publishers' past practices of steeply discounting subscriptions.

That Men's Vogue's newsstand is down 39.1 percent, for example, even as it's raising its rate base to 400,000, can be explained several ways: first, that it suffers from an apples-and-oranges comparison between five issues published in the first half of 2008 and three in the first half of 2007; second, and more significantly, that it's growing its audience the expensive way, through subscriptions, and not wowing on the newsstand.

The title also has seen its verified circulation (bulk copies in public places) drop by 14 percent since last year. A spokeswoman said, "Men's Vogue continues to take risks on covers to recognize accomplishment over celebrity." Case in point: the model-free Bugatti cover in May, which sold 45,000 copies, according to Rapid Report. (That was still better than the worst cover to date, April with Alex Rodriguez, at 41,000.)

As such, given the flood of negative newsstand figures in the first half, the few examples of uptick in sales should be particularly celebratory - among them, In Style, which, whether you consider it a core fashion title or a peer of Glamour and Marie Claire, was the only one in either group to see any rise in newsstand, by 4 percent to 783,254. That's before the recently unveiled redesign was even tested on the newsstand.

And Rodale's David Zinczenko showed once again that he can put his money where his mouth is, maintaining Men's Health's position as the number-one newsstand seller in the men's category with a 2 percent growth, and having a hand in two newer magazines, which also have seen good news: Women's Health, with its 12 percent rise, and Best Life, up almost 20 percent. Maybe that's why Men's Health Living has been given a go-ahead in a tough environment for shelter magazines.

So, do the steep declines serve as a harbinger of equally sharp falls in advertising revenue as firms seek other media? Well, for now, media buyers seem to be seeing the big picture. "I don't think we would have seen these types of declines if the economy had been in a different place," said Robin Steinberg, senior vice president and director of print investment and activation at MediaVest. "We would have seen some declines, but not deep declines." That said, she added: "The future of magazines is not going to have the same distribution exposure as in years past," as the business model shifts from emphasizing the number of eyeballs to assessing quality of audience.

And media companies are experimenting with new distribution tools such as Maghound, the so-called "Netflix for magazines" launching in September. A subsidiary of Time Inc., Maghound will allow consumers to switch in and out titles for a flat monthly fee, and around 300 titles have signed up so far.

Magazine publishers also are trying to figure out how to leverage their Web sites to build a subscription base - a potentially more efficient, or at least cheaper, way to add subscribers than direct mail or verified circulation. Hearst magazines in particular - many of which tend to be big, single-copy-heavy titles in an age of grim newsstand - have suggested this as a winning strategy. In the face of a newsstand decline of 17.3 percent, for example, Oprah's Seelig pointed to the fact that the magazine hasn't had to resort to verified circulation and that subscriptions were up 7 percent, in part because "we played around with the subscription offers on Oprah.com."

She added, "The simple truth is consumers are not going to the places where our magazines are sold as frequently as they were," i.e., airports, supermarkets, drugstores and other retailers.
That said, the magazine recently saw the exit of editor in chief Amy Gross, billed as voluntary, and new editor of former Golf for Women editor Susan Reed will have to figure out how and if the newsstand can be turned around. George Janson, managing partner/director of print at Mediaedge:cia, said, "Some magazines have reached a natural level of circulation," pointing to Oprah in particular.

"Magazines are also coming off a period where [advertising] spending and circulation have, for the most part, been flat to up," added Janson - meaning that what goes up sometimes has to come down.

But if the latest newsstand numbers prove to be long-term indicators, publishers could be faced with hard choices, such as cutting rate bases or rethinking their distribution models. "As content becomes free on the Internet, I question whether or not the future of magazines will be opt-in and nonpaid," said Steinberg.

As the vision unfolds, software still can't surf.

2008-08-06T22:13:00.000-04:00

As the vision unfolds, software still can't surf.
By Andrew Brenneman
http://www.bookbusinessmag.com/story/story.bsp?sid=113283&var=story

Tim Berners-Lee, director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), outlined a strategy for the future of the Web in a series of papers and articles published between 1998 and 2001. He observed that while there was a wealth of information available for people to explore on the Web, computers had difficulty extracting information from it. The Web consists largely of free-form text, and computers have great difficulty understanding human language. While search engines can index the Web, a human being is required to interpret the search results. You may be able to surf the Web, but your computer can't. The value of the World Wide Web is significantly compromised, Berners-Lee argued, without the ability for systems to interpret its content.

He proposed a solution: the Semantic Web, which would provide a bridge between the language of humans and the language of computers. It consists of a set of standards for creating XML-based tags that describe information contained on the Web in a way that computers can understand. The Semantic Web would act as a global database that software applications could meaningfully explore. Your computer could surf.

The implications for content providers are significant, and fall into two categories:

1. Value Chain Integration: A common way of labeling subject matter and meaning within content-the contents of the content-would help integrate parties along the publishing value chain: authors, publishers, distributors, retailers, consumers.

2. Research Value: The value of content for research would be enormously increased. Content that is semantically structured could be queried, as one would query a relational database. Software research agents could continually comb through the Web, looking for significant information, aiding in research. For example, a research agent could be programmed to continually monitor the Web for new findings involving the correlation between thyroid cancer and any polychlorinated biphenyls congener in Northern Europe. This would have a profound impact on legal, scientific and scholarly research.

It has been a decade since Berners-Lee presented this vision, and the Semantic Web is yet to be. The content on the Web is still, for the most part, in human language, undecipherable by software. While there has been much research on semantic technologies, they have not been widely deployed over the last 10 years. HTML took only a couple of years to become a global standard.

What Currently Exists
Was Berners-Lee wrong about the Semantic Web? To begin to answer that, we can first examine what methods have evolved to manage and extract value from the content on the Web.

· Search Engines: Search engines, principally Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Live Search, are the primary means for exploring content on the Web. A search engine's results are semantically "fuzzy" or imprecise, because a search engine indexes words and not their meanings: "apple" will return search results with both fruit and computers. Inexact or not, search engines provide tremendous value and, for many, structure the Web experience.

· Folksonomies: In the current Web 2.0 era, communities of users dynamically submit content to share with others on the Web. The user creates and assigns labels to the content. These labels, or "tags," describe the subject matter and help connect it with other content. This is similar in principal to the application of tags within the Semantic Web model, with an important distinction: The Semantic Web only uses tags from a standard taxonomy of terms, a "controlled vocabulary." Web 2.0 tags are typically user-defined, uncontrolled and are referred to as being within a "folksonomy." A folksonomy is inexact because one user's tags will likely not correspond with another's. Folksonomies, therefore, cannot be used efficiently by software. A person is still required to interpret them. Like search results, folksonomies are "fuzzy," but sometimes "fuzzy" is good enough.

Examples of the Semantic Approach's Value
In looking at the dominance of search engines and Web 2.0 folksonomies, we may well conclude that the model of the Semantic Web has been usurped by other less cumbersome and more organic methods.

But I don't think that is the case. There are some compelling examples emerging of how the semantic approach is adding value to published content.

· Book Industry Standards and Communications (BISAC). Publishing professionals know all about taxonomies. They use them every day. BISAC and Library of Congress subject headings are, in fact, standardized taxonomies, used to connect partners along the publishing value chain. Publishers do not typically embed BISAC tags according to the Semantic Web technical specification, nor do BISAC subject categories contain the detail necessary to perform research. Ted Hill, a publishing consultant who specializes in digital supply chain issues, points out that BISAC was created to let booksellers know on which shelf in a bookstore to place a book. "BISAC subject codes were part of a strategy to reduce double-stocking and cut the cost of inventory," notes Hill, "not promote discovery by search engines." However, BISAC is conceptually consistent with the semantic vision described by Berners-Lee.

· Alexander Street Press. Founded in 2000, Alexander Street Press might be the most forward-thinking electronic content aggregator in the humanities. Alexander Street Press acquires, prepares and electronically distributes collections of books, documents and rich-media content for humanities research. Their preparation includes a very detailed application of semantic tags from controlled vocabularies that dramatically increase the value of the content for research. This process requires domain expertise, curatorial care and technical know-how. According to Alexander Street Press President Stephen Rhind-Tutt, "There is a general underestimation of the value of librarianship and cataloging."

The value of the results is clear, however. Semantic preparation enables researchers to extract facts from collections of content-not just find search terms. Rhind-Tutt observes, "Researchers can ask questions that are much harder to ask [than] if the content was not semantically structured." Alexander Street's longevity is a testament to the value it is creating in the humanities research marketplace.

· Knovel. Knovel provides semantically structured collections of engineering and technical content, including text, charts and tables. This allows the information contained in articles to be queried, as one would query a database. Technical researchers can find answers contained in large bodies of content with great efficiency. For example, a technical researcher could submit a query to find studies that address polymers with a specific tensile strength at a given temperature range. This is tremendously more efficient than simply putting a search engine on top of a collection of thousands of journal articles. In the context of the cost of an engineer's time (and the time he saves on research), the economic value is enormous.

Was Berners-Lee's vision of the Semantic Web on target? BISAC, Alexander Street Press and Knovel are evidence that the semantic approach can increase the value of content through discoverability and research efficiencies. While considerable effort is required to structure content in this way, it yields, in many cases, a significant return.

What has not taken place is the wholesale transformation of the Web. The Web has not become a global, semantically structured database. Instead, there are islands of semantically structured content, inside commercial, walled gardens (subscription services), or within defined communities, as in the case of BISAC. The reason is economic: There often is insufficient justification for the investment required in semantically structuring content.

In addition, adoption of semantic technologies has been slow, since it is built upon other standards-particularly XML and Web Services (a standard way that software can connect with one another on the Internet). It has taken time for XML and Web Services to become widespread. With those standards in place, the semantic approach can and will be increasingly used. However, this will only occur in specific areas of content when there is a particular, usually financial, rationale for doing so.

Your computer still won't be able to surf, but it may be able to swim some laps in the pool. And that may be enough.

Andrew Brenneman is managing director of Finitiv, a digital media consultancy. He has 20 years of experience leading pioneering digital media initiatives in publishing and advertising, including NETg's Skill Builder, Thomson Learning's WebTutor, FreeMark Mail and MsDewey.com. Brenneman also founded the Digital Media Group of The University of Chicago Press Books Division, where he led digital distribution for the Books Division and the development of The Chicago Manual of Style Online.

BoSacks Speaks Out: Free Textbooks Coming Near You

2008-08-03T22:54:00.000-04:00

BoSacks Speaks Out: This is an amazing little article. The portents are huge for text book publishers, but might just have some traction for other publishing styles as well. What if educators banded together and formed their own network (publishing house)? It is not so far fetched. I am skeptical about a full open source text book implementation, because someone, somewhere has to get paid. But there are ways of incorporating both open source and capitalism. It is a new business model and one worth thinking about. It's not for everybody, but in the "long tail" style of doing business it doesn't have to be.

They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.
Andy Warhol (1928 - 1987), The Philosophy of Andy Warhol

Free textbooks coming near you
Brittani Lusk - Daily Herald
http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/275408/17/

Textbook options: fork out the cash and buy the shiny new book, forget the book altogether and rely on class notes, or read it online for free.

Fall semester begins at Brigham Young University and at Utah Valley University in a little more than a month. Students will be looking for the cheapest way to get their hands on class materials, and they may have a new option.

Textbooks with open licenses are complete, scholarly college texts written by the same type of people writing traditional books, but these books have a twist. They've been placed online with the author's permission under an open license that allows students and instructors to read, print and even customize the text for free or a small fee. Students, professors and other advocates nationwide, including students and professors in Utah County, are pleading with authors to participate in the open textbook movement. One UVU professor is even writing an open textbook simply on principle.

Fighting the system
"I'm so upset about the whole textbook issue that it's actually motivating for me on the basis of just my values," said UVU professor Ron Hammond. He said his book "will be an act of community service to the whole country."

The UVU sociology professor, who last year stopped using traditional textbooks, has written six chapters of a sociology textbook that will be available online when he and his students finish it at the end of the year.

"I just finally got fed up," Hammond said.

He periodically publishes scholarly work in academic journals and isn't worried about losing royalties on the new book.

Some book publishers have contended that the work he is doing isn't real scholarship and his online manuscript won't be a real book. Hammond disagrees with the textbook company representative that criticized his work.

"This book is going to be better than the book that's on the market in terms of currency, because it's got links," Hammond said.

In his book, Hammond plans to link to current data from the Census Bureau and other government agencies. That gives him a real-time edge because most traditional books, he said, are usually one to two years behind when it comes to numbers. Having the book online allows Hammond to update the research whenever it changes.

Behind the cause
Hammond is one of more than 1,200 college professors across the nation, including at least three from Utah County, who have signed a statement of intent pledging to use open textbooks when available. The Campaign to Make Textbooks Available posted the Faculty Statement of Intent on its Web site, maketextbooksaffordable.org, earlier this year.

"It really shows that textbooks don't have to be expensive," said Nicole Allen, director of the campaign.

She said the key to decreasing costs that have been rising at double the rate of inflation for at least the last two decades is changing the market by adding more competition. That's where open textbooks come in.

"Students have to buy whatever textbook they're assigned," Allen said. "So publishers can choose whatever price they want."

She said finding a textbook online and printing it themselves gives students the choices they need to fight back.

"You can get it on pink paper," Allen said. "The idea is that students have more options."

Students in Utah have been lobbying their professors to use more open-source, free material. Kelly Stowell, executive director of the Utah Student Association, called the effort a grass-roots movement aimed at recognizing professors willing to use free materials.

"We'd like to recognize and reward professors," Stowell said.

At UVU, student leaders have been meeting with their professors and school administrators pitching the idea. Student Body President Joseph Watkins said the reception has been good.

"Everybody that we've spoken to is more than happy to help out," Watkins said.

Watkins said the students might gather the information and put professors using open-source materials into some sort of database so students can pick and choose which professors to take knowing who uses books and who doesn't.

In addition to Hammond, UVU information systems and technology professor Jeff Cold signed the statement of intent, as did BYU professor David Wiley.

"If I have an opportunity to get them a textbook for free, I will do so," Cold said.

Wiley has been using open source material in his classes for years.

"I made a commitment to myself a number of years ago that I wold only use free or openly licensed materials in my courses, and have stuck to that commitment since," Wiley wrote in an e-mail.

He's even written an open book and makes all his course materials public.

A new way of thinking
Cold said he'll use open textbooks when they're available, but he doesn't have a vendetta against book publishers.

"I think that at times, textbooks can be expensive. I don't think the publishers are gouging students," Cold said.

His interest in open textbooks is their timeliness. In information systems, technology changes before the books can be updated. Cold doesn't like teaching students to use operating systems from a book that is sometimes two versions old.

Hammond said the Internet model will help solve the lag that paper books face as well as serve his Google-generation students better.

"They want to know what they have to know and then they go find it," Hammond said.

He said the textbook learning model that worked in the past is fading.

"The point is that we can't say to them, 'Do it the way we did.' "

Hammond said he was once worried that material found on the Internet wasn't the same caliber as written material and that perhaps students wouldn't gain the skills they needed if they only surfed the net.

"I used to [think that], but I don't anymore because our society is computers-based and Internet-enriched," Hammond said.

He said students need the computer skills and should develop them.

"We don't know, but it looks like the paper version of knowledge is on its way out," Hammond said. "The Internet version of knowledge seems to be much more powerful, much more efficient."

Wiley said an open license doesn't automatically make a book better, but open texts have more potential because they can be added to and customized.

"You have made it possible, now, for others to make the changes they need to make in order for the text to really speak to their students. So open textbooks aren't automatically of higher quality than traditional texts, but they have the opportunity to become better over time," Wiley wrote.

Making it work
One pair of former publishing company employees is attempting to make open textbooks into a business model that serves the students and the book authors better than the publishing companies.

Eric Frank and Jeff Shelstad both left publishing companies to start Flat World Knowledge, an open textbook publishing company.

"Basically we're, as far as I know, the first commercial open textbook publisher," Frank said. Frank is the chief marketing officer for the company he founded and plans to offer open textbooks in the spring of 2009. Right now the company is testing and researching its products.

Wiley has been working with Flat World Knowledge as its chief openness officer, helping them with licensing issues and developing strategy.

Frank said when the system is up and running, students will be able to view books online, print them for about $30 or download an audio book for about $25. Students could also purchase PDF versions to print themselves.

"Our model here is, you decide," Frank said.

Flat World also plans to offer a smattering of study aids in an a-la-carte format similar to iTunes. Students can purchase one study aid such as a podcast or set of flash cards for 99 cents each. Instructors will also be able to customize a textbook by rearranging chapters or only giving students certain pieces of the text.

Frank said book authors will be as compensated or more compensated than they are by publishing companies because authors will continue to receive royalties on their book several semesters after it is released.

Frank said the traditional model, where students buy a new version of the book and then re-sell it, causing used books and pirated works to circulate, only allows authors to receive royalties on new books sold. That results in a steep drop-off in royalties after the first semester. Frank said that drop shouldn't happen in the Flat World model.

The Internet Is No Substitute for the Dying Newspaper Industry

2008-07-29T21:19:00.000-04:00

The Internet Is No Substitute for the Dying Newspaper Industry
By Chris Hedges, Truthdig
http://www.alternet.org/story/92284/

The decline of newspapers is not about the replacement of the antiquated technology of news print with the lightning speed of the Internet. It does not signal an inevitable and salutary change. It is not a form of progress. The decline of newspapers is about the rise of the corporate state, the loss of civic and public responsibility on the part of much of our entrepreneurial class and the intellectual poverty of our post-literate world, a world where information is conveyed primarily through rapidly moving images rather than print.

All these forces have combined to strangle newspapers. And the blood on the floor, this year alone, is disheartening. Some 6,000 journalists nationwide have lost their jobs, news pages are being radically cut back and newspaper stocks have tumbled. Advertising revenues are dramatically falling off with many papers seeing double-digit drops. McClatchy Co., publisher of the Miami Herald, has seen its shares fall by 77 percent this year. Lee Enterprises Inc., which owns the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, is down 84 percent. Gannett Co., which publishes USA Today, is trading at nearly a 17-year low. The San Francisco Chronicle is now losing $1 million a week.

The Internet will not save newspapers. Although all major newspapers, and most smaller ones, have Web sites, and have had for a while, newspaper Web sites make up less than 10 percent of newspaper ad revenue. Analysts say that although Net advertising amounts to $21 billion a year, that amount is actually relatively small. So far, the really big advertisers have stayed away, either unsure of how to use the Internet or suspicious that it can't match the viewer attention of older media.

Newspapers, when well run, are a public trust. They provide, at their best, the means for citizens to examine themselves, to ferret out lies and the abuse of power by elected officials and corrupt businesses, to give a voice to those who would, without the press, have no voice, and to follow, in ways a private citizen cannot, the daily workings of local, state and federal government. Newspapers hire people to write about city hall, the state capital, political campaigns, sports, music, art and theater. They keep citizens engaged with their cultural, civic and political life. When I began as a foreign correspondent 25 years ago, most major city papers had bureaus in Latin America, the Middle East, Europe, Asia and Moscow. Reporters and photographers showed Americans how the world beyond our borders looked, thought and believed. Most of this is vanishing or has vanished.

We live under the happy illusion that we can transfer news-gathering to the Internet. News-gathering will continue to exist, as it does on this Web site and sites such as ProPublica and Slate, but these traditions now have to contend with a new, widespread and ideologically driven partisanship that dominates the dissemination of views and information, from Fox News to blogger screeds. The majority of bloggers and Internet addicts, like the endless rows of talking heads on television, do not report. They are largely parasites who cling to traditional news outlets. They can produce stinging and insightful commentary, which has happily seen the monopoly on opinion pieces by large papers shattered, but they rarely pick up the phone, much less go out and find a story. Nearly all reporting -- I would guess at least 80 percent -- is done by newspapers and the wire services. Take that away and we have a huge black hole.

Those who rely on the Internet gravitate to sites that reinforce their beliefs. The filtering of information through an ideological lens, which is destroying television journalism, defies the purpose of reporting. Journalism is about transmitting information that doesn't care what you think. Reporting challenges, countermands or destabilizes established beliefs. Reporting, which is time-consuming and often expensive, begins from the premise that there are things we need to know and understand, even if these things make us uncomfortable. If we lose this ethic we are left with pandering, packaging and partisanship. We are left awash in a sea of competing propaganda. Bloggers, unlike most established reporters, rarely admit errors. They cannot get fired. Facts, for many bloggers, are interchangeable with opinions. Take a look at The Drudge Report. This may be the new face of what we call news.

When the traditional news organizations go belly up we will lose a vast well of expertise and information. Our democracy will suffer a body blow. Not that many will notice. The average time a reader of The New York Times spends with the printed paper is about 45 minutes. The average time a viewer spends on The New York Times Web site is about seven minutes. There is a difference between browsing and reading. And the Web is built for browsing rather than for reading. When there is a long piece on the Internet, most of us have to print it out to get through it.

The rise of our corporate state has done the most, however, to decimate traditional news-gathering. Time Warner, Disney, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., General Electric and Viacom control nearly everything we read, watch, hear and ultimately think. And news that does not make a profit, as well as divert viewers from civic participation and challenging the status quo, is not worth pursuing. This is why the networks have shut down their foreign bureaus. This is why cable newscasts, with their chatty anchors, all look and sound like the "Today" show. This is why the FCC, in an example of how far our standards have fallen, defines shows like Fox's celebrity gossip program "TMZ" and the Christian Broadcast Network's "700 Club" as "bona fide newscasts." This is why television news personalities, people like Katie Couric, have become celebrities earning, in her case, $15 million a year. This is why newspapers like the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune are being ruthlessly cannibalized by corporate trolls like Sam Zell, turned into empty husks that focus increasingly on boutique journalism. Corporations are not in the business of news. They hate news, real news. Real news is not convenient to their rape of the nation. Real news makes people ask questions. They prefer to close the prying eyes of reporters. They prefer to transform news into another form of mindless amusement and entertainment.

A democracy survives when its citizens have access to trustworthy and impartial sources of information, when it can discern lies from truth. Take this away and a democracy dies. The fusion of news and entertainment, the rise of a class of celebrity journalists on television who define reporting by their access to the famous and the powerful, the retreat by many readers into the ideological ghettos of the Internet and the ruthless drive by corporations to destroy the traditional news business are leaving us deaf, dumb and blind.

We are cleverly entertained during our descent. We have our own version of ancient Rome's bread and circuses with our ubiquitous and elaborate spectacles, sporting events, celebrity gossip and television reality shows. Societies in decline, as the Roman philosopher Cicero wrote, see their civic and political discourse contaminated by the excitement and emotional life of the arena. And the citizens in these degraded societies, he warned, always end up ruled by a despot, a Nero or a George W. Bush.

Chris Hedges, who graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, is the author of "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America."

JUST IN: NEWSSTAND DROPS MAGAZINES

2008-07-26T15:14:00.000-04:00

JUST IN: NEWSSTAND DROPS MAGAZINES
There's lots of empty space as Michael Bonney transitions his Monmouth Street shop from a newsstand to a convenience store.
By LINDA G. RASTELLI
When Michael Bonney bought Red Bank News in May, it seemed the decades-old monument to print journalism, deemed "a Red Bank treasure" by one regular, would continue much the same as before.
Patrons could still lose themselves browsing the racks of newspapers and magazines that took up most of the shop’s floor space.
But today, what was once a crowded warren of newsprint and glossies is open space that mainly draws the eye to the checkered black and white floor (soon to be replaced by hardwood or linoleum, Bonney said).
The magazine racks are gone, as Bonney has drastically pruned his 500-title magazine inventory, which he's planning to replace with more household items, including dairy products and toiletries.
"It'll be more like Prown's," he explained, referring to the much lamented Broad Street five-and-dime that closed in 2003 and for many residents remains the symbol of a slower, more stable, less gentrified downtown.
Now it seems that the Red Bank News known to generations of customers is also about to begin slowly fading into the collective memory, as newspaper and magazine sales become more of a sideline to its business than its mainstay.
"I do feel bad about it," Bonney told redbankgreen last week. "People are a little bit disappointed, and there's been a few complaints."
Like many other changes wrought by technology, the decline of print media attracts its mourners. But Bonney has found that standing against the tide enacts its toll — in this case, financial.
Bonney, an Asbury Park resident and avid newspaper reader, said he was returning more than 1,000 unsold copies of periodicals monthly. He's also learned in his short time in the business that more people were browsers than buyers.
So as much as he liked carrying the variety of titles, he decided after a painfully slow August that he couldn't continue to stock a product that was unprofitable. Lack of flexibility in working with his large distributor also contributed to his decision, he added.
"People just aren't buying most magazines every month," he said. "They use the Internet, or subscribe, so they don't buy single copies much."
Now, copies of garish gossip magazines and the obligatory Playboys sit at the front counter amid a few lonely looking copies of Discover and the Economist. "I'm just keeping the ones that always sell," Bonney said.
He's still selling newspapers, but not in as great a variety as before. Cigarettes, lottery tickets an snacks remain on sale.
What's next? The store will slowly transition to more of a convenience store, Bonney said, while he tries out new items — household staples such as light bulbs and foods such as eggs and milk.
And how are the old-timers taking it? During all his stops and starts, "people have been very patient and understanding, I want you to say that," Bonney stressed. "I'm learning as I go. These are growing pains."

Delighting in a Magazine's Death?

2008-07-21T22:09:00.000-04:00

Delighting in a Magazine's Death? a Q&A with the blogger behind MagazineDeathPool.com
By Peter Beisser
http://www.pubexec.com/story/story.bsp?sid=113873&var=story

The Grim Reaper, the popular, anonymous blogger behind the Magazine Death Pool at http://www.magazinedeathpool.com, believes the end of days is near for print magazines.

It may not mean coming into physical contact with the blade of a scythe, but appearing on the Grim Reaper's blog may prove just as deadly to a major magazine title. For nearly three years now, the unidentified industry insider regularly has taken pleasure in predicting what popular title will close its doors next. Whether it's a dip in ad revenue or pages, another redesign or a shake-up in management, the Reaper sniffs out the early warning signs and chronicles the shuttering of popular magazines throughout the industry.

While maintaining his (her?) anonymity, the Grim Reaper excused himself for a few minutes from taking pleasure in predicting who's next on the chopping block, and answered Publishing Executive Inbox's questions about his bleak outlook for the future of the industry.

Publishing Executive Inbox: In your opinion, what are the top reasons that all of these magazine titles have been shuttering in such great numbers in the last few years?
Grim Reaper: There are several reasons why titles are closing down, some with greater impact than others. A) Magazines that outlived their usefulness or relevancy, especially being in the line of fire of what's popular on the Web. B) Magazines that were right in the crosshairs of the faltering economy. C) No. 3 titles in some categories were just not going to survive. D) Magazines that were created for advertisers, not for an audience. E) Magazines that did not have a smart and profitable digital strategy. F) Too much reliance on advertisers in trouble or under the gun (i.e. automobiles, liquor).

In the first three cases, there was really not much fault to be given. The times changed. The way people consumed their media changed. The Web began to own certain areas, like gossip, personal finance and sports, so magazines were becoming more vulnerable.

As for D, the biggest mistake is to create a magazine first for advertisers, and hope the audience follows afterwards. Cargo will forever be the poster boy for this line of thinking-that men would want a shopping magazine if women had made Lucky so successful. I have a feeling we will see Portfolio fall into the same trap in the next year or so, and it will create a much more deafening crash in the forest.

As for E, it still amazes me that magazine publishers didn't learn from the first dot-com bubble about slapping their own articles online, thereby cannibalizing themselves. Fast Company and Radar put many of their current issue articles online when they hit newsstands, for example. On the other hand, SmartMoney was intelligent enough to create a site that not only stands on its own, but they created unique Web applications that they can license out.

Inbox: When did it all begin to snowball out of control? What did publishers and the industry do wrong?
Reaper: I sensed it all began to spiral out of control when I started my blog, when Time Inc. began its first round of layoffs in December 2005. The paradigm shift to digital media really kicked in the fear at that point. I do not think publishers did anything wrong for the most part except be in the wrong place at the wrong time, much like the dinosaurs.

Inbox: What are the warning signs that tell you a title is in trouble? When is the plug usually pulled?
Reaper: The warning signs I look for a magazine getting in trouble include: losing lots of ads and/or circulation in a category dominated by the Web or becoming irrelevant, publishers firing in-house sales staff and then outsourcing them, desperate attempts to pretty up the covers into something the editorial isn't, changing the editorial mission, especially to be fad-ish, and consumers basically ignoring them.

Inbox: What do you think magazine publishers can do to stop the hemorrhaging?
Reaper: With some titles, there's nothing that can be done to stop hemorrhaging. For example, I just don't see how newsweeklies are going to survive, so they may as well close up shop and move fully to the Web. I know this sounds terrible, but if you can't beat 'em, join 'em in some cases. Magazine brands and their domains can be very strong and profitable on the Web, as opposed to ink on paper. Others just need to suck it up, cut rate bases, and devote resources to Web sites that can stand alone with well-done SEO to generate revenue.

Inbox: What were your main goals for the Web site? What has the response been from the industry?
Reaper: I set up Magazine Death Pool in February 2006 as a way of marking the slow end of an era in my own special way. It functions to point out some of the foolishness and arrogance of the industry, while certainly mourning the notable titles that have passed on. I've received a lot of e-mails from professors, as well as people who get sentimental about magazines that went under a long time ago. Of course, there are a few bile-spewing e-mails, including ones from the magazines I write about. I don't mind if they post comments in response to what I write. They should have a platform to vent. Knight Kiplinger, Jr. posted quite a long defensive comment on the blog recently. Anybody whose first name is Knight deserves a spot on my blog.

Inbox: Who is going to survive, and why are these titles different?
Reaper: The titles which have the best odds of surviving are the ones that are read for the big splashy ads, like Vogue, Elle, the bridal books. People buy those magazines for their lush spreads and ads. They can not be reproduced on the Web or read comfortably on a mobile phone . . . yet.

In these hard times, some titles are up in pages

2008-07-17T23:25:00.000-04:00

When the going's tough, the tough sell
In these hard times, some titles are up in pages
By Diego Vasquez
http://www.medialifemagazine.com
This last quarter was the worst in recent memory for consumer magazines, and it doesn't look very promising going forward, contrary to some forecasts that see magazines rebounding in the second half of 2008.

How bad was the second quarter?

Ad pages were down 7.4 percent, according to Publishers Information Bureau figures, and of the 23 magazine categories tracked by Media Life, all but one saw pages fall.

Just a handful of magazines saw improved ad page counts, among them OK!, up 31.7 percent; The Economist, 3.7 percent; Harper's Bazaar, 9.4 percent; Conde Nast Traveler, 3.8 percent; National Geographic, 11 percent; Popular Mechanics, 8 percent; and Everyday with Rachael Ray, 15.4 percent.

To get a better sense of the state of the magazine industry, and why some magazines are up in pages, Media Life talked to their publishers, as well as longtime magazine consultant Martin Walker of Walker Communications.

These are anxious times, they agree.

"I've seen a lot of ups and downs, but this is scary," Anne Balaban, publisher of Everyday with Rachael Ray, tells Media Life. "We're hearing day after day about how many marketers just aren't advertising. It's across the board. It's every industry, not just ours. These are trying times."

Says Lisa Hughes, vice president and publisher of Conde Nast Traveler: "It's harder to find that customer out there who's still consuming. The economy is the economy, and there are a lot of unknowns right now. The election, will oil prices ever come down? It's a tough business climate for everybody."

William Congdon, publisher of Popular Mechanics, agrees. "We're in for a challenging second half. Right now we're up through the October issue at least, but I know it will be challenging. Through first quarter it will still be very challenging. A lot of it depends on when we get a new president and people figure out what direction we're heading."

Says Jason Webby, vice president of advertising sales at the Economist: "I would hope magazines rebound in the second half of this year. That's everybody's hope. But with what's happening in the financial markets, especially this week, you never know."

Walker doesn't see consumer magazines springing back anytime soon.

"The industry probably won't turn around until at least 2010," he says. "Most of the decisions about next year are being made in the next two or three months, so all of those will be based on what's happening now. If the economy all of a sudden gets good in 2009, that's not enough time to impact the second half of next year, given the print cycle."

A major hurt has been the drop in pharmaceutical ads, which had buoyed consumer titles for several years. For this first half of this year, ad pages for drugs and remedies fell 13.2 percent.

Always controversial, drug advertising has come under closer scrutiny by regulators following a rash of lawsuits over harmful side effects that were not detected or revealed before going to market. Marketers, anxious to avoid tougher regulation, are cutting ad spending, and they've entirely cut advertising for new drugs in their first six months.

Certainly, the falloff in drug advertising has hurt a lot of titles, and it's something publishers have no control over. That's true of all ad categories.

But a huge factor in how well a title is doing is in the hands of publishers, and that's in how hard and how well they sell. That especially matters during tough times, these publishers say.

Conde Nast Traveler's Hughes says it's about coming up with better ideas.

"You have to be really out there, you have to be aggressive as a sales team. Advertisers are demanding great programs, and they scrutinize every dollar they spend. The titles that are hungry for the business and coming up with good ideas are going to win the business."

Says Rachael Ray's Balaban: "This is when it really counts to have good product and smart programs--building a base of smart programs that are unique to our brand and compelling enough to advertisers that makes them feel they're getting so much value with their dollars. "

Says Tom Morrissy, OK!'s publisher: "Those who have strong programs in place and are strong brands will do fine. It just won't be one of those years where everyone is breaking open champagne bottles."

Popular Mechanics' Congdon observes that good programs have a way of rooting out ad dollars. "It's not so much that ad budgets are totally cut. Advertisers are just being cautious. But if you keep going in and keep bringing fresh ideas, they'll still have that money."

Valerie Salembier, publisher of Harper's Bazaar, says it's also about being where your competitors are not.

"Things are tough, but they've been tough before and all of these magazines continue to publish and last and endure," she says.

"In terms of selling advertising, it is back to basics 101. Get out there and make the calls. You don't get ads by sitting behind your desk on the phone, you get them sitting at your client's desk.

Claudia Malley, vice president and U.S. publisher of National Geographic, says it's also about being able to stand apart from your competitors, and a big part of that is reader engagement, which she says resonates with marketers.

"Integration will be a key. Those brands who can differentiate by being a brand leader and then have communication with consumers across all media will be the ones that succeed."

Is Digital Marketing Killing Magazine Ads?
2008-07-14T11:20:00.001-04:00

Is Digital Marketing Killing Magazine Ads?
BY Jason Baer

A report last week by the Publishers Information Bureau found that advertising pages in the nation’s magazines declined by 7.4% compared to the first half of 2007.

With the stock market down by about 20%, and house prices down at least that much in some parts of the country, a 7% dip in magazine ads may seem less frightening than the prospect that Angelina Jolie will somehow end up being mother to all of the world’s children.

However, there are two inexorable trends in marketing right now and neither bode well for magazines mid or long-term. The economy will rebound at some point, but even when that happens, will magazines recoup their share of the advertising pie? In general, I think not.

First, marketing is increasingly about measurability, and on that front magazines score no better than any other “traditional advertising” tactic like TV, radio, or newspaper. I would put magazines ahead of outdoor on that scale, because at least they have audited circulation. But how does the savvy marketing director (or agency media buyer) determine the financial impact and ROI of magazine? Short of tracking URLs and phone numbers (which basically pass the measurement buck off to another medium), it’s pretty difficult to isolate the effect of a magazine buy - which is why digital marketing is growing and everything else is stagnating in this down economy.

The second issue for magazines is speed. The lead times required by monthly magazines for advertising and editorial are positively anachronistic. Consumer magazines are working on their October issues right now. Seriously? By October, Brett Favre could be playing quarterback for the Bears, and all of California could be on fire. In these uncertain times, committing to expensive magazine ads 90 days in advance seems like a leap of faith that fewer advertisers are willing to make.

And speaking of speed, magazines without an especially sharp editorial focus and solid reporting are going to have a tough time in a culture where information is conveyed in 160-character bites RIGHT NOW. Interestingly, some of the magazines showing the biggest decline in ad pages this year are those who cover topics that are perhaps covered better online by sites and blogs.

Blender (-23.5%). See www.pitchforkmedia.com, last.fm

Business Week (-14.8%) See www.thestreet.com, www.cnbc.com, www.businessweek.com

PC Magazine (-35.8%) See www.gizmodo.com, www.cnet.com

Newsweek (-22.4%) Time (-21.1%) and U.S. News (-30.3%) See www.huffingtonpost.com, www.nytimes.com, and Twitter, where thousands of people are discussing current events as they happen, not a week later.

Interestingly, one area of magazine-ville that showed consistent gains was food publications. With gas and food prices soaring, Americans are eating out less and trying to craft delicious meals at home. I’m not sure this trend is going to do anything about the obesity problem, however, as Cooking with Paul Deen ad pages were up 31%. That lady is physically incapable of executing recipes without at least one pound of sour cream.

Media Survival: Avoid Obsolescence

2008-07-10T14:36:00.000-04:00

Media Survival: Avoid Obsolescence
by Diane Mermigas
http://www.mediapost.com/blogs/on_media/index.php?p=210

Obsolescence is a word that sends chills down the spines of most corporate executives. It also is something we are going to see more of as sweeping changes in digital technology, fuel prices and financial fundamentals disrupt and displace the norms.

This trend is starkly evident at U.S. automakers struggling with car sales at a 10-year lows, and most particularly General Motors, whose stock is trading at 50-year lows. At the core of these troubling trends is a dramatic, swift shift in consumer demand caused by the oil crisis. Detroit automakers are still selling the SUVs and minivans that consumers wanted when gasoline was selling at $2.50 a gallon, but have quickly shunned at $4-plus per gallon.

The knee-jerk response of production plant closings, massive layoffs and other cost reductions do not get to the heart of the problem. GM and other U.S. automakers must unload their existing inventories of gas-guzzling vehicles and completely revamp their operations and infrastructure to accommodate demand for new products. Liquidity is a big issue, as is the ability to revise existing cost structures and union contracts without resorting to bankruptcy. Since none of this can be accomplished overnight, there is going to be transitional pain. They simply cannot shift gears fast enough. For proof, look no further than the financial and logistic nightmare haunting domestic airlines.

Media companies - in particular, broadcasters, cable operators and content creators - must take heed, too. They could be confronted by a similar obsolescence that renders their assets and operations with shrinking value and flexibility. The marketplace's pervasive digital conversion is well ahead of where most traditional media players need to be. There are many instances where their products, services and business models are no longer what technology-empowered consumers want. These companies' public values, balance sheet stability and cash reserves are in decline.

They can't generate new digital revenues fast enough to offset the decline in traditional revenues due to an inability to reform their inefficient legacy structures. They also are limited in their ability to raise capital. Media companies of all stripes have seen their valuations tumble, not just because of the overall stock market malaise. Their revenue and earnings forecasts are being thrown off by massive shifts in content distribution, services and the general flow of money. It is challenging to value new interactive connections between target consumers with the most relevant advertisers and content, much less redefine the value of entire companies.

The parallels to the auto industry are disturbing. GM's market cap has fallen to $6 billion, compared with foreign-based Toyota at $147 billion. CBS is treading a $13 billion market cap compared with Google's low-end $169 billion valuation. New business models, methods and markets are both creating and destroying value.

The media sector where this is most painfully evident is newspapers, which are sustaining record double-digit declines in annual advertising revenues and even some operating margins. The entertainment and broadcasting sectors collectively are down 25% from the first half of 2007, based on soft advertising trends in a worsening economic environment and local markets "more exposed to recessionary trends and lower digital penetration," according to Lehman Brothers analyst Vijay Jayant. All media and telecom (67 stocks in 14 subsectors) were collectively down -15.5% from a year earlier, underperforming the S&P 500 (down 12.8%) the first half of 2008.

However, there will be even more dramatic structural and fiscal fallout evident for some broadcasters when there is no election or Olympic year ad spending in 2009. Local TV broadcasters will be confronted by what veteran analyst and consultant Tom Wolzien has described as the $16 billion challenge, or the growing gap between their primary channel and total revenue goals based on mining digital opportunities.

Wolzien made the point during a TVB presentation that local broadcasters - like their affiliated broadcast networks - will need to do more than shift some of their TV programming and ads online. He made the point using 2006 newspaper statistics. Although newspapers collectively sold $2.7 billion in Web advertising, up 31%, overall newspaper industry growth based on all revenues sources was flat.

In other words, for the beleaguered newspaper industry to post even just 5% returns, it needed for its online sales to rise an estimated 161%. Not all revenues are made equal, especially when priced differently and held up against legacy operating expenses that can only be permanently reduced through a complete embrace of e-publishing models - akin to GM shifting from SUV to hybrid car manufacturing.

On the broadcast front, Borrell Associates estimates that local TV station Web revenues will grow 48% this year to top $1 billion, and grow to an estimated $1.4 billion in 2009. However, analysts point out that online revenues still represent 5% or less of TV stations' overall revenues and generally will not completely offset lost or declining revenues especially in non-election years. The only way to secure more significant, permanent growing new revenues and profits is to structurally alter the local TV broadcast business. It is a tactical overhaul that TV broadcasters - like car manufacturers - must squarely confront and execute to achieve lasting change and a path to survival.

E-editions are gaining ground in the mainstream market.

2008-07-06T17:39:00.000-04:00

E-editions are gaining ground in the mainstream market.
By Gretchen A. Peck
http://www.pubexec.com/story/story.bsp?sid=110154&var=story

This spring, Barnes & Noble announced that it would offer both print publications and digital editions of more than 1,000 magazine titles to visitors of BN.com. The e-editions will be fulfilled by Barnes & Noble partner Zinio. Indeed, it’s just one more indication that, despite some debate on their future, digital editions are becoming a viable alternative to print for a growing number of readers.

Cambridge, Mass.-based The Gilbane Group recently published a study, “Digital Magazine and Newspaper Editions: Growth, Trends, and Best Practices,” showing that the number of business-to-business publications offering digital editions increased by more than 300 percent in a two-year span (2005 to 2007), and the number of consumer publications offering digital editions has increased by more than 200 percent.

For publishers, clear economic and environmental benefits exist: Digital editions don’t kill trees, and the cost to produce a digital edition is much less than a printed publication.

Beyond the environmental and economic considerations, many publishers also have found digital editions to be an effective medium for enhancing the editorial and advertising experience with the use of rich media.

Today, even businesses that have for generations been dedicated to printing publications are looking at digital distribution as a new way to serve publishing clients. For example, Brown Printing Co.—one of the nation’s largest magazine printers—announced that it would assist publishers with their digital publications by partnering with iMirus Digital Solutions, the e-edition division owned by parent company Riggs Heinrich Media Inc. Many other printers are now offering digital-publication services to their publishers as well.

Digital editions also can be an effective way for publishers to expand into new markets, and increase their circulations without the additional printing and mailing costs.

It was the opportunity to launch a new global title that prompted the publisher of Recycling Today to venture into e-editions. The global edition of the magazine debuted in April exclusively as an e-edition, with the help of Advanced Publishing Corp.

“We are extending an existing North American title into a global market position,” explains James R. Keefe, executive vice president and group publisher, GIE Media, which publishes Recycling Today. “The launch of the new product, which is different from a content perspective, was easier to achieve in an electronic format, as delivery to a reader base around the world is more reliable and immediate. Therefore, the distribution issue becomes much easier to solve. As well, the platform we selected allows a lot of powerful multimedia and interactive applications.”

The monthly, controlled-circulation title already has 30,000 subscribers, but with reader feedback already very positive, Keefe expects continued circulation growth.

Digital editions are also proving to be a valuable strategy for publishers looking to breathe new life into previously published issues. For example, Wenner Media contracted Bondi Digital Publishing to convert Rolling Stone’s entire printed history into digital format and republish it as a searchable DVD, “Rolling Stone Cover-to-Cover: The First 40 Years.”

Whether the mass market will adopt digital editions as their preferred format for reading magazines in the future remains to be seen—and debated by industry pundits. But with recent triple-digit growth rates and one of the nation’s largest magazine retailers giving space to e-editions on its Web site, the future certainly seems promising for the digital magazine.

Solutions on the Market
As the number of publishers providing digital editions of their publications has grown, so has the number of digital editions solutions providers. Today, publishers have their choice of a wide range of products and services to fit their and their readers’ expectations for a digital publication. Here are a number of today’s top solutions on the market. Many printers of all sizes—such as Publishers Press, RR Donnelley and Sheridan Magazine Services—also now offer solutions to help publishers provide digital editions of their publications (but are not listed here). Many of these solutions are available to non-customers, so they may be worth investigating in your search for the best solution for your needs.

Advanced Publishing Corp.
Solution/Service: RIDE (Rich Interactive Digital Edition) is designed to enable publishers to create digital publications based on Microsoft’s award-winning Silverlight platform. Publications are fully searchable and may be complemented with rich media features. A secure subscription system is provided. Publishers also have access to real-time reports on pages viewed, time spent, click-thrus and more. Advanced Publishing digital-edition service includes conversion, hosting, subscriber access management, customized registration and data capture, e-mail notification delivery, BPA/ABC audit assistance, cross-publication search, archive issues access, and added capabilities for online ads, sponsorships, online video and more.
Pricing: All-inclusive, consisting of a one-time setup fee and a per-page fee based on the number of magazines and the overall volume of pages. For paid consumer magazines, it may also include a per-subscriber fee for each issue.
Magazine customers include: Composites Manufacturing; International Figure Skating; Vertical Magazine; GIE Media Inc.; Western Design & Interiors; Madavor Media LLC
Contact: (866) 785-4400, AdvancedPublishing.com

alQemy
Solution/Service: alQemy is an Adobe Partner that pioneered the first interactive PDF magazine and catalog format with the launch of Magazooms. Today, all digital editions are built in Adobe Flash format, transformed using the company’s Internet-based Flash application and hosted on alQemy servers. Publishers also can present their e-editions, including archives, on their own Web sites via customizable portals, and have access to content feeds to supply their Web sites and RSS feeds with articles from their Magazooms publications. Magazooms offers a “Search and Save” feature, which enables users to conduct global cross-issue searches and save resulting pages to the desktop as a new, customized PDF. AlQemy has announced plans to offer special Magazooms versions for the Apple iPhone.
Pricing: Available as a Free Basic Service, which includes conversion and hosting to qualified publishers (some restrictions apply), or a Full Feature Service, based on cost-per-page with enhanced options such as video insertions, custom hyperlinks, reader graphs and analytics with reader maps, customizable Web portals, shopping-enabled pages and an integrated Shopping Cart.
Magazine customers include: Electronic Retailer; Online Strategies; Dog Fancy; Freshwater and Marine Aquarium; Texas RV Park and Travel Guide
Contact: (864) 284-9918, Magazooms.com

BlueToad Inc.
Solution/Service: BlueToad’s page-flip technology is designed to enable publishers to create and deploy an enhanced online version of print publications. Publishers can upload and convert print files to create a one-of-a-kind online publication with streaming audio and video, and as many as 20 direct Web links per page. Publishers can put a publication on BlueToad’s Web site, or distribute it from their own sites with a BlueToad Icon and a self-contained, online viewing system.
Pricing: No fees for setup, and no contracts required. Pricing is based on a per-page fee, which may be as little as $2.
Magazine customers include: Not available for publication.
Contact: (407) 992-8744, BlueToad.com/publisher

Bondi Digital Publishing
Solution/Service: Bondi Digital Publishing designs, creates and publishes complete print-magazine-archive box sets in searchable digital editions.
Pricing: Not provided.
Magazine customers include: The New Yorker; Playboy Enterprises; Wenner Media
Contact: (212) 405-1655, BondiDigital.com

Content Data Solutions, a div. of Thomas Publishing Co.
Solution/Service: Content DSI converts print-ready publication files into digital replicas that are searchable by keyword or full text, and can include live links, and statistical reporting on editorial content and advertising. Content Data Solutions can also host digital publications on the publisher’s behalf.
Pricing: Not provided.
Magazine customers include: Not available for publication.
Contact: (800) 872-2828, ContentDSI.com

DMC Inc.
Solution/Service: EditionDuo enables publishers to create digital replicas of print publications, enhanced with rich media, and stored and hosted by DMG. Publishers can present the publications on their Web sites; animated GIFs can be sent to subscribers via e-mail; or publishers can distribute a Flash file of the e-edition via removable media. Accessed via standard Web browsers. Among EditionDuo’s features: simple text feeds (an Article Link will open a text version of the article in a new window); article translation; link building through bookmark sites such as Digg, del.icio.us, Google and more; article commenting; and an Adverts Menu, which acts as a table of contents for all of the publication’s advertising features. Links can direct readers to advertisers’ specific Web landing pages. Reader activity is tracked and reported.
Pricing: $229 setup fee plus $3 per-page fee. $0.50 per page for removing all EditionDuo branding (optional). Additional charges include $35 for an animated GIF, and $95 for a compiled Flash file.
Magazine customers include: Golf Georgia; Grape Anticipation; I Do for Brides; Clemson University; Designs Direct Publishing
Contact: (770) 992-5078, EditionDuo.com

Dirxion
Solution/Service: Dirxion’s solution replicates printed publications, and supports restricted or open access. Standard features include: database-driven searches (by keyword, phrase and category); banner ad space; hot links to Web sites and e-mail addresses; customized table of contents; “sticky” notes; cross-reference links; Flash ads; audio/video linking; usage tracking and reporting; and support for multiple languages.
Pricing: Not provided.
Magazine customers include: PennWell; Harrison Group
Contact: (888) 391-0202, Dirxion.com

E-Book Systems Inc.
Solution/Service: E-Book Systems’ FlipBook Publishing System’s Digital Flip technology is designed to replicate the page-flipping experience. With FlipBook Creator, a Wizard-based program, online magazines can be enhanced with video, animations, music, embedded links and search functions.
Pricing: Not provided.
Magazine customers include: FHM; Primedia; MediaCorp
Contact: (408) 625-8000, FlipViewer.com

iMirus, a div. of Riggs Heinrich Media Inc.
Solution/Service: iMirus enables publishers to create digital editions—online or downloadable—of their print titles. The iMirus Reader may be customized to match the publisher’s branding and deployed via the publisher’s site (no software download is required), or served up as a client application for readers who wish to download a publication “to go.” iMirus also provides advertising and marketing programs, including banner ads, sponsorship programs, custom-published content, and sales of the outside front cover of the e-edition.
Pricing: iMirus operates as a “software as a service” model. Pricing is based on a package, which includes all services, or a la carte, which start at as low as $600 (including hosting).
Magazine customers include: Business Traveler; NWA World Traveler; Dental Economics; Rhode Island Monthly; Giant
Contact: (918) 492-0660, Imirus.com

NewsStand Corp.
Solution/Service: NewsStand takes a consultative approach to developing solutions for publishers of magazines, books, newspapers and more. NewsStand’s services and solutions include archiving, content management and repurposing, electronic editions, subscriber management and custom publishing. In addition to its public-facing NewsStand.com site, the company also works with b-to-b and corporate publishers to develop e-editions and Intranet-based content portals, enabling more robust advertiser-publisher programs.
Pricing: NewsStand.com’s e-editions are created based on flat fees dependent upon circulation. For pricing of other services, contact NewsStand.
Magazine customers include: Barron’s; Harvard Business Review; Laptop Magazine; Flight International; Nature Publishing
Contact: (866) 837-4567, NewsStand.com

Nxtbook Media
Solution/Service: Nxtbook Media’s e-edition solution features include: bookmarks and page notation; word searches (current issue and archival); “forward content to a friend” capabilities; hyperlinks and e-mail links; and permalinks. The e-edition may be enriched with toolbar ads and sponsorship programs; Flash ads; audio and video ads; gatefolds, bellybands and inserts; and Gravicon surveys. Reader behavior is also tracked.
Pricing: Not provided.
Magazine customers include: Advanstar Communications; Reed Business Information; Weaver Official Publications; EContent Magazine; Primedia
Contact: (866) 268-1219, NXTBookmedia.com

Olive Software
Solution/Service: Olive Software is designed to create exact print replicas, through a centralized data-storage system and a single workflow, and to enable publishers to use the software to produce and host the digital edition—or, via its outsourced model, have Olive produce and host the title.
Pricing: Not provided.
Magazine customers include: Time Inc.; ESPN; Reed Business Information; Hearst Business Media; Newport
Communications
Contact: (866) 654-8387, OliveSoftware.com

PageSuite Ltd.
Solution/Service: PageSuite is an online, interactive, page-turning software application that enables publications to be presented in a digital edition deployed via the Internet.
Pricing: From $500; depends on page count and frequency.
Magazine customers include: Condé Nast; Cambridge Style; City Living; Working Mother; Clarity Media Group
Contact: Info@PageSuite.co.uk, PageSuite.co.uk

Pressmart Media Ltd.
Solution/Service: Pressmart converts publishers’ digital prepress pages into digital editions, using a patent-pending technology, and delivers them via the Web, mobile, podcasts, RSS feeds, social networks and content-aggregation services. Publications are promoted to subscribers via Pressmart.net, as well as by online advertising, new-edition notifications, news alerts and e-mail campaigns. E-editions are pre-
integrated with social-networking sites and content-
aggregation services, and are search-engine ready.
Pricing: Not provided. No upfront investment; fees based on a per-page rate.
Magazine customers include: Not available for publication.
Contact: (212) 351-5090, Pressmart.net/eedition.html

Qiosk.com
Solution/Service: Qmags’ electronic issues, delivered via the Internet, can be exact copies of the printed magazines, or digital publications created with the QuVu format, which enables the publication to fit readers’ computer screens, requiring no page manipulation. E-magazines can be enhanced with audio and video, hyperlinks and electronic search capabilities.
Pricing: Not provided.
Magazine customers include: Animation Magazine; Armchair General Magazine; Computer Magazine; IEEE Security & Privacy; Waste Management World
Contact: (212) 947-6050, ext. 11, Qmags.com

Texterity
Solution/Service: Texterity converts publishers’ titles into the Published Web Format (PWF) from PDF files. PWF replicates page-turning, and enables cover wraps, bellybands, etc., to be transformed into overlays, pop-ups or animation. Buyers’ response cards appear as blow-ins (layered on the publication), and direct readers to specific advertiser locations. Texterity’s Lead Management System enables publishers and advertisers to offer premium content, such as white papers, within the digital edition, prompting readers to opt-in. PWF reader reports may also be used for BPA and ABC circulation statements.
Pricing: Not provided. Costs include a per-page conversion fee; a monthly maintenance fee for document hosting with customer-branded URL, search engine visibility, archive issues, and availability across all platforms without a plug-in or application (Windows PC, Macintosh, and iPod Touch or iPhone), among others; and a delivery fee. Other services also are available.
Magazine customers include: Make Magazine; Game Developer; Internal Auditor
Contact: (508) 804-3000, Texterity.com

YUDU Media
Solution/Service: YUDU Publishing Pro features include video, audio and Flash file insertion; a digital rights management system; contextual and archival search; bookmarking and notations; advertising components, such as tabs, gatefolds and bellybands; statistics capture; and more. It offers crisp vector text (which eliminates pixelation) and infinite zoom.
Pricing: Not provided.
Magazine customers include: Not available for publication.
Contact: (888) FOR-YUDU, Yudu.com

Zendition
Solution/Service: Zendition’s a base model application is designed to enable page flipping, print capabilities, search functions, zoom, table of contents and more. Add-on modules include audio, video, pop-ups, back-end integration, BPA auditing, and registration and user tracking.
Pricing: Not provided.
Magazine customers include: Strategy & Business; Relix; Global Rhythm; Trader Monthly; Corporate Leader
Contact: (646) 278-0621, Zendition.com

Zinio LLC
Solution/Service: Zinio’s Publisher Growth Services Group collaborates with publishes to help integrate and tailor online marketing programs to a publisher’s circulation, ad sales, brand extension or other audience-building goals.
Pricing: Not provided.
Magazine customers include: Primedia; Reader’s Digest; VNU (now Nielsen); Disney; The Hearst Corp.; Rodale; National Geographic; TV Guide
Contact: Zinio.com/publishers

Zmags Inc.
Solution/Service: Zmags Publicator is designed for creating and editing electronic versions of print publications. It is designed to enable creation of e-editions in as few as five minutes, on average. The solution is Web-based, requiring no software downloads. Available in two levels—PublicatorExpress and PublicatorPro. PublicatorPro also features advanced editing; archives management; high-resolution zooming; advanced analytics; and automatic linking to internal and external sources.
Pricing: Starting at $45/month per publication.
Magazine customers include: Not available for publication.
Contact: (613) 627-4101, Zmags.com PE

Gretchen A. Peck is a freelance author who writes about the international printing and publishing industries.

Will Print Die? Not Today.

2008-07-01T12:15:00.000-04:00

Will Print Die? Not Today.
Noelle Skodzinski
Editor-In-Chief
Publishing Executive Magazine
http://www.pubexec.com/

In his column on page 42 [seePart 1 in today's Newsletter], columnist Bob Sacks writes: "The only thing holding [digital magazine editions] back presently is a perfect substrate." That's sort of like saying, "The only thing holding me back from a fabulous singing career is my voice."

The key to any new medium seems to be the benefit to the user. When cassette tapes came out, I never wondered whether they would replace vinyl. Cassettes wouldn't scratch, they took up less space, and you could play them in the car.

When CDs came out, did anyone wonder whether they would replace cassettes? CDs didn't get "eaten" or melt in the sun, and you didn't have to fast forward to find the beginning of the next song.

Then came the iPod-it's teensy-tiny, it won't scratch or melt, it's easy and inexpensive to download music, and it can do many things a CD, cassette or record can't. With each new medium, the benefits to the music fan increased dramatically.

But e-books' and digital editions' future is under debate. Will they be the future? Bob Sacks says yes. Many disagree.

E-editions and e-books do save on space. But are books or magazines really that cumbersome compared to laptops or even e-readers? How often do most people carry them around anyway, and particularly several at once? Students, along with frequent travelers (who Sony initially targeted with its Reader), may be the exception. Are print pages difficult or time-
consuming to flip? Print publications are already quite cheap and convenient (delivered to your door).

But there are benefits: archives and searches available with many digital editions; rich media enhancements and live links; timeliness-you can eliminate printing and distribution time. But what about magazines where time isn't a factor? As Alex Brown points out in her "Master Manufacturer" column (page 18), some magazines are meant to be in print, some are not.

Saving trees is a growing consumer priority and may be a significant contributor to wider-scale adoption of e-magazines.

But at this point, most benefits are to the publisher-saving on manufacturing and distribution costs, which publishers are striving desperately to tame. This is pushing publishers to push digital editions. Is that in the consumers' best interest?

Digital editions are being adopted in growing numbers (see "Digital Editions' Growth Spurt," page 33). For others, reading for pleasure on a computer screen at home isn't appealing. Sacks even acknowledges this.

But, he writes, "The future is here now," with the Sony Reader, Amazon Kindle and other e-readers. The price of e-readers will likely come down. And, as Sacks notes, "These devices will not go away, but rather will only get better and more advanced at what they do-distribute content."

Will screenagers be the tipping point? Maybe. They want the latest gadgets and are used to reading on screens. But they also are used to reading in bytes. So the question may not be whether they'll read a book or magazine in print or digital form, but whether they'll read them at all in their current format.

You should offer a digital edition if your readers want it. Should you offer only digital editions? Sacks writes, "By 2025, e-paper devices will be the predominant way in which people read. And they will most likely be reading some formulation of digital-edition technology." That's 17 years away, so you've got some time, even by BoSacks' standards.

E-paper-if developed to truly mimic real paper, and to be cost-effective and benefit-driven-seems a promising alternative to paper. But I can't help but be reminded of the fact that the first e-book was created more than 60 years ago, and people have predicted the death of print since at least the '60s. Marshall McLuhan, an English professor, media analyst and book author, predicted print's demise 46 years ago.

In 1999, Princeton University history professor Robert Darnton wrote in the New York Review of Books: "Marshall McLuhan's future has not happened. . . . The electronic age did not drive the printed word into extinction . . . . . . . We have heard that prophecy repeated ever since the first e-book, a clunking monstrosity known as Memex, was designed in 1945. By now, the conventional book has been pronounced dead so often that we shouldn't be surprised to find that it seems in excellent health."

The media world is changing-no denying that. Readers' habits are changing. Business models are changing, and online media empires are being built as we speak. But will print die? Not today.

BoSacks Replied thusly on the Web Site
That was a brilliant and wonderful treatment and overview of the "current" publishing situation. Key emphasis is on the word current. The technology and the sociology is changing faster than anyone can possible keep up with, and yet I try to do so. Our researchers at Media-Ideas.net continue to focus on emerging technologies, and they have forecast some interesting data and reading utilization curves. Predicting that an event will happen and concurrently predicting when it will happen are two different sets of prescience. 600 years ago Leonardo Da Vinci forecast and actually designed, the tank, the car, the automatic transmission, hydraulic pumps, reversible crank mechanisms, several flying machines, including a helicopter, a light hang glider, and the parachute. He wasn't wrong. But the "current technology wasn't up to the task and his vision.

Today, for publishers, the technology is not in some far off distant future, but present and on sale right now. Each month there are new and improved additions to the ereading marketplace.
At the next Publishers Executive meeting let us forget about inviting Samir Husni. I would be delighted to debate you in his place on this very subject. It would be fun and informative for everyone. You represent the hopes and the real fears of the editor in us all, while I represent . . . well something else.

Th-Th-Th-That's All, Folks! No More Talk of Media End-Times Yeah

2008-06-26T07:54:00.001-04:00

Th-Th-Th-That's All, Folks! No More Talk of Media End-Times Yeah, the Sky Is Falling. But It's Time to Stop Mourning the Demise of the Golden Age of Easy Media Profits

By Simon Dumenco

http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=127893

In Medialand, the sky is falling, the sky is falling! No, really, it's totally falling, for real. Every last bit of it -- the sun, the stars, the clouds, the rainbows. And somebody (Google, I think) has even made off with the pots of gold that used to anchor those rainbows. 10 years: Google's anniversary is coming up in September.

We've been getting the news, in dribs and drabs, about the disintegration of traditional media models for how many years now? The chorus of death rattles -- all that gruesome gurgling and gasping! -- is getting to me. So I propose a moratorium: Let's stop obsessing about the lost golden age of easy media profits and just get on with inventing the media future (which will, let's face it, involve lower margins for just about everybody -- except Google!). I'll go first. I'm going to do my best, from now on, to stop writing about any of the following Top 10 Media Death Memes. Wish me luck.

The end of Madison Avenue hegemony. Thanks, Sergey and Larry! (By the way, did you realize the 10-year anniversary of Google is this September? That's right, 10 years ago today, there was no Google Inc. AMC should make a "Mad Men" spinoff about how sexy and awesome things were in the summer of 1998!) The end of (duh) newspapers. Honestly, I can barely stand to read Jim Romenesko's journalism-industry blog anymore because it's like reading the obits.

Actually, the end of all print. Tip of the hat (of course) to Romenesko for giving big play to Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer's pronouncement (to The Washington Post) that "there will be no media consumption left in 10 years that is not delivered over an IP network. There will be no newspapers, no magazines that are delivered in paper form. Everything gets delivered in an electronic form."

The end of the album. The iPod forever trashed our musical attention spans, and no matter how much full-length album auteurs such as Radiohead expect that we'll listen to their Complete Works start to finish, life has become one big random mix tape.

The end of the rock star. Nobody will ever again sell 100 million copies of a record (like Michael Jackson did with "Thriller") or even 25 million (like Nirvana did with "Nevermind"). Ever. Ever ever! Rapper Lil Wayne sells a measly million records in a week and there's practically dancing in the (record-label) suites. With easy money no longer propping up rock-star lifestyles, what will we be left with? More multimedia moguls like Kanye West, for whom music making is just one part of the equation.

The end of broadcast TV. In the future, everybody gets their own on-demand, internet-delivered viewing experience with custom-tailored ad insertions (for when they're not watching the "American Idol" finale on Fox).

The end of media civility. Thanks, apparently, to bloggers. And blog commenters. And bad parenting. The end of journalism in general. Seriously, who's gonna bankroll the bulk of it once the newspaper industry collapses and network TV throws in the towel on the evening newscast? (Watch for CBS to go first, after Katie Couric's successor also sinks in the ratings.)

The end of objectivity. With the death of journalism and the rise of millions of pro and semi-pro opinionists on the web, in the future every media person will be an insufferable partisan.

The end of paid content, period. Wired Editor in Chief Chris "The Long Tail" Anderson has a book in the works that will expand on his recent cover story, "Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business." (Basically, nobody's going to pay for content anymore, so you have to give it away and figure out how to merchandise and monetize everything that surrounds the content.) Cue chorus of the Smiths' "Shoplifters of the World Unite."

Th-Th-Th-That's All, Folks! No More Talk of Media End-Times Yeah

2008-06-26T07:54:00.000-04:00

Th-Th-Th-That's All, Folks! No More Talk of Media End-Times Yeah, the Sky Is Falling. But It's Time to Stop Mourning the Demise of the Golden Age of Easy Media Profits

By Simon Dumenco

http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=127893

The end of objectivity. With the death of journalism and the rise of millions of pro and semi-pro opinionists on the web, in the future every media person will be an insufferable partisan.

8 simple rules for succeeding on the Web

2008-06-10T22:30:00.000-04:00

8 simple rules for succeeding on the Web
Commentary: Magazines should find opportunities, not obstacles
By Jon Friedman, MarketWatch
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/

Magazines are squandering a golden opportunity.
That was my message last week when I spoke at the annual meeting of City and Regional Magazines here in this charming city on the banks of the Mississippi River. In fact, many media folks beyond magazine editors are blowing it.

I encountered magazine editors and publishers who bemoaned the state of publishing today. Advertising is down. Circulation remains stagnant. Costs are rising. It's impossible to fully embrace the Web.

Huh? Give me that last one again.

Here's a rundown of their gripes:

Their writers don't want to write exclusively for the Web because it isn't as glamorous as a glossy magazine.
They have a hard time devising easy-to-navigate sites.
Their publishers won't commit funds to the Internet business.
They don't know what kind of content to publish on their sites.

Hogwash. There is no excuse for magazine editors and publishers to be uneasy about the Internet. They talk as if it's some strange, exotic instrument that nobody quite understands.

Here are my eight simple rules to ensure success on the Internet:

Have an attitude. If you have a good time presenting the content on the Web, your audience will likely enjoy reading and using it.
Make it easy to read. It doesn't matter how much great stuff you pile on your site if people can't find it, don't know where to look or feel overwhelmed. Readers should be able to navigate your site easily.

Stress interactivity. The Web offers you an enormous opportunity to reach and keep readers as long as they feel part of your "Internet experience" (not to be confused with the Jimi Hendrix Experience). On the Internet, a person can read a story, watch a video, listen to an interview and, presumably, work up enough of a reaction to send a comment. Building a community of readers and customers is a big step toward success. Interactivity is the magic word.

Entertain. Know your audience. These are curious, busy, easily bored people. Don't be afraid to entertain them while you inform them. The Web shouldn't have the tone of the Nuremberg Trials, after all. People like to see creativity and wit. Heck, by now, the public all but demands originalityon the Web. Let them down at your peril. Reading a Web site should not be something akin to doing geometry homework.

Maintain an identity. Your site should stand for something and reflect the tone of your magazine. If your magazine is sarcastic, your site should be sarcastic. If you intend to come across as highly intellectual on newsstands, do the same on the Web.
Live in real time. Refresh your front page at least once an hour. Your readers exist in real time and so should your site's most important component -- or else you will look dated and inconsequential.

Be true. Accuracy is key. When you print an error, correct it as quickly as possible and make it clear to readers that you have done so. If a factual error appears in a magazine, it must stay there until an editor can print a correction in the following issue. The Web is more nimble.

Experiment. Don't make every single headline the same size or feature the same, endless black-print-on-white-page style. You have an opportunity to look different, as well as to present an alternative style of journalism to your readers.

Again, if you have fun creating a Web site, the readers will have fun. I promise.

Make Your Marketing Useful

2008-06-01T21:39:00.000-04:00

BoSacks Speaks Out: Jonah Bloom is spot on in this vent to the advertising/marketing industry. It is a retelling of a story I wrote about last year, but one worth revisiting. The concepts here are just as relevant for large publishers as they are for smaller publishers. Just as relevant to local magazines as to national titles. With a little creativity we can market ourselves with unique applications to reach our public in humane and genuinely appreciated ways.

"It is not what we read, but what we remember that makes us learned. It is not what we intend but what we do that makes us useful. And, it is not a few faint wishes but a lifelong struggle that makes us valiant." Henry Ward Beecher (Liberal US Congregational minister, 1813-1887)

Make Your Marketing Useful, Like Samsung and Charmin
Take a Small Chunk Out of Those Billion-Dollar Budgets and Help Provide a Free, Helpful Service
By Jonah Bloom

After about half an hour of staring at the space where a plane should've been, we're granted the announcement we knew was coming: The 3:30 p.m. out of LAX is now the 4:50 p.m., which we all know means it's really the 6-something p.m. There's a brief period of eye-rolling before everyone goes back to their business, which in my case means huddling with a dozen other worshippers around the Samsung totem pole to which our BlackBerries and laptops are attached.

If you have the misfortune to run the gauntlet of America's airports with any regularity, you're all too familiar with this scene and may even know the totem I'm referring to. It's an eight-foot, electrical charging station with a little shelf about halfway up its length where devices rest and recharge. It was Samsung that came up with the idea to pay for and install these life savers, hence having its brand name emblazoned on the side.

There are now more than 50 of them in both LAX and New York's JFK and a bunch in Dallas-Fort Worth, too. Earlier this month Samsung announced plans to bring them to LaGuardia and Orlando, where they'll undoubtedly be the most functional thing about two airports that vie for the title "grimmest travel hub" with Uzbekistan's Tashkent International Airport.

Do I think charging stations sell phones? Unlikely. But they're way more likely to leave me feeling affection for the brand than some mind-numbing airport billboard that has nothing to do with the frustration and boredom I'm experiencing. They're classic examples of marketing as service, a concept worthy of more attention and dollars than it's getting.

Marketing as service is where brands actually give consumers something they want or need. It's also been tagged "brand utility," while WPP's Bridge is giving it a slightly more altruistic, cause-centric slant and calling it "marketing with meaning."

One of my favorite examples came from Metro newspapers in the U.K., which spent some of its launch marketing budget repairing and improving inner-city sports facilities. It was a good way to get the Metro name emblazoned into the very fabric of the cities in question and a clever way to give the brand a bit of "history" within the city.

There are other examples: the oft-quoted Nike Plus and, just as brilliant, the Charmin restrooms in Times Square. But they're too few and far between. Drew Neisser, CEO of interactive shop Renegade, collects them on thedrewblog.com and is responsible for executing one such program, the HSBC BankCab, which ferries the bank's customers around New York free of charge. But he admits he hasn't been able to find that many and believes that's because "frankly, even if a few people talk about it, too few really get it."

My suggestions: AT&T, for example, how about you spare a few million from the billion you spend shoving your bars in my face, and help the MTA fix its Subway intercoms? Or Citi, how about you take some of the hundred million a year you spend telling us how friendly you are to construct a wireless network for New York? (Hell, I can even see an adaptation of the umbrella in your logo as a wireless signal.) BP, you really want to convince us you're green, how about putting together a borrow-a-bike system in a few U.S. cities, like the ones in Paris, Berlin and Munich?

Don't get me wrong. Consumer affection and interaction can be won through extremely entertaining advertising. But for brands who don't believe their mission in life is to entertain or have tried and repeatedly failed at that exercise, marketing-as-service offers an option that doesn't involve thrusting your mission statement in our faces every time we turn a corner.

2008-05-15T15:49:00.000-04:00

Coffee and the papers. Yes, papers
By Anita Diamant
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/12/opinion/eddiamant.php

Monday, May 12, 2008
For me, the morning begins with the newspapers, which arrive somewhere in the vicinity of my front door, every day of the week. This fact brands me as a bit of an anachronism, and certainly a demographic cliché: middle-aged, middle-class, blahblahblah.

According to a 2006 survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, only about 4 in 10 Americans get their news this way anymore, down by 18 percent since 1993, a trend that continues. I am not among the 57 percent who watch TV newscasts. And while I am glad to know that between 1993 and 2006 National Public Radio nearly doubled its audience from 9 to 17 percent, I will never quite forgive "All Things Considered" for what I swear was a 20-minute segment about Indian cooking that included a lingering sound-clip of garlic hissing in a frying pan.

I have friends who long ago canceled their hard-copy subscriptions and pick up the news from a laptop. My reluctance to join them has something to do with the fact that I already spend far too many hours staring at a screen. The computer is my work station, a place where I frequently pull at my hair and wish I could be somewhere else. The last thing I need is to start my day there, too.

I know that my morning newspaper is on its way into the museum, along with the model T and the whalebone corset, perhaps within my own lifetime. And while that prospect makes me a bit wistful, I am not convinced that the end of newsprint signals the death of literacy, reporting, language or civilization itself. The daily paper is, after all, only one of many news delivery systems. And some of the new systems are way cool.

Recently, I have taken to reading novels and works of nonfiction from the screen of an ebook - an electronic book - a paperback-sized, 10-ounce wonder that enables me to lightly lug a whole library in my carry-on luggage and to change the font size if I misplace my reading glasses. In the interest of full disclosure, you should know that I acquired this nifty little reading device as payola for taping an endorsement of the herein unnamed product. That said, I do love my new toy, which means I'm never stuck for reading material. Well, almost never.

I get all peevish when a title I want is not available in electronic form; what's the matter with that publisher, that writer? Are they quill-and-parchment Luddites? Get with the program already.

But when I settle into my airplane seat and fire up my ebook, I am one very chill Cheshire cat. The young man who sat beside me on recent flight admired it and asked if I worked in high tech. I glowed, feeling a good 20 years younger than I am, and precisely the sort of person who gets her news online, too.

And yet I cling to my paper. I'm biliterate, and proud. If I lost my ebook, I'd buy another. But cellulose is part of my morning ritual, a song-and-dance that starts when I open the front door to make sure it's been delivered. Will I need to put on shoes to retrieve it? Is an umbrella called for? Generally, I just sneak out in my robe and slippers, regardless of weather, studiously keeping my eyes on the ground, which makes me invisible to the kids walking past on their way to school.

Back at the kitchen table, I inhale the reviving aroma of coffee and open her up. First, I peruse the headlines and check in with the presidential campaign. But after that, it's pure chance what catches my attention. I flip through the sections: city, business, arts, sports. I wander and meander, finishing my grapefruit over a movie review. I pour a second cup and sigh about the situation in Israel, or Zimbabwe, or in a local public school. I glance at the ads and wonder who buys those "Sex for Life" books. I read all of the comics.

My husband wanders in and I say, "You've got to see this."

Anita Diamant's most recent novel is "The Last Days of Dogtown."

Print is not a burden, Useless drivel is the burden.

2008-05-08T22:34:00.000-04:00

BoSacks Speaks Out: Rex Hammock is one of my favorite bloggers. I picked up this rant today from his site. It covers a lot of ground worth discussing with a style and grace we should all emulate. Rex and I have e-chatted for years and he is a top shelf observationist.

"There is no lighter burden, nor more agreeable, than a pen"
Francesco Petrarch (Italian Scholar, Poet and Humanist, 1304-1374)

Print is not a burden.
Useless drivel is the burden.
So ignore this post.
Posted by Rex

Early this morning, there seemed to be a theme emerging in my RSS newsreader. Here are a few items that showed up:

Frank Anton of Hanley Wood, says:

"If the magazines published two or three years from now aren't different, we're in trouble. The current magazine model won't take us into the next five years, let alone the next 100 years."

Colin Crawford of IDG says:

" . . . being unburdened by print allowed the team at Infoworld the opportunity to focus on the changing needs of their customers and to develop online, event and mobile products."

Jeff Jarvis responding to Colin's post, says:

"Yes, print is a burden. It's expensive to produce for it. It's expensive to manufacture. It's expensive to deliver. It limits your space. It limits your timing. It's stale when it's fresh. It is one-size-fits-all and can't be adapted to the needs of each user. It comes with no ability to click for more. It has no search. It can't be forwarded. It has no archive. It kills trees. It uses energy. It usually brings unions. And you really should recycle it. Wow, when you think about it, print sucks.

So what was the theme? Print is a burden. Unfortunately, saying "print is a burden" implies that there are other options out there that are not burdens. Frankly, the web is a burden. Traveling to events IDG puts on is a burden. Trying to synch my phone and computer is a burden. As Scott Karp displayed in a post yesterday, trying to discover which among 2,000 different news stories on the same topic is a burden.

Despite my love (and I use the word love very deliberately) of the magazine medium, I have never been burdened by thinking print is a hammer and every communications or marketing challenge is a nail.

Granted, my company has published magazines since the day it opened 16 years ago. But even back then, we also created lots of "interactive multimedia" (published on CD-ROM). And in those pre-web days, we also managed "forums" on CompuServe. As a custom media creator, I've never felt "burdened" by any medium that helps build strong relationships between our clients (associations and companies) and their members or customers. If smoke signals would help forge and sustain those relationships, we'd be all over it.

Those who know me - even through this blog - know I personally agree with Jeff Jarvis on his somewhat satirical indictment of print. I'm about as paper-free as someone can get in their personal and business practices, but I'm no print vegan (did I just create a new buzzterm?). As Jeff is writing a book and writes for newspapers and magazines, it's not like he's a print vegan either. But my print aversion is neither "environmental" (as I always say , if paper is the cause of global warming, someone needs to share that inconvenient truth with this guy) nor based on any belief that print is inherently bad. What I find a burden is poorly designed, written and produced print. What I find a burden is the clutter and confusion print and paper often add to my already cluttered life.

Bottomline: Print is not the burden. My time is the burden. If you publish a beautiful magazine with articles that really matter to me - that instruct, inform or celebrate something I feel strongly about, it is no burden on me. If you help me get to the information and insight I need to live a fuller life or conduct business in a more flexible and productive way, your blogging and tweeting and bookmarking does not burden me. Useless, redundant, meaningless, re-shuffled drivel is the burden. It can be delivered via print or on a weblog or a mobile device. Crap is a burden no matter what the medium used to deliver it.

Condé Nast Eyes Eye-Tracking

2008-05-04T08:46:00.000-04:00

Condé Nast Eyes Eye-Tracking
By Jason Fell
http://www.foliomag.com/2008/cond-nast-eyes-eye-tracking-ads
Publisher to monitor effectiveness of ad campaigns; others wait on technology.
When the thought of "eye tracking" comes to mind, one may invariably picture some amalgamation of popular sci-fi flicks-the Matrix, Minority Report, Total Recall-with test subjects wearing cumbersome, Robocop-style headgear to trace eye and head movement.

Today, the clunky headgear has been replaced by cameras that are built into computer monitors. By collecting and analyzing data like "first gaze" and a person's vision path across a page or screen, publishers can use the information to help design covers, monitor the effectiveness of advertisements and help plan Web site redesigns-and they are beginning to do so. Condé Nast recently partnered with eye tracking service provider MediaAnalyzer to analyze the effectiveness of its clients' ads, especially for its long-term advertisers.

According to Scott McDonald, Condé Nast's senior vice president of marketing research, the partnership enables the company to offer "a unique value add to advertisers in our publications." Using MediaAnalyzer's methodology, he says, "helps our advertisers maximize their ROI and determine whether readers are engaged with their ads."

MediaAnalyzer's Web-based "AttentionTracking" technology tracks the path of eye movement while a print or online ad is being viewed. This, combined with a questionnaire, allows MediaAnalyzer to quantify the ads that leave the most lasting impressions. Or attempt to, anyway.

"In an increasingly competitive magazine market-with publishers fighting declining circulation numbers and a shift in ad dollars to other media-it is important that publishers continue to differentiate their products and offerings from the competition," says Charles Boyar, MediaAnalyzer's vice president of U.S. operations. "Research can help publishers create better-looking and more compelling magazines [and Web sites] and can aid them in helping their customers to create ad campaigns that will best address readers."

Are Other Publishers Buying It?

Despite some of the stated benefits, magazine publishers so far have been slow to buy into eye tracking technology, even online. So far, Condé Nast is MediaAnalyzer's only magazine client.

"Most of the eye tracking technology science is used for video and Web work," says veteran magazine consultant Bob Sacks. "When we start to get into digital editions, then the science becomes more meaningful and important, e-paper, eye tracking technology and a Web connection changes everything."

"When used appropriately, eye tracking studies have the most immediate impact for magazine publishers as they relate to Web sites," says Tim Kauffold, director of business development at Oneupweb, an integrated online marketing firm that provides eye tracking services. Kauffold says studies can cost as little as $4,000 or "well into six figures." Oneupweb does not have any magazine clients.

"The demands for user attention online are huge, and it's critical for sites to maximize all the opportunities they have to interact with their users," says Kauffold. "Poor navigation, cluttered content, and unnecessary confusion can force users away. This is a huge loss for publishers, especially in the relationship with their advertisers."

But as print magazines continue to see their business move online, Sacks says more publishers will start turning more to eye tracking services. "When we as publishers adapt to the next level of digital information distribution, and abandon a print-only mentality, we will have to use all the science and technology at our command," says Sacks. "Our use of eye tracking technology will grow as we do."

Google CEO Foresees Advertising, Technology Cozying Up

2008-04-30T22:08:00.000-04:00

Google CEO Foresees Advertising, Technology Cozying Up
by Laurie Sullivan
http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.san&s=81589&Nid=42154&p=204904

Look for the advertising and the technology industries to grow cozier in a move similar to one experienced by the financial industry during the 1970s.

That's when a set of scientists and mathematicians developed new metrics, and suddenly a generation of employees focused on analytics joined financial firms to maximize efficiencies and profits, Google chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt told attendees at the 90th annual American Association of Advertising Agencies Leadership Conference on Tuesday in Laguna Niguel, Calif.

"There is every reason to believe marketing will go through a similar transition--but the principles of marketing, which are around storytelling, entertainment, targeting and selling--will be augmented by analytical tools," Schmidt said.

The goal for Google is to develop technology that delivers actionable metrics, making it easier for advertisers and agencies to optimize and measure campaigns. More advertisers will have the tools to expand into multiple markets that can test consumer interest in products and services.

Take, for example, Cadillac's click-to-play video ads. The car manufacturer had its ad agency create 13 versions of an ad, testing them in multiple markets to gauge consumer impact and the correlation between viewing the ads and the actual sales. Chrysler allowed consumers to customize the Chrysler 300, but the carmaker did it as content to draw in consumer engagement.

Honda sponsored a concert. Google engineers built technology that allowed concertgoers to ask the band questions and get responses. Schmidt says these will become the defining models for advertisers over the next 10 or 20 years.

For Google, advertising nirvana occurs when the search giant can return the exact answer for each query, accompanied with one perfectly targeted ad. "Eventually, maybe what we can do is guarantee advertisers who pay us money--and this is my fantasy, the sale," Schmidt says. "If we can get to that level of that specificity, advertising will no longer be a marketing expense. It becomes a sales expense."

Schmidt also addressed the challenges of finding ways to compensate content producers and issues of finding advertising content on YouTube when the consumer does not have a specific destination in mind. He acknowledges that financial compensation from one minute of online content brings in much less than one minute on television, but says the solution should focus on creating more compelling and targeted ads that command higher rates.

Nearly 400 attendees signed up for the conference, which runs through today.

Vancouver's Magpie Magazine Gallery to close

2008-04-27T21:00:00.000-04:00

BoSacks Speaks Out: Here is an interesting story of a small eclectic magazine store going out of business. I thought that the response of the owner interesting and quite telling.

Such as this remark:
The effect of industry consolidation was to reduce competition. The way so many wholesalers competed with each other was to offer good terms and lengthy lists of titles including many low-circulation, specialized magazines. After consolidation, the remaining wholesalers learned to respect each other's turf, reducing competition more. They tightened up terms with retailers considerably. And they reduced their lists of titles by expelling the kind of low-circulation specialty magazines Magpie thrived on.

Well industry . . . What do you have to say to that? Decreased competition and a reduction of magazine titles. Is that the way for our continued sustainability and success? Or do you think it is a good thing for us to be at the mercy of Wal-Mart who at any moment can lop off another "unnecessary" printed 1,000 titles.

Business is a good game - lots of competition and a minimum of rules. You keep score with money.
Atari founder Nolan Bushnell

Vancouver's Magpie Magazine Gallery to close
http://canadianmags.blogspot.com/
Running a proper magazine store, one that reflects the owners' sensibilities and carries offbeat, quirky and hard-to-find titles is not an easy job and sometimes the job just gets too much. Hence, one of Vancouver's most engaging magazine stores, Magpie Magazine Gallery, is closing this Saturday after 15 years in business. The reasons given are sobering.According to a heartfelt tribute by Chad Christie in the Vancouver Sun and a personal note to his readers by Magpie owner Kevin Potvin, the store was done in by the usual suspects: Amazon, the internet, changing public tastes. As Christie put it:

It offered not the facade of intelligence -- a fake fireplace, decorative library ladders, a comfy "leather" chair -- but rather its own raw eccentricities.

Magpie was perhaps the only bookstore in the entire country that didn't play the same euro-centric classical music all day long. There, one could negotiate the sounds of Gracie Fields one minute and Public Enemy the next, Zhou Xuan and Madonna, Yma Sumac and Nine Inch Nails, Emmett Miller and Rodney Graham, among others.

Almost instantly Magpie became a community resource, the nexus of something new. In 2000 the owner of the store, Kevin Potvin, published a manifesto for the area in the Vancouver Courier entitled the "People's Republic of East Vancouver."

The article drew so much attention that I designed a logo for it, the merchandise of which -- stickers, magnets, T-shirts -- remained popular sale items to this day. Several local festivals and even realty brochures now refer to the area as such, and Potvin soon established the at times infamous Republic of East Vancouver newspaper, copies of which are subscribed to from all over the world.

Kevin Potvin, the Magpie's owner, writes in the current issue of The Republic of East Vancouver:

I am sad to be closing Magpie, but I'm very happy to have operated so long on this wonderful street bringing to residents of my community such a wide array of interesting magazines and good books. It was always a delight, and it remains one now.
Potvin says that changing public habits (staring off into space on the bus with ipods in their ears, rather than reading books, using laptops in coffee shops, staying home and surfing the web) were one of the blows. Another was the consolidation of the distribution industry.

Where once the store had magazine supply contracts with up to 42 wholesale distributors, today only three remain after a serious round of mergers, takeovers, consolidations and collapses.

The effect of industry consolidation was to reduce competition. The way so many wholesalers competed with each other was to offer good terms and lengthy lists of titles including many low-circulation, specialized magazines. After consolidation, the remaining wholesalers learned to respect each other's turf, reducing competition more. They tightened up terms with retailers considerably. And they reduced their lists of titles by expelling the kind of low-circulation specialty magazines Magpie thrived on. Just as supply of these types of magazines became harder, demand dropped as well, as particularly those readers who sought out specialized content were among the first to discover the internet as a source.... But there are things the periodical industry could have done had they perceived the changes in time and had they imagined solutions that were available.

For example, it is well-known in the magazine and newspaper businesses that the proceeds from sales of single copies at stores have never more than covered the accounting, collections, distribution and wasted copies costs of supplying stores. The only benefit to publishers of single copy sales in stores has always been the chance to attract new subscribers. The real business of periodicals is in advertising, a business that requires eyeballs at almost any cost.

Publishers could have perceived the same changes already sweeping the digital music business and switched their way of doing business by offering stores directly-shipped free copies of their products, sill with a cover price, with the stores responsible for paying for shipping only. The result for publishers would have been the same neutral cost they already accept by employing the lecherous distribution industry, but they would have helped create many more flourishing stores happy to make space to push sales of what would then be very high profit margin products. I wrote an article seven years ago for the leading magazine-industry magazine explaining this solution. The article was rejected. That magazine itself went out of business the following year due to the same pressures.
And, finally, it was finances that finished the quirky independent off:

Magpie itself had developed intractable business problems. Around 2000, after operating for six years and arriving, as expected, at a time to re-capitalize, the unexpected arrival on the scene of Chapters Bookstores, with its predatory schemes-successfully executed-to wipe out most independent bookstores, made it suddenly impossible for any remaining bookstores to negotiate ordinary business re-capitalization loans at banks. The only financing available was through credit cards. Rather than close after six years, I made the choice to take credit card money, the crack of financial markets.

Since then, the amount the store has paid in interest rates on credit cards is equal to almost two times the capital borrowed against them. Credit card interest rates, though at a period of historically very low Bank of Canada overnight borrowing rates, were such that Magpie had in seven years paid the borrowed capital back twice over and yet still owed the total amount again. Pleas for lower more reasonable rates fell on coldly deaf ears.

New Rules of Custom Publishing

2008-04-24T07:21:00.000-04:00

Hell, there are no rules here-- we're trying to accomplish something.
Thomas A. Edison (1847 - 1931)

New Rules of Custom Publishing - New Complimentary White Paper: Nine Strategies to Create a World-Class Content Marketing Company
Posted by Joe Pulizzi
http://blog.junta42.com/content_marketing_blog/2008/04/new-rules-of-cu.html

The web and a continuing modification of buyer behavior (among other things) have changed the rules of what most people call the "custom publishing" industry. Traditional custom publishers, who profit from the creation and execution of customized content solutions for clients, must understand the new rules of custom publishing in order to survive. To help, I put together this complimentary white paper titled: The New Rules of Custom Publishing: Nine Key Strategies for Creating a World-Class Content Marketing Company.
Although this white paper is clearly targeted for publishers, or the providers of content services for marketing professionals, there is tremendous value for both marketers and publishers. This is especially true, since it doesn't matter if you make your money off of publishing or not. We are all publishers . . . so we all need to understand what is going on in the marketing/publishing world in order to compete in it (with content).
Unfortunately, most custom publishers are still hanging on to older business models and, as such, are getting plowed down by those abiding by the new rules of custom publishing. That said, there is a huge opportunity for those organizations that do choose to adopt the new rules as part of their overall business strategy.
The nine strategies highlighted in "The New Rules of Custom Publishing" are:
Understand the Changes That Are Leading the Content Marketing Future - A comprehensive overview of the changes in technology, publishing and marketing that are driving the custom content revolution.
Be Active in Social Media: It's Mandatory for the Future of Custom Publishing - From blogs to LinkedIn to Facebook, the new landscape of social media is an essential part of any strategy.
Acquire Expertise in All Forms of Content - Forget about focusing on one custom product; these days publishers need to be masters (or access to expertise) of everything from print magazines to Webcasts.
Walk the Talk - Don't expect a client to have confidence in your expertise if your company is not its own best content marketer.
Position Yourself as Both a Marketing and a Publishing Expert - Only companies that understand - and work with - both sides of the business are going to thrive.
Have a Clear Value Proposition - At some point the custom publishing field will become glutted. What's going to differentiate your company from the masses?
Price Your Services According to What the Customer Values - From industry standards to client specifics, everything a company could need to know about pricing.
Value the Role of the Project Manager - No project is going to manage itself. Don't underestimate the importance of good oversight.
Use Questions, Not Answers: Five Steps to Closing the Deal - How to make the client knock on your door...
Download this complimentary white paper The New Rules of Custom Publishing: Nine Key Strategies for Creating a World-Class Content Marketing Company and take your content company into the new world of publishing. I hope you enjoy it!

Ad buying goes digital

2008-04-21T21:49:00.000-04:00

Ad buying goes digital
By Eric Pfanner
The International Herald Tribune
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/20/technology/ad21.php

For all the talk of "digital this" and "2.0 that," one part of the advertising world remains defiantly analog: the buying and selling of ad space and time in traditional media like television and print.

Eschewing online auctions and other digital-age transactional tools, owners of offline media and the agencies that allocate marketers' ad budgets often turn to an older negotiating forum: the bar.

There, over a beer, they can run through the available ad space in, say, a newspaper, and determine how much an advertiser is willing to pay. They can haggle over how much of a discount the advertiser should get, compared with the media owner's published ad rates. And, in some cases, they can decide how much of that discount should go back to the media-buying agency as part of its compensation for brokering the deal.

Advertisers sometimes complain about the lack of transparency in this arrangement, though media buyers say their clout helps them negotiate better deals than their clients would be able to strike otherwise.

Digital evangelists say there is greater clarity online, at least when marketers use systems like Google's AdWords, which places text advertisements alongside search results, using an online auction to allocate a keyword to the highest-bidding advertiser. Google has moved to extend its services to offline advertising in the United States, with agreements to sell newspaper, radio and some television spots.

Now an online media buying venture based in London is trying to do something similar in Britain. The firm, called MediaEquals, was set up by Martin Banbury, a marketing executive and entrepreneur, who described it as an "online stock exchange" for advertising.

The exchange allows media owners to list their available advertising space or time slots online; they can choose from a variety of pricing methods, including an auction system that allows agencies to bid competitively for the ad opportunities. Media buyers can go online and get a clear picture of what is available.

"When there's more transparency, people are able to spot greater value," Banbury said. "That opens up markets for additional trading."

Several media buying agencies said they would participate in the MediaEquals pilot. These agencies are eager for alternatives to Google, because its online auction system essentially cuts them out of the deal. MediaEquals, by contrast, keeps them in the loop; its system essentially moves the existing media buying process online.

"They aren't looking to replace the traditional buyer-seller relationship," said Jim Marshall, chairman of one of these agencies, the British unit of Starcom MediaVest, which is owned by Publicis Groupe.

MediaEquals plans to begin operating in a few weeks in Britain. If it succeeds, Banbury said, the goal is to expand the service to other markets, including Continental Europe and the United States.

Some media buyers are skeptical about the benefits of automating the process, noting that the planning of marketing campaigns has grown more complex, given the proliferation of new, digital media formats.

The biggest challenge for Banbury may be to persuade media owners to make attractive ad slots available on the system. MediaEquals is not the first online ad exchange, but previous initiatives have tended to focus on subprime advertising niches, like selling late-night space on cable television. A U.S. service, Bid4Spots, for example, allows radio advertisers to buy unsold radio air time.

Banbury said several media owners, including the magazine publishing arm of the British Broadcasting Corp. and the billboard owner CBS Outdoor, along with radio stations and newspapers, have agreed to join the system for the pilot program. Media owners will be charged a commission to sell their ads on MediaEquals.

"If I can get my inventory across more eyeballs, then I've got nothing to lose," said Matt Teeman, ad sales director at BBC Magazines. "The challenge will be to see how it can coexist alongside personal relationship. I don't think people will stop making phone calls or seeing each other in person."

New Research Into Why People Read

2008-04-17T21:56:00.000-04:00

New Research Into Why People Read
Posted by Tom Weber
http://blogs.wsj.com/buzzwatch/2008/04/15/habit-forming-blogs-new-research-into-why-people-read/?mod=WSJBlog

The question of what drives people to read blogs is a big one for traditional media losing time with their audiences to the Internet and companies looking to tap the Web for marketing. It's also of more than passing interest to bloggers themselves (including us here at Buzzwatch).
One view suggests that, with such a broad smorgasborg of blogs and posts to choose from, readers will only dine on the most compelling content. But some researchers who studied a group of blog readers say one factor may be unappreciated:
Habit.
When University of California at Irvine researchers delved into usage patterns, they found study participants who labeled their blog-reading time as "chilling out" and "doing nothing," with one describing his impulse to read blogs as similar to his cigarette habit. Another talked about following through on her blog-reading routine even when she wasn't interested in some of the content.
In other words, when it comes to some blog readers, keeping them may be much easier than getting them in the first place-a finding that suggests the importance of good marketing for blogs. The study, "Exploring the Role of the Reader in the Activity of Blogging," was presented last week at a conference on human factors in computing.
There are some caveats to the research-most notably, that the study examined just 15 blog readers. The researchers say their results point to areas worthy of bigger studies-and note how little academic research has been done on blog reading.
One interesting finding: the blog readers typically professed little stress about information overload in trying to keep up with their favorite blogs. When they got behind on reading posts, they just skipped the old ones. (Blogs apparently are not like the pile of New Yorker magazines you intend to get to-someday.)
We asked two of the study's authors, Eric Baumer and Bill Tomlinson, to answer a few questions. Mr. Baumer is a doctoral candidate at the University of California at Irvine. Mr. Tomlinson is an assistant professor there. Here's the interview:
Q: Your study suggests that regular blog readers are reading out of habit, rather than making content-oriented decisions about whether to read. Do you think blog reading is becoming more like TV viewing, to which some people devote hours while complaining that they can't find anything good to watch?
Mr. Baumer: While blog reading often becomes habitual, that does not mean it is not about the content. Motivations for reading are highly multifaceted, and while routine is one motivation, there are many others, including finding current news, fostering a personal connection with the blogger, fulfilling social obligations by reading a friend's blog, entertainment value, etc. While blog reading is often habitual, that habitual nature interacts with many other varied motivations.
With respect to the comparison with television, the form of the habitual activity is different from TV viewing. With few exceptions, TV limits the viewer to being a mostly passive participant; it is not a medium that facilitates much audience interaction. On the other hand, blogs enable interaction in a number of different forms: comments, email, trackbacks, etc. Thus, while blog reading might in part be habitual, those habits include interaction and engagement by the reader in a way not possible with television.
Q. People told you that they don't get stressed out if they're not up-to-date with their blog reading-which you point out is at odds with the pervasive notion of information overload. What are the implications? And does this ring true for you personally?
Mr. Baumer: In the paper, we actually reference a quote that describes the excessive amount of information available and that people will soon be completely overwhelmed by it; that quote is from 1613.
There are a number of important implications here. First of all, this rhetoric of information overload is not new, and is certainly not only a product of digital information technologies (keeping in mind that books are a sort of analog information technology).
Second, I think this finding helps to open up the design space in terms of tools to support blog reading. Rather than focusing on helping readers wade through a deluge of information content, one could envision tools that focus on the reader's relationship with the blogger or allowing more fluid, nuanced interactions between bloggers and readers.
Does it ring true personally? Yes. Shortly after I started reading blogs regularly, I gave up on trying to stay completely up to date, as it was a futile effort. When I have a chance, I'll skim through titles and maybe glance at some interesting looking posts, but I'm not trying to get to everything in my RSS feed reader.
Also, one of the biggest ways I find items of interest is through other people I know. If another student in our lab or a friend of mine finds something interesting, they're likely to share it. Lots of online sites, such as del.icio.us, are built around this idea of social filtering, but that sort of filtering happens through casual offline conversations, too.
Q. What are the signs that someone's own reading of blogs has become habitual? Also, you say that tools to raise self-awareness could be needed. What might those be, and what problems would they address?
Mr. Baumer: Habits aren't necessarily bad; reading the same blogs in the same order at the same time every day can help make it easier to remember which blogs one wants to read.
However, habits aren't necessarily good, either. Habitual reading can become potentially detrimental when people disengage mentally and don't think very critically about what they're reading. Many of our participants were reflective about why they read blogs, but not as reflective about how or what they read.
In terms of self-awareness, there is an interesting potential for tools that encourage critical thinking and reflection about what a person is reading. We want to encourage and enable people to ask questions about what is being said on the blogs they read, not just by the words themselves, but between and behind the words. Encouraging this sort of critical reflection may be an interesting and compelling way to make blog reading a more engaging experience.
Q. Your results are based on 15 respondents-all under age 40, and many of them bloggers themselves. What are the limitations of that sample?
Mr. Tomlinson: In the early stages of research into a topic, it's often helpful to begin with small qualitative studies such as this one in order to figure out the key issues. Quantitative studies with larger sample sizes are then useful for refining the understanding of these issues and developing statistical analyses of specific phenomena.
While the small sample size in this study does limit the generalizability of the findings (i.e., not everyone will have the same perspectives as the 15 people in this study), it nevertheless allowed us to go into much greater depth with each participant and develop a nuanced understanding of their way of approaching the blogs they read. This study has helped us to identify behaviors and perspectives for this particular group; further studies can then help see if these findings hold across broader samples and different communities.
Q. Many bloggers are obsessed with-and depend financially on-the size of their readership. What do you see as the most important takeaways from your results to bloggers? How might they be used to improve blogs?
Mr. Tomlinson: One of the most important lessons for bloggers from the study is that readers are heterogeneous - they're coming from different backgrounds, and have different expectations and motivations. Even among the participants in this study, there was a wide diversity of perspectives on several key issues.
Being aware of this heterogeneity in their readership can help bloggers think more carefully about the content they are providing, and how it will be perceived by their audiences. Blogs as a medium are highly varied and give rise to a broad range of interactions between bloggers and readers; understanding a bit more about the dynamics of these relationships was one of the core goals of this study.

Cheapskate Journalism

2008-04-15T22:50:00.000-04:00

Cheapskate Journalism
What went wrong at JRC
Posted by Alan Mutter
http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/

Teetering near default on a tower of debt and days from being booted off the Big Board, Journal Register Co. shows how strategic missteps and bad luck can imperil even as good a business as this highly profitable chain of community newspapers.

For all that's wrong with JRC - and there is a quite lot, to be sure - the company's 19.3% operating profit not only compares quite favorably with those of several of the largest Fortune 500 corporations but actually surpasses the margins of such giants as Chevron (18.5%), Wal-Mart (7.5%) and General Motors (3.5%).

The ability of JRC to continue generating rich profits at a time of unprecedented contraction in the newspaper business is the direct legacy of the rigorous expense management enforced by Robert Jelenic, the chief executive who ran the company for two decades until he resigned in November to undergo cancer treatment.

In addition to leaving JRC with some of the leanest-running newspapers in the land, Mr. Jelenic also left the company with the hefty $628.4 million in debt that now threatens to force it into bankruptcy. Most of the debt results from one bold, but less than successful, acquisition he undertook in 2004 in an effort to keep the company's sales, profits and stock price growing.

Not only did the transaction prove over time to be a serious miscalculation, but a steep drop in JRC's sales in the last two years has made it increasingly unlikely that the company can generate enough profits in the future to service its ponderous debt.

Between 2005 and 2007, JRC's sales tumbled 20.2% to $463.2 million, a drop nearly 2½ times greater than the over-all industry decline of 8.2% in the same period. (Some revenue was eliminated in JRC's sale of a few modest operating units, but the volume of the discontinued operations comes nowhere close to accounting for the disparity between the performance of the company and the industry as a whole.)

Caught between high debt and declining sales, the company today finds itself in a world of hurt:

JRC's share price has fallen by 99% from a high of $21.84 in 2004 to $0.265 Friday at the New York Stock Exchange. The Big Board plans to ban the shares from trading this week, because the value of the company is too low to meet the minimum listing standards.

:: The company's debt, which amounts to an untenable seven times its operating earnings for the last 12 months, is now rated at Caa1 by Moody's Investor Services, which means the rating agency believes the company has better than a 1 in 3 chance of default. Moody's is concerned that the company cannot generate enough cash to cover the debt repayments scheduled for 2009.

:The largest portion of the debt that threatens to force JRC into bankruptcy resulted from the acquisition for $415 million in 2004 of a group of community papers concentrated around economically distressed Detroit. To date, the company has been forced to write off $215 million, or nearly 52%, of the value of those assets.

:: An investment banker has been hired to explore the sale of some or all of the company's assets, but few parties are interested in acquiring newspapers these days, given the the unsettled outlook for the industry. Further, it is questionable whether a buyer, if one materializes, would pay much more than the 7x earnings necessary to extinguish the company's debt. This fear has caused investors to hammer the stock to the point it is all but worthless.

Ironically, JRC, which owns 22 daily newspapers and more than 300 non-daily publications in six geographic clusters, got its start as the reincarnation of a newspaper empire that was run off the rails in the 1980s by Ralph Ingersoll II, a buccaneering publisher who built his eponymous empire by overpaying for newspapers and financing them with junk bonds.

When Ingersoll Publications collapsed under its debt in 1990, its investors turned to Bob Jelenic, Mr. Ingersoll's protégé, to restart the company as Journal Register.

The strategy for JRC, which went public in 1997, was essentially the same as that of Ingersoll Publications: Build the company by aggregating neighboring newspapers into ever-larger clusters that would make it possible to sell advertising more efficiently while lowering the costs of producing the publications.

It's a terrific idea, so long as you don't overpay for acquisitions and have a plan to build sales while judiciously cutting costs. But the execution didn't prove to be much better at JRC than it was for Ingersoll Publications.

As JRC pursued its rollup strategy, Mr. Jelenic sought to boost his company's stock by aggressively reducing expenses to increase earnings as much as possible, thus earning the reputation as the most zealous cost cutter in the newspaper industry. "Nobody cinches the belt tighter than . . . Journal Register Co., where cost-cutting has become an art," reported Forbes Magazine in a 2001 article titled "Cheapskate Journalism."

Beyond shrinking staff, benefits and newshole, JRC was known for such practices as printing on ever-thinner newsprint and requiring executives to check the odometers of journalists before reimbursing them for driving to their assignments. A former JRC publisher told the American Journalism Review in 1999 that Mr. Jelenic sometimes demanded the instant firing of an employee, any employee, if his paper missed its weekly revenue target.

JRC produced some of the highest operating profits ever seen in the newspaper industry when its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) hit 29.1% in 2001. But it is hard to replicate annually such one-time savings as downsizing a newsroom or consolidating two printing plants into one. In the absence of significant sales growth from 2001 to 2003, JRC's profitability, though still ample, began faltering.

To boost the company's growth and potential for future profitability, Mr. Jelenic in 2004 bought 21st Century Newspapers in what it called "affluent markets" in Michigan for $415 million, paying a generous 11.5x EBITDA. But the domestic auto industry was facing a decline that, if anything, has accelerated since then.

The Michigan acquisition not only failed to produce the hoped-for sales and profits, but also saddled JRC with substantial debt at the same time revenues began falling at its properties and most other newspapers in the United States.

Now, JRC is caught in a squeeze it may not be able to survive. Unlike newspapers owned by other publishers that are trying to tough out the tough times by paring expenses, most JRC newspapers have little left to cut - and limited resources to build sales with new print and online products.

Despite its straitened circumstances, JRC in 2007 did manage to pay Mr. Jelenic more than $6.3 million in salary, severance and other compensation, which represented a fourfold increase over the nearly $1.5 million he received the prior year.

As part of his severance arrangement, Mr. Jelenic got an extra 192,000 shares of JRC to add to the nearly 2.3 million shares he already owns. Unfortunately, his stock, like mine, isn't likely to be worth anything near what it used to be.

What's Next for Newsmagazines?

2008-04-13T23:05:00.001-04:00

What's Next for Newsmagazines?
Fading Publications Try to Reinvent Themselves Yet Again
By REBECCA DANAApril 4, 2008; Page B1
http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=7n4krlcab.0.sgjdylcab.cuf4zubab.1&ts=S0331&p=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle_email%2FSB120727766116988719-lMyQjAxMDI4MDA3NDIwNzQ3Wj.html
The weekly newsmagazines have been declared dinosaurs as far back as the late 1980s. But now that 111 employees at Washington Post Co.'s Newsweek have taken buyouts, including many longtime editors, it's clear that their cultures are finally being blown up and reinvented. And some say that's not such a bad thing.

The employees at Newsweek, making up around 20% of the staff, last week accepted a buyout offer that includes months of salary, years of health insurance, and in some cases, a contract with Newsweek. However generous-sounding, the buyout marks a significant round of bloodletting in the newsmagazine business, which in recent years has seen Time Warner Inc.'s Time and Newsweek wage staff-attrition campaigns in search of long-term economic viability. Shedding employees, particularly older ones that earn higher salaries, is a quick way to offset depressed advertising and newsstand sales.
The most recent cuts are more than just attrition, however. These magazines are changing dramatically, and losing chunks of institutional memory along with the exiting employees, many of whom never worked anywhere else.
Newsweek Editor Jon Meacham offered the buyouts to around 150 employees mainly as a way of cutting costs, but also because it fits into the broader strategy he said he has been putting in place at the magazine since taking the reins 18 months ago.
Mr. Meacham's strategy involves increasing the quotient of serious news in his magazine by bringing in energetic, often younger and frequently lower-earning talent while keeping Newsweek's stable of brand-name writers intact. Some of those writers, including Cathleen McGuigan and film critic David Ansen, accepted the buyout offer but will likely return on contract.

"Like any managers anywhere, we looked at a revenue picture that could be more thrilling and said, 'How can we accomplish two or three things?,' " Mr. Meacham said in an interview. " 'How can we control costs? How can we have money to rebuild and hire new voices and new reporting talent? And how can we do that in the service of what we've been trying to do with the magazine of the last year-and-a-half, which is make it more serious and try to make ourselves indispensable to the conversation?' "
While circulation for both Newsweek and Time has remained flat, at around 3.1 million and 4 million per issue, respectively, the number of advertising pages has declined in recent years and major retailers, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., are reducing the number of issues they stock in stores.
Time, along with several of its sibling magazines, endured its own round of buyouts just over a year ago. Editor Richard Stengel assumed his post shortly before Mr. Meacham did and made sweeping changes, redesigning the magazine and Web site, cutting the advertising rate base and changing the delivery date to Friday from Monday.
"My whole view was there's more information out there than any time in human history. What people don't need more of is information," Mr. Stengel said. "They need a guide through the chaos."
This appears to contrast with Mr. Meacham's strategy of upping the news content in his magazine. However, both men share what could be called "Economist-envy." In 2007, the Economist newsmagazine, published by U.K.-based The Economist Newspaper Ltd., saw an 8.5% increase in advertising pages compared with 2006, according to the Magazine Publishers of America. By contrast, Newsweek's advertising pages dropped 6.7% and Time's fell 6.9%.
Cable news and the Web have sapped Time and Newsweek of much of their audience in recent years, crowding out their exclusive hold on certain kinds of stories, including analyses and detailed retellings of major news events. As the Internet has also given rise to a new generation of multiplatform, self-branded news personalities. It no longer takes two decades at Newsweek to be a brand-name pundit.
The newsmagazines' first response years ago was to increase their focus on softer, user-friendly stories on topics such as health, science and technology. The content appealed to baby boomers; advertisers liked it, too, seeing it as a better environment for their pitches than wars and political scandals. Meanwhile, having well-known columnists became a way these magazines could distinguish themselves amid the increasing competition.
"What's happened in the business as a whole is talk is cheap and reporting is expensive," said Newsweek writer Jonathan Alter, a 25-year veteran at the magazine who qualified for the buyout but declined it. But he adds, some of the change in culture is welcome. "In general, the office politics are at a much lower volume than in the past because the old fight of space is different than it was. If there's not room in the magazine for something, you can just do it online," he said.
Mr. Meacham said that since he took over, Newsweek has 30% more text and fewer pictures.
Time and Newsweek have both used targeted voluntary buyout packages to help trim the budget in recent years. Time has also closed some bureaus to save on real-estate costs, replacing them with roaming "laptop correspondents," and removed some of the layers of intermediate editors.
Those who survived rounds of buyouts at both titles are adapting to new job descriptions. "We have to have stories that have original reporting and are well-written and that you can actually remember," said Newsweek Editor-at-Large Evan Thomas.
At a recent speech at Columbia University, Mr. Meacham delivered a blistering response after he asked who reads Newsweek and none of the 100-odd students in attendance raised their hands.
"It's an incredible frustration that I've got some of the most decent, hard-working, honest, passionate, straight-shooting, non-ideological people who just want to tell the damn truth, and how to get this past this image that we're just middlebrow, you know, a magazine that your grandparents get, or something, that's the challenge," Mr. Meacham said. "And I just don't know how to do it, so if you've got any ideas, tell me."

Murdoch: Technology Driving Vast Changes in Media

2008-04-08T16:51:00.000-04:00

Murdoch: Technology Driving Vast Changes in Media
http://explore.georgetown.edu/news/?ID=32589

Media Magnate Discloses Desire to Add Another Newspaper to His Stable of NY-based Publications

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch warned that "technology will continue to destroy all of the old ways and old assumptions, especially in the media" during an April 2 speech on "Creative Destruction: News for the 21st Century," sponsored by the McDonough School of Business.

"We have one certainty - we can never be sure where the industry will end up," Murdoch said in a Gaston Hall address about the changing face of media. "It is true that technology is changing accepted ways of doing business. It's making us work harder for our customers."

The ultimate effect, Murdoch predicted, is more access to news and entertainment for people who cannot traditionally afford it.

Murdoch is the chairman and chief executive officer of News Corp., one of the world's most extensive media conglomerates. Its holdings include TV and radio channels, movie studios, Internet sites and newspapers. In his speech, he said technology's effects have permeated every aspect of News Corp., from the social networking on MySpace to the type of articles printed in local newspapers.

Consumers, especially the younger generation, have a chance to shape the inevitable changes by demanding content based on personal preferences, he added.

"Unlike traditional media, choices in the future will be generated from the bottom up, not top-down," Murdoch explained. "A 13-year-old girl in Delhi is not going to want the same news and entertainment as a 50-year-old executive in Chicago . . . Our challenge is to personalize the experience for these people so we can reach them both."

Murdoch foresees the end of traditional mass media with consumers receiving news and entertainment from limited sources. Media companies need to diversify to survive, which is one reason his company purchased MySpace in 2005, he said.

The CEO claimed News Corp. is at the forefront of providing individualized content. His company's news media outlets reached three-quarters of the world's population and are published in more than 30 languages.

Murdoch hinted for the first time publicly that he is looking to extend that reach by acquiring Newsday, a Long Island-based newspaper owned by Tribune Company. That, Murdoch said, could bolster another News Corp. holding, The New York Post, and compete for revenue against The New York Times.

However, he acknowledged the U.S. Department of Justice might stand in the way based on antitrust concerns, because News Corp. also owns The Wall Street Journal.

When asked about bias in the media, Murdoch dismissed claims that his outlets show biases, saying that his personal opinions are not reflected in the news cycle.

"People laugh at Fox News because we call ourselves fair and balanced . . . The fact is that CNN was always extremely liberal and never had a conservative, Republican voice on it. The only difference is that we have equal voices on both sides, but that seems to have upset a lot of liberals," he said. "We believe the more voices, the better and let's have variety and opinions coming from all sides. Society is growing more intelligent and people can absorb this, they can accept or reject it."

Murdoch also denied that his company wants to create a news monopoly by saying, "We're just a tiny fraction of the media landscape. There are millions of voices out there. Everything we've done, in my opinion, is to create competition , , , We think that's a public service. We want to give people choices. The more choice there is, the better it is."

The Most Notable Launch of 2007

2008-04-06T17:30:00.000-04:00

The Most Notable Launch of 2007
Posted by Samir Husni
http://mrmagazine.wordpress.com/

Drum roll please . . . from a field of 715 new magazines launched in 2007, Condé Nast Portfolio is our choice as The Most Notable Launch of the Year. 2007 will be remembered as the year that saw the return of the prophets of doom and gloom and at the same time as the year folks like David Carey and Joanne Lipman showed the world that print is and can be alive, well and kicking. Our hats off to the folks at Condé Nast Portfolio and the 714 other magazines that showed the doubting Thomases that print is still a very vibrant medium in this day and age. A recent Dutch newspaper adopted the tag-line "News is free but information you have to pay for." And that is exactly what CN Portfolio has done as it approaches its first anniversary issue. The magazine has provided in depth information on business issues ranging from food, gender, oil, media . . . you name it. The information in each issue is presented in an in-depth fashion merging the power of words and images to deliver the best visual impact of print (VIP). This VIP enhances CN Portfolio's addictive, exclusive and timely, yet timeless content.
With the power of print alive, well and kicking on the pages of CN Portfolio magazine, the same can be said about Portfolio.com website. CN Portfolio provides a complete package of information that makes it a must to today's movers and shakers. Whether ink on paper or pixels on the screen CN Portfolio deserves the honor of being named the Most Notable Launch of the Year. A well done job in the midst of a very rough year both on the business and media fronts.
Indeed, 2007 has been a rough year for media across the board, but what we have seen in the last 12 months isn't new. It has happened before. In just one short year we have seen overseas news bureaus shutdown, a television and movie writers' strike that has altered viewing habits, a move to free internet media content by some big name papers, the slashing of approximately 1000 titles from Wal-Mart's newsstands and now you see that we have the lowest total number of new magazine launches in five years. So what should I do? Should I say some of you were right? That we are actually a dying industry?
I can't and I won't.
If I were to say those things and side with those who believe media is doomed I would not only be ignoring some key events that happened this year, but I would be ignoring what happened when new mediums burst on to the market in the middle of the last century. Newspapers and magazines were supposed to die after radio wowed the world. A few decades later radio, newspapers and magazines were all agreed to be dead after we fell in love with television. And today the talk seems to be that everything will suffer because of the internet. Just for a quick historical piece of information newspapers and magazines, like any other product, have a time to be born and a time to die. That was true in 1690 when the first American newspaper was born and the same was true when it died after the first issue was born. There is nothing new under the sun when it comes to the life cycle of all things that have a time to be born and a time to die.
Well here we are: it is 2008, we still have television, we still have radio, we still have newspapers and we still have magazines. That will not change. Most of the world is having no problem with media consumption. Newspaper circulation and readership is up all over the world with the exception of the American market (that is the subject of another blog), a paper mill was recently completed in Germany at a cost of €486 million, a printing press was also recently opened in the United Kingdom unlike any we've seen before and foreign newsstands are more crowded than ours and still European consumers want more.
But you don't even need to look as far as Europe to see that print is well, alive and kicking. The 2007 new launches totaled 715. That is, still nearly two new magazines launched each day on average. And while 2007 count is nearly 200 titles fewer than 2006, it is still substantially higher than the number than the number of new launches in 1991, the first year that commercial use of the internet was allowed. And don't forget the golden goose. Condé Nast felt so sure of the current desire for good content that they fed over $125 million into the launch of CN Portfolio, our Most Notable Launch of the Year. So far I haven't heard one whisper of disappointment concerning that investment, except of course from the prophets of doom and gloom.
I've been saying this for some time now, we are in the midst of a market correction. We saw the market correct itself in 1999 and we are seeing it again this year. What we are seeing is, in some ways, similar to what the housing market or national economy is doing. Anything involving money has a tendency to be a roller-coaster ride of ups and downs. There may be those that are complaining as we are at a low point, but be certain, those same individuals will be praising our industry when the numbers swing back up like they have time and again over the 20+ years I have been tracking new launches. Enjoy.

BoSacks Readers Speak Out: Evil Mantra, Scan Based Mags and Husni

2008-04-01T22:36:00.001-04:00

BoSacks Readers Speak Out: Evil Mantra, Scan Based Mags and Husni
www.bosacks.com

RE: Is the Real Mantra? Be Evil. Very Evil
What happened to words like trust, ethics, civility, common courtesy, or morality (not to be confused with "religious")? Articles like this make me want to quit my job and live in a small cabin in the middle of nowhere.

Thanks for sharing this, I needed a little fire in my belly this morning to get the juices flowing.
(Submitted by an innocent bystander)

RE: Is the Real Mantra? Be Evil. Very Evil
Google has me scared . . . really scared. I am fearful as a publisher, as a father, and as a citizen in an open democracy. Where does this intrusion end? Can it actually end? The genie is out of the bottle. We have willing given out information everywhere to everyone. I can't see a way to stop this and at the same time I am fearful of it, even though my business does it's best to collect the very same data.
(Submitted by a Publisher)

RE: Is the Real Mantra? Be Evil. Very Evil.
Privacy. Hm. What's that?
Well let me give another example of a "time bomb".
Let's say you sign up with Earthlink.net for an email address. You use it for a couple of years and then something better comes along. So you cancel your Earthlink.net account and signup with your new subscriber. You take the time to make all the changes to all your accounts, you think, so they send messages and newsletters to the new account.
Then one day, a year or two later you get an email from a stranger. They have randomly chosen your old email account. An account that Earthlink.net conveniently re-activated as an available email name since you were not using it. This stranger tells you he was able to access your Classmates.com account using your old email address. How? Well, since he now has your email address, he can conveniently say he lost his password and they'll send him a new one, to the email address! Voila! Access to an account and ANY information, credit card info, personal data, that may be there. And, the stranger says, that any email list that you were on that hasn't updated their list, he is now receiving. Oh boy, you'd better not let you Mom/Wife/co-workers see THAT newsletter. That could be embarrassing. If the stranger wasn't an honest person, well let's just say that blackmail and identity theft from an old email address pops into mind.
So what do you think? How many of you dropped your dial-up email address for a new DSL email address? Did you know that your email address is being recycled?
Just something to think about.
(Submitted by a Paper Person)

RE: Jerry Seinfeld quote
"There's very little advice in men's magazines, because men don't think there's a lot they don't know. Women do. Women want to learn. Men think, "I know what I'm doing, just show me somebody naked.""
Jerry Seinfeld quotes (American television Actor and Comedian, b.1954)

I love this quote! And it's pretty much exactly what Mike LaFavore was told when he presented his pitch more than a decade ago for a new magazine idea: Men's Health.
Fortunately, Men's Health has proven Jerry's comment to be largely -- but not entirely -- incorrect. Men's Health does have a lusty "Cex & Relationships" section - and Cex is always a top-ranking Web feature as well.
Men DO want advice. They just don't want to admit it.
(Submitted by an Editor)
(BoSacks has intentionally changed the word CEX to hopefully bypass silly corporate filters that have no understanding or sense of proper usage and propriety)

RE: Scan-Based Trading's Hold-Up
A couple of comments . . . .
SBT is a way of the future - no doubt about it. Why in your whole story on SBT was the term "Issue code" not mentioned? (I searched) Simple scan based trading is logical and can apply to gum, except we change our product every week/every month and want to know if Angelina outsells Posh Spice. Retailers have not come to grips that requirement. Shall we change the manufacturing code every week as I believe People does? Then there will be 10,000 bar codes in the system. Also - not all retailers scan . . . will wholesalers have 2 classes of retailer. Many independents will likely never afford SBT.

It was also amusing when in the same set of BOSACKS emails, one had advertisers demanding magazines be more environmentally friendly then in the second email they we being suspicious of any audience calculations. The fastest way to efficiency in the use of magazines is to count pass along. To demand inflated circulation for the sake of rate bases is environmental hypocrisy - and a poor business model as well.
(Submitted by a Director, Consumer Marketing)

RE: Husni Vs. BoSacks - The Whole Experience vs. the Hole Experience
Bob, I've been a long reader, studier, and huge fan of print magazines. I've tracked their successes, their failures, I've tried to educate my customers about their trends to better serve the needs of publishers and mag advertisers. I've been fiercely loyal to print. I've purchased hundreds of newsstand copies to the tune of thousands of dollars (and NOT on an expense report). My very livelihood depends on the success of magazines. I've
worked to convince advertisers of the importance of the tangibility of that printed piece.

You know what? I haven't bought a magazine for 10 months.

I realize now that I didn't buy them for the paper, or the convenience. I bought them for the content, and I found a better way to get much higher quality content. Jezebel.com has replaced any random women's title (my intro was from an ADAge. Com article). I've literally replaced every bit of content that I once got from mags with free content on the web.

Now, I still buy print. Mostly books (lots of engagement hours for the money) and newspapers (lots of info for the amount of money) when I travel. Magazines fill neither niche . . . high cost for the time of engagement provided. The exception, of course are magazines like Vanity Fair, New Yorker, Esquire and Atlantic Monthly. And I feel THIS is the category of mag that will survive.
Keep up the good work!
(Submitted by an unknown Publishing Professional)

RE: Husni Vs. BoSacks - The Whole Experience vs. the Hole Experience
Bo, Your on-going debates are a joy to be a part of. You and Samir are both passionate defenders of your particular points of view and both unyielding of your turf. I think Samir is on the wrong side of the equation, but I applaud his last man standing approach. Having seen you both several times, you both make terrific and convincing arguments. I would see you again at any given moment. But Bo, is more correct than Samir. Magazines will be around for a long time as Samir says, but it will be the digital world where all the action and the advertising dollars will be. And that is coming from a multi-title print publisher. But in my niche, my readers are saying they prefer the digital path 2 to 1. I will not argue with my bread and butter as they pay the bills and the digital subscription fees.
(Submitted by a Multi-Title Publisher)

In the UK, free Publications bite down Hard

2008-03-30T22:17:00.000-04:00

In the UK, free Publications bite down Hard
National papers have lost 14 percent of their circulation
By Heidi Dawley

For Britain's national newspapers, the recent years have been tough, in some ways tougher than for U.S. papers. It's not just the internet, though that's certainly hurt.

British papers have been besieged by free dailies in growing numbers, far more than U.S. papers.

It's cost dearly. In all, Britain's national paid-circulation newspapers have lost 1.9 million copies, nearly 14 percent of their circulation since 2000, according to a study from Ernst & Young.

Worst hit have been the downmarket titles. "We could say the increase in the number of free titles has hurt the populars more than other segments of the market," says Luca Mastrodonato, a media analyst at Ernst & Young in London and author of the study.

For the U.S., where free papers haven't gained nearly the foothold, it raises some intriguing questions. For one, how much have the paid titles been hurt so far? And will free dailies ever take off in the U.S. as they have elsewhere in the world?

While most U.S. markets have free publications, there are just a few with free dailies backed by big-money chains with growth ambitions, notably the Metro and Examiner chains. And their growth hasn't been anything near what's been seen in Europe.

But it's tough to draw comparisons, and for several reasons. One is that the Ernst & Young study looks only at national newspapers in the UK, of which there are many, not local dailies. In the U.S., there are only really three national dailies, The New York Times, USA Today and The Wall Street Journal, and they have fared far better.

Also, the U.S. doesn't have upmarket and downmarket papers, at least outside of major cities like New York. Metro dailies tend to be one-size-fits-all papers. And while their circulation losses have been considerable, they're below UK levels. All told, U.S. dailies have lost 8 percent of their daily circulation since 2001 and 11.4 percent of their Sunday circulation, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Still, Mastrodonato's study is interesting for what it says about the UK market. His figures show the Daily Mirror and the Sun have lost more than 17 percent of their circulation since 2000, whereas the quality titles like the Daily Telegraph and the Times have only lost 10 percent.

The loss has been particularly pronounced for the downmarket papers since 2003, when the free papers really began taking off in Britain. Since then downmarket papers have lost 14.5 percent of their circulation, compared to just 2.2 percent for the qualities.

In fact, the only paper to see its circulation increase in the last two years is the Financial Times, which is very high end.

A big factor behind the decline of the downmarket papers has been the defection of the young, which surveys show are increasingly turning to the internet for information. In fact, Ernst & Young reports that over half of Britain's 15-to-44-year-olds rely on the internet as their first source of news and information.

One huge reason is that it's free, and that also explains the attraction of the free papers over the paid-for downmarket papers.

"The risk is these people aren't going to get the paid-for habit in the future. So going forward the risk gets higher," says Mastrodonato.

All this paints a dark future for downmarket paid-circulation papers, in Mastrodonato's view.

He foresees a shakeout in which paid dailies will shrink in number and more free ones will arise.

He's more optimistic about quality dailies, which he believes will have an easier time of it. "We will be looking at print editions for some time to come," he says.
Heidi Dawley is a staff writer for Media Life.

Long-running industry magazine files tell epic story of writer's market

2008-03-23T21:26:00.000-04:00

Long-running industry magazine files tell epic story of writer's market
The Associated Press
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/03/22/arts/Books-The-Writers-Market.php
CINCINNATI: Emma Gary Wallace, professional author, had more than a few notions about the business of writing.

With a resume that included essays in housekeeping and cooking magazines, and a popular Christmas story, "The New Neighbor," she was able and ready to share tips with readers of a new monthly magazine called Successful Writing.

"Writers waste a great deal of postage sending stuff around the country to impossible markets," she observed. "Don't carry coals to Newcastle or offer jewelry in a blacksmith shop. Every magazine has its own policy and makes a definite appeal to a certain clientele. Study these and take them into consideration when offering your wares for any market."

The year was 1921, and advice about writing was and remains a market itself.

The timeless cry for help as one makes the great leap from the desire to write to actual writing to published writing has inspired countless books, magazines, classes and Web sites. Successful Writing, now Writer's Digest, is one of the oldest players in the business. Based in Cincinnati at the corporate headquarters of F&W Publications, it still enjoys a circulation of more than 100,000.

"I sincerely believe that we have something to offer a broad spectrum of writers at every stage of their development, from the novice to the veteran writer in every genre," says Writer's Digest editor Maria Schneider.

For anyone who wonders what the emerging writer has faced over the decades, the magazine's files preserved in bulky, bound volumes tell a dual history. Evolution is constant, as technologies from airplanes to computers, and historical events from the Great Depression to the sexual revolution, bring on new markets and genres. But at the heart of the game, the riddle remains: How does one write, and write well? How do you get your writing noticed and sold?

Like the best epics, reading through the pages of Writer's Digest is less about finding the answer than enjoying the questions.

"It's like asking if we're any closer to the great mystery of how one paints a portrait or composes a symphony?" says mystery writer Lawrence Block, who for years contributed a column to Writer's Digest. "Most of the arts certainly are extremely difficult, and there are always more people who want to do it than can do it."

Writer's Digest features interviews, market surveys and general advice. The April issue includes a cover story on vampire novelist Laurell K. Hamilton, updates on such "hot" genres as romance and horror and an essay by contributor Bonnie Trenga, who recommends that sentences run no longer than 40 words because "your readers don't have a very long attention span."

When the magazine debuted, "crook stories" were in, dialect was out and the great new draw was "motion pictures," or photoplays, a business barely as old as the century. The Goldwyn Co. ran an advertisement about its hunt for the "screen's own Shakespeare." An article reported that the "penurious playwright who used to peddle manuscripts" was "probably writing his plays for the motion pictures now, and living in ease."

Gertrude Stein, James Joyce and other modernists were already breaking up traditional narrative and grammar, but in the early 1920s, the marketplace belonged to the straight and the simple.

"A readable, lucid style, is far preferable to what is called a 'literary style.' ... a complicated method of expression which confuses rather than clarifies thought," one columnist advised. A suggestion for nonfiction writers: "One of the surest ways to please editors is for the writer to prove himself accurate."

The market often danced to the tune of current events. In the '20s, the rise of commercial flights resulted in "airplane fiction," adventure stories set in the skies. The repeal of Prohibition, in 1933, led to new opportunities in beer industry journals.

During World War II, romance writers were urged to forget those Depression-era tales of financial peril and were reminded that if a young man wasn't in uniform, the writer had to explain why. At the end of 1945, after the Japanese had surrendered, correspondent Sgt. Donn Hale Munson reported that the "war market" was "shot" and that it was time to "take your hero out of uniform ... and put him back in civic clothes."

The times could change as surely as snow melts in spring. In January 1981, the cover story centered on authors and their typewriters, and revealed that Gay Talese used dental floss for repairs. By April, the magazine was running a long article on word processors. By the end of the year, one article speculated about an "easily accessible database network."

Cyberspace and electronic publishing seemed like science fiction for much of the 20th century, and it took a science fiction writer to catch the future. A 1971 essay by the editor of Galaxy magazine, Frederick Pohl, an award-winning science fiction writer, uncannily anticipated print-on-demand and electronic books as he imagined the market of 2001.

"Suppose you want to read a novel. You type out the name and byline on the keyboard of your teletype, and 'order' a copy of the book. Immediately it starts printing out your personal copy, a page at a time," Pohl writes. "And if you don't care about (having an actual book), you can hang your TV tube over the foot of the bed, have the book displayed to you a page at a time and read it at your ease."

Scandals that seemed new in recent years were around long before. In the 1930s, articles were appearing on plagiarism, ghost writing ("as old as the proverbial hills") and journalistic fakery. In the 1950s, a new genre teen fiction was identified.

If publishing was ever a gentleman's game in tweed, the pages of Writer's Digest were not telling. Books over the decades were compared to breakfast food, chewing gum and oil-burning engines. A columnist in 1930 complained of the "abnormal emphasis being stressed on sex." As early as 1945, the industry was condemned for selling its soul to the gods of publicity.

"Nowadays it is not enough to publish a book; it must be sent skyward like a trial balloon, carrying its banners and famous names," complained Vardis Fisher, an Idaho-based author and newspaper columnist.

Romance and mystery were in demand all along, although trends and publications have come and gone.

In the early '20s, you could try Saucy Stories, which called for "fiction with very rapid action" and a few "clever epigrams" thrown in, or "The Youth's Companion," which "welcomes humor and pathos, but not pessimism." During the Depression, the MacMillan Co. was looking for "realistic, proletarian" novels, while by 1974, in the wake of Watergate, magazines from the National Tattler to The Woman were seeking investigative pieces.

The writer in 1949 looked out on an especially interesting market. Whisper magazine was seeking "sensational material, only with tabloid treatment." Jungle Stories was soliciting stories on "native tribal life or adventures of white men in the jungle."

Both sides of the Cold War were possible: Personal Liberty Magazine sought examples of "the enslaving spirit of Communism, Nazism and fascism." The Kapustkan Magazine wanted fiction "aimed at the evils of war, greed, hypocrisy, secrecy, poverty, injustice, intolerance, inequality and intimidation."

A caution: "Brevity desired."

The market was a code to crack and self-proclaimed experts came bearing solutions, such as J. Berg Esenwein, whose advice "plucks out the heart of magazine writing" and saves much "eye strain" for young writers. Readers of the '20s and 1930s likely heard much about William Wallace Cook's Plotto, "a new method of plot suggestion." Other options included Grace Porterfield Polk's "Polk-a-Dot Primer for Poets" and the Sherwin Cody School of English, presided over by Cody himself, a bearded man with a stern, professorial gaze.

No one was readier to counsel, and console, than Thomas H. Uzzell, identified as a former editor of Collier's and a market watcher whose ads and essays appeared for more than two decades.

In 1931, as the Depression dragged on, he reminded the idle businessman that the empty hours could be filled writing that long-promised book. "Necessity has launched more literary careers then you'd like to imagine," Uzzell observed.

A decade later, soon after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the U.S. entry into World War II, an Uzzell ad was headlined "WAR! NEW MARKETS! NEW DEMANDS! NEW PROBLEMS! Can you solve them?" Uzzell declared that in "such times only craftsmen, trained writers with editorial insight can survive. Escape and propaganda must be combined."

The famous, too, have prescribed. Somerset Maugham, in a 1942 essay, thought hospital doctors were ideal writers because they have seen human nature "bare" and frightened. Fifty years later, Stephen King urged against writing outlines, even as the magazine itself touted a system of plotting with index cards. Michael Crichton believed that you should get published first, then worry about an agent.

All agreed that the only way to become a writer was to write. The prolific John Updike recommended steady work habits, while Michael Chabon said nothing was possible without "talent," "luck" and "discipline." And in the early 1920s, a promising young short story writer offered a terse formula for success after a less fortunate peer sought help on how to develop a plot.

"Your letter was very vague as to what you wanted to know," the author scolded. "Study Kipling and O. Henry, and work like hell! I had 122 rejections slips before I sold a story."

The author, F. Scott Fitzgerald, was not easily discouraged.

Death of Print? Not at News Corp in Britain

2008-03-18T17:27:00.000-04:00

Death of Print? Not at News Corp in Britain
News International unveils 'biggest printing plant in the world'
By Patrick Smith
Journalists at News International's four national newspapers will face wide-ranging changes when the company moves all printing from its Wapping headquarters in April.

At a tour of the company's new £187 million Broxbourne plant in north London today, the company's senior management said that the latest in automated printing technology would give journalists later deadlines and editors greater freedom in redesigning pages.

News International claim the plant, just off the M25 near Enfield, is the biggest printing centre in the world. It is part of a £650m initiative including plants in Knowsley, near Liverpool, and Motherwell, near Glasgow.

The "triple-width" printing presses can produce tabloid and broadsheet newsprint simultaneously, meaning that many traditional editorial and printing deadlines could be scrapped.

Clive Milner, News International's group managing director, told Press Gazette: "It affects the process of journalism in a number of ways. It allows the editors to refresh and redesign the product and that's good news for readers.

"Our current products are in some cases constrained by the production, this is changed by Broxbourne."

The Sunday Times, which currently begins printing on Wednesdays, could now be printed entirely on Saturday, he said, putting sections like business into a "live" slot.

The Broxbourne plant is the size of 23 football pitches, it has 12 full-colour printing presses capable of printing 86,000 copies per hour - the equivalent of 330,000 tonnes of newsprint a year. Wapping managed 36,000 copies per hour.

Automated, pre-programmed computer technology - including laser-guided trucks and conveyor belts carrying rolls of paper around the vast factory floor - mean that printing staff are to be cut by two thirds making the company an estimated annual saving of £13m.

James Murdoch, the chairman and chief executive of News Corp's Europe and Asia division, said the investment "should be ample answer to those who believe the business of journalism, in print, is a business for yesterday's readers, not tomorrow's."

He continued: "At News, we believe that print will continue to be a driving force, even as we expand in this connected age."

The Sun is already being printed at Broxbourne. The Daily and Sunday Telegraph will begin printing from Broxbourne late this year.

NI is currently looking for a new home for its editorial staff. A sale document for Wapping has been issued to potential buyers but no potential site has been mentioned by the company so far.

What Went Wrong with the Postal Rate Hike?

2008-03-12T22:04:00.000-04:00

What Went Wrong with the Postal Rate Hike?
Nothing, says Time Inc.'s mail czar.
By Jim O'Brien
http://www.foliomag.com/2008/what-went-wrong-postal-rate-hike

Recent data from the Postal Service indicate that Periodicals Class mail only covered 83% of its costs in fiscal year 2007. This news comes on the heels of the "cost based rates" that went into effect last July and were designed to reduce the Postal Service's costs. Many people in the industry are now wondering "What went wrong?" The answer is that "nothing went wrong," once three basic facts are understood:
Since the new Periodicals Rates went into effect on July 15, 2007, the USPS' data only reflected 2-1/2 months of mailing under the new rate structure (the USPS fiscal year ended on September 30, 2007).

In an effort to mitigate the impact on smaller mailers, the July, 2007 rates only reflected 40% of the actual bundle and container costs. As a result, mailers did not receive accurate pricing signals and some companies actually reduced the number of drop-ship entry points. This reduction resulted in increased USPS transportation costs.

Many mailers focused 100% of their attention on implementing the new rate structure and spent very little time reviewing their mailing practices an implementing changes in 2007.

As a result of these three factors and others, the Postal Service did not reduce its costs in FY 2007. With this as a backdrop, the question now becomes, "Will the new rate structure have a positive impact on Postal Service costs in 2008?" To drive costs from the system, mailers need to make changes. Here are a few changes that are taking place at one mailer and in the printing industry.

Time Inc. is making a number of changes to its mailing behavior and these adjustments may be of use to other publishers. For starters, each title has been analyzed to determine if all or a portion of its circulation can take advantage of co-binding, co-mailing, and/or co-palletization. Today, six Time Inc. titles participate in co-mail pools and the company will soon begin to co-mail a portion of their large circulation monthly magazines. Most people think that large circulation titles are not good candidates for co-mail because they have little to gain in presort improvement, but that perception may soon change.

Todd Black, Time Inc.'s assistant director of postal operations, working in conjunction with Brown Printing and Time customer service, has developed an innovative plan for Essence magazine and other large circulation monthlies. It begins when Time customer service determines Essence's presort. The label data for the carrier route copies is sent to Brown Printing in its usual fashion and the copies are produced using selective binding. Following production, the carrier route copies are included in Fairrington Transportation's co-palletization pool and drop-shipped. Essence also has a number of copies that do not lend themselves to co-mailing (polywrapped, personalized wraps, etc.) and these copies are also included in the co-palletization/drop-ship pool. The balance of the non-carrier route labels are not presorted and customer service produces a SLIR file that is transmitted to Brown for inclusion in their co-mail pool. After manufacturing (using conventional binding) the copies are co-mailed, entered into the Fairrington pool-shipping program, and drop-shipped to 96 ADCs. As a result of this combination of co-mailing and co-palletization, virtually 100% of Essence is drop-shipped with very few sacks and a significant presort improvement.

Time Inc.'s weekly titles have also been reviewed and improvements have been made. Since these weekly magazines have large circulations and carrier route percentages in the 75% to 85% range, there is little opportunity for co-mailing and drop-ship improvement. However, certain editions of the magazines do quality for co-palletization. The best example of this is an edition of People magazine that is produced in one plant for a national distribution. Prior to the implementation of the new rate structure, this edition was placed in sacks and entered into the postal mail stream at the printing plant. Today, these copies are included in the Fairrington co-palletization pool and drop-shipped. As a result, these copies have shifted from "100% sacks and zero drop-shipping" to "nearly zero sacks and 100% drop-shipping."

In addition to the co-palletization, Time magazine co-binds its Life and Style supplement along with its regular issue four times per year. Entertainment Weekly will co-bind a special issue along with one of its regular issues in May.

When the changes have been completed on the Time Inc. magazines, Black estimates that 23 Time Inc. titles will be using co-mail or co-palletization for all or a portion of their print order. Black states that, "There are cost savings out there for everyone, regardless of your size or vendor. My advice to other mail owners is to dig deep into each mailing to find what portions you can better presort and drop ship right now. For the portions that can't, ask why and keep asking why until each mailing is optimized."

In addition to the changes being made by the Time Inc. titles, the printing/logistics industry is opening new co-mail facilities and adding new machines to handle a wide variety of products. Black recently visited the new R.R. Donnelley & Sons co-mail facility in York, Pennsylvania. In response to increases in customer demand, Donnelley already has expansion plans for this new facility. York complements Donnelley's existing facility in Bolingbrook, Illinois.

In March, Black will visit the ALG Worldwide Logistics facility also located in Bolingbrook. ALG is a logistics firm that provides co-mailing and drop shipping for the print industry.
Quad/Graphics has developed a multifaceted program that now includes: Multi-Mail (co-mail); Multi-Wrap (offline for poly wrapped Periodicals); Multi-Bind (co-binding); and Multi-Blend (inline combination of previously bound Periodicals with magazines that are being bound). These options provide a great deal of mail-piece design and production schedule flexibility for their clients while still creating volume that maximizes presort and drop ship efficiencies. Quebecor World Logistics continues to invest in solutions that will enable them to co-mail a greater range of product (specifically thin and poly wrapped mail pieces). By the end of 2008 they will double their capacity with new state of the art co-mailers.

Fry Communications in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania is now offering its customers onsite co-mailing, selective binding, blended mail at the mail table level, and co-production (co-binding). Fry reports that they are seeing substantial growth in the number of copies co-mailed and increasing interest from clients who previously were not interested in taking advantage of the reduced distribution costs. In addition, Fry now has customers who use them as a co-mailer but not as a printer. As Fry's pool size increases, the opportunity for savings increases as more copies move from a 3-digit sort level all the way to carrier route presort.

If the changes at Time Inc. and the printing/logistics industry are representative of more global Periodical Class change, we will most likely see a significant reduction in Postal Service costs and a corresponding improvement in cost coverage throughout 2008. Such changes will go a long way toward keeping Periodicals Class mail well within the CPI rate cap in future years.

Mags Grow Online but Still Dwarfed by Web Bigs

2008-03-04T06:36:00.000-05:00

Mags Grow Online but Still Dwarfed by Web Bigs
Titles Have to Face up to the Scale of the Competition If They Expect Larger Share of Digital Ad Revenue
By Nat Ives
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- When the magazine industry turned out for its latest digital conference last week, no one doubted the importance of the web. But now that they've moved online, many major magazine publishers are finding themselves nobodies in the new neighborhood, overshadowed by digital brands like Yahoo, MySpace and Huffington Post. So how much of the internet's growth can magazine brands snare for themselves?

CNN Gives Biz Sites Run for Their 'Money'
Now With Online Video, CNNMoney.com Is a Bigger Threat on the Web

The signs so far have been discouraging. Consider the recent good word from the Magazine Publishers of America. Consumer magazine sites attracted 67.5 million monthly unique visitors in the fourth quarter last year, it reported, up 8.1% over the fourth quarter a year earlier.

That's great if publishers only want digital companions for their core print properties, to recruit subscribers and provide a little inventory for integrated ad buys. If they also want to leverage their magazine brands to get meaningful online ad revenue, however, they have to face up to the scale of the competition. And YouTube draws at least 67.5 million unique visitors all by itself, according to Nielsen Online.
"Do I think the web will cannibalize from print magazines?" said Christopher Johnson, VP-content and business development for Hearst Magazines Digital Media, in an interview last week. "Yes, I'm afraid I think so. The question is: Do you want those dollars that are shifted out of print into online to be absorbed by your company?"

Scale and inventory

The most popular magazine-brand websites are becoming real businesses because they have scale and, therefore, the inventory to offer advertisers. They include the sites for Sports Illustrated, with 6.6 million unique visitors in December, per Nielsen Online; Forbes, with 6.5 million; Time, at 6.3 million; Newsweek, at 5.9 million; and People, with 5.3 million.

But brands that span media hold their own much better against the rest of the web. ESPN, the mega-brand attached to cable TV, magazines, mobile and radio, attracted 19.1 million uniques to ESPN.com in December. Still not YouTube numbers, but considerably better than the standalone magazine sites.

A foothold in TV doesn't hurt; CNNMoney.com, where Time Inc. houses Fortune and Money magazines, scored 7.1 million unique visitors in December, Nielsen said. Martha Stewart's eponymous site, part of a multimedia spread if ever there was one, got 2.1 million. And there are the united-we-stand Condé Nast portals such as Epicurious, where Gourmet and Bon Appetit content helped grab 4.2 million uniques.

The vast majority of titles, however, can't attract enough eyeballs to top Nielsen Online's cutoff for measurement. Fewer than 10% even draw as many people online, where their content is free, as they have paying offline, according to Format, a magazine consultancy. The industry, in fact, averages 0.3 uniques per paid print copy.

"There are . . . . examples of sites that are very profitable," said Bob Davidowitz, the former publisher of In Touch and Life & Style, now a partner at Format. "You're seeing a number of other properties with a lot of velocity and growth."

Adding software

"They need to be thinking about, 'Now we're in a really different kind of business,'" said Jeremy Davis, another Format partner. "It's not just Madison and Vine, it's Madison and Vine and Silicon Valley. 'What is the software that's going to get our readers engaged?"

Christopher Johnson, VP-content and business development for Hearst Magazines Digital Media

Fast Company has put its muscle behind that approach, overhauling its site last month to add tons of community functions. Readers-turned-members can contribute blogs, take up questions from the editors and communicate with other readers.

Hearst's digital unit, formed less than two years ago, has recently forged a bevy of partnerships to help catch any spending that shifts out of print, Mr. Johnson said. Two weeks ago Hearst announced a deal with YouTube to develop magazine-branded channels and share the ad revenue. It signed up, along with Condé Nast and Time Inc., to provide content for a site called AOL Home. And last week Hearst said it will help feed Yahoo Buzz, a site allowing readers to vote articles up or down.

"We've decided our strategy is to partner with all these guys," Mr. Johnson said. "I think of them as the equivalent of the Wal-Marts and Barnes & Nobles: great places to put our titles and content in front of millions of people every day."

"If one side is, 'do I want a companion site,''' he added, "the other side is 'do I want my digital media strategy to be a business in itself, to live and die based on its ability to exploit the medium using the brand?'"

Booster shot for Men's Titles

2008-02-29T09:39:00.000-05:00

Booster shot for Men's Titles
ShortList and Sport are now the largest magazines
By Heidi Dawley
After several ferociously competitive years and declining circulations, Britain's men's magazines have just gotten a real boost. Circulation has rebounded for the category.

"The men's market was up something like 11 percent," says Dan Pimm, head of print media at Universal McCann's London operation, referring to just-released circulation data. "For the men's market that's amazing."

Now here's the not-so-good news. The gains are being enjoyed not by all titles but by two of the newest publications, and both are free and with hefty distributions, ShortList, an upscale men's weekly, and Sport, also a weekly.

The figures reveal several things, and one is to put the kibosh on the idea that men were drifting off to the internet and away from print titles.

"For those that say men are moving away from magazines and going online, this shows the opposite," says Mike Soutar, ShortList's founder and a former editorial director at IPC, a major UK publishing house.

"If you get the content right, men's magazines have never been more engaging. There has never been a greater number of men's magazines read than today."

But it also speaks volumes about the potential for free magazine in the UK and perhaps elsewhere, including the U.S.

In just the last 18 months, three free titles have launched, two men's and one women's magazine.

Sport, a British reworking of a successful French concept that launched in 2006 as a weekly, distributes 317,209 copies each week in London on Friday mornings.

ShortList debuted in London and five other cities last September, and each Thursday it hands out close to 500,000 copies. ABC figures for second-half 2007, its first audit period, show that ShortList averaged 462,731 copies a week. It aims to reach 500,000.

Shortlist and Sport are now the two largest circulation men's magazines in the country.

"We are seeing a real shift in the way consumers expect to engage with the men's magazine market," says Soutar. "Before there was only one route--to choose from the newsstand. Now we are seeing a small amount of cannibalization but also a lot of new readers in the market."

Earlier this month, Dare, a women's monthly, went free, upping its distribution to 750,000. It's handed out at London tube and train stations.

While it's too early to judge Dare's impact on the women's category, that cannot be said about ShortList and Sport. They appear to be doing some damage to the paid-for weeklies.

Circulation at Bauer Consumer Media's Zoo was down 12.5 percent, to 179,006 from July to December 2007 compared to the same period the year before, while IPC Media's Nuts was down 8.5 percent, to 270,053.

ShortList and Sport solve a problem for marketers by offering the sort of mass distribution that was difficult with paid titles. As Alan Brydon, head of press communications at Media Planning Group, notes, most existing men's titles were either too small or their content too salacious for a lot of advertisers.

While Brydon worries that a big chunk of ShortList's circulation may be going to those outside its target demographic--the title is handed out at stations to men who look to be of the right age--he says it still amounts to a big magazine in the men's market at the moment, making it worth using.

For his part, Soutar says the readership study they commissioned showed that 86 percent of readers are men and 82 percent fall into the affluent bands they are targeting.

Both titles say they think their concepts could work in other countries.

What Are You Worth in a Free Economy?

2008-02-25T21:42:00.000-05:00

What Are You Worth in a Free Economy?
Chris Anderson Explains How 'Freeconomics' Will Change the Media World
By Nat Ives

Chris Anderson's book "The Long Tail" described the rising potential in niche media -- enabled by plummeting digital-storage costs -- and predicted a declining reliance on blockbuster media. In his first (as yet untitled) book since then, Mr. Anderson, the editor in chief of Wired magazine, plans to crystallize the implications of doing business when the cost of products, services and storage is falling rapidly toward zero.
Wired's new issue is free .. sort of. You still have to pay for the mag.

"'Free' shifts the economy from a focus on only that which can be quantified in dollars and cents to a more realistic accounting of all the things we truly value today," he writes in a forthcoming Wired cover story previewing the topic.
That's not to say Wired's growing print circulation is about to become free for readers, or that Wired didn't happily pocket every new penny of revenue when ad pages edged up 5.6% last year, according to its estimates.

It does suggest, however, that media companies and their advertising clients might rethink their strategies amid growing competition from the sector called "free." In an interview ahead of that cover story and Hyperion's planned book release early next year, Mr. Anderson told Ad Age what's coming now. We edited lightly for space, which still has a cost attached to it for Ad Age.

Advertising Age: Give us the broad strokes on "freeconomics." What's free, for whom and why?

Chris Anderson: When you think about it, there really are three kinds of free. There's the free we've known forever, which is the King Gillette razor-and-blade model, which is a form of cross-subsidy. A spin-off of that model is the media model, where the product is free because it's subsidized by the advertiser. That's called a three-party market -- the publisher, the advertiser and the consumer who gets everything for free.

The second kind of free is this weird kind of the free that's never existed before, simply because cost goes to nothing. Moore's Law said processing would get cheaper every year, but there are corollaries for bandwidth and storage. As the price gets closer and closer to zero, you can eventually just treat it as free.

Hotmail started with a tiny amount of storage for free and then you had to pay for the rest. By 2000 to 2002, you were getting more. Then Gmail said, "We're going to give away one gigabyte for free," and revolutionized the market. Yahoo said, "We'll give them infinite storage. We'll use that to reinforce people's connection with Yahoo and make the money somewhere else, maybe banner ads on Yahoo News, maybe just the information you get from people's user behavior that allows you to charge more for ads."

The third model of free is the gift economy. This is what used to be called freaky, Berkeley, hippy-commune stuff and now is the basis for Wikipedia, the blogosphere, Craigslist. There is a real economy out there that is motivated by nonmonentary consideration such as reputation, attention, expression -- all the social incentives that are turning out to be incredibly effective in getting people to do things for free. Before we didn't have a platform on which they could work.

Ad Age: If everything is getting closer to free, why did the cover price on all my celebrity-gossip magazines just go up?

Mr. Anderson: Magazines are in the essentially free business. At Wired, we charge $10 a year for a subscription when the actual cost to us is more than 10 times that much. So why do we charge anything? We charge a nominal fee simply as a psychological fee that shows that you want it -- which allows us to charge advertisers more. A single penny does it. We charge $10 because we don't want to devalue the product, because that would be sending the wrong message. But from our perspective it's essentially free.

Ad Age: Which media companies or marketers win with free, and which lose?

Mr. Anderson: Obviously you don't want to compete with free. If your economic model doesn't let you get to free but your competitor's does, you're fighting a very powerful proposition. If you are selling software and some other company decides to make that software a free service, Microsoft Office is going to be more and more competing with online word processors. That's a wake-up call for Microsoft.

Music labels are the best example of an industry threatened by free. They're in the selling-discs business, the selling-songs business. Obviously the newspapers are dealing with Craigslist. Newspapers charge for classifieds; Craiglist runs them for free. We know how that story ends.

Advertising is a very interesting question. Right now the agencies are competing with cheap. Google can serve very small advertisers who can't pay for big agencies. There's going to be more and more advertising forms that are free to somebody. Advertising isn't the victim of the free economy; it's the engine of the free economy.

One of the biggest issues is it's not all about advertising. Advertising pays for a lot and will pay for more, but there are many other models such as premium, cross-subsidies that are not based on ads.

Ad Age: You discuss the effects of abundance in your article. What happens when we get to play with bandwidth and storage that's free or nearly so?

Mr. Anderson: The best example of this today is YouTube. We focus on the viral hits and phenomenons and the most popular videos. As a Long Tail guy, what's really interesting about YouTube is the extent to which we waste the bandwidth and storage for passing around videos that are of interest to, like, three of us. It's YouTube, not Viral Tube or Lonelygirl15 Tube. It's not about quality; it's about relevance and focus. It's about being incredibly targeted on narrow interests.

Ad Age: So how does a "freeconomic" media model affect or interact with the Long Tail?

Mr. Anderson: The Long Tail is all about infinite choice. If you can give people infinite choice, you can discover the latent demand for products of niche appeal. Infinite free shelf space was essentially the enabling factor. It was simply by being able to be indiscriminately, profligately wasteful that we are able to discover the demand for niche content.

Chris Anderson, editor in chief of Wired magazine

What we're discovering about the world of the narrow, of the specific, of the niche is that's where people's engagement is the highest. That's where they care about stuff. We have relatively superficial engagement with mass products and relatively deep engagement with niche products. As you go down the tail of popularity, people will pay more to reach narrow audiences than they will to reach broad audiences. You can sell things for big money; you can charge more for advertising.

The world we live in -- a mass-market, commodity, cost-per-thousand market -- is very interesting to compare with the hyper-local. There's a site on Seattle-geek parenting -- you would say that's pretty narrow. We asked what their CPMs are. They said: 'We don't calculate that; we have local merchants who will pay us a few hundred dollars.' If you work it out in CPMs, they're paying $100 per thousand.

A site on Seattle-geek parenting is only possible because the cost of production is zero and most of the labor is donated.

Ad Age: Does free empower consumers, whose attention and respect are becoming the media companies' chief asset, or dis-empower them by eliminating the vote-with-your-wallets influence of circulation revenue, subscriber fees and so on?

Mr. Anderson: I'd like to think that getting more for less is empowering. As we shift from the currency being money to attention and reputation, in a sense, the field becomes a relatively level one. We all have attention and respect we can offer. That's a far more democratic access to the marketplace. We all have attention that has some value. As more and more becomes free, we're able to deploy that wherever for whatever. Basically everything is available to everybody -- not necessarily at all tiers and all features, but the walls to entry to products and services are falling faster than ever before.

Ad Age: What's going on at The Wall Street Journal online, which Rupert Murdoch had strongly hinted would go free once he took over but now is slated to retain a walled garden at its core with possibly even higher prices?

Mr. Anderson: Murdoch has to be culturally sensitive to the company that he bought and deftly change it. Ripping out the pay side overnight would have probably been too traumatic. I'm not sure we've seen the end of that story.

It reminds us that the original Stewart Brand quote is "Information wants to be free." The actual quote also says some information wants to be expensive. What he meant was that commodity information wants to be free and noncommodity information wants to be expensive. I could give away my book and sell you speeches, which are targeted. A band does exactly the same thing: commoditize the album and then monetize the performance. What Murdoch is exploring is the difference between a commodity and a noncommodity.

Ad Age: What's your take on micropayments? Edward Wasserman recently asked in the Miami Herald whether journalism could live without ads, imagining instead "a vast menu of news and commentary offered to you ad-free for pennies per item, the charges micro-billed, added up and presented like a utility bill at month's end."

Mr. Anderson: At this point, my opinion is that micropayments have always failed and will always fail. They violate the fundamental law of free. Free is psychologically powerful. Charging one penny ruins the psychology. Asking people to just think for one second, "Is this worth it?" or "How much is it worth?''is often too much.

Ad Age: Will your book be free?

Mr. Anderson: Obviously we're going to walk the talk. The issue is going to be free. Send us your snail-mail address, and we'll send you an issue free

Time Inc. to Make More Cuts This Year

2008-02-24T15:59:00.000-05:00

Time Inc. to Make More Cuts This Year
By Seth Sutel, AP Business Writer
Magazine Publisher Time Inc. Will Make More Cuts This Year, Time Warner Discloses in Filing
NEW YORK (AP) -- Time Warner Inc. said in its annual regulatory filing Friday that it expects to cut more jobs in its magazine publishing division in the first quarter, resulting in $10 million to $20 million in expenses.
Time Inc. spokeswoman Dawn Bridges said that the job cuts affected fewer than 100 people, and that most of them had already occurred in various parts of the company. Time Inc. has a global work force of more than 10,000.

Time Warner, whose Time Inc. division includes the titles People, Time, Sports Illustrated and Fortune, said the division incurred $67 million in restructuring costs last year, partly related to the closure of Life magazine.

Time Warner also owns Warner Bros., Time Warner Cable and cable channels including HBO and CNN.

Belt-tightening efforts continued last year across other parts of the sprawling company, resulting in $262 million in restructuring costs as 4,400 employees were terminated. That was down slightly from 2006, when the company spent $295 million as it eliminated 5,600 jobs.

Investors are looking to Jeff Bewkes, who took over as CEO at the beginning of this year, to further streamline Time Warner, which many on Wall Street believe has too cumbersome a structure.

Bewkes said earlier this month that AOL will separate its rapidly declining Internet access business from its online advertising operations, which could prime AOL to be either sold or combined with another online company. Microsoft Corp. had expressed interest in AOL two years ago but has since decided to go after Yahoo Inc.

Google Inc. owns 5 percent of AOL and has the right to trigger a public offering of its stake beginning this July, although Time Warner could opt to buy back Google's stake instead.

Bewkes also said Time Warner would consider whether to keep its 84 percent stake in Time Warner Cable Inc., its publicly traded cable TV subsidiary.

Time Warner, the world's largest media company by revenues, also disclosed in its filing that it paid $125 million in cash for a previously announced purchase of an online advertising company called Buy.at.

Advertisers Will Have to Cut Costs

2008-02-12T22:30:00.000-05:00

As Giant Retailers Reel, Marketers Gird for Worst
Advertisers Will Have to Cut Costs to Keep Pace With Changing Consumer Priorities, but Can They Afford to Slash Ad Spend?
By Ad Age Staff
http://adage.com/article?article_id=124972

Even the most optimistic had to stop and take a deep breath last week.

First came the retail industry's January sales, and the gain -- a meager 0.5% year over year -- marked the slenderest growth since "The Brady Bunch" ran in prime time. In announcing its numbers for the month, Wal-Mart made the almost apocalyptic pronouncement that consumers were hoarding their gift cards -- "more often for food and consumables than discretionary purchases." All of that was capped off by a Federal Reserve report that consumer credit-card borrowing was down sharply, along with reports that the credit is more often being used to fund the bare necessities.

So just how sobering is this news for marketers of just about anything beyond food, gasoline and home-heating oil -- and the agencies and media that subsist on their advertising? Ad Age looks at the implications for some of the key marketing categories.

Automotive
More loan defaults, more trading down and deferred purchases might be on the way for the already beleaguered auto industry. Morgan Keegan & Co. analyst Peter Hastings believes that in 2008, 15.7 million automotive units will be sold. If that happens, it would mark the industry's second year of declines; 2007 sales slid by 2.5% to 16.1million units, according to Automotive News.
If consumers need to buy a new car, they will step down in price and size, said Mr. Hastings.

Toyota Motor Sales USA's Bob Carter, group VP-general manager of Toyota Division, admitted that the auto industry will undergo "a lot of volatility in the first four or five months of the year." But, like the majority of other auto executives, he projected a stronger second half. Sophia Koropeckyj, auto analyst at Moodys Economy.com, said automaker finance arms have seen loan-default rates rise since the last downturn in 2001 and she predicted they would be more conservative in lending practices this year.

Package goods
Unilever CFO James Lawrence was perhaps the first industry executive to acknowledge a slowing economy may be having an impact on package-goods. "In the second half of the year, we've seen slightly weaker demand in personal care in the United States," he said on a Feb. 7 earnings call. "There has been some softness in [food-service] channels, but in contrast, we have seen quite strong demand for food products which are used in the home, such as meal kits and side dishes."

Household and personal-care industry sales grew an anemic 0.5% in the four weeks ended Jan. 27, according to Information Resources Inc. data reported by Deutsche Bank. That was better than the decline of 0.9% in December, but still nowhere near the sales increases of 4% in the first quarter of 2007.

As the economy slows, U.S. package-goods players will have to rely on cutting costs for the vast majority of their earnings growth in 2008-2010, Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Ali Dibadj said in a research note last week, though he doesn't expect the knife to hit marketing spending. "Every company in our coverage," he said, "speaks passionately about its focus and ability to cut costs to offset increasing commodities, inflation and marketing spend."

"A lot of people are using gift cards to buy food," said Burt Flickinger, principal at Strategic Resource Group, but "they may be trading up rather than using them to buy pasta and peanut butter sandwiches for dinner tonight. They might buy five or six steaks to treat the family."

Consumer electronics
A move by Americans to buy only necessities doesn't worry the Consumer Electronics Association. "There's certainly a discussion about whether tech today should be considered discretionary vs. necessary," said the trade group's economist, Shawn DuBravac. "Consumers continue to allocate away from other categories for technology." He said it's more likely that consumers will buy cheaper diapers and groceries than cut off a mobile phone or deprive their kids of a computer.

Forecasts for 2008 -- from CEA and other CE researchers such as iSuppli and in-Stat -- bear that out, with predictions of overall electronics growth, albeit slower than last year. Computer analysis from researchers IDC and Gartner predicts similar softer growth in that sector.

"Last year, when oil prices were going through the roof, we saw that people said, 'Since we're not traveling, let's spend some of that money on buying a flat-panel TV,'" said iSuppli analyst Riddih Patel.

But not everyone is buying that argument. "I've found the greatest correlation in PC shipment levels is overall economic indicators of GDP and consumer confidence," said analyst Roger Kay of Endpoint Technologies Associates, and formerly of IDC. "There is some shifting in buying where people who were going to buy a new PC now content themselves with an MP3 player. ... It's the delay scenario that's most troubling. People still want it, but they decide to put it off, wait to see how things go."

Fast food
Two words: value menus. In the next six months, they're likely to become even more important to the nation's biggest chains. "I think you're going to see more options for the dollar," said Darren Tristano, exec VP of Technomic. He added that if consumers are paying with a credit card for their burger fix, it isn't necessarily bad for the industry. "Your check average goes up with credit-card purchases."

Gift-card purchases were up 16% at Starbucks during the first quarter ended December 2007. Reloads were also up 12% during the same period. Spokeswoman Tricia Moriarty said some customers use its gift cards to keep spending under control. "The reload feature can be an effective way to help people ... enjoy their daily latte while maintaining their budget."

Retail
"Marketers are doing the one thing that they should not be doing right now," said Zain Raj, global practice leader-retail brands at Euro RSCG. "They are out there trying to promote and discount their way to growth. When you have a consumer-confidence issue, it's not about spending less money, it's about spending any money. Marketers need to say 'Here's why you need these things.'"

"You've got to play offense. Now is the time to be aggressive and go out and get market share," said Mike Boylson, exec VP-chief marketing officer, J.C. Penney. The retailer remains committed to the biggest launch in its history later this month, an exclusive brand created in partnership with Polo Ralph Lauren called American Living that will be supported with a splashy campaign debuting during the Academy Awards.

Others are trying to do more with less. ""People are going to have less disposable income, so that's going to change the way we do advertising," said Jose Docabo, senior advertising manager for Home Depot. "We're also going to have to get more creative with less budget."

"Retailers need to take part of their budget and block and take part of it and experiment," said Ric West, exec VP-marketing promotion and production at Sears Holdings.

Telecommunications
Bad economy or no, telecommunications marketers can't afford to trim back $5 billion in spending with cable companies breathing down their collective necks. "We could see more aggressive advertising by cable companies trying to drive customers to their all-in-one plans," said Ross Rubin, directorindustry analysis at NPD Group. He added that consumers may switch plans to take advantage of promotional offers.

It's also possible consumers will drop optional services that tend to run up phone bills, such as call waiting or caller ID, and some may be pushed to consider lower-price options to long distance, such as phone service provided over internet connections.

On the wireless side, a downturn could fuel acceleration in the growth of prepaid-wireless services, primarily for those who can't meet credit requirements for post-paid plans, said Roger Entner, senior VP-communications sector, IAG Research. Yankee Group estimated the number of pre-paid wireless customers will grow from 41.8 million last year to 61.7 million in 2011. Among the phone companies that would benefit from the shift would be TracFone, Boost Mobile, and AT&T pre-paid products such as the Go Phone.

The Coming Ad Revolution

2008-02-11T22:51:00.000-05:00

The Coming Ad Revolution
By ESTHER DYSON
Wall Street Journal Page A18
While the big news in the online world focuses on Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, a more profound revolution is taking place on the online social networks: The discussion about privacy is changing as users take control over their own online data. While they spread their Web presence, these users are not looking for privacy, but for recognition as individuals -- whether by friends or vendors. This will eventually change the whole world of advertising.

The current online-advertising model will become less effective, even as it gets increasingly sophisticated. New players are emerging to devalue the spaces that the ad giants are currently fighting over. Companies you've never heard of called NebuAd, Project Rialto, Phorm, Frontporch and Adzilla are pitching tools to Internet service providers that will enable them to track users and show them relevant ads. This approach (called behavioral targeting and already in service by ad networks that track users through so-called tracking cookies) undercuts traditional online publishers, who employ content to lure users and to sell adjacent ads. Now, the ISPs can sell advertisers direct access to the same users.

Take user number 12345, who was searching for cars yesterday, and show him a Porsche ad. It doesn't matter if he's on Yahoo or MySpace today -- he's the same number as yesterday. As an advertiser, would you prefer to reach someone reading a car review featured on Yahoo or someone who visited two car-dealer sites yesterday? His identity is still private: The ISP and behavioral-targeting networks don't know 12345's name and don't care. They just know what they think he wants.

This market will get more competitive, and users will be barraged by ads to which they will pay less and less attention. Call that public space, a world of billboards and cacophony. Even though the ads will be more "relevant" than ever, users will increasingly tune them out.

Now consider the new world of social networks. Facebook, unwittingly or on purpose, has been teaching people to manage their own data about themselves. Facebook's launch of the Beacon service -- which informs Facebook of members' activities (i.e., purchases) on other sites -- was a PR fiasco. But it still familiarized millions of users with the notion that they can control information about themselves online -- and determine to whom it is visible.

What might seem like a horribly complex and tedious task to their elders -- categorizing "friends," managing news feeds, handling intersecting communities of contacts -- feels natural to the Facebook users of today. They want more granularity of control, not less.

Each user determines who will get into his own garden, whether friends or vendors. Look at Dopplr (where I plan to become an investor), a site for travelers. I list my trips, and see how they intersect with my friends' itineraries. "Oh, we'll both be in London April 4? Let's get together!" Or, "Juan and Alice will be in town next Tuesday. Let's hold a dinner!" You can imagine or visit equivalent approaches for books (a hypothetical Amazon 2.0, new and more personalized), clothes (Glam.com and Stardoll.com), and even money management.

So what's the business model? I'll "friend" British Airways, which will say, "We see you're going to Moscow next month. Why not fly through London and we'll give you 10,000 extra miles?" I'm no longer in a bucket of frequent travelers, my privacy protected. I'm an individual with specific travel plans, which I intentionally make visible to preferred vendors. British Airways, of course, will pay Dopplr a handsome sponsorship fee to be eligible to be my "friend" (just as a Nike rep might pay to sponsor a basketball game and be part of the community). Someday NetJets may show up, offering to ferry me and my friends to a conference we'll be attending together.

I'm far more likely to respond to BA or NetJets within a trusted site, and for a specific offer, than I am to heed their ad while reading a newspaper article on the troubles in Russia. (As for Orbitz, my old standby: After five years, it still doesn't acknowledge my preferred airlines.)

The new model creates a more trusted environment for reaching high-value, frequent purchasers, whether of airline tickets, electronics, clothes or other items. Where does that leave the less-frequent purchasers? Probably looking to their friends rather than to advertising for advice. I'm an expert on travel; my friends may look to me for hotel choices. When I'm in the mood to buy a book or a new computer, I'll check out what my friends on Facebook are doing.

This does not mean that traditional online advertising will go away, just that it will become less effective. Value is being created in users' own walled gardens, which they will cultivate for themselves in real estate owned by the social networks. The new value creators are companies -- like Facebook and Dopplr -- that know how to build and support online communities.

Ms. Dyson is an investor in companies including 23andMe, Eventful.com, Meetup Inc., WPP Group and Zedo

Sweating Bullets in Magazineland

2008-02-10T23:19:00.000-05:00

Sweating Bullets in Magazineland
Unfortunately for independent, midsize companies, the new year is turning ugly early
by Jon Fine
It's barely February as I write this, but already 2008 is making brows sweat in Magazineland. Paper prices are skyrocketing, advertising is sluggish, and recessionary fears loom. Wal-Mart (WMT) booted hundreds of magazines out of its stores, which won't help newsstand sales. Nor will magazine wholesalers' ongoing campaign to reduce the volume of copies they distribute, so that they can increase the percentage of copies they actually sell. "Everything that's going up is not supposed to be going up, and everything that's going down is not supposed to be going down," cracks a mordant senior executive. Plus, oh yeah, that Internet thing. Virtually all publishers are racing to invent or buy digital strategies after previously neglecting that part of the business.

This year's stresses are likely to hit the independent, midsize companies of the sector first. These guys are not huge enough to spread challenges across a business notching north of a billion in revenues, nor can they hide within a parent company's multiple companies, as Hearst Magazines or Time Warner's (TWX) Time Inc. can. But they rely on titles big enough to be exposed to macro advertising trends, to which small, niche companies are relatively immune. Rodale and American Media, which post annual revenues around $625 million and $475 million, respectively, are very different companies in very different situations. But they're both still likely to feel the changes in this year's barometric pressures earlier than their bigger brethren.

LITTLE ROOM FOR ERROR
American Media is heavily dependent on supermarket tabloids like the National Enquirer and Star. Rodale bet early on what we now call "wellness," in a move that proved fortuitous, and has hit big with the magazines Men's Health and Prevention, which it founded in 1950; it's also had the fortune to publish The South Beach Diet book. Rodale is a family-owned company, run by President and CEO Steven Murphy. American Media, backed by Thomas H. Lee and Evercore Partners (EVR), has been run since 1999 by magazine veteran David Pecker. American Media's financial results are solid on the surface, but it's been rocked by earnings restatements. It has also, quite simply, not delivered for its investors, and underperformed many of Pecker's promises of revenue and profit levels, even while its fiscal year, which ends March 31, looks notably better than the previous one. Rodale's profit was less than $25 million in 2007, according to two executives who viewed financial data, a low figure for a company whose overall ad pages last year surged around 15%. They are thus two companies without much apparent margin for additional spending at a time when competitive vicissitudes require just that.

Murphy disputes this, saying '08 will be a year in which newish, in-the-red magazines Women's Health and Best Life will turn toward profitability. "I would be more worried if our investments were not working," he says. That three high-level executives have departed since December-one remains a part-time adviser-has raised concerns about cost cuts. But Murphy denies the moves were motivated by such concerns, and a spokeswoman says new hires are imminent. (Pecker's spokesman declined an interview request.)

American Media and Rodale both sought buyers in 2007, although Rodale truncated the process abruptly, say executives who were involved. A long-discussed deal between American Media and Source Interlink (SORC), a Ron Burkle concern that owns a major distribution arm and a set of enthusiast magazines, appears dormant. Pecker's five-year contract, which expires in April, will be extended a year, says a spokesman, a vote of confidence that, given industry chatter, may surprise observers. (Two senior executives employed elsewhere report knowledge of conversations in which American Media's owners discussed replacing Pecker around a year ago.)
These observers may search for other clues from these companies that the outlook for magazines is souring faster in '08. Look for a quick, quiet round of layoffs. Look for small-bore magazine or asset sales. Look for sudden ad dips at cornerstones such as American Media's Shape or Rodale's Men's Health. Look, in sum, for 2008 to decide whether the midsize, privately held players can still thrive as standalones in a stagnant or shrinking world.

For Jon Fine's blog on media and advertising, go to www.businessweek.com/innovate/FineOnMedia
Fine is BusinessWeek's MediaCentric columnist and Fine On Media blogger .

Things aren't so bad at the newsstand

2008-02-08T00:07:00.000-05:00

Things aren't so bad at the newsstand
For all the shakeout talk, celeb titles are holding up
By Diego Vasquez
The Audit Bureau of Circulations will release numbers for the final six months of 2007 on Monday, and already there's word that circulation for celebrity magazines continues to slow. After years of boom, and the addition of several titles to the category, these magazines are now seeing their numbers either slow or actually fall. Part of that is no doubt due to an increase in cover prices for two of the newer magazines, In Touch and Life & Style, which announced yesterday that they are cutting their rate base. But media people have also begun wondering whether a shakeout is on the horizon, as other categories such as lads, shelter and teen magazines have seen recently. Another issue getting buzz among print buyers as the ABC numbers loom is Wal-Mart's recent trimming of its magazine list, unloading a number of prominent titles from its shelves. The retailer is one of the country's biggest magazine sellers, though the effects of that decision won't be seen until the next measuring period. John Harrington, editor of The New Single Copy, which tracks newsstand sales, talks to Media Life about celebrity titles, Wal-Mart and why things don't look as bad as they might first appear.

Circulation numbers are due out from ABC on Monday, and there are rumors that some celebrity titles, like Life & Style, are going to take a hit. Are we finally seeing the saturation of this genre?

Well, now don't forget that In Touch and Life & Style raised their cover prices by 50 percent, and there's no question that that's going to cause a hit. It's a significant increase. They used to promote their low price, but now that's missing.

My understanding is that In Touch seems to have been hit less and is recovering, and in fact one of their recent issues is one of the best it's had at the newsstand.

I wouldn't ever take it so far as to say we're finally seeing saturation, we may need more evidence to make that statement. Us Weekly has some good numbers, as does OK!. There's a little softness, but nothing outrageous when you consider their positions.

Do you expect a shakeout in the celebrity category?

I don't think there's enough evidence to say the category is ready for a shakeout. It's still the leading category and generates the most sales at the newsstand.

OK! has seen some circulation growth over the last year, though the publication has reportedly lost more than $80 million. Do you think their policy of paying celebrities for their stories will ultimately prove to be a smart one, or is the magazine still in trouble?

They've had newsstand growth the last two periods, despite the fact that they've also raised prices by 50 percent. My understanding is they took a hit at the beginning, but they did some promotion and expanded their coverage, and there is newsstand growth. So that indicates they're starting to find an audience.

Regarding the policy of paying celebrities, everybody's been paying for photos, or something, at some point. How it works into their overall economics I can't tell you. But as far as newsstand goes, their news is good news.

A lot has been made of Wal-Mart's recent decision to cut some titles from its newsstand. Will this have much effect on the magazine industry, or is it a matter of perception being worse than reality?

Well, I think it's less than meets the eye.

They lowered their list by a lot, but there are a couple of things to keep in mind.

First, the remaining titles represent about 98 percent of their sales. So most of the titles that they took off were ones that were deadwood on their list. They either weren't selling or had low distribution. And some magazines had actually been discontinued prior to that time.

So that brings the list down to between 1,100 and 1,200 titles, and that's probably in the same range that larger supermarket chains were already at. So, like I said, it's less than meets the eye.

The other part of that is Wal-Mart, on a broader basis than just magazines, has been on a highly publicized effort that's a part of the whole green movement.

It's certainly an issue for them; three or four months ago they issued a statement to the magazine industry that said they wanted to increase sales efficiency to 50 percent and still increase overall sales by 5 percent. So, that whole reduction of the list falls into that same movement. What they call it in quotes is their "sustainability initiative," and it applies to everything in the store.

At this point there's not a reason to think this will have a negative impact on magazine sales.

What categories have seen the biggest circulation changes, in single-copy sales, over the last few years? What does this tell us about these categories?

To tell the truth, I'm not sure there's been any major shifts.

There's been growth in the women's' categories and some falloff in the men's category, especially if you're talking about the laddies books, but on the other hand I think the other end of the men's business has been pretty solid, so I don't know that it's a notable shift.

Some of the women's service magazines have done well in the last year or two, though a few of the years leading up to that were soft. But that's probably shifted to the more style magazines, like Oprah or Martha Stewart Living.

Other than the continued strength of the celebrity category, there hasn't been any significant overall shifts.

With the number of checkout pockets decreasing, what has been the competitive effect on magazines?

Again, I'm not sure there's a significant falloff in checkout pockets.

Some people in the business may actually say there's too much in checkout, as in there're too many choices. Now, there are some things going on where other products are getting aggressive about checkout space. But I'm not sure that's really taken hold yet.

If you look at the numbers on most of the magazines that are considered checkout titles, it's a mix, but I don't think their overall sales have moved significantly over the last four, five or six measuring periods.

Everyone's concerned about it, but I'm not sure there's an overall trend that can be identified.

Diego Vasquez is a staff writer for Media Life.

It's a printer Jim, but not as we know it

2008-02-07T00:31:00.000-05:00

It's a printer Jim, but not as we know it
So far, the digital age has been all about information. This is fine if you like that sort of thing - chatting, blogging and texting, etc - but what if you're someone who likes to actually create things, i.e. solid objects? Until recently, you could design them on a computer using 3D software, but they would remain virtual until you built them in a workshop.

Now there's an alternative: desktop machines that allow you to press 'print' and out comes your object in its full 3D glory. It's early days yet for these 3D printers: you can print a cup or a working hinge, for example, but not a working pen. However, it's clear that we're now witnessing a moment in history as significant as when photography changed from black and white to colour. Well, actually, it will probably be much bigger than that.

This 3D technology is currently used by engineers in the aerospace and automobile industries. Formula 1 car designers, for instance, want to constantly modify and replace parts. This technology allows them to design and test components virtually and then press print when they're happy with their designs. These printers are also used by medics to print implants that are digitally tailor-made for patients. The technology is even being used in the arts. For example, some jewellery is now designed on computers to suit the size and tastes of the customer and is then printed off.

The extraordinary thing about this technology is that it turns all the values of mass production on their head. Would we get used to going round to other people's homes for dinner and finding exactly the same knives and forks on the table as we have? But what would happen if you could digitally craft your own cutlery and print it off? Time will tell.

There are now many different types of 3D printing technology and a huge range of materials that can be machine sintered, laser cut, welded, UV cured or just glued. Very importantly, these machines are affordable, so designers and craft cooperatives can now compete in terms of price and precision with big business. Thus this technology doesn't threaten local craftspeople. On the contrary, it supports them at the expense of factories and mass production.

Printing in 3D is revolutionary in another sense, too, because as soon as we can make a machine that can make itself, the means of production will be available to everyone. There are already several groups working on this replicator idea, such as Adrian Bowyer's RepRap project at the University of Bath (www.reprap.org). His vision is to transform the manufacturing capacity of developing countries by making a 3D printer that can not only print useful objects, such as pumps, but also has the ability to print itself.

Some people say that such revolutionary technology will cause a complete upheaval in the economic and manufacturing landscape of the world. What ever happens, I hope that, for once, we engineers and scientists, who are so often the architects of change, engage not just in the economic impact of 3D printing, but also in the massive social, cultural and political changes it will undoubtedly bring to life on this planet.

Dr. Mark Miodownik, Materials Scientist, Kings College London

E-Mail Newsletters Seek to Replace Magazines

2008-02-05T22:44:00.000-05:00

Advertisers are finding receptive audiences with the increasingly popular services.
By Alana Semuels
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-list5feb05,1,7359535.story?ctrack=2&cset=true
Evan Friedman isn't lazy, just efficient. Why should he slog through newspapers, entertainment guides, restaurant fliers and concert promotions if someone will do it for him?

Friedman, a 24-year-old from Los Angeles, subscribes to Thrilllist.com, which bills itself as a lifestyle guide for men. It keeps him in the know with daily e-mails that advise him, basically, on how to be cool. He has dined at restaurants it suggested, attended events it plugged and purchased gadgets it recommended, including a cover for his iPhone.

"It's a trusted break in my barrage of e-mail," Friedman said. "It's kind of like an e-mail from a friend."

Thrillist is one of dozens of electronic mailing list services. Some have been around for years but new ones have been popping up recently, godsends not only for Friedman and people like him but also for advertisers.

The services, most supported by ads, reach audiences most magazines only dream of. The median household income of Thrillist subscribers, for instance, is $107,000, dwarfing Sports Illustrated's median of $63,605 and Maxim's of $65,710.

"Magazines like Stuff and Cargo have been going under, and we've been taking their place in the market," said Ben Lerer, a co-founder of Thrillist, which recently launched a Las Vegas edition. Lerer said its L.A. edition was projected to reach 45,000 recipients by next December, which would be an 86% jump from a year earlier.

The idea behind e-mail list services is simple. They bring order to the chaotic mass of information on the Web and elsewhere, seize on relevant information -- or things that the services' employees decide is relevant -- and present it via e-mails to subscribers.

"We appeal to people who like to be on top of things but don't have the time to do it," said Gary Foodim, general manager of Very Short List.

Every service claims a niche. Veryshortlist.com says it "points to excellent new (and sometimes vintage) entertainment and media that haven't been hyped to within an inch of their lives." Dailycandy.com touts itself as "the ultimate insider's guide to what's hot, new and undiscovered." Flavorpill.com says it provides "filtered bits of knowledge that help you better navigate an ever-expanding sea of cultural options."
The field is getting crowded, bursting with lists targeted at specific groups of people. Among them: UrbanDaddy ("an exclusive, daily e-mail magazine devoted to keeping you in the know"), Julib.com ("what's new and hot in the world of restaurants, boutiques and beauty") and Pocketchange.com ("detailing the most expensive goods and services found in New York and Los Angeles").

Most e-mails carry with them at least one ad. Recipients don't seem to mind the marketing, said Kris Hallerman, a senior analyst at eMarketer. "It's not seen as intrusive because people have control." They can always unsubscribe.

Advertisers like to hop onto e-mails that people invite into their mailboxes, especially now that spam filters have gotten better at blocking ad-only messages.

"People that are fans of the list have quite a personal relationship with it; that makes it a good vehicle for the right advertising," said Michael Jackson, president of programming at IAC/InterActiveCorp., which funds Very Short List.
After a Thrillist e-mail mentioned Astor & Black, a tailor that makes inexpensive custom suits, $100,000 worth of suits were purchased in a matter of weeks, the company said. DailyCandy said an e-mail about a movie screening prompted 8,000 RSVPs.

The competition for subscribers is heated. Flavorpill, a weekly list founded in 2000, recently made its content accessible on mobile phones and updates its website frequently, notifying subscribers when there's something new. "We've been looking over our shoulders for seven years, wondering why no one else was doing this," co-founder Mark Mangan said.

DailyCandy is making its archive, which contains eight years of content, more accessible on its website and is trying to bring its subscribers together in the physical world for philanthropic and other events. It recently started sending out daily texts to the mobile phones of people who prefer to receive information that way, and created a mobile website for people to access on their hand-held devices.

"We're always thinking about how to provide new and undiscovered things in different ways going forward," said Pete Sheinbaum, chief executive of DailyCandy Inc. "The fortunate thing for us is that we are requested by users to enter their in-boxes, which is a private space these days."

Magazine Observers See Challenging Year

2008-02-04T21:22:00.001-05:00

Memo Pad: Ouch, It Hurts . . . ... Holy Smokes . . .
OUCH, IT HURTS: Magazine publishers are already feeling the pinch from fears of a recession - and many observers expect things to get worse before they get better.
George Janson, managing partner, director of print for Mediaedge:cia, predicts it will be a challenging year, with perhaps minor growth in packaged goods. "If there is any overall growth, it will run between 0 and 2 percent," he said.

Deutsche Bank also maintains a cautious view on the prospects of consumer magazines this year. It expects revenue performance to continue to be constrained since structural pressures remain in key sectors, including automotive and men's lifestyle. According to a report from the bank last month, online revenues are growing quickly but aren't enough to offset erosion elsewhere in the business. "We believe the recent Emap consumer magazines sale for 9.5x EBITDA, compared with an average 11.3x EBITDA M&A multiple for the industry, is a clear indicator of the pressure on consumer magazine asset values at present," the report said.

Retail advertising is turning into a sore spot for many magazines - so what do fashion titles do when one of their key ad categories is down? Focus even more on luxury, it appears.

Valerie Salembier, senior vice president/publisher at Harper's Bazaar, said she just returned from Paris and the only concern she heard was how retail was going in the U.S. She added that, so far, the magazine has experienced no losses from luxury advertisers. Donna Lagani, senior vice president and publishing director at Cosmopolitan, agreed retail continues to be a tough category for the magazine, but added her ad base is diverse enough to offset a downturn in spending.

"If you read the papers, you see that retail is awfully vulnerable because of the comparable-store sales," said Lagani. Still, Kohl's, J.C. Penney, Sears and Wal-Mart are all advertising in Cosmo. "We don't have the reliance on the retail sector as other magazines with whom we compete. We've expanded in technology and packaged goods. There's a lot of money in that stuff." And the Hearst title is also picking up business that would normally go to TV, at least temporarily, thanks to the writers' strike: "One is a beauty client, two are packaged goods," Lagani said.
Talk of a possible recession isn't keeping Carlos Lamadrid, vice president and publisher of Woman's Day, up at night. He argued the magazine's core business is relatively resistant to economic woes. "Our big categories are pharmaceutical, beauty and packaged goods and food. Those are all recession-proof. With pharmaceuticals, you're sick, you need your meds, you take them. People will still eat no matter what. We're not talking gourmet, we're talking Kraft and Quaker. And beauty is a luxury that every woman will continue to indulge in. You may not buy a $600 pair of Gucci shoes, but a new lipstick still perks you up." Ad Age last week cited a Deutsche Bank report that found that cosmetics sales decreased 2.2 percent to $790.4 million during the fourth quarter of 2007, with lip treatments dropping 10.9 percent.

Lamadrid did concede that retail is a trickier prospect. "We carry some apparel, but it's been difficult to build that business, because their business is so soft. At the same time, if the consumer who was going more upmarket starts to come back to masstige, that presents an opportunity. Our reader is a Wal-Mart, J.C. Penney, Kohl's, Target shopper, and shop up toward Macy's, Bloomingdale's and Nordstrom."

GQ publisher Pete Hunsinger said retail sales are an issue and he sees some advertisers shifting their allocations a little in response. "People are holding off - if they did an eight-page insert last year, maybe they do a four-pager this year," he said. "If they did a spread, maybe they're doing a page."

He added GQ has actually added luxury auto accounts so far this year. The men's title was up a little in January, up 10 percent in February and slightly down in March.
Of course, some publishers expressed reason for optimism. Details publisher Chris Mitchell said after a slow start, his magazine's endemic businesses of fashion and retail "are so far holding or growing." He added the magazine had its best March and April ever this year. And Elle publisher Carol Smith said she's closed four record issues so far, calling upon the old saying that "things are never as good or as bad as they look." She added, "Despite the bleak headlines, luxury marketers - for the most part - haven't given up on consumers."

It remains to be seen how long that will be the case. One media buyer who works with luxury clients, particularly in Europe, emphasized global economic shifts over a U.S.-centric view. European brands, he said, were spooked by the devastating losses of the fraud at Société Général, and consumer confidence both domestically and internationally has been rattled.

The media buyer said advertisers' decision-making would likely be on the short term, with fewer long-term commitments. "We have people coming back from meetings and saying, 'We need a contingency plan. We need to hold back resources.'" - Amy Wicks, Irin Carmon and S.D.S.

HOLY SMOKES: Ellen von Unwerth has rankled her share of Catholic Bostonians by photographing what looks like a handful of nuns sketching a naked man for Equinox Fitness clubs' new campaign. After the ad appeared in Boston magazine earlier this week, angry callers and e-mailers started barraging the Back Bay club with complaints. Then the local media jumped on the story, further stoking the fires about the Fallon-made ads.

Terrence Donilon, a spokesman for the Boston Archdiocese, has called for an apology and wants the ads yanked. He told one news agency, "It's offensive to religious women who dedicate their lives for the good works of the church." But Equinox isn't headed for the confessional, and still plans to run the ad in Esquire and Vanity Fair. The company's spokeswoman, Judy Taylor, said, "The ads capture the energy and artistry of the well-conditioned body in a thought-provoking fashion, blending fantasy and impact." - Rosemary Feitelberg

Magazine Observers See Challenging Year

2008-02-04T21:22:00.000-05:00

Magazine" Inkjet Technology to Dominate Drupa

2008-02-04T08:01:00.000-05:00

BoSacks Speaks Out" The following paragraph caught my eye and I thought it was worth passing on:

"It's the first time we have seen continuous inkjet in the category of glossy media and catalogues," Kodak chief technical officer Bill Lloyd told reporters.

This seems to me to the logical next step in printing magazines. It is an enormous opportunity to personalize edit to individual readers. It gives any publisher the ability to have multiple niches within a single long press run.

"Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth."
- Jules Verne

"Magazine" Inkjet Technology to Dominate Drupa
BY Barney Cox, PrintWeek,
http://www.printweek.com/drupa/news/778768/Inkjet-technology-dominate-Drupa-Kodak-Xerox-launches/

Drupa 2008 is set to live up to its billing as 'the inkjet Drupa' after both Kodak and Xerox revealed plans to show new inkjet technologies. Both firms have pledged to reveal new high-speed inkjet technology at the Düsseldorf event, although the two have widely diverging views on the potential applications for the technology. Kodak has revealed plans to commercialise its Stream technology, unveiled at last week's pre-Drupa media week, within two years and claims it offers "offset class" performance that will transform the industry.
"It's the first time we have seen continuous inkjet in the category of glossy media and catalogues," Kodak chief technical officer Bill Lloyd told reporters.

Kodak predicts that a trillion pages per year, which is the equivalent of 1% of the world's printed pages, will be produced using Stream technology by 2015.

At Drupa, Stream will be shown as a one-up, 150m per minute concept press and the firm plans to begin selling products based on the technology by 2010.

Xerox's approach to inkjet development is more cautious. The firm has suggested inkjet will be a niche technology, despite having registered more than 1,200 patents for inkjet technology developments.
"We believe inkjet has its place and is suitable for very high volumes," said Xerox production systems group vice president of marketing Valerie Blauvelt. "People have high-quality applications inkjet is not suitable for. These include direct mail and transactional."

Blauvelt described Xerox as "not a single technology company" and added the firm was going to continue to develop products based on xerography and solid ink.

The firm used last week's conference to launch two new machines, the 490/980 colour continuous feed printers and the 650/1300 continuous feed printers.

USPS Performance Indicates Rough Year Ahead

2008-01-31T19:06:00.000-05:00

USPS Performance Indicates Rough Year Ahead
Continued volume declines could threaten CPI cap, certain services.
BY Matt Kinsman
First Class Mail volume declined in the first fiscal quarter of 2008, while Standard Mail, which typically makes up for the decline in First Class, also fell, raising a red flag of warning about the stability of the entire USPS rate structure.

First Class Mail, made up of personal letters, most bills, and Standard Mail, which includes catalogs and direct mail, combined accounts for about 94 percent of the total mail processed by the United States Postal Service. If those categories continue to decline, the billions in revenue they produce will decline too, forcing the USPS to raise rates, probably across the board, including for magazines.

Standard mail declined by 2.6 percent to 27.7 billion pieces in the first fiscal quarter of 2008, and First Class declined by 3.9 percent, to 24.4 billion pieces.

Revenue was up 3.5 percent to $20.4 billion in the first quarter and the USPS posted a profit of $672 million. However, the revenue was $500 million less than forecast for the first quarter (October through December), which is typically the best-performing financial period for the USPS because of the holidays.

"As First Class and Standard decline, together which pay for almost all of fixed costs, something will have to pay those fixed costs," says David Straus, postal counsel for American Business Media. "My guess is we'll see tension building with the CPI cap, reduced volumes and USPS cost-cutting efforts met with Congressional opposition. One of most pressing issues will be the Postal Service's efforts at reconfiguring its network, contracting out some of its labor and whether they'll be stymied by Congress or whether they can downsize. We could see a reduction of service, including cutting out some deliveries. There are all sorts of wild theories out there, like charging for home delivery."

When the USPS agreed to the CPI cap last fall, Nina Link, president and CEO of Magazine Publishers of America, said: "Having the next increase, which is likely in the spring, and all future increases under the CPI system will literally save publishers billions of dollars in postage costs in the coming years."

Worldwide, magazines are holding up

2008-01-30T23:31:00.000-05:00

Worldwide, magazines are holding up
Forecast of 3.4 percent growth in ad spending to 2010
By Heidi Dawley
Magazine publishing in the U.S. may have become gloomy for certain categories, but worldwide it's in healthy shape, with emerging markets making up for the slowdowns in mature markets like the U.S.
And the picture for magazines worldwide looks brighter still going forward, even if they're not seeing anywhere the growth in ad revenue as the internet.

Worldwide ad spending on magazines grew 2.7 percent in 2007, and that pace is forecast to pick up to 3.4 percent a year through 2010.

Much of that growth is coming in countries like India and China.
"It is still a relatively positive outlook in the west, but much more so in the emerging markets," says Rolf Rohwer, marketing and research manager at the International Federation of the Periodical Press, which just released a new study.

But even with the growth in the developing markets, magazines are seeing their share of total media dollars shrink, and that's expected to continue, falling from 12.5 percent in 2006 to 11.4 percent by 2010, according to figures provided to IFPP by ZenithOptimedia.

But there's some consolation. Spending on magazines has kept ahead of inflation over recent years, always a welcome sign for any media. Notes Jonathan Barnard, head of publications for ZenithOptimedia: "It is rising in real terms."

Also, as Barnard further notes, magazines are doing better than newspapers worldwide, where ad spending is forecast to rise roughly 2.8 percent a year on average over the next three years.

Barnard thinks this is the case in part because the magazine experience isn't so easily replicated online. "The experience of reading a magazine is different from a newspaper. The relaxed experience people have browsing through the magazine isn't the same while you are in front of your computer console clicking away."

But magazines have also held the attention of the younger generation better than newspapers, he notes.

What's driving the growth of magazines in developing economies is the emergence of a middle class of growing affluence. They can afford magazines as they could not before, and they can afford the products advertised in them. That in turn makes magazines a more attractive medium to brand advertisers, more so than newspapers.

In China, ad spending on magazines more than doubled between 2001 and 2006, from $145 million to $375 million, and it's forecast to reach $515 million this year. Magazines have also grown their share of market, from 2.3 percent in 1995 to 3.3 percent in 2006.
In the U.S., magazines ad spending grew from $21.5 billion in 2001 to $25.2 billion in 2006 and is forecast to hit $28.3 billion in 2008, according to FIPP figures.

Custom Publishing Gets a Makeover

2008-01-28T21:26:00.000-05:00

BoSacks Speaks Out; Someone please explain to me the difference between general publishing in the new digital world order and custom publishing. This article states that

custom publishers would rather call themselves "custom marketers." That's because what used to be custom publishing now includes word-of-mouth, the internet, e-mail newsletters, mobile alerts, deeper database crunches and complex behavioral modeling. Does that or does that not sound like a ripe formula for our traditional publishers as we head deeper and deeper into nichedom?
So I put forward the proposition that niche publishing and custom publishing - no, make that custom marketing - is the very same thing, and that a profitable rose by any other name is still and yet a profitable rose.

"There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures."
William Shakespeare

Custom Publishing Gets a Makeover
Fueled by Tech Advances, Niche Expands to Include E-Mail, Word-of-Mouth
By Nat Ives
http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=123338
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Custom publishing, the arm of the magazine business that turns out titles such as Jeep and Departures, is being transformed as surely and swiftly as any other feature in the media landscape -- to the point that some practitioners even correct you for still calling it custom publishing.

"We would rather call it custom marketing today," said Wendy Riches, exec VP at one of the biggest custom players, Meredith Publishing Group. That's because what used to be custom publishing now includes word-of-mouth, the internet, e-mail newsletters, mobile alerts, deeper database crunches and complex behavioral modeling.

The expansion in related spending can hardly help but transform the field at the same time: Custom revenue ballooned to $37.4 billion in 2006 from $22.1 billion just two years before, according to Veronis Suhler Stevenson.

Connecting with customers
Then there's the media and marketing revolutions going on elsewhere, which have served to elevate the relationship management that is custom's key strength. "In a world of oversupply, where there's very little product differentiation in the marketplace and even some commoditization, it then becomes critical for these organizations to truly create a relationship with their existing customers," said Chris Schraft, president of Time Inc. Content Solutions.

Custom publishing and associated efforts, as a result, are marching across the magazine business. Content Solutions, whose publications include MyFord and Merrill Lynch Rewards, recently opened an interactive-specialist unit called Liquid Dialogue. Next month the Custom Publishing Council, up to 90 members from 25 when it split from the Magazine Publishers of America in 2002, will publish the second issue of Content, its own magazine.

"The core premise of why people do custom publishing hasn't changed," said Val Valente, VP-publishing director at Rodale Custom Publishing, which has produced titles for major advertisers including Bloomingdale's, Kraft Foods and Johnson & Johnson. "The desire to communicate directly with consumers, control the message, wrap the brand in an editorial context, generate loyalty, express a brand identity -- all those reasons still hold true. Custom publishing has become part of the larger concept that's out there in the market called branded content, where companies are saying, 'We need to control our message.' We're just riding that wave."

Targeting
Maybe so, but the surfboards are getting pretty fancy. Meredith, for example, recently bought a database-analytics company called Directive to build out its custom abilities. "As the technology's gotten better, the costs have come down," Ms. Riches said. "We can now build enormously strong predictive models to help us. It would be who's most likely to be interested in this new car, what are the characteristics of a really high-value owner, somebody who changes their car frequently, who is loyal to a particular make of car."

Mark Stanich, chief marketing officer of American Express Publishing, said the sector could still use a higher profile. "Custom does get overlooked sometimes," he said. "But it's really cost-efficient, and it's really targeted. You know exactly who these people are, and you know they buy a lot of stuff from you. Why wouldn't you want to talk with them?"

Print Inserts Pass TV Ads As Important Influence in Purchase Decisions

2008-01-27T19:58:00.000-05:00

Print Inserts Pass TV Ads As Important Influence in Purchase Decisions
Based on research findings released by Vertis Communications, twenty-seven percent of adults indicated they look for information in advertising inserts as part of making a purchase decision. That's up from 19% ten years ago. Television advertising is no longer the main influencer in purchasing decisions, according to Vertis. TV ads are now the main influencer for 8% of consumers, compared to 22% in 1998.

Other research findings indicate that women have become more involved in the decision making process for purchasing home electronics products. In 1998 about 69% of women 18 to 24 participated in such decisions, but as of this year 91% report being part of the process, says Vertis.

The report, Vertis' Customer Focus: Decade of Data study revealed that for adult men 18 and older, TV advertising is no longer the main influencer in their purchasing decisions, down 8 percent from 1998 to 22 percent.

Advertising inserts have grown to become the most influential medium for both adult men and all adults in America. Twenty-four percent of men and 27 percent of total adults indicated they turn to this medium when making a purchasing decision, compared to just 16 percent and 19 percent, respectively, 10 years ago.

Scott Marden, director, marketing research for Vertis Communications, says " . . .Americans' use of new media, entertainment and information vehicles have become increasingly more fragmented... "

Looking deeper into the study, young adults have drifted away from personal interaction when choosing leisure activities. Since 1998, the number of young adults participating in team sports has decreased from 19 percent to 13 percent, while the amount of time spent with computers has drastically increased, from 8 percent to 21 percent in the same 10 years.

Additionally, the number of young adults going out to the movies has decreased from 13 percent in 1998 to just 3 percent in 2008, while the number of adolescents staying home to watch television or rent videos has increased from 24 in percent in 1998 to 32 percent in 2008.

Marden continued, "...tracking trends in leisure preferences and media activities arms marketers with an acute awareness of where and when this important consumer group can be reached."

The Customer Focus: Decade of Data study, which surveyed 3,000 consumers via telephone, further revealed the following:

· In 2008, 91 percent of women ages 18-24 report they are a part of the process, with cell phones, desktop computers and digital cameras being some of the most popular purchases for this age group

· 68 percent of women age 50 and older now have access to the Internet, up from 30 percent in 1998

· In the past 10 years, the percentage of women ages 25-34 who are single or living with their significant others has increased from 30 percent in 1998 to 38 percent in 2008

· In 2004, 31 percent of adults indicated they entered a store without any prior research; this number is down to 17 percent in 2008. Prior to entering a store in 2008, the study indicates approximately 57 percent of adults will look through advertising circulars, 50 percent will conduct research on the Internet, and 38 percent will utilize catalogs to retrieve additional information

· In today's current crises in the housing and gas markets, 40 percent of Americans indicated they're less likely to make purchases over $100 in the coming year, 24 percent more than after 9/11

· Adults are shifting their vacation agendas in 2008 to include fewer trips via automobile, decreasing 5 percent since 1998, while fewer adults are planning to take a vacation in 2008, down from 70 percent 10 years ago to 67 percent today.

· 40 percent in 1998 to 43 percent in the new year

In men's magazines, a question of size

2008-01-27T19:48:00.000-05:00

BoSacks Speaks Out;

I'm not the first nor the last to say it, but as we all know, it's not the size, but the magic it performs that counts. This is as true for magazines as anything else. The discussion below of alternate, smaller-sized magazines is neither new nor all that adventurous. The magazines will work very well for some readers and not so well for others. At best they are a stop-gap performance. The sizes that are now being discussed for these travel-sized magazines are pretty much the same size as the Sony e-reader and the Amazon Kindle. So, is the magazine industry laying the ground work for size acceptance with this new introduction or is it just my imagination? OK, I guess it's just my imagination.

"An optimist will tell you the glass is half-full; the pessimist, half-empty; and the engineer will tell you the glass is twice the size it needs to be"
- Unknown

In men's magazines, a question of size
Britain's FHM will introduce a travel-size edition
By Heidi Dawley
http://www.medialifemagazine.com/

In men's magazines, the eternal question is whether size does in fact matter, and in Britain, where competition among men's titles has been especially fierce, it's a question that's being asked more and more.

FHM thinks it may have the answer.

This spring, the monthly title is set to launch a smaller version that it hopes will help attract readers on the go.

This idea of what's called a travel-size edition is not new. It's been a popular tactic in the women's market for some years now. FHM will be one of the few major men's titles to give it a go.

Media buyers think it might well attract new readers. "The travel format has certainly seemed to work in the women's sector. A number of magazines have brought it out," says Steve Goodman, managing director, print trading at GroupM. "So for FHM to try it is a very sensible move."

For FHM, as well as its brethren, the last few years have not been stellar. The magazine sold an average of 311,590 copies a month in the first six months of 2007, according to ABC figures. That was down 25.9 percent on the same six months in 2006 and way down from the 750,000 copies it sold monthly not so many years ago.
Among the problems facing FHM and the other monthlies was the flush of men's weeklies launched in recent years, mostly downmarket publications. That led the monthlies to chase downmarket in an effort to hold onto their readers, and not with success. "They were tarnished with that," says Mark Gallagher, press director at Manning Gottlieb OMD.

But the monthlies have also been hurt by the internet, which comes as no surprise.
So in 2007, FHM brought in a new editor Anthony Noguera, who had been head of Emap's men's magazine portfolio, to help bolster FHM's fortunes. Noguera oversaw a redesign that came out in August.

"FHM is very different from how it was a few months ago. It is less in that downmarket sphere that it was pulled into to compete with the others," says Gallagher.

The decision to bring out a travel edition, which will be published in select markets alongside the larger edition, is likely to be another part of that effort to help create distance from the others in the market, believes Gallagher.

FHM has not yet said how big the travel edition will be. The regular edition is 12 inches by about 8 ¾ inches.

The travel edition is likely to be similar in size to other travel editions in the glossy monthly market. For instance, Glamour, the magazine credited with bringing this size to the market, is 8 ¾" tall and just over 6 ½" wide.

FHM has said that the travel edition will be a scaled-down version of the regular edition, having the same content and page layouts. It will retail for the same price as the full-size edition -- $7.60 an issue.

The travel size first really took off in Britain in 2000 when Glamour launched into the market. The magazine chose what it called the "handbag size" when it launched.

Glamour flew off the newsstands, overtaking Cosmopolitan to become the No. 1 women's glossy just about 18 months after launch.
Not surprisingly, others followed suit, launching travel editions alongside their regular-sized editions in commuter markets.

A number of publications continue to publish at least part of their circulation in this format, including Marie Claire and Elle, which implies that the publishers believe it to be successful, although it hasn't resulted in huge upward spikes in circulation.

How it does for men's titles is an open question. One title that tried it was James Brown's Jack magazine. It launched in that size, but later abandoned it and has since folded.

http://www.medialifemagazine.com/artman2/publish/Magazines_22/In_men_s_magazines_a_question_of_size.asp

A Venerable Magazine Energizes Its Web Site

2008-01-24T22:37:00.000-05:00

A Venerable Magazine Energizes Its Web Site
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
A year ago, The Atlantic's Web site was, to put it gently, weak - in content, staff, traffic and advertising.
Today, with big-name bloggers and video, it barely resembles the same site, having evolved into one of the livelier places on the Web for public policy debate and news analysis. And the number of readers going to the site has quadrupled.
Readership will get another boost starting Tuesday, when TheAtlantic.com will abolish the fire wall that has allowed only subscribers to the print magazine to see most of its articles online. It will make its archive accessible, too.

Executives hope that a rise in traffic brings to The Atlantic, one of the nation's oldest publications, something it hasn't had in many years: a profit.

The Web site "functioned for too long as just a marketing arm for the print magazine, rather than publication in its own right," said James Bennet, the editor in chief. For years, he said, "it was a very small number of people, working very hard, who kept it alive."

Other magazines that report on public affairs and culture, like The Economist, Harper's and The New Republic, also have fire walls; The New Yorker does not, although some articles cannot be read online.

By comparison, a year ago The Atlantic made fewer articles available to nonsubscribers and offered less Internet-only material. It had no blogs. But in February, it hired Andrew Sullivan, the iconoclastic, sometimes conservative commentator, who is one of the nation's most prominent journalists. Justin Smith, the president of Atlantic Media, estimated that the addition of Mr. Sullivan's blog accounts for 30 percent of the increased traffic.

In April, James Fallows, a national correspondent for the magazine who has a big following, moved his own blog to TheAtlantic.com. Several other bloggers, on both the political left and right, were added over the course of the year. The result has been a sort of digital conversation, with writers testing themes that later turn into long-form articles, and responding - sometimes negatively - to each other's postings and to articles in the magazine.

"A highly turbulent Web site where people are engaging in argument with each other turns out to work very well with the idea of a polished monthly magazine about the same kind of political and cultural debate," Mr. Bennet said.

The site has added video and put more articles outside the fire wall, including archival pieces by the likes of Mark Twain.

The number of visitors jumped to 308,000 last month from 72,000 in December 2006, according to comScore Media Metrix. (Like most publications, The Atlantic says the true numbers are much higher.) The print magazine sells about 400,000 copies, a figure that has more or less held steady.

Mr. Smith said The Atlantic had long done a poor job of selling ads online but is hiring more ad sellers, and Goldman Sachs will sponsor the elimination of the fire wall, buying all the ad space this week.

"The magazine is still in the red, in the $3-to-$5-million range," he said, but he hopes to be in the black in five years.

The Atlantic seems to have stabilized after a period of turmoil. The previous editor in chief, Michael Kelly, stepped down in 2002, and the owner, David G. Bradley, left the post vacant for more than three years. (Mr. Kelly was killed in Iraq in 2003 while reporting for the magazine.)

While the managing editor, Cullen Murphy, ran the magazine, it won numerous awards for excellence but circulation dropped sharply. In 2005, Mr. Bradley moved The Atlantic from Boston, where it was founded in 1857, to Washington, leading Mr. Murphy and many other staff members to leave.

For a few months, it seemed that no one was in charge, until Mr. Bennet was hired less than two years ago.

Because of Niches, Magazines Still Strong

2008-01-23T21:56:00.000-05:00

Because of Niches, Magazines Still Strong
By Steve Tarter, Journal Star
Jan. 20--PEORIA -- While the Internet casts a giant shadow over much of the print world, magazines remain in the sun.
Newspaper publishers fret that younger readers go online for their news, but magazines continue to command loyal audiences, many of them young.

"There are more magazines than ever before," said Samir Husni, a journalism professor at the University of Mississippi known as "Mr. Magazine" with a Web site dedicated to the subject. "There are more specialized magazines today than there were in the mid-1960s." Husni said magazines have changed, most notably with the demise of "the 800-pound gorilla," he said, referring to general-interest magazine.

Richard Stolley, formerly of Pekin, was an editor at Life when the fabled weekly folded in December, 1972.

"Everybody was devastated. Subscribers were upset. It was a grim experience," said Stolley, who started his media career as a 15-year-old sports editor for the Pekin Times in 1944.

At the time Life went under, its circulation was 8 million, Stolley said. "We picked up the Look subscriber list (after that magazine closed) but that only hastened its demise. Production costs were astronomical. We were losing money on every magazine," he said.

Other magazines have replaced old titles, but with a different approach.

"We've seen the demise of Life, Look and other general-interest magazines but since the mid-1990s, there's been a big explosion of titles on the marketplace," said Husni.

"Publishers no longer launch magazines looking for a million readers. The new face of magazines are niche titles that may never exceed 10,000 in circulation," he said.

Husni estimated only 10 percent of the magazines published today fall into the general-interest category, down from 30 percent just 20 years ago.

While niche titles proliferate the magazine industry is seeing other changes. "The big three newsweeklies -- Time, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report -- have lost 1 million readers in combined circulation over the past 16 years," said Mark Glaser, who writes an online media column for the University of Southern California's school of journalism.

"But the magazine business as a whole remains relatively healthy because of the rise of so many niche publications and the staying power of glossy entertainment news," he said.

Magazines have met the challenge of the Internet, note observers like Ed Moran, director of product innovation at the New York-based consulting firm Deloitte & Touche USA.

"There's something very seamless and easy about reading a magazine. They're high-quality, have high-resolution images. They're easy to scroll through and they don't need an Internet connection," he said in an interview with Media Life magazine. "Online can be a pale representation and I think that's something we tend to forget." Said a report from Washington, D.C.-based Bivings Group, a firm that creates Web sites for national companies: "We can expect that the pressure on magazines to 'change their ways' is less forceful than the pressure facing newspapers.

"Many experts in the newspaper industry fear the evolution of the Internet and theorize that newspapers must either 'change or die' -- either leverage the Internet or face being replaced by it," the report said. "In contrast, it is unlikely that magazines, complete with their glossy photos, eye-catching headlines and tangible qualities could actually be replaced by the Internet." That's not to discount the impact the Internet has had on the magazine industry. Many magazines now maintain Web sites for additional communication with readers -- through forums, blogs, games and contests.

"Digital editions of magazines are more like a TV channel than a magazine. The good ones are not competition to print, just a different medium," said Husni. "The problem with many of the (magazine) Web sites I've seen is that they are one-way streets. We send readers to the Web from the print side and we never ask them to come back.

"Rather than looking at technology as a competitor, we need to look at it as an add-on." There's room for all media when the focus is on a subject people want to know about, Husni said. "Look at celebrity magazines. It's not just People. We have six different celebrity titles that are all successful because we have the Internet and TV feeding the addictiveness of the public," he said.

Being able to adapt to change is key, Husni added. "I tell people that newspapers are not dying but committing suicide because they refuse to change content," he said.

An example of how specific some magazines get is Garden and Gun, one of the hottest new magazines in 2007, Husni said on his Web site, mrmagazine.com. "What started as a celebration of the sporting life and the Southern land has evolved into a magazine full of experiences and sights and sounds that engages not only those living or intrigued by that lifestyle but also by those who appreciate the art and culture of the South," he noted.

While most young people have gravitated to the Web, some magazines still count on a youthful audience. "When reading for pleasure, boys prefer magazines over books and newspapers," said Kristen Harrison, a professor of speech communication at the University of Illinois.

Harrison, who is doing a research project with another U of I professor, Bradley Bond, said video game magazines are among the most influential with preadolescent boys. "If you look at these magazines, video game characters (displayed in magazine ads) are depicted as superheroes having bodies with oversized muscles," she said.

The U of I team concluded exposure to gaming magazines promotes a drive for muscularity in young males, a drive that might lead to steroid use.

Conversely, a thin body appears to be the model for many girls' magazines, said Harrison.

Young people remain interested in working on magazines, said Jim Burwitz, who teaches a class on magazine production at Bradley University.

"I'm pleasantly surprised how strong the interest is in four-color publications. People say it's a dying medium but it's far from its way out," said Burwitz, editor of Pathways, the alumni publication for the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria.

Trade magazines like Pathways often provide jobs for those interested in the magazine field, he said.

Genevieve Diesing, a 2007 Northern Illinois University graduate who interned at the Journal Star last summer, recently was hired by a magazine in Chicago. As associate editor at the Chicago division of Schofield Media, an international publisher of trade magazines, she writes and edits copy on several different industries.

"I like what I'm doing now. It doesn't require the same passion as newspaper writing but it pays the bills and gives me experience while I try to get my foot in the door at more commercial magazines," she said.

Meanwhile, magazines continue to evolve. Two popular titles, CosmoGirl and Popular Mechanics, are slated for development as webisode projects. The online series will feature two- or three-minute episodes that will launch on the magazines' Web sites.

If successful, the Fox TV-Hearst Magazine collaboration might even be expanded to the network TV level, noted Advertising Age.

BoSacks Readers Speak Out: On MPA: Mags Must Adapt Or Die

2008-01-22T16:19:00.000-05:00

BoSacks Readers Speak Out: On MPA: Mags Must Adapt Or Die

Re: MPA: Mags Must Adapt Or Die
Bo- I agree this is infuriating. I have been associated with the magazine business since 1985 when PIB reports came in binders. The MPA and PIB seem to have conspired to present information that has as much believability of cold war soviet era crop reports. I remember listening to soviet reports of ever increased production of crops, shoes, autos all of which were to point to vitality while the nation crumbled from the inside. How is this different?
Submitted by a Publisher)

Re: Wrong Again: The MPA and Readers
Bo: Perhaps the MPA misunderstands their mission? Bob, you use the word entrepreneurial a lot when you speak and sometimes when you write, I was wondering if there are any people at a management level of the MPA that understands what you are talking about. Is there a single entrepreneur in their ranks? If not, WHY not?

Re: Wrong Again: The MPA and Readers
Bob, The MPA is so clueless. users? 24/7? No wonder they are losing circulation. They don't know what they are doing!
(Submitted by an Industry Supplier)

Re: BoSacks Speaks Out: I Love Printing
I think I watched it like 6 times already. That is the best!!
Submitted by a Senior paper Buyer)
This video can still be found at www.bosacks.com - look for Bo's Videos on the right side of the web page

Re: BoSacks Speaks Out: I Love Printing
Bo, that was terrific. This guy is my new hero. All our CSR's are still laughing/crying.
Another cool moment in time. The BoSacks brilliance, where you never know what Bo will find and send out to the troups. Bravo.
(Submitted by a Senior Plant Manager)
This video can still be found at www.bosacks.com - look for Bo's Videos on the right side of the web page

Re: NewPage Announces Integration Restructuring Plans
and the beat goes on. Hope the paper buyers are reading this news. No more two year guarantees will be available, let alone one year protection. More customers who have purchased their own paper will now ask the printers to get the deals because the large printers will have more purchasing power. All the rules are going to change because the candy store for paper is finally closed. Amen.
(Submitted by a Senior paper Person)

Re: NewPage Announces Integration Restructuring Plans
God I hope people read this all the way through. For those who didn't please note: "we are merging the operations in a manner that will actually increase our 2008 North American production by 3-8% compared to the combined production in 2007."
(Submitted by a Senior Paper Manager)

Re: Shelter Magazine Publishers Adjust to Changing Housing Market
I didn't read U.S. House and Garden, but it was my wife's favorite magazine, by far. Dominique Browning's editorial put H&G far ahead of the competitors. Even Conde Nasty makes mistakes, and this one was huge. Their PR hype says that while circulation and customer loyalty were strong, somehow the media types didn't think the advertisers were interested. Hmmmmm...loyal, affluent subscribers...will pay anything that circulation will charge for their subscriptions...but some idiot in the CN marketing department thinks the title is old. Well, it's gone, and nothing to be done about that. Just make sure somebody shoots the idiot. My wife called and demanded a refund of her unfulfilled subscription, and was told that she was "not the first one" to do so. If she wanted Architectural Digest, offered as a substitute, she would have ordered it. Instead, she's resigned to enjoying the UK version of House and Gardens, for which she happily pays US$130 per year...for a monthly!
(Submitted by a Senior Director of MFG and Dst)

Re: The Passion of Steve Jobs
We are Mac people, because publishing is overwhelmingly a Mac environment, and I still think Macs are less irritating than other computers. But I am very tired of hearing about Steve Jobs. I first signed a contract with a publisher over 20 years ago, and compiled an 1800-page reference book on a little Kaypro pc because it cost a fraction of what Jobs was demanding for an Apple machine. He was trying to sell hardware instead of capturing the industry with his unique operating system and its features, and he might as well have been selling washing machines. If he was as smart as he thinks he is, we never would have heard of Bill Gates.
(Submitted by a Semi-retired writer)

Re: The Passion of Steve Jobs
Steve will not make a reader but watch the iPhone to become the mobile reader and the air to become the reader for college kids. Kids love Apple and they are the future consumers who want to but all Apple products. Kids today buy a new iPod each year.
(Submitted by a Vice President of Manufacturing Operations)

Re: The Passion of Steve Jobs
But are the 40% who don't read the one's advertisers and marketers want to reach? I highly doubt it.
(Submitted by a Publisher)

Re: The Passion of Steve Jobs
I suppose I'm getting old, but I find myself wondering how bad a Depression we would have to have to put all the #$*% video games and 'reality' TV out of business. How do we know that an electronic reading platform wouldn't make some inroads? I think book design is in a bad way; I work in a big-box bookstore and I don't see that many books that make me want to pick them up and look at them . . . but I'm probably just full of hot air . . .
(Submitted by an Unknown)

Re: Reaction Intense to Magazine Cover
Dave Seanor made this error in judgment because he is from the publishing side of the industry. He thought he was supposed to provide his customers with all the noose that was fit to print. No printer would have made a similar error because we know that, when dealing with customers, no noose is good noose.
(Submitted by a Senior Printer)

Golfweek Fires Editor Over 'Noose' Cover

2008-01-20T20:34:00.001-05:00

Reaction Intense to Magazine Cover
By DOUG FERGUSON http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g8bZqdcoe9gLMIhLuRLdt3Bq6nOQD8U7URH00 The editor of Golfweek magazine said he was overwhelmed by negative reaction to the photo of a noose on the cover of this week's issue, illustrating a story about the suspension of a Golf Channel anchor for using the word "lynch" in an on-air discussion about how to beat Tiger Woods.
"We knew that image would grab attention, but I didn't anticipate the enormity of it," Dave Seanor, vice president and editor of the weekly magazine, said from the PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando, Fla.

"There's been a huge, negative reaction," he said. "I've gotten so many e-mails. It's a little overwhelming."

Among the critics was PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem, who said he found the imagery to be "outrageous and irresponsible."

"It smacks of tabloid journalism," Finchem said in a statement. "It was a naked attempt to inflame and keep alive an incident that was heading to an appropriate conclusion."

Kelly Tilghman was suspended for two weeks because of comments she made during the second round of the Mercedes-Benz Championship, when she and analyst Nick Faldo were discussing young challengers to Woods.

Faldo suggested that "to take Tiger on, maybe they should just gang up (on him) for a while."

"Lynch him in a back alley," Tilghman replied.

Tilghman said she apologized directly to the world's No. 1 player, and Woods' agent issued a statement that said it was a non-issue.

Seanor said editors at the magazine debated several choices for a cover, and he took responsibility for the noose. The title of the cover is "Caught in a Noose," with a sub-title, "Tilghman slips up, and Golf Channel can't wriggle free."

Golf Channel didn't deal with Tilghman's comments until Newsday in New York first wrote about the "lynch" reference three days after the broadcast. The suspension was announced shortly after the Rev. Al Sharpton demanded on CNN that Tilghman be fired.

"We're a weekly news magazine. The big story of the previous week was Kelly Tilghman, and that's what we chose," Seanor said. "How to illustrate that? It was tough. Do you put Kelly Tilghman out there? But was it so much about her or the uproar?

"This is emblematic of why people were so offended."

The Golfweek staff previously had scheduled a meeting with PGA Tour officials Thursday morning, and Seanor said the noose quickly became "item 1-A" on their agenda.

He said dozens of customers at the merchandise show stopped by the Golfweek stand and put an issue in their bag, with some stopping to discuss and complain.

"Most people who are objecting to it - within the golf industry - are saying this episode was just above over," Seanor said. "I think it's indicative of how, when you bring race and golf into the same sentence, everyone recoils."

Seanor said he was struck by the paucity of black customers among the thousands of people at golf's largest merchandise exposition.

"Look at the executive suites at the PGA Tour, or the USGA, or the PGA of America. There are very, very few people of color there," he said. "This is a situation in golf where there needs to be more dialogue. And when you get more dialogue, people don't want to hear it, and they brush it under the rug. This is a source of a lot of pushback."

Seanor said he expected canceled subscriptions over the issue. He was not sure how it would affect advertising. Golfweek is published by Orlando-based Turnstile Publishing Co.

Asked if he regretted the cover, Seanor paused before answering.

"I wish we could have come up with something that made the same statement but didn't create as much negative reaction," he said. "But as this has unfolded, I'm glad there's dialogue. Let's talk about this, and the lack of diversity in golf."

He denied the cover was an attempt to sell more magazines, noting that Golfweek is 99 percent subscriptions.

"I was a little shocked by the commissioner's reaction," he said. "It was rather strong, particularly from someone who rarely comments on things on his own tour."

The day after Tilghman was suspended, Finchem said it was clear the Golf Channel was "was taking this unfortunate incident very seriously."

"Over the years, many PGA Tour players and staff have had the chance to get to know Kelly," he said. "Knowing her, her comment seems to us to be very uncharacteristic and we believe it was completely inadvertent. We have no reason to believe that she was intentionally malicious in her remark."

Golfweek is one of two weekly magazines devoted entirely to golf.

Golf World, coincidentally put on its cover this week a photo of Bill Spiller, one of the black pioneers in the sport, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of his push to integrate the PGA Tour.

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Golfweek Fires Editor Over 'Noose' Cover
A cover about a controversy becomes a controversy of its own.
Dylan Stableford
http://www.foliomag.com/2008/golfweek-fires-editor-over-noose-cover

Golfweek has fired its editor less than a week after publishing a noose on its cover.

Dave Seanor, the editor responsible for the controversial cover, has been replaced with senior writer Jeff Babineau, the magazine confirmed Friday.

The cover was an attempt to illustrate a story on the racially-insensitive remarks made by a Golf Channel announcer about Tiger Woods. The anchor, Kelly Tilghman, suggested on-air that Woods' rivals "lynch him in a back alley."

"We apologize for creating this graphic cover that received extreme negative reaction from consumers, subscribers and advertisers across the country," William P. Kupper Jr., president of Turnstile Publishing Co., the parent company of Golfweek, said in a statement [1]. "We were trying to convey the controversial issue with a strong and provocative graphic image. It is now obvious that the overall reaction to our cover deeply offended many people. For that, we are deeply apologetic."

Seanor's firing came a day after the PGA Tour threatened to pull all of its advertising out of the magazine.

"Clearly, what Kelly said was inappropriate and unfortunate, and she obviously regrets her choice of words," PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem said in a statement. "But we consider Golfweek's imagery of a swinging noose on its cover to be outrageous and irresponsible. It smacks of tabloid journalism. It was a naked attempt to inflame and keep alive an incident that was heading to an appropriate conclusion."

"We know we have a job ahead of us to re-earn the trust and confidence of many loyal readers," Babineau said in a note [2] posted on the Golfweek Web site. "Our staff is very passionate about the game. Our wish is that one regretful error does not erase more than 30 years of service we've dedicated to this industry."