BoSacks Speaks Out: Do I feel lucky? Well do you, punk?
As I reported to you last week, Samir Husni and I held a terrific debate at the Florida Magazine Association's annual conference. I received many flattering notes and reports about our "heated" conversation. For those who weren't there I intend to attempt to broadcast a brief recap of the event in the very near future. But for today's note, let me just interject the following:
We are all employed and in the media/publishing business to make money. My question to you is this. Who is going to be the predominant media revenue provider and employer in the near future? Will it be radio, newsprint, magazines, TV or a digital platform?
For the record, I have never said that magazines are going to disappear. No, I think the printed magazine will be around for a long time to come, but it will not be the predominant reading medium for the majority of the masses. The internet gained mass appeal and attraction about 1996. The internet is now about eleven years old. My question to you is, how long do you expect to be working for living? What do you think you will be doing ten years from now? Do you think your responsibilities and job requirements will remain similar to what they are today?
The more I ponder this, the more I think that the only vocation that will still be doing in ten years, what they do today are the writers, editors and assorted proof readers of our industry. If you aren't involved in the creation of putting words in the right order, and in a pleasant format that others will want to read, then whatever you are doing today will be different a decade hence.
What do you think? Do you disagree?
BoSacks
-30-
This here's a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and it can blow your head clean off. Now, you must ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well do you, punk? -
- Clint Eastwood"
Web Ad Spending To Eclipse Radio In '07
Louis Hau
http://www.forbes.com/2007/08/29/advertising-radio-internet-cx_lh_0829radio.html
U.S. Internet advertising spending is poised to overtake radio advertising for the first time, providing a reminder that broadcasters need to be more aggressive in their embrace of online opportunities.
U.S. radio ad spending is expected to inch up 1.5% in 2007, to $20.4 billion, short of online ad expenditures of $21.7 billion, which will be up 22% from last year, eMarketer senior analyst Ben Macklin said in a report.
Over the next several years, radio station Web sites and online audio advertising "will be the principal drivers for radio advertising growth,'' Macklin said.
But he doesn't think that growth will add up to much. He expects the sluggish radio advertising market to continue experiencing slow growth, climbing to an estimated $22.6 billion in 2011, when online ad spending is expected to surge to $44 billion.
Terrestrial radio companies like Clear Channel Communications, CBS and Cox Radio still retain massive audiences, but consumers are spending less time listening to radio than they do surfing the Web or watching TV.
In addition, only 17% of U.S. consumers consider radio the "most" essential medium, down from 26% five years ago, according to a study released earlier this year by Arbitron and Edison Media Research.
For many advertisers, the choice between radio and non-radio online ads won't be an either-or proposition, Macklin said, pointing to studies showing that consumers often listen to the radio while consuming other media and that a mix of terrestrial radio and online ads can be far more effective than online ads alone.
"There are many synergies between radio and the Internet and, for the most part, they complement rather than compete with each other,'' he said. "Advertisers should not abandon radio in favor of the Web but combine the two media to take advantage of the unique attributes of each."
Those might sound like encouraging words for the radio industry. But as Macklin's estimates show, these new opportunities don't appear likely to kick-start the radio industry out of its doldrums.
Friday, August 31, 2007
BoSacks Speaks Out: Do I feel lucky? Well do you, punk?
BoSacks Speaks Out: Do I feel lucky? Well do you, punk?
As I reported to you last week, Samir Husni and I held a terrific debate at the Florida Magazine Association's annual conference. I received many flattering notes and reports about our "heated" conversation. For those who weren't there I intend to attempt to broadcast a brief recap of the event in the very near future. But for today's note, let me just interject the following:
We are all employed and in the media/publishing business to make money. My question to you is this. Who is going to be the predominant media revenue provider and employer in the near future? Will it be radio, newsprint, magazines, TV or a digital platform?
For the record, I have never said that magazines are going to disappear. No, I think the printed magazine will be around for a long time to come, but it will not be the predominant reading medium for the majority of the masses. The internet gained mass appeal and attraction about 1996. The internet is now about eleven years old. My question to you is, how long do you expect to be working for living? What do you think you will be doing ten years from now? Do you think your responsibilities and job requirements will remain similar to what they are today?
The more I ponder this, the more I think that the only vocation that will still be doing in ten years, what they do today are the writers, editors and assorted proof readers of our industry. If you aren't involved in the creation of putting words in the right order, and in a pleasant format that others will want to read, then whatever you are doing today will be different a decade hence.
What do you think? Do you disagree?
BoSacks
-30-
This here's a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and it can blow your head clean off. Now, you must ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well do you, punk? -
- Clint Eastwood"
Web Ad Spending To Eclipse Radio In '07
Louis Hau
http://www.forbes.com/2007/08/29/advertising-radio-internet-cx_lh_0829radio.html
U.S. Internet advertising spending is poised to overtake radio advertising for the first time, providing a reminder that broadcasters need to be more aggressive in their embrace of online opportunities.
U.S. radio ad spending is expected to inch up 1.5% in 2007, to $20.4 billion, short of online ad expenditures of $21.7 billion, which will be up 22% from last year, eMarketer senior analyst Ben Macklin said in a report.
Over the next several years, radio station Web sites and online audio advertising "will be the principal drivers for radio advertising growth,'' Macklin said.
But he doesn't think that growth will add up to much. He expects the sluggish radio advertising market to continue experiencing slow growth, climbing to an estimated $22.6 billion in 2011, when online ad spending is expected to surge to $44 billion.
Terrestrial radio companies like Clear Channel Communications, CBS and Cox Radio still retain massive audiences, but consumers are spending less time listening to radio than they do surfing the Web or watching TV.
In addition, only 17% of U.S. consumers consider radio the "most" essential medium, down from 26% five years ago, according to a study released earlier this year by Arbitron and Edison Media Research.
For many advertisers, the choice between radio and non-radio online ads won't be an either-or proposition, Macklin said, pointing to studies showing that consumers often listen to the radio while consuming other media and that a mix of terrestrial radio and online ads can be far more effective than online ads alone.
"There are many synergies between radio and the Internet and, for the most part, they complement rather than compete with each other,'' he said. "Advertisers should not abandon radio in favor of the Web but combine the two media to take advantage of the unique attributes of each."
Those might sound like encouraging words for the radio industry. But as Macklin's estimates show, these new opportunities don't appear likely to kick-start the radio industry out of its doldrums.
As I reported to you last week, Samir Husni and I held a terrific debate at the Florida Magazine Association's annual conference. I received many flattering notes and reports about our "heated" conversation. For those who weren't there I intend to attempt to broadcast a brief recap of the event in the very near future. But for today's note, let me just interject the following:
We are all employed and in the media/publishing business to make money. My question to you is this. Who is going to be the predominant media revenue provider and employer in the near future? Will it be radio, newsprint, magazines, TV or a digital platform?
For the record, I have never said that magazines are going to disappear. No, I think the printed magazine will be around for a long time to come, but it will not be the predominant reading medium for the majority of the masses. The internet gained mass appeal and attraction about 1996. The internet is now about eleven years old. My question to you is, how long do you expect to be working for living? What do you think you will be doing ten years from now? Do you think your responsibilities and job requirements will remain similar to what they are today?
The more I ponder this, the more I think that the only vocation that will still be doing in ten years, what they do today are the writers, editors and assorted proof readers of our industry. If you aren't involved in the creation of putting words in the right order, and in a pleasant format that others will want to read, then whatever you are doing today will be different a decade hence.
What do you think? Do you disagree?
BoSacks
-30-
This here's a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and it can blow your head clean off. Now, you must ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well do you, punk? -
- Clint Eastwood"
Web Ad Spending To Eclipse Radio In '07
Louis Hau
http://www.forbes.com/2007/08/29/advertising-radio-internet-cx_lh_0829radio.html
U.S. Internet advertising spending is poised to overtake radio advertising for the first time, providing a reminder that broadcasters need to be more aggressive in their embrace of online opportunities.
U.S. radio ad spending is expected to inch up 1.5% in 2007, to $20.4 billion, short of online ad expenditures of $21.7 billion, which will be up 22% from last year, eMarketer senior analyst Ben Macklin said in a report.
Over the next several years, radio station Web sites and online audio advertising "will be the principal drivers for radio advertising growth,'' Macklin said.
But he doesn't think that growth will add up to much. He expects the sluggish radio advertising market to continue experiencing slow growth, climbing to an estimated $22.6 billion in 2011, when online ad spending is expected to surge to $44 billion.
Terrestrial radio companies like Clear Channel Communications, CBS and Cox Radio still retain massive audiences, but consumers are spending less time listening to radio than they do surfing the Web or watching TV.
In addition, only 17% of U.S. consumers consider radio the "most" essential medium, down from 26% five years ago, according to a study released earlier this year by Arbitron and Edison Media Research.
For many advertisers, the choice between radio and non-radio online ads won't be an either-or proposition, Macklin said, pointing to studies showing that consumers often listen to the radio while consuming other media and that a mix of terrestrial radio and online ads can be far more effective than online ads alone.
"There are many synergies between radio and the Internet and, for the most part, they complement rather than compete with each other,'' he said. "Advertisers should not abandon radio in favor of the Web but combine the two media to take advantage of the unique attributes of each."
Those might sound like encouraging words for the radio industry. But as Macklin's estimates show, these new opportunities don't appear likely to kick-start the radio industry out of its doldrums.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
A BoSacks Reader Speaks Out: Ads, Landfills, and Publishing Relevancy
A BoSacks Reader Speaks Out: Ads, Landfills, and Publishing Relevancy
Yesterday morning I received three terrific response emails from the very first BoSacks Cub Reporter, Ed Cobb. Ed, my college roommate, is a lifelong friend, co-worker and all around great guy. Ed is a printing expert and one of the best in the trade. There is so much I could say, but for today I will just tell the story of firsts.
Yes, Ed was the first BoSacks cub reporter, but even more important, Ed was the very first subscriber to this newsletter. I actually have Ed to thank for there being any newsletter at all. How is that you say? I will tell you the genesis of this newsletter as briefly as possible. The longer tale will be in my autobiography with the working title of, "You Can't Get Here From There."
In the last century, on or about 1989, I worked with (not for, but with) AOL. They needed manufacturing help in the insertion of plastic diskettes onto and into millions of magazines. After we succeeded in this first-time-ever production feat, I was given an AOL account.
What is an AOL account in 1989 you may ask? My memory is that they had 25,000 or so subscribers. Having an email address back then was like yelling in the forest. If there is nobody to hear you, did you yell at all? Not only that, the dial-up modems were capable of reaching the blazing speeds of something like 9,000 baud. In those days it could take a ½ hour to download a simple little picture.
This is years before the World Wide Web, but there were FTP sites that had information relating to printing. Ed was the first guy I knew who had an email address other than me. We would write each other about things we found at FTP sites which related to our industry and we would agree or disagree about what we found. The cross dialog was terrific. It occurred to me that this new form of communication was something I should know about if I wished to stay employed in the publishing field.
OK, I'll wind this tale up fast. First there were just the two of us, then three, then four and before you knew it, this became a global newsletter, which is now required reading in several universities. Thanks Ed.
So, after telling you that, BoSacks Cub Reporter Ed has submitted the following responses from last night's emails. They are great reading even without knowing the history, but better if you do.
"There is a history in all men's lives."
William Shakespeare quotes (English Dramatist, Playwright and Poet, 1564-1616)
Re: Which Ads Don't Get Skipped?
Submitted by Ed Cobb
To my mind, the key insight in the article describing this study is this: "relevancy outweighs creativity." This is true not only for TV commercials but for all advertisements. Is there a print magazine parallel? Yes, a very significant one: Relevancy comes naturally in magazine advertising. Print magazines, when they are good, are more than the parallel of this phenomenon; they are its embodiment.
Really good magazines, as we have discussed elsewhere, have passion and a point of view. They are the original targeted marketing because good magazines share a set of interests and attitudes, a world view with the readers. Good magazines are informed by the concerns and agenda of their readers, while at the same time helping to create those concerns and shape that agenda. This symbiotic relationship is the reason good Editors are worth ten times their weight in Bean Counters. If no one cultivates the fields, there are no beans to count. At least, not enough to bother counting.
A good magazine produced by an effective editor creates a context to which its community of readers relates. That context provides an advertiser with an opportunity to establish his own relevance to that interest community. When that happens, when the advertiser makes that connection, the advertisement becomes part of the context. The advertiser participates in the symbiosis that occurs between editor and reader, and becomes as much part of the interest community as they are. The opportunity for this to happen in a good magazine is part and parcel of the medium. It never happens on TV or the Internet, where ads are always an intrusion.
Responsibility for the failure to recognize and capitalize on these truths must fall to ad agency management. The agency media buyers should be directed by their management to place ads where they do the most good for their clients. This is not necessarily the same thing as placing them in the environment with the most cachet, sex appeal, and buzz. The agency creative types have to be focused and directed by their management. Creative does not mean "original" (nothing is new under the sun), or "avant garde" (nothing is more cliched than the avant garde), or "edgy" (yawn.). In advertising, creative means forging an emotional and intellectual connection with the interest community whose members might actually buy the product because it fits the context of their lives. Anything else is mere self gratification with the client's money; advertiser abuse.
As the great ad man David Ogilvy said, "If it doesn't sell, it isn't creative." Placing relevant ads in a context where they will create a connection to an interested community, like in a good magazine, is creative. That kind of common sense has become so rare it's almost countercultural.
Re: Filling Landfills with New Books
Submitted by Ed Cobb
This printed matter disposal themed piece of your rant today puts me in mind of an assignment you once delegated to me back when you were the Production Manager at High Times and I was your Production Assistant. It should be noted that the late-80's wave of title inflation had not yet hit. A circa 1978 Production Manager is equivalent to today's Production Director in inflation adjusted masthead-speak. I don't know for certain what a Production Assistant would be today, except that he'd still be underpaid.
Anyway, Circ had moved our fulfillment and back issue business to Larry Flint's organization (more stories!). As a result, we had to dispose of a quantity of old magazines from the original fulfillment operation in the West Village. I dutifully reported for work supervising a gang of teamsters as they passed cartons of High Times out the cellar window, into the alley way, finally tossing them into the waiting dump truck.
The work crew piled into their truck and I and my Polaroid camera into my red VW, and off we went through the tunnel, across the river, to the wilds of New Jersey. In those pre-Giants Stadium days, the Meadowlands was a whimsical name for a swamp/landfill harboring dreams of glory. The industrial strength magazine hearse travelled into that great and desolate space inhabited by tall weeds and large rats, crisscrossed by hard packed convex makeshift dirt roads, occupied here and there by concentrated clusters of man and machine activity, and watched over by more seagulls than I have ever seen anywhere else, including the sea. How the driver navigated the wasteland and chose one faux roadway over another remains a mystery to this day. Finally, we found ourselves perched atop a plateau composed of Lord knows what, surrounded by thousands of acres of refuse built hills and fast vanishing reed covered dales. The only thing more memorable than the sight of the site, and the Manhattan views beyond was the smell of it all. Ah, show business!
The dump truck swung around, backed itself to the edge of our mystery mesa, tilted its immense bed, and poured thousands of copies from the first five years of publication of High Times toward their final destiny. The work of all who contributed from paper mill, ad agencies, and editorial offices through the printing plant was completed here as our magazines tumbled down the hillside, making the valley just a little less deep than it had been moments before. Such is the way of all flesh and its creations.
If they ever dig up Giants Stadium they are unlikely to find Jimmy Hoffa. But I know what they will find because I saw it with my own eyes. The Meadowlands, like our careers, is built on years of production of High Times magazines. I have Polaroids to prove it.
Re: BoSacks Speaks Out: Your Ad Here
Submitted by Ed Cobb
The impact of this kind of advertising cuts both ways, which people tend to forget. If a McDonald's logo stares you in the face from the seat back in front of you as you employ the barf bag in response to turbulence, do you grab a Big Mac as soon as you land? Doubtful. If the stay at home mom whose Plymouth Voyager is wrapped in P&G's Tide graphics flirts with another stay at home mom's husband at the PTO meeting, does mom #2 switch to All? Maybe. If an Expedition sporting Verizon Wireless decorations misbehaves on the highway and cuts off you and your Silverado, do you pursue and run him off the road ("Can you hear me now, you sonofa....?") and change your service back to Sprint? Could happen.
There is no denying that some truth resides in the "no such thing as bad publicity" school of thought. Mr. Whipple was annoying but people bought Charmin. But this strikes me as an application that carries the concept too far for its own good. Or, more accurately, too far for the advertiser's good. Just because you can do it doesn't mean you should do it. It might be hot. It might be edgy, and ground breaking, and all the rest. It might get media buzz. But is it smart? Is it efficient? Or is it just a high visibility roll of the dice destined for YouTube infamy? ("Ask yourself one question. Do you feel lucky? Well, do ya?")
It might be noticeable. It might even be memorable. But does the technique of "wrapping" place the advertiser's product message in a flattering, complimentary context? Would Sirius Satellite Radio be better advised to take a full national page in Jazz Times or wrap 100 VW's tooling around the country? Or 1000? The only sure winner with the wrapping approach to advertising is 3M, who makes and sells the wraps. Plus maybe the guy who pockets the $750 in return for driving a hideous car (unless he gets run off the road). For the other potential players, is this the best way for an agency to spend a client's money? Or is it just more ego boosting self gratification for buyers and creatives?
Yesterday morning I received three terrific response emails from the very first BoSacks Cub Reporter, Ed Cobb. Ed, my college roommate, is a lifelong friend, co-worker and all around great guy. Ed is a printing expert and one of the best in the trade. There is so much I could say, but for today I will just tell the story of firsts.
Yes, Ed was the first BoSacks cub reporter, but even more important, Ed was the very first subscriber to this newsletter. I actually have Ed to thank for there being any newsletter at all. How is that you say? I will tell you the genesis of this newsletter as briefly as possible. The longer tale will be in my autobiography with the working title of, "You Can't Get Here From There."
In the last century, on or about 1989, I worked with (not for, but with) AOL. They needed manufacturing help in the insertion of plastic diskettes onto and into millions of magazines. After we succeeded in this first-time-ever production feat, I was given an AOL account.
What is an AOL account in 1989 you may ask? My memory is that they had 25,000 or so subscribers. Having an email address back then was like yelling in the forest. If there is nobody to hear you, did you yell at all? Not only that, the dial-up modems were capable of reaching the blazing speeds of something like 9,000 baud. In those days it could take a ½ hour to download a simple little picture.
This is years before the World Wide Web, but there were FTP sites that had information relating to printing. Ed was the first guy I knew who had an email address other than me. We would write each other about things we found at FTP sites which related to our industry and we would agree or disagree about what we found. The cross dialog was terrific. It occurred to me that this new form of communication was something I should know about if I wished to stay employed in the publishing field.
OK, I'll wind this tale up fast. First there were just the two of us, then three, then four and before you knew it, this became a global newsletter, which is now required reading in several universities. Thanks Ed.
So, after telling you that, BoSacks Cub Reporter Ed has submitted the following responses from last night's emails. They are great reading even without knowing the history, but better if you do.
"There is a history in all men's lives."
William Shakespeare quotes (English Dramatist, Playwright and Poet, 1564-1616)
Re: Which Ads Don't Get Skipped?
Submitted by Ed Cobb
To my mind, the key insight in the article describing this study is this: "relevancy outweighs creativity." This is true not only for TV commercials but for all advertisements. Is there a print magazine parallel? Yes, a very significant one: Relevancy comes naturally in magazine advertising. Print magazines, when they are good, are more than the parallel of this phenomenon; they are its embodiment.
Really good magazines, as we have discussed elsewhere, have passion and a point of view. They are the original targeted marketing because good magazines share a set of interests and attitudes, a world view with the readers. Good magazines are informed by the concerns and agenda of their readers, while at the same time helping to create those concerns and shape that agenda. This symbiotic relationship is the reason good Editors are worth ten times their weight in Bean Counters. If no one cultivates the fields, there are no beans to count. At least, not enough to bother counting.
A good magazine produced by an effective editor creates a context to which its community of readers relates. That context provides an advertiser with an opportunity to establish his own relevance to that interest community. When that happens, when the advertiser makes that connection, the advertisement becomes part of the context. The advertiser participates in the symbiosis that occurs between editor and reader, and becomes as much part of the interest community as they are. The opportunity for this to happen in a good magazine is part and parcel of the medium. It never happens on TV or the Internet, where ads are always an intrusion.
Responsibility for the failure to recognize and capitalize on these truths must fall to ad agency management. The agency media buyers should be directed by their management to place ads where they do the most good for their clients. This is not necessarily the same thing as placing them in the environment with the most cachet, sex appeal, and buzz. The agency creative types have to be focused and directed by their management. Creative does not mean "original" (nothing is new under the sun), or "avant garde" (nothing is more cliched than the avant garde), or "edgy" (yawn.). In advertising, creative means forging an emotional and intellectual connection with the interest community whose members might actually buy the product because it fits the context of their lives. Anything else is mere self gratification with the client's money; advertiser abuse.
As the great ad man David Ogilvy said, "If it doesn't sell, it isn't creative." Placing relevant ads in a context where they will create a connection to an interested community, like in a good magazine, is creative. That kind of common sense has become so rare it's almost countercultural.
Re: Filling Landfills with New Books
Submitted by Ed Cobb
This printed matter disposal themed piece of your rant today puts me in mind of an assignment you once delegated to me back when you were the Production Manager at High Times and I was your Production Assistant. It should be noted that the late-80's wave of title inflation had not yet hit. A circa 1978 Production Manager is equivalent to today's Production Director in inflation adjusted masthead-speak. I don't know for certain what a Production Assistant would be today, except that he'd still be underpaid.
Anyway, Circ had moved our fulfillment and back issue business to Larry Flint's organization (more stories!). As a result, we had to dispose of a quantity of old magazines from the original fulfillment operation in the West Village. I dutifully reported for work supervising a gang of teamsters as they passed cartons of High Times out the cellar window, into the alley way, finally tossing them into the waiting dump truck.
The work crew piled into their truck and I and my Polaroid camera into my red VW, and off we went through the tunnel, across the river, to the wilds of New Jersey. In those pre-Giants Stadium days, the Meadowlands was a whimsical name for a swamp/landfill harboring dreams of glory. The industrial strength magazine hearse travelled into that great and desolate space inhabited by tall weeds and large rats, crisscrossed by hard packed convex makeshift dirt roads, occupied here and there by concentrated clusters of man and machine activity, and watched over by more seagulls than I have ever seen anywhere else, including the sea. How the driver navigated the wasteland and chose one faux roadway over another remains a mystery to this day. Finally, we found ourselves perched atop a plateau composed of Lord knows what, surrounded by thousands of acres of refuse built hills and fast vanishing reed covered dales. The only thing more memorable than the sight of the site, and the Manhattan views beyond was the smell of it all. Ah, show business!
The dump truck swung around, backed itself to the edge of our mystery mesa, tilted its immense bed, and poured thousands of copies from the first five years of publication of High Times toward their final destiny. The work of all who contributed from paper mill, ad agencies, and editorial offices through the printing plant was completed here as our magazines tumbled down the hillside, making the valley just a little less deep than it had been moments before. Such is the way of all flesh and its creations.
If they ever dig up Giants Stadium they are unlikely to find Jimmy Hoffa. But I know what they will find because I saw it with my own eyes. The Meadowlands, like our careers, is built on years of production of High Times magazines. I have Polaroids to prove it.
Re: BoSacks Speaks Out: Your Ad Here
Submitted by Ed Cobb
The impact of this kind of advertising cuts both ways, which people tend to forget. If a McDonald's logo stares you in the face from the seat back in front of you as you employ the barf bag in response to turbulence, do you grab a Big Mac as soon as you land? Doubtful. If the stay at home mom whose Plymouth Voyager is wrapped in P&G's Tide graphics flirts with another stay at home mom's husband at the PTO meeting, does mom #2 switch to All? Maybe. If an Expedition sporting Verizon Wireless decorations misbehaves on the highway and cuts off you and your Silverado, do you pursue and run him off the road ("Can you hear me now, you sonofa....?") and change your service back to Sprint? Could happen.
There is no denying that some truth resides in the "no such thing as bad publicity" school of thought. Mr. Whipple was annoying but people bought Charmin. But this strikes me as an application that carries the concept too far for its own good. Or, more accurately, too far for the advertiser's good. Just because you can do it doesn't mean you should do it. It might be hot. It might be edgy, and ground breaking, and all the rest. It might get media buzz. But is it smart? Is it efficient? Or is it just a high visibility roll of the dice destined for YouTube infamy? ("Ask yourself one question. Do you feel lucky? Well, do ya?")
It might be noticeable. It might even be memorable. But does the technique of "wrapping" place the advertiser's product message in a flattering, complimentary context? Would Sirius Satellite Radio be better advised to take a full national page in Jazz Times or wrap 100 VW's tooling around the country? Or 1000? The only sure winner with the wrapping approach to advertising is 3M, who makes and sells the wraps. Plus maybe the guy who pockets the $750 in return for driving a hideous car (unless he gets run off the road). For the other potential players, is this the best way for an agency to spend a client's money? Or is it just more ego boosting self gratification for buyers and creatives?
The Worst PR Debacle in History
BoSacks Speaks Out: Here is a real news story that has huge PR lessons embedded in it for us all. Denny Hatch's conclusion takes this world news story and brings relevancy to our everyday business, be you large or small. It seems clear that we will be affected by this story on many levels for years to come. My conclusion so far is that we are better off that China does not have better PR . . . Imagine the consequences if they did.
"Friendship is like expensive china. It can be fixed when it is broken, but the crack will remain."
Unknown
The Worst PR Debacle in History
What Can Be Learned from China
http://www.businesscommonsense.com/story/story_singlepg.bsp?sid=73328&var=story
In 50 years of being a news junkie, I cannot recall a tectonic success-the roaring Chinese economy-being so badly trashed by greed, incompetence and appalling PR.
With a 1.3 billion population, China is governed by an iron-fisted Communist regime. But with millions of individual entrepreneurs "doing their own thing," its laws are unenforceable.
When laws are unenforceable, a society is ungovernable.
The key takeaway point in this story: Whether you are a nation, a corporation, a small business or an individual, do not get into a pissing match with your critics, do not stonewall and do not try to muzzle the media.
This is not good PR.
Backgrounder
The June 21 story in this e-zine was titled, "IS IT TIME TO STOP DOING BUSINESS WITH CHINA?
I created a laundry list of unacceptable Chinese behavior: theft of intellectual property, piracy, counterfeiting, exporting poisonous foods for humans and pets, the export of chemical-laden toys and products, plundering the oceans, cruelty to animals and gendercide-the state-approved murder and abandonment of girl babies.
I assumed that the story would gradually fade away, and I could go on to other things. But during the past month, the media have reveled in recalls of more toys, tires, formaldehyde-infested blankets and pajamas as well as a scathing report on working conditions in Chinese toy factories.
The only light at the end of the tunnel for China appears to be the headlamp of an onrushing locomotive.
China's Pollution Crisis
This past Sunday's front-page exposé in The New York Times on pollution in China was huge-four columns with an illustration of a coal mining shantytown above the fold. A good 40% of the front page was devoted to this 4,300-word story. It has worldwide implications and serious troubles for China.
Last Saturday at the Osaka, Japan, track and field championships, one-third of the marathoners were unable to finish because of the polluted air. Juliet Macur reported in Sunday's New York Times that with the 2008 summer Olympics scheduled to be held in Beijing, American marathoner Deena Kastor is considering wearing a surgical mask.
"Chinese cities often seem wrapped in a toxic gray shroud" write Joseph Kahn and Jim Yardley in the Times. "Only 1 percent of the country's 560 million city dwellers breathe air considered safe by the European Union. Beijing is frantically searching for a magic formula, a meteorological deus ex machina, to clear its skies for the 2008 Olympics."
Imagine the embarrassment to China if all 10,500 Olympic athletes-as well as thousands more staff, handlers and fans-are seen wearing surgical masks on worldwide television for the full 10 days of the event!
How China will deal with its pollution crisis remains to be seen. Especially interesting will be its PR offensive as it tries to persuade the world that Beijing is a simply ducky place to have the Olympics, that running the marathon will not be the equivalent of inhaling the smoke from two cartons of cigarettes.
Based on the events of the past month, China has a lot to learn about how PR works.
Bellicose Chinese PR
American PR practitioners in government and the private sector are trained to do their damnedest to smooth things over and get a bad story out of the public eye. The object is to contain it until something more dramatic captures the attention of news editors.
Containment is not in China's lexicon. The Communist government's current modus operandi is aggressive confrontation and intimidation.
"China Steps Up Safety Efforts"
This is the July 6 headline of a story by David Barboza in The New York Times. Barboza described China's clumsy PR effort to deal with defective products created for export. To make the world feel better, China boasted about quickly executing (presumably by pistol shot to the back of the head) a drug official who had taken bribes to overlook shoddy products.
"Uncle Sam, Your Banker Will See You Now . . . In the Hole to China"
On August 8, this headline ran over Paul Craig Roberts' byline in Alexander Cockburn's e-zine, CounterPunch. The less-than-elegant lead paragraph:
Early this morning China let the idiots in Washington, and on Wall Street, know that it has them by the short hairs. Two senior spokesmen for the Chinese government observed that China's considerable holdings of US dollars and Treasury bonds "contributes a great deal to maintaining the position of the dollar as a reserve currency."
For years-using very complex wheeling and dealing-China has maintained an artificial value of its currency against the dollar, putting the United States deeper and deeper in thrall to the Chinese economy. The Bush Administration has threatened sanctions against the Chinese if they continue to manipulate the yuan against the dollar.
Trouble is, China holds more than a trillion dollars in American debt. Roberts' story is about Hi Fan, a researcher with the Institute of World Economics and Politics at the China Academy of Social Sciences, who issued a dire threat to the United States. If the United States starts playing economic hardball, China will start selling dollars on the world markets and literally destroy the U.S. economy.
Welcome to hardball, Beijing style.
Three days later, the Associated Press ran a dispatch by Audra Ang with the following headline: "Product Safety Fear Inflated, China Says." From Ang's story:
BEIJING, Aug. 10-China's Health Ministry accused foreign media Friday of exaggerating problems with the safety of the country's food, and a Chinese tiremaker at the center of a huge U.S. recall accused the company importing the tires of distortions. While China faces "severe challenges" in ensuring food safety, foreign media are playing up the problems and have ulterior motives, Health Ministry spokesman Mao Qunan said at a news conference.
Everybody hates the media. To the Chinese, good PR is shooting the messenger.
"China Cracks Down on New Media as Party Congress Nears," was the August 16 headline of Keith Bradsher's story in The New York Times. Bradsher reported that the Chinese government threw a reporter in jail for a year and fined him $130 after his conviction for fabricating a report that dumpling makers in Beijing were using cardboard as filler.
In point of fact, I watched a television news story-I think on ABC-which showed cardboard being cut up and used in dumplings by a street vendor; the story was emphatically not fabricated. The government warned that "those who intentionally fabricated news and caused public anxiety and tarnished the nation's image would be harshly dealt with or even prosecuted if they broke the law. Their news organizations would also be penalized."
In other words, if Chinese authorities do not like your reporting, you do jail time. This was what happened to Shi Tao, sentenced to 10 years in prison for releasing Chinese propaganda instructions to western Web sites.
On August 21, the Associated Press reported an attempt by the Chinese government to restore trust in its products and export practices with the headline, "China launches PR campaign in tainted-goods controversy." The Chinese government also launched a TV series extolling its strict safety standards and excoriated the world press for "demonizing China's products." The week-long series was available only in China.
The following day, August 22, the Associated Press ran a truly bizarre headline, "Chinese Exec: Mattel At Fault For Recall. Blame Cannot Be 'Pushed Aside' For Lead-Tainted Toys, Chinese Toy Manufacturer Says."
This charge was in response to the much-publicized recall of 1 million toys in early August because of lead paint danger-which can kill children-and the recall of 19 million toys two weeks later because they were made with tiny magnets, which children can swallow or choke to death on. Li Zhuoming, executive vice chairman of the Guangdong Provincial Toy Industry Association, put the blame on Mattel for failing to do proper testing.
In that same AP report were two additional charges that the U.S. was at fault for China's problems:
* China's ambassador to the United States defended the quality of Chinese products and blamed the press for "churning up agitating stories."
* China's General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine accused the United States of sending a shipment of soybeans that contained pesticides that had a "great potential hazard to the food safety of Chinese consumers."
Another PR technique China is using is to blame American importers for its woes-specifically Wal-Mart, Target, Gap and Eddie Bauer. In an August 22 story in The New York Times, Jane Spencer wrote:
The textile industry is one of China's dirtiest. In addition to heavy metals and various carcinogens, fabric dyes may contain high levels of organic materials, and thread is often dipped in starch before it is woven into fabric. The breakdown of large amounts of organic compounds such as starch can suck all the oxygen out of a river, killing fish, and turning the water into a stagnant sludge.
Prices on fabric and clothing imported to the U.S. have fallen 25% since 1995, partly due to the downward pricing pressure brought by discount retail chains. One way China's factories have historically kept costs down is by dumping waste water directly into rivers. Treating contaminated water costs upwards of about 13 cents a metric ton, so large factories can save hundreds of thousands of dollars a year by sending waste water directly to rivers in violation of China's water-pollution laws.
"Prices in the U.S. are artificially low," says Andy Xie, former chief economist for Morgan Stanley Asia, who now works independently. "You're not paying the costs of pollution, and that is why China is an environmental catastrophe."
"You have to realize," said Professor Wenran Jiang at the University of Alberta, "China is going through a radical transformation and it's hard to manage. The state just doesn't have the expertise to keep up with these things."
Takeaway Points to Consider:
* China is a textbook case of how not handle a PR crisis.
* In the PR world, what China is trying to deal with is known as "reputation management." Its aggressive, uncoordinated lashing out and placing the blame on its customers and the media are doing more harm than good.
* American PR professionals are trained to do their damnedest to smooth things over and get a bad story out of the public eye. The object is to contain it until something more dramatic captures the attention of news editors.
* Crisis management is not taught in MBA courses at business schools. In 2005, Orbitz president Michael Sands told The Wall Street Journal's Ronald Alsop that "crisis communication is critical for business students as is understanding how corporate communications gets integrated into the marketing plan." A graduate of Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management, Sands said that he learned corporate communications skills on the job, "sort of like an apprenticeship."
* You never know when a PR crisis might strike. Who can forget that day when a Wendy's customer found a human finger in her bowl of chili?
* It is imperative for every business to have in place a plan for PR crisis management-a team ready to assemble on a moment's notice, lines of predetermined responsibilities with one person in charge and one calming, reasoned voice that speaks for the company.
* If a crisis hits with no plan in place, the situation will be exacerbated and everybody concerned will look like chumps.
* When a crisis hits, immediately inform your employees and keep them in the loop. If your associates learn about the problem from an outside source and the company is silent, morale will tank.
* No employee should be allowed to speak to the media or answer questions from anybody. All inquiries must be directed to the department handling the crisis. Otherwise, if employees are accessible, the media will gleefully exploit inconsistencies and make mincemeat of your efforts.
* Whether you are a nation, a corporation, a small business or an individual, do not get into a pissing match with your critics, do not stonewall and do not try to muzzle the media.
* "PR is the business of letting people in on what you are doing."
-Evelyn Lawson, my first mentor and publicity director at the Ivoryton, Conn. Playhouse, 1951
Web Sites Related to Today's Edition:
"China's Deadly Pollution," The New York Times, August 26, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/world/asia/26china.html
"Beijing Air Imperils Olympics," The New York Times, August 26, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/sports/othersports/26runners.html
Investigations on Toy Suppliers in China, China Labor Watch
http://www.chinalaborwatch.org/20070821eighttoy.htm
Wendy's Finger in the Chili: A Case History
http://mgppr.com/20050422_wendys.htm
"Friendship is like expensive china. It can be fixed when it is broken, but the crack will remain."
Unknown
The Worst PR Debacle in History
What Can Be Learned from China
http://www.businesscommonsense.com/story/story_singlepg.bsp?sid=73328&var=story
In 50 years of being a news junkie, I cannot recall a tectonic success-the roaring Chinese economy-being so badly trashed by greed, incompetence and appalling PR.
With a 1.3 billion population, China is governed by an iron-fisted Communist regime. But with millions of individual entrepreneurs "doing their own thing," its laws are unenforceable.
When laws are unenforceable, a society is ungovernable.
The key takeaway point in this story: Whether you are a nation, a corporation, a small business or an individual, do not get into a pissing match with your critics, do not stonewall and do not try to muzzle the media.
This is not good PR.
Backgrounder
The June 21 story in this e-zine was titled, "IS IT TIME TO STOP DOING BUSINESS WITH CHINA?
I created a laundry list of unacceptable Chinese behavior: theft of intellectual property, piracy, counterfeiting, exporting poisonous foods for humans and pets, the export of chemical-laden toys and products, plundering the oceans, cruelty to animals and gendercide-the state-approved murder and abandonment of girl babies.
I assumed that the story would gradually fade away, and I could go on to other things. But during the past month, the media have reveled in recalls of more toys, tires, formaldehyde-infested blankets and pajamas as well as a scathing report on working conditions in Chinese toy factories.
The only light at the end of the tunnel for China appears to be the headlamp of an onrushing locomotive.
China's Pollution Crisis
This past Sunday's front-page exposé in The New York Times on pollution in China was huge-four columns with an illustration of a coal mining shantytown above the fold. A good 40% of the front page was devoted to this 4,300-word story. It has worldwide implications and serious troubles for China.
Last Saturday at the Osaka, Japan, track and field championships, one-third of the marathoners were unable to finish because of the polluted air. Juliet Macur reported in Sunday's New York Times that with the 2008 summer Olympics scheduled to be held in Beijing, American marathoner Deena Kastor is considering wearing a surgical mask.
"Chinese cities often seem wrapped in a toxic gray shroud" write Joseph Kahn and Jim Yardley in the Times. "Only 1 percent of the country's 560 million city dwellers breathe air considered safe by the European Union. Beijing is frantically searching for a magic formula, a meteorological deus ex machina, to clear its skies for the 2008 Olympics."
Imagine the embarrassment to China if all 10,500 Olympic athletes-as well as thousands more staff, handlers and fans-are seen wearing surgical masks on worldwide television for the full 10 days of the event!
How China will deal with its pollution crisis remains to be seen. Especially interesting will be its PR offensive as it tries to persuade the world that Beijing is a simply ducky place to have the Olympics, that running the marathon will not be the equivalent of inhaling the smoke from two cartons of cigarettes.
Based on the events of the past month, China has a lot to learn about how PR works.
Bellicose Chinese PR
American PR practitioners in government and the private sector are trained to do their damnedest to smooth things over and get a bad story out of the public eye. The object is to contain it until something more dramatic captures the attention of news editors.
Containment is not in China's lexicon. The Communist government's current modus operandi is aggressive confrontation and intimidation.
"China Steps Up Safety Efforts"
This is the July 6 headline of a story by David Barboza in The New York Times. Barboza described China's clumsy PR effort to deal with defective products created for export. To make the world feel better, China boasted about quickly executing (presumably by pistol shot to the back of the head) a drug official who had taken bribes to overlook shoddy products.
"Uncle Sam, Your Banker Will See You Now . . . In the Hole to China"
On August 8, this headline ran over Paul Craig Roberts' byline in Alexander Cockburn's e-zine, CounterPunch. The less-than-elegant lead paragraph:
Early this morning China let the idiots in Washington, and on Wall Street, know that it has them by the short hairs. Two senior spokesmen for the Chinese government observed that China's considerable holdings of US dollars and Treasury bonds "contributes a great deal to maintaining the position of the dollar as a reserve currency."
For years-using very complex wheeling and dealing-China has maintained an artificial value of its currency against the dollar, putting the United States deeper and deeper in thrall to the Chinese economy. The Bush Administration has threatened sanctions against the Chinese if they continue to manipulate the yuan against the dollar.
Trouble is, China holds more than a trillion dollars in American debt. Roberts' story is about Hi Fan, a researcher with the Institute of World Economics and Politics at the China Academy of Social Sciences, who issued a dire threat to the United States. If the United States starts playing economic hardball, China will start selling dollars on the world markets and literally destroy the U.S. economy.
Welcome to hardball, Beijing style.
Three days later, the Associated Press ran a dispatch by Audra Ang with the following headline: "Product Safety Fear Inflated, China Says." From Ang's story:
BEIJING, Aug. 10-China's Health Ministry accused foreign media Friday of exaggerating problems with the safety of the country's food, and a Chinese tiremaker at the center of a huge U.S. recall accused the company importing the tires of distortions. While China faces "severe challenges" in ensuring food safety, foreign media are playing up the problems and have ulterior motives, Health Ministry spokesman Mao Qunan said at a news conference.
Everybody hates the media. To the Chinese, good PR is shooting the messenger.
"China Cracks Down on New Media as Party Congress Nears," was the August 16 headline of Keith Bradsher's story in The New York Times. Bradsher reported that the Chinese government threw a reporter in jail for a year and fined him $130 after his conviction for fabricating a report that dumpling makers in Beijing were using cardboard as filler.
In point of fact, I watched a television news story-I think on ABC-which showed cardboard being cut up and used in dumplings by a street vendor; the story was emphatically not fabricated. The government warned that "those who intentionally fabricated news and caused public anxiety and tarnished the nation's image would be harshly dealt with or even prosecuted if they broke the law. Their news organizations would also be penalized."
In other words, if Chinese authorities do not like your reporting, you do jail time. This was what happened to Shi Tao, sentenced to 10 years in prison for releasing Chinese propaganda instructions to western Web sites.
On August 21, the Associated Press reported an attempt by the Chinese government to restore trust in its products and export practices with the headline, "China launches PR campaign in tainted-goods controversy." The Chinese government also launched a TV series extolling its strict safety standards and excoriated the world press for "demonizing China's products." The week-long series was available only in China.
The following day, August 22, the Associated Press ran a truly bizarre headline, "Chinese Exec: Mattel At Fault For Recall. Blame Cannot Be 'Pushed Aside' For Lead-Tainted Toys, Chinese Toy Manufacturer Says."
This charge was in response to the much-publicized recall of 1 million toys in early August because of lead paint danger-which can kill children-and the recall of 19 million toys two weeks later because they were made with tiny magnets, which children can swallow or choke to death on. Li Zhuoming, executive vice chairman of the Guangdong Provincial Toy Industry Association, put the blame on Mattel for failing to do proper testing.
In that same AP report were two additional charges that the U.S. was at fault for China's problems:
* China's ambassador to the United States defended the quality of Chinese products and blamed the press for "churning up agitating stories."
* China's General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine accused the United States of sending a shipment of soybeans that contained pesticides that had a "great potential hazard to the food safety of Chinese consumers."
Another PR technique China is using is to blame American importers for its woes-specifically Wal-Mart, Target, Gap and Eddie Bauer. In an August 22 story in The New York Times, Jane Spencer wrote:
The textile industry is one of China's dirtiest. In addition to heavy metals and various carcinogens, fabric dyes may contain high levels of organic materials, and thread is often dipped in starch before it is woven into fabric. The breakdown of large amounts of organic compounds such as starch can suck all the oxygen out of a river, killing fish, and turning the water into a stagnant sludge.
Prices on fabric and clothing imported to the U.S. have fallen 25% since 1995, partly due to the downward pricing pressure brought by discount retail chains. One way China's factories have historically kept costs down is by dumping waste water directly into rivers. Treating contaminated water costs upwards of about 13 cents a metric ton, so large factories can save hundreds of thousands of dollars a year by sending waste water directly to rivers in violation of China's water-pollution laws.
"Prices in the U.S. are artificially low," says Andy Xie, former chief economist for Morgan Stanley Asia, who now works independently. "You're not paying the costs of pollution, and that is why China is an environmental catastrophe."
"You have to realize," said Professor Wenran Jiang at the University of Alberta, "China is going through a radical transformation and it's hard to manage. The state just doesn't have the expertise to keep up with these things."
Takeaway Points to Consider:
* China is a textbook case of how not handle a PR crisis.
* In the PR world, what China is trying to deal with is known as "reputation management." Its aggressive, uncoordinated lashing out and placing the blame on its customers and the media are doing more harm than good.
* American PR professionals are trained to do their damnedest to smooth things over and get a bad story out of the public eye. The object is to contain it until something more dramatic captures the attention of news editors.
* Crisis management is not taught in MBA courses at business schools. In 2005, Orbitz president Michael Sands told The Wall Street Journal's Ronald Alsop that "crisis communication is critical for business students as is understanding how corporate communications gets integrated into the marketing plan." A graduate of Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management, Sands said that he learned corporate communications skills on the job, "sort of like an apprenticeship."
* You never know when a PR crisis might strike. Who can forget that day when a Wendy's customer found a human finger in her bowl of chili?
* It is imperative for every business to have in place a plan for PR crisis management-a team ready to assemble on a moment's notice, lines of predetermined responsibilities with one person in charge and one calming, reasoned voice that speaks for the company.
* If a crisis hits with no plan in place, the situation will be exacerbated and everybody concerned will look like chumps.
* When a crisis hits, immediately inform your employees and keep them in the loop. If your associates learn about the problem from an outside source and the company is silent, morale will tank.
* No employee should be allowed to speak to the media or answer questions from anybody. All inquiries must be directed to the department handling the crisis. Otherwise, if employees are accessible, the media will gleefully exploit inconsistencies and make mincemeat of your efforts.
* Whether you are a nation, a corporation, a small business or an individual, do not get into a pissing match with your critics, do not stonewall and do not try to muzzle the media.
* "PR is the business of letting people in on what you are doing."
-Evelyn Lawson, my first mentor and publicity director at the Ivoryton, Conn. Playhouse, 1951
Web Sites Related to Today's Edition:
"China's Deadly Pollution," The New York Times, August 26, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/world/asia/26china.html
"Beijing Air Imperils Olympics," The New York Times, August 26, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/sports/othersports/26runners.html
Investigations on Toy Suppliers in China, China Labor Watch
http://www.chinalaborwatch.org/20070821eighttoy.htm
Wendy's Finger in the Chili: A Case History
http://mgppr.com/20050422_wendys.htm
Men's magazines turn the page on their adolescence
Men's magazines turn the page on their adolescence
By Joshua Chaffin in New York
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/1/8362116e-525b-11dc-a7ab-0000779fd2ac.html
One of the surest ways to irritate Jay Fielden, the otherwise unflappable editor of Men's Vogue magazine, is to mention the term metro-sexual.
"I think it was created by the media to tar a certain male who's interested in more things than the average guy," Mr Fielden says. He then poses a rhetorical question: "Was Thomas Jefferson a metro-sexual? He decorated his own house."
Since Men's Vogue was launched two years ago, Mr Fielden has become an expert at such distinctions. His mission has been to take a magazine whose namesake is the bible of women's fashion and make it palatable to men.
To some in the advertising and publishing industries, it is an impossible errand. "Vogue is a women's brand - not a men's brand," says one dubious media buyer, who predicts that few heterosexual men would be caught dead with a copy of the magazine under their arm or on their desk.
Mr Fielden disputes this. Ralph Lauren, he points out, managed to expand the Polo brand from men to women.
Some supporters argue that the magazine may benefit as male readers snap out of an adolescent spell.
"I think the men's magazine category is going through a maturity stage, and I think Men's Vogue could be well positioned for that," says Andrew McLean, president of Mediaedge:cia, a division of the WPP global advertising group.
Indeed, after taking the industry by storm in the mid-1990s, men's magazines featuring bawdy humour and scantily clad B-list starlets seem to be waning. The decline was first seen in the UK, birthplace of "lads' mags", where circulation fell 14 per cent last year. Among the hardest hit titles were Loaded, Nuts, FHM and Maxim. One media investor declared "a new revulsion to naked women" in London.
That chill appears to have spread to the US. Last week, Dennis Publishing sold Maxim and its other US titles to Quadrangle, a private equity firm, for a reported $240m (£120m), less than half the price that was offered for the group three years ago, according to several people close to the company. The new owners are closing Maxim's sister magazine, Stuff, while FHM's US edition has already folded.
By contrast, the mood has brightened at the more mature end of the newsstand. With a circulation last year of more than 1.8m in the US, Men's Health, a must-read for those interested in maintaining their abs and improving their sex life, had a record first-half of the year. Two older titles, GQ and Esquire, are turning in steady performances after being jolted by the lads a decade ago.
Condé Nast is betting that Men's Vogue will provide a natural extension for the fashion and luxury advertisers who helped swell the September Vogue to a record 727 pages. Many of those patrons have men's lines.
"It's a very exclusive magazine, and our brand is that," says Nancy Austin, director of marketing for Hinckley Yachts, which has advertised in Men's Vogue since its inception.
Convincing professional men to spend their free hours reading a magazine is not easy - particularly in the age of the internet. While Condé Nast claims that circulation has grown steadily to more than 300,000, those figures have not yet been verified.
"Earning your way into men's working and leisure time is a difficult thing," says Mr Fielden, who previously worked as an editor at Vogue and The New Yorker and might serve as a stand-in for his ideal reader. At our meeting in the Condé Nast cafeteria, he was wearing a pinstripe suit with a pink polkadot handkerchief. His tie was askew. Yet Mr Fielden's Texas roots filter through his accent, he is married, and can credibly claim to hunt quail.
To distinguish his magazine from Vogue's glamour, he has gone out of his way to push its substance. Recent covers featured US presidential hopefuls Barack Obama and John Edwards. Hints about braided belts and Argentine polo boots lurked inside.
The magazine scored a coup with the current issue by landing an exclusive interview with Tony Blair, conducted during the African leg of the former UK prime minister's farewell tour. Mr Fielden recruited the New York Times' Roger Cohen, a heavyweight journalist, to write the piece.
The British media buzzed not about Mr Blair's reflections on his time in office or his plans to make peace in the Middle East, but about whether his wrinkles had been airbrushed from the cover photograph.
One of Mr Fielden's most artful sleights-of-hand has been his treatment of fashion. He has banished male models from the editorial pages and instead outfitted subjects such as tennis star Roger Federer and survivalist Bear Grylls in clothes that are stylish but accessible. It is a Trojan Horse strategy of sneaking fashion into the magazine on the backs of interesting, well-rounded men whom other men might care to read about.
"Fashion is not a word that translates well to men in America," Mr Fielden says. His readers are more comfortable with the notion of "looking good". Just don't call them metro-sexuals.
By Joshua Chaffin in New York
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/1/8362116e-525b-11dc-a7ab-0000779fd2ac.html
One of the surest ways to irritate Jay Fielden, the otherwise unflappable editor of Men's Vogue magazine, is to mention the term metro-sexual.
"I think it was created by the media to tar a certain male who's interested in more things than the average guy," Mr Fielden says. He then poses a rhetorical question: "Was Thomas Jefferson a metro-sexual? He decorated his own house."
Since Men's Vogue was launched two years ago, Mr Fielden has become an expert at such distinctions. His mission has been to take a magazine whose namesake is the bible of women's fashion and make it palatable to men.
To some in the advertising and publishing industries, it is an impossible errand. "Vogue is a women's brand - not a men's brand," says one dubious media buyer, who predicts that few heterosexual men would be caught dead with a copy of the magazine under their arm or on their desk.
Mr Fielden disputes this. Ralph Lauren, he points out, managed to expand the Polo brand from men to women.
Some supporters argue that the magazine may benefit as male readers snap out of an adolescent spell.
"I think the men's magazine category is going through a maturity stage, and I think Men's Vogue could be well positioned for that," says Andrew McLean, president of Mediaedge:cia, a division of the WPP global advertising group.
Indeed, after taking the industry by storm in the mid-1990s, men's magazines featuring bawdy humour and scantily clad B-list starlets seem to be waning. The decline was first seen in the UK, birthplace of "lads' mags", where circulation fell 14 per cent last year. Among the hardest hit titles were Loaded, Nuts, FHM and Maxim. One media investor declared "a new revulsion to naked women" in London.
That chill appears to have spread to the US. Last week, Dennis Publishing sold Maxim and its other US titles to Quadrangle, a private equity firm, for a reported $240m (£120m), less than half the price that was offered for the group three years ago, according to several people close to the company. The new owners are closing Maxim's sister magazine, Stuff, while FHM's US edition has already folded.
By contrast, the mood has brightened at the more mature end of the newsstand. With a circulation last year of more than 1.8m in the US, Men's Health, a must-read for those interested in maintaining their abs and improving their sex life, had a record first-half of the year. Two older titles, GQ and Esquire, are turning in steady performances after being jolted by the lads a decade ago.
Condé Nast is betting that Men's Vogue will provide a natural extension for the fashion and luxury advertisers who helped swell the September Vogue to a record 727 pages. Many of those patrons have men's lines.
"It's a very exclusive magazine, and our brand is that," says Nancy Austin, director of marketing for Hinckley Yachts, which has advertised in Men's Vogue since its inception.
Convincing professional men to spend their free hours reading a magazine is not easy - particularly in the age of the internet. While Condé Nast claims that circulation has grown steadily to more than 300,000, those figures have not yet been verified.
"Earning your way into men's working and leisure time is a difficult thing," says Mr Fielden, who previously worked as an editor at Vogue and The New Yorker and might serve as a stand-in for his ideal reader. At our meeting in the Condé Nast cafeteria, he was wearing a pinstripe suit with a pink polkadot handkerchief. His tie was askew. Yet Mr Fielden's Texas roots filter through his accent, he is married, and can credibly claim to hunt quail.
To distinguish his magazine from Vogue's glamour, he has gone out of his way to push its substance. Recent covers featured US presidential hopefuls Barack Obama and John Edwards. Hints about braided belts and Argentine polo boots lurked inside.
The magazine scored a coup with the current issue by landing an exclusive interview with Tony Blair, conducted during the African leg of the former UK prime minister's farewell tour. Mr Fielden recruited the New York Times' Roger Cohen, a heavyweight journalist, to write the piece.
The British media buzzed not about Mr Blair's reflections on his time in office or his plans to make peace in the Middle East, but about whether his wrinkles had been airbrushed from the cover photograph.
One of Mr Fielden's most artful sleights-of-hand has been his treatment of fashion. He has banished male models from the editorial pages and instead outfitted subjects such as tennis star Roger Federer and survivalist Bear Grylls in clothes that are stylish but accessible. It is a Trojan Horse strategy of sneaking fashion into the magazine on the backs of interesting, well-rounded men whom other men might care to read about.
"Fashion is not a word that translates well to men in America," Mr Fielden says. His readers are more comfortable with the notion of "looking good". Just don't call them metro-sexuals.
Mother Jones Magazine Reviewed
Mother Jones Magazine Reviewed
BY Jon Carroll
A while back I expressed some doubt about whether Mother Jones could be an effective magazine with two editors. I have been in co-editing situations, and the dynamic often makes the process of putting out the magazine more about power than content. It was suggested to me that because the co-editors (Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery) were women, the collaboration might be smoother. Again, my experience (which I would, of course, make no generalizations from) is that women are not immune from quarrels over authority and control, although women do work collaboratively on specific projects much better than men.
Anyway, that was all theory. Now we have had a look at the practice, and oh boy, was I wrong. Mother Jones right now is as good as I've ever seen it. I'm not sure what they're doing right, but they should keep at it.
(Full disclosure: I once wrote an article for Mother Jones, but that was five editors ago. I don't recognize any of the names on the masthead except Adam Hochschild, and I think Hochschild is to Mother Jones as Colonel Sanders is to KFC, and his name and image will appear in the magazine long after his physical body has returned to the deep black earth.)
The editors seem aware of Mother Jones' historical problem: Its urgent sense of mission has led to too many issues of the magazine bathed in High Seriousness, very ideologically pure but not very useful for general readers. A mass-market magazine is popular journalism, and being entertaining is not the same thing as being bought out by the soulless devils of capitalism.
The current version of Mother Jones is almost rollicking. A lot of the information is packaged in bite-size data pockets, useful koans to use in meditating on corruption, scandal and greed. In the current issue (September-October; stick figure on a blackboard cover) has a two-page bushel o' factoids written by Dave Gilson about the credit crunch. It includes such interesting tidbits as:
The average U.S. household owes $9,658 on its credit cards. Sixty percent of Americans have been in credit card debt for more than one year. People who pay off their credit cards bills in full every month are known in the industry as "30-day-wonders" or "deadbeats." A "preferred customer" is one with "a taste for credit" who's "willing to make minimum monthly payments - forever."
And my favorite: Americans owe $850 billion in credit card debt. The world's 54 poorest countries owe $412 billion in foreign debt.
Another feature is called "Heckuva Job" and presents profiles of current administration officials who have landed on their feet despite well-publicized failings and misdeeds. Then there's Mother Jones' annual campus activism roundup, which includes this paragraph:
"It was a brilliant way to get attention from the nostalgic lefty press: reviving Students for the Democratic Society. Since being reconstituted last year, 'New SDS' has opened chapters in 148 colleges and 50 high schools. It's got some new tricks, such as SDSwiki - because there's nothing like a wiki to prevent the kind of infighting and petty bickering that doomed its predecessor."
Mordant satirical humor! In Mother Jones! Life is good!
The center of the magazine still belongs to the kind of investigative reporting that Mother Jones has done so well for so long. The cover story, by Jennifer Gonnerman, is summed up in its subhead: "Eight states are sending mentally retarded and emotionally troubled kids to a facility that punishes them with painful electric shocks. How many times do you have to zap a child before it's torture?"
The article is about a place called the Judge Rotenberg Center in Massachusetts, which does indeed administer punitive electric shocks to the children in its care. The story includes a link to Mother Jones online (motherjones.com), which provides a bunch of primary documents and interviews supporting the facts in the story. Would that every print publication used its Web presence that way.
The Mother Jones Web site is a lot more than a digitized magazine; it's a really splendid collection of breaking news and blogs, much in the manner of the Huffington Post but without the HP's reliance on provocative personalities. It's a really good site; please go visit it and get its click rate up.
Other stories in the magazine include a look at Hillary Clinton's prayer circle (very real; too real); an extremely good essay by Ted Genoways on fake news found in places other than Fox News; and a brilliant photo essay about the effects of global warming on the small arctic village of Shishmaref.
Subscriptions are a low, low $24 per annum. Mail checks to Mother Jones, P.O. Box 334, Mount Morris, IL 61054. That's just a subscription fulfillment house; the magazine's offices are still in San Francisco.
BY Jon Carroll
A while back I expressed some doubt about whether Mother Jones could be an effective magazine with two editors. I have been in co-editing situations, and the dynamic often makes the process of putting out the magazine more about power than content. It was suggested to me that because the co-editors (Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery) were women, the collaboration might be smoother. Again, my experience (which I would, of course, make no generalizations from) is that women are not immune from quarrels over authority and control, although women do work collaboratively on specific projects much better than men.
Anyway, that was all theory. Now we have had a look at the practice, and oh boy, was I wrong. Mother Jones right now is as good as I've ever seen it. I'm not sure what they're doing right, but they should keep at it.
(Full disclosure: I once wrote an article for Mother Jones, but that was five editors ago. I don't recognize any of the names on the masthead except Adam Hochschild, and I think Hochschild is to Mother Jones as Colonel Sanders is to KFC, and his name and image will appear in the magazine long after his physical body has returned to the deep black earth.)
The editors seem aware of Mother Jones' historical problem: Its urgent sense of mission has led to too many issues of the magazine bathed in High Seriousness, very ideologically pure but not very useful for general readers. A mass-market magazine is popular journalism, and being entertaining is not the same thing as being bought out by the soulless devils of capitalism.
The current version of Mother Jones is almost rollicking. A lot of the information is packaged in bite-size data pockets, useful koans to use in meditating on corruption, scandal and greed. In the current issue (September-October; stick figure on a blackboard cover) has a two-page bushel o' factoids written by Dave Gilson about the credit crunch. It includes such interesting tidbits as:
The average U.S. household owes $9,658 on its credit cards. Sixty percent of Americans have been in credit card debt for more than one year. People who pay off their credit cards bills in full every month are known in the industry as "30-day-wonders" or "deadbeats." A "preferred customer" is one with "a taste for credit" who's "willing to make minimum monthly payments - forever."
And my favorite: Americans owe $850 billion in credit card debt. The world's 54 poorest countries owe $412 billion in foreign debt.
Another feature is called "Heckuva Job" and presents profiles of current administration officials who have landed on their feet despite well-publicized failings and misdeeds. Then there's Mother Jones' annual campus activism roundup, which includes this paragraph:
"It was a brilliant way to get attention from the nostalgic lefty press: reviving Students for the Democratic Society. Since being reconstituted last year, 'New SDS' has opened chapters in 148 colleges and 50 high schools. It's got some new tricks, such as SDSwiki - because there's nothing like a wiki to prevent the kind of infighting and petty bickering that doomed its predecessor."
Mordant satirical humor! In Mother Jones! Life is good!
The center of the magazine still belongs to the kind of investigative reporting that Mother Jones has done so well for so long. The cover story, by Jennifer Gonnerman, is summed up in its subhead: "Eight states are sending mentally retarded and emotionally troubled kids to a facility that punishes them with painful electric shocks. How many times do you have to zap a child before it's torture?"
The article is about a place called the Judge Rotenberg Center in Massachusetts, which does indeed administer punitive electric shocks to the children in its care. The story includes a link to Mother Jones online (motherjones.com), which provides a bunch of primary documents and interviews supporting the facts in the story. Would that every print publication used its Web presence that way.
The Mother Jones Web site is a lot more than a digitized magazine; it's a really splendid collection of breaking news and blogs, much in the manner of the Huffington Post but without the HP's reliance on provocative personalities. It's a really good site; please go visit it and get its click rate up.
Other stories in the magazine include a look at Hillary Clinton's prayer circle (very real; too real); an extremely good essay by Ted Genoways on fake news found in places other than Fox News; and a brilliant photo essay about the effects of global warming on the small arctic village of Shishmaref.
Subscriptions are a low, low $24 per annum. Mail checks to Mother Jones, P.O. Box 334, Mount Morris, IL 61054. That's just a subscription fulfillment house; the magazine's offices are still in San Francisco.
Innocentive for Journalism: Crowdfunding our Way to a New Business Model
Innocentive for Journalism: Crowdfunding our Way to a New Business Model
Posted by David Cohn
http://newassignment.net/
Over at PJNET Leonard Witt has begun blogging about something he calls Representative Journalism.
Meanwhile at Invisible Inkling, Ryan Sholin is harboring on a future blog post, which although still hazy, he refers to as the "What Are You Reporting On?" post.
I think they are talking about the same thing.
Representative journalism, as I understand it, is very similar to what Innocentive has done for science research. (More reading: Our Assignment Zero interview with Alpheus Bingham, co-founder of Innocentive.)
I'd like to add my voice to the chorus. This is a business model that we've thrown around as an idea here at NewAssignment.Net - and in truth I think it's the future of independent investigative journalism. I'm glad Leonard Witt has come up with a name for it. I've been struggling myself, often referring to it as "Innocentive journalism."
The basis of the model is micropayments. Independent journalists post what investigations they want to begin. With the potential investigations posted, individual readers can then decide to donate $10 or so to the investigation they are most interested in. If 300 people donate $10 you have $3,000. That's not a bad monthly wage for an independent journalist.
The individual funders are what Sellaband, an example of crowdfunding, would call believers. With enough believers, an independent band gets to record an album with SellaBand.
An immediate question that comes up when explaining this model is always "how do you keep the journalist honest." If a journalist is investigating something with a political slant and is funded by people who want specific results, how can we continue to keep those investigations fair and balanced?
Good question.
First, let's reconsider the relationship between funder and journalist. It shouldn't be that the individual funders are trying to hire a journalist to get the "truth" that they are looking for. What they are hiring is an umpire, somebody they can trust to dig deep and find out what's really happening. That might seem obvious to professional journalists, but whatever example of "Representative Journalism" comes to fruition will have to set that tone.
Second and more importantly, whatever organization creates the means for readers to find and fund journalists will have to be somewhat responsible for the end results. They will have to keep the independent journalists on deadline and working. In a sense, they will be managing editors. And if that means screening the journalists who can propose possible investigations, I'd understand that. Not in an effort to be top-down, but as a means to ensure that people's money is put to good use.
Benefits: An audience is automatically created. Just like the Spread FireFox campaign, if you donate time or money to something, you are going to use the final product (in this case read the final product) because you feel a sense of ownership.
A marketplace for independent journalists to find funders for the type of journalism they believe in. The bottom line is erased and re-written by popular demand.
A new organization that doesn't hire journalists, it allows them to make a case for their own work. Jobs might be limited right now, but there is space for anybody who is willing to commit to the job.
Funders/Readers can help with the investigation itself. This is a slippery slope. As we noted above, funders might also have axes to grind, and that is their right as citizens, so when I say they can "help with the investigation," I am not suggesting they have a role that would compromise the investigation. But I do believe that through the funding process a network would be created and the journalist who is spearheading the investigation could use that network in innovative ways.
Posted by David Cohn
http://newassignment.net/
Over at PJNET Leonard Witt has begun blogging about something he calls Representative Journalism.
Meanwhile at Invisible Inkling, Ryan Sholin is harboring on a future blog post, which although still hazy, he refers to as the "What Are You Reporting On?" post.
I think they are talking about the same thing.
Representative journalism, as I understand it, is very similar to what Innocentive has done for science research. (More reading: Our Assignment Zero interview with Alpheus Bingham, co-founder of Innocentive.)
I'd like to add my voice to the chorus. This is a business model that we've thrown around as an idea here at NewAssignment.Net - and in truth I think it's the future of independent investigative journalism. I'm glad Leonard Witt has come up with a name for it. I've been struggling myself, often referring to it as "Innocentive journalism."
The basis of the model is micropayments. Independent journalists post what investigations they want to begin. With the potential investigations posted, individual readers can then decide to donate $10 or so to the investigation they are most interested in. If 300 people donate $10 you have $3,000. That's not a bad monthly wage for an independent journalist.
The individual funders are what Sellaband, an example of crowdfunding, would call believers. With enough believers, an independent band gets to record an album with SellaBand.
An immediate question that comes up when explaining this model is always "how do you keep the journalist honest." If a journalist is investigating something with a political slant and is funded by people who want specific results, how can we continue to keep those investigations fair and balanced?
Good question.
First, let's reconsider the relationship between funder and journalist. It shouldn't be that the individual funders are trying to hire a journalist to get the "truth" that they are looking for. What they are hiring is an umpire, somebody they can trust to dig deep and find out what's really happening. That might seem obvious to professional journalists, but whatever example of "Representative Journalism" comes to fruition will have to set that tone.
Second and more importantly, whatever organization creates the means for readers to find and fund journalists will have to be somewhat responsible for the end results. They will have to keep the independent journalists on deadline and working. In a sense, they will be managing editors. And if that means screening the journalists who can propose possible investigations, I'd understand that. Not in an effort to be top-down, but as a means to ensure that people's money is put to good use.
Benefits: An audience is automatically created. Just like the Spread FireFox campaign, if you donate time or money to something, you are going to use the final product (in this case read the final product) because you feel a sense of ownership.
A marketplace for independent journalists to find funders for the type of journalism they believe in. The bottom line is erased and re-written by popular demand.
A new organization that doesn't hire journalists, it allows them to make a case for their own work. Jobs might be limited right now, but there is space for anybody who is willing to commit to the job.
Funders/Readers can help with the investigation itself. This is a slippery slope. As we noted above, funders might also have axes to grind, and that is their right as citizens, so when I say they can "help with the investigation," I am not suggesting they have a role that would compromise the investigation. But I do believe that through the funding process a network would be created and the journalist who is spearheading the investigation could use that network in innovative ways.
Murdoch's Wall Street Journal: French editors react
Murdoch's Wall Street Journal: French editors react
In the wake of Rupert Murdoch's $5.6 billion takeover of Dow Jones, the reactions among the media have been diverse: was it a fatal blow onto a trusted news organization's credibility, a profitable deal in a struggling industry, a conventional business move that won't affect the Wall Street Journal's (WSJ) editorial integrity? Most probably, a little of all of the above. What will become of the Journal's praised journalism? In addition to international media's views, the Editors Weblog collected the insight of some top French editors.
In the Dow Jones' headquarters, "the Australia-born media mogul's $5.6bn takeover of the Wall Street Journal's publisher prompted a mixture of resignation and angst," reports the UK Media Guardian.
"Contrary to all the nonsense the Bancrofts and the New York Times put out, Rupert Murdoch is not about to destroy the Dow Jones editorial reputation for which he has paid so much - indeed look for Murdoch's global plan to make the Wall Street Journal THE US newspaper of record," says Philip Stone, for Follow the Media.
"News Corp.'s proposed acquisition of Dow Jones begins a process that will affect us all, but won't change what we do in the newsroom," echoes Marcus Brauchli, WSJ's managing editor.
Meanwhile "the Independent Association of Publishers' Employees, Local 1096, which represents over 2000 Dow Jones professionals, quickly criticized the reported victory for Rupert Murdoch," reports Editor & Publisher.
The New York Times, after having led a virulent campaign against the deal, chose to cover the story from a more factual stance, summarizing the main stages in the deal process.
France: the editorial reaction
France has a strong and persistent tradition of upholding editorial independence and trying to keep its newspapers' editorial lines clear from their financial owners. So one might expect editors to firmly oppose this type of deal with Murdoch and be worried about WSJ's future. Not so fast.
What would be your reaction if your newspaper were being acquired by News Corp.?
"We would try to resist," says Daniel Psenny, deputy chief of Media at Le Monde. "We know who Murdoch is, what he does."
"This (News Corp.) is not any big company," says Henri Gibier, editor in chief of Les Echos, a leading French business daily. "I don't think we could legitimately oppose a takeover, because it would be a press group acquiring a newspaper."
Gibier rejected the analogy with Les Echos' current controversial situation, which is allegedly a conflict of interest (a prominent businessman, Bernard Arnault head of LVMH, acquiring a leading business newspaper).
Didier Pillet, Director of Information at Ouest-France: "Ouest-France has protected itself against this type of acquisition. Our project is to provide an information service; it is not a project for the accumulation of profit. In 1990, to guarantee the perenniality of this project, shareholders sold their shares to the 'Association pour le soutien des principes de la démocratie humaniste,' and Ouest-France became a not-for-profit organization."
Was this a tradeoff between editorial integrity / independence and additional financial resources - to be potentially invested in editorial quality? How do you find an acceptable compromise in this situation?
Pillet: "I don't believe in this type of compromise. It is not up to businessmen to judge (the editorial quality), it's up to the readers. Editorial quality is not exchangeable."
Psenny: "Editorial quality is also editorial independence. The press is not an industry. It's not like other products." Any time there is a majority shareholder, this financial power can impose its influence on editorial integrity.
Gibier: "You can't exchange independence against additional financial resources. The credibility of an information newspaper is based first and foremost on its editorial independence. But it's true that quality is not independent of the resources a newspaper has for its investigations and coverage."
All three editors defend the precedence of editorial integrity over additional financial resources. However, they don't offer a solution to newspapers faced with this - albeit unacceptable - ordeal. How can a newspaper protect itself when forced into this situation? Some possibilities: either by obtaining guarantees with the new owner, or by naming editorial watchdogs, or by simply preventing these situations, as is the case for Ouest France.
The question remains: Will the few guarantees of editorial independence obtained by the Journal be effective in practice?
How will this deal affect the Wall Street Journal's journalism?
"The Wall Street Journal is a referential Bible in journalism," says Psenny, but Murdoch seems to want to turn it in more of a general news publication, to compete with The New York Times. "It's up to the journalists to resist that and be wary of changes in their editorial policy."
"Most of the newspapers acquired by Murdoch have been levelled from below," agrees Gibier, citing the Sun, and even prestigious newspapers like the London Times. "There is a will to produce populous press."
The WSJ is another matter though. Considering Murdoch is a pragmatic press manager, Gibier thinks it would be dangerous to turn the Journal into a general news publication or decrease its quality. Although the Journal is widely circulated, it remains targeted toward the elites.
Pillet doesn't believe either that the Wall Street Journal's journalism will be affected negatively. Since WSJ's asset is financial, it needs to be further developed, thus it must uphold its credibility for readers to trust it. Along the lines of Philip Stone's argument, it would be against Murdoch's interest that WSJ's journalism diminish in quality.
This probably is the essential point: whether or not Murdoch noses into the Journal's editorial policy - surreptitiously or ostensibly - his main interest is business. This is why he bought Dow-Jones with a 60% premium in the first place, and this is why he plans on injecting many more millions into the WSJ.
Murdoch is certainly aware that a Fox News-oriented WSJ would enjoy little credibility and success in a crusade against the Financial Times and an aggressive expansion plan in Asia.
In the end, most analysts agree that, from a strictly financial point of view, the deal will be profitable for Dow Jones. After all, Murdoch's goal here is about the bottom line, not editorial integrity
In the wake of Rupert Murdoch's $5.6 billion takeover of Dow Jones, the reactions among the media have been diverse: was it a fatal blow onto a trusted news organization's credibility, a profitable deal in a struggling industry, a conventional business move that won't affect the Wall Street Journal's (WSJ) editorial integrity? Most probably, a little of all of the above. What will become of the Journal's praised journalism? In addition to international media's views, the Editors Weblog collected the insight of some top French editors.
In the Dow Jones' headquarters, "the Australia-born media mogul's $5.6bn takeover of the Wall Street Journal's publisher prompted a mixture of resignation and angst," reports the UK Media Guardian.
"Contrary to all the nonsense the Bancrofts and the New York Times put out, Rupert Murdoch is not about to destroy the Dow Jones editorial reputation for which he has paid so much - indeed look for Murdoch's global plan to make the Wall Street Journal THE US newspaper of record," says Philip Stone, for Follow the Media.
"News Corp.'s proposed acquisition of Dow Jones begins a process that will affect us all, but won't change what we do in the newsroom," echoes Marcus Brauchli, WSJ's managing editor.
Meanwhile "the Independent Association of Publishers' Employees, Local 1096, which represents over 2000 Dow Jones professionals, quickly criticized the reported victory for Rupert Murdoch," reports Editor & Publisher.
The New York Times, after having led a virulent campaign against the deal, chose to cover the story from a more factual stance, summarizing the main stages in the deal process.
France: the editorial reaction
France has a strong and persistent tradition of upholding editorial independence and trying to keep its newspapers' editorial lines clear from their financial owners. So one might expect editors to firmly oppose this type of deal with Murdoch and be worried about WSJ's future. Not so fast.
What would be your reaction if your newspaper were being acquired by News Corp.?
"We would try to resist," says Daniel Psenny, deputy chief of Media at Le Monde. "We know who Murdoch is, what he does."
"This (News Corp.) is not any big company," says Henri Gibier, editor in chief of Les Echos, a leading French business daily. "I don't think we could legitimately oppose a takeover, because it would be a press group acquiring a newspaper."
Gibier rejected the analogy with Les Echos' current controversial situation, which is allegedly a conflict of interest (a prominent businessman, Bernard Arnault head of LVMH, acquiring a leading business newspaper).
Didier Pillet, Director of Information at Ouest-France: "Ouest-France has protected itself against this type of acquisition. Our project is to provide an information service; it is not a project for the accumulation of profit. In 1990, to guarantee the perenniality of this project, shareholders sold their shares to the 'Association pour le soutien des principes de la démocratie humaniste,' and Ouest-France became a not-for-profit organization."
Was this a tradeoff between editorial integrity / independence and additional financial resources - to be potentially invested in editorial quality? How do you find an acceptable compromise in this situation?
Pillet: "I don't believe in this type of compromise. It is not up to businessmen to judge (the editorial quality), it's up to the readers. Editorial quality is not exchangeable."
Psenny: "Editorial quality is also editorial independence. The press is not an industry. It's not like other products." Any time there is a majority shareholder, this financial power can impose its influence on editorial integrity.
Gibier: "You can't exchange independence against additional financial resources. The credibility of an information newspaper is based first and foremost on its editorial independence. But it's true that quality is not independent of the resources a newspaper has for its investigations and coverage."
All three editors defend the precedence of editorial integrity over additional financial resources. However, they don't offer a solution to newspapers faced with this - albeit unacceptable - ordeal. How can a newspaper protect itself when forced into this situation? Some possibilities: either by obtaining guarantees with the new owner, or by naming editorial watchdogs, or by simply preventing these situations, as is the case for Ouest France.
The question remains: Will the few guarantees of editorial independence obtained by the Journal be effective in practice?
How will this deal affect the Wall Street Journal's journalism?
"The Wall Street Journal is a referential Bible in journalism," says Psenny, but Murdoch seems to want to turn it in more of a general news publication, to compete with The New York Times. "It's up to the journalists to resist that and be wary of changes in their editorial policy."
"Most of the newspapers acquired by Murdoch have been levelled from below," agrees Gibier, citing the Sun, and even prestigious newspapers like the London Times. "There is a will to produce populous press."
The WSJ is another matter though. Considering Murdoch is a pragmatic press manager, Gibier thinks it would be dangerous to turn the Journal into a general news publication or decrease its quality. Although the Journal is widely circulated, it remains targeted toward the elites.
Pillet doesn't believe either that the Wall Street Journal's journalism will be affected negatively. Since WSJ's asset is financial, it needs to be further developed, thus it must uphold its credibility for readers to trust it. Along the lines of Philip Stone's argument, it would be against Murdoch's interest that WSJ's journalism diminish in quality.
This probably is the essential point: whether or not Murdoch noses into the Journal's editorial policy - surreptitiously or ostensibly - his main interest is business. This is why he bought Dow-Jones with a 60% premium in the first place, and this is why he plans on injecting many more millions into the WSJ.
Murdoch is certainly aware that a Fox News-oriented WSJ would enjoy little credibility and success in a crusade against the Financial Times and an aggressive expansion plan in Asia.
In the end, most analysts agree that, from a strictly financial point of view, the deal will be profitable for Dow Jones. After all, Murdoch's goal here is about the bottom line, not editorial integrity
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
BoSacks Wonders exactly where will it end?
BoSacks Wonders exactly where will it end?
BoSacks Speaks Out: My long time readers know that I have a fascination and professional interest in unusual advertising placement. This man's opinion is that it has become grossly intrusive, dangerously over exposed and almost without any seeming integrity. But that's just me. You can find advertising everywhere. I read an article yesterday that airlines will now be putting advertising on both sides of the pull down trays while in flight. Just imagine the
opportunity to stare at your favorite logo for 6 hours while on a cross-country flight. The damned intrusion has gone so far as to infiltrate the privacy of public restrooms with advertising while we are communing with the sublime. It's not that I mind advertising here, or perhaps even there, but I sure as hell don't want it everywhere.
With that in mind I give you an article about the next great assault. If you've got opinions, I would love to hear them.
Your Ad Here, on My S.U.V.? And You'll Pay?
By ANDREW ADAM NEWMAN
www.newyorktimes.com
Some companies pay millions to have their logos on Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s racecar, but others prefer to pay Brian Katz $500 or more a month for space on his Ford Expedition
Mr. Katz, 32, of Manhattan, is one of the tens of thousands of motorists who have signed up to have their cars and trucks wrapped in advertisements in exchange for a stipend up to $800 a month.
These offers are becoming so popular that car owners have been willing to limit where they shop and abide by a code of conduct while they are behind the wheel.
Even with the restrictions, a free car or a hefty subsidy is attractive to motorists like Mr. Katz. "One of my friends read something about someone giving away free cars for being a moving advertisement, which didn't sound like anything that could actually happen," Mr. Katz said, adding that it struck him as "a little shady."
But he found the offer to be legitimate and has been paid handsomely to wrap his car for several companies, including Jamba Juice and Verizon Wireless.
True, he does not always feel like rolling down his window to answer strangers' questions about, say, Verizon's calling plans. "It can be a little intrusive sometimes, but that's nothing in the grand scheme of things," Mr. Katz said.
Vehicle wrapping started, by most accounts, in 1993, when PepsiCo bought the rights to paint six city buses in Seattle with its logo. Pepsi planned to put the buses in a paint shop for six weeks, but Louis Hoffman, general manager for a Seattle printing company called SuperGraphics, persuaded Pepsi to have the buses wrapped instead with a vinyl material made by 3M that could be applied in less than two days. (Now it takes just a few hours.)
3M, which remains the largest producer of the material, uses an adhesive similar to the one on its Post-it notes, enabling installers to place vinyl strips on a vehicle that do not stick until pressure is applied. The material is popular for wrapping racecars, helicopters, planes, boats and even buildings. Far from hurting the paint job, the wrap preserves it.
ARD Ventures, a venture capital firm, has studied the phenomenon of wrapped cars and estimates that motorists and pedestrians see a single vehicle's advertising message as many as 70,000 times a day.
Mr. Katz was matched with his advertisers by FreeCar Media, an advertising agency in Los Angeles that claims to have a database of more than a million car owners who say they are open to wrapping their cars in ads for a fee, said Drew Livingston, president of the company.
The sponsor also pays as much as $5,000 a car for the wrap job. Generally, a car can qualify if it has enough surface area for a sizable ad and is no more than five years old.
"A company like Procter & Gamble will come to us and say, 'We have a new and improved Tide, and our target is stay-at-home moms with two-plus children who live in these 20 markets,' " Mr. Livingston said. His company then finds drivers in that demographic. "We feel that when you can wrap a mom's car and get it to her P.T.A. meeting or Curves gym, you're getting the acceptance from her social circle."
The company either gives its brand ambassadors free cars or, more often, pays them as much as $800 a month. In the last seven years, FreeCar Media has hired about 7,000 motorists, who are instructed to park outside whenever possible, refrain from smoking, littering or swearing in their vehicle, and to attend a monthly influencer event where they hand out samples or coupons. They also have to send reports frequently with photographs to show where their cars have been.
People whose cars were wrapped with ads for two Coca-Cola products - Planet Java, a bottled coffee, and Vault, an energy drink - were cautioned against sipping Pepsi products behind the wheel. Nor could they park at restaurant chains like KFC or Pizza Hut that serve Pepsi exclusively, Mr. Livingston said.
Another FreeCar participant, Jerome Harris, 22, was in his junior year at Temple University last year when he had his Nissan Altima wrapped for a promotion for Trolls, the endomorphic dolls with Don King hairdos. He earned $500 a month while his car was wrapped; in addition to driving around while on his best behavior, he was required to hand out Trolls pens to fellow students during finals week.
"We weren't allowed to have alcohol in or around the car, or use profanity," said Mr. Harris, who now lives in Brooklyn and is a few credits shy of a degree in advertising. "When you're out, you're supposed to be representing the brand."
Some companies are taking mobile advertising into their own hands. Brian Morris, the owner of We Fix Ugly Pools, a pool repair and construction company in Phoenix, wrapped more than 30 vehicles in his fleet in ads for his company. He monitors how customers find him, and attributes more than $1 million in revenue over the last year to people seeing one of his trucks in a driveway.
Or in traffic.
"I tell my guys, 'If you're in rush hour, find the slowest lane and sit in it,' " Mr. Morris said. "I'll pay for the time and gas. The people behind you can't help but sit and stare."
At Jobing.com, a job-search and recruiting company in Phoenix, all employees who have been with the company for more than a year are eligible to get their cars wrapped with ads for their employer, a perk that pays them $500 a month plus unlimited gas, even if they were to drive cross-country on vacation. "It just seemed fair to us," said Aaron Matos, the 35-year-old chief executive of Jobing.com. "This is a way to get a mobile billboard out on the street, so we were definitely willing to pay for that."
Jobing.com workers must submit driving records and photographs of their cars, which can be no more than five years old. They also must enroll in a defensive-driving class. Nearly half its work force - 187 employees - participates, and Mr. Matos said that the workers with wrapped cars tended to stay with the company longer.
One employee got a warning from the boss after another motorist complained that he was speeding, and then drew another traffic complaint. "We still loved the employee. He just made a very bad decision," said Mr. Matos, in explaining his decision to unwrap the car after the second complaint.
Mr. Matos's own Volkswagen Touareg is wrapped, as is his wife's Isuzu Rodeo. Would he drive the mobile billboard in, say, a funeral procession? "That hasn't come up," he said. "But if it were my funeral, I suppose everyone would have them."
BoSacks Speaks Out: My long time readers know that I have a fascination and professional interest in unusual advertising placement. This man's opinion is that it has become grossly intrusive, dangerously over exposed and almost without any seeming integrity. But that's just me. You can find advertising everywhere. I read an article yesterday that airlines will now be putting advertising on both sides of the pull down trays while in flight. Just imagine the
opportunity to stare at your favorite logo for 6 hours while on a cross-country flight. The damned intrusion has gone so far as to infiltrate the privacy of public restrooms with advertising while we are communing with the sublime. It's not that I mind advertising here, or perhaps even there, but I sure as hell don't want it everywhere.
With that in mind I give you an article about the next great assault. If you've got opinions, I would love to hear them.
Your Ad Here, on My S.U.V.? And You'll Pay?
By ANDREW ADAM NEWMAN
www.newyorktimes.com
Some companies pay millions to have their logos on Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s racecar, but others prefer to pay Brian Katz $500 or more a month for space on his Ford Expedition
Mr. Katz, 32, of Manhattan, is one of the tens of thousands of motorists who have signed up to have their cars and trucks wrapped in advertisements in exchange for a stipend up to $800 a month.
These offers are becoming so popular that car owners have been willing to limit where they shop and abide by a code of conduct while they are behind the wheel.
Even with the restrictions, a free car or a hefty subsidy is attractive to motorists like Mr. Katz. "One of my friends read something about someone giving away free cars for being a moving advertisement, which didn't sound like anything that could actually happen," Mr. Katz said, adding that it struck him as "a little shady."
But he found the offer to be legitimate and has been paid handsomely to wrap his car for several companies, including Jamba Juice and Verizon Wireless.
True, he does not always feel like rolling down his window to answer strangers' questions about, say, Verizon's calling plans. "It can be a little intrusive sometimes, but that's nothing in the grand scheme of things," Mr. Katz said.
Vehicle wrapping started, by most accounts, in 1993, when PepsiCo bought the rights to paint six city buses in Seattle with its logo. Pepsi planned to put the buses in a paint shop for six weeks, but Louis Hoffman, general manager for a Seattle printing company called SuperGraphics, persuaded Pepsi to have the buses wrapped instead with a vinyl material made by 3M that could be applied in less than two days. (Now it takes just a few hours.)
3M, which remains the largest producer of the material, uses an adhesive similar to the one on its Post-it notes, enabling installers to place vinyl strips on a vehicle that do not stick until pressure is applied. The material is popular for wrapping racecars, helicopters, planes, boats and even buildings. Far from hurting the paint job, the wrap preserves it.
ARD Ventures, a venture capital firm, has studied the phenomenon of wrapped cars and estimates that motorists and pedestrians see a single vehicle's advertising message as many as 70,000 times a day.
Mr. Katz was matched with his advertisers by FreeCar Media, an advertising agency in Los Angeles that claims to have a database of more than a million car owners who say they are open to wrapping their cars in ads for a fee, said Drew Livingston, president of the company.
The sponsor also pays as much as $5,000 a car for the wrap job. Generally, a car can qualify if it has enough surface area for a sizable ad and is no more than five years old.
"A company like Procter & Gamble will come to us and say, 'We have a new and improved Tide, and our target is stay-at-home moms with two-plus children who live in these 20 markets,' " Mr. Livingston said. His company then finds drivers in that demographic. "We feel that when you can wrap a mom's car and get it to her P.T.A. meeting or Curves gym, you're getting the acceptance from her social circle."
The company either gives its brand ambassadors free cars or, more often, pays them as much as $800 a month. In the last seven years, FreeCar Media has hired about 7,000 motorists, who are instructed to park outside whenever possible, refrain from smoking, littering or swearing in their vehicle, and to attend a monthly influencer event where they hand out samples or coupons. They also have to send reports frequently with photographs to show where their cars have been.
People whose cars were wrapped with ads for two Coca-Cola products - Planet Java, a bottled coffee, and Vault, an energy drink - were cautioned against sipping Pepsi products behind the wheel. Nor could they park at restaurant chains like KFC or Pizza Hut that serve Pepsi exclusively, Mr. Livingston said.
Another FreeCar participant, Jerome Harris, 22, was in his junior year at Temple University last year when he had his Nissan Altima wrapped for a promotion for Trolls, the endomorphic dolls with Don King hairdos. He earned $500 a month while his car was wrapped; in addition to driving around while on his best behavior, he was required to hand out Trolls pens to fellow students during finals week.
"We weren't allowed to have alcohol in or around the car, or use profanity," said Mr. Harris, who now lives in Brooklyn and is a few credits shy of a degree in advertising. "When you're out, you're supposed to be representing the brand."
Some companies are taking mobile advertising into their own hands. Brian Morris, the owner of We Fix Ugly Pools, a pool repair and construction company in Phoenix, wrapped more than 30 vehicles in his fleet in ads for his company. He monitors how customers find him, and attributes more than $1 million in revenue over the last year to people seeing one of his trucks in a driveway.
Or in traffic.
"I tell my guys, 'If you're in rush hour, find the slowest lane and sit in it,' " Mr. Morris said. "I'll pay for the time and gas. The people behind you can't help but sit and stare."
At Jobing.com, a job-search and recruiting company in Phoenix, all employees who have been with the company for more than a year are eligible to get their cars wrapped with ads for their employer, a perk that pays them $500 a month plus unlimited gas, even if they were to drive cross-country on vacation. "It just seemed fair to us," said Aaron Matos, the 35-year-old chief executive of Jobing.com. "This is a way to get a mobile billboard out on the street, so we were definitely willing to pay for that."
Jobing.com workers must submit driving records and photographs of their cars, which can be no more than five years old. They also must enroll in a defensive-driving class. Nearly half its work force - 187 employees - participates, and Mr. Matos said that the workers with wrapped cars tended to stay with the company longer.
One employee got a warning from the boss after another motorist complained that he was speeding, and then drew another traffic complaint. "We still loved the employee. He just made a very bad decision," said Mr. Matos, in explaining his decision to unwrap the car after the second complaint.
Mr. Matos's own Volkswagen Touareg is wrapped, as is his wife's Isuzu Rodeo. Would he drive the mobile billboard in, say, a funeral procession? "That hasn't come up," he said. "But if it were my funeral, I suppose everyone would have them."
Monday, August 27, 2007
Portfolio is approaching a point of no return
Portfolio is approaching a point of no return
Commentary: Its staff conjures up scenes from 'Mutiny on the Bounty'
By Jon Friedman, MarketWatch
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/conde-nasts-portfolio-reaching-point/story.aspx?guid=%7B1F3EE0B3%2D079E%2D475E%2D8F60%2D7420CE72B531%7D
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Conde Nast's Portfolio magazine is getting a bad rap and a bad rep.
I'm not referring to its overhyped launch, the debatable quality of the articles, a decline in ad pages from the first issue or even its unambitious Web product. The No. 1 question dogging Portfolio is whether it can repair its image as an out-of-control mess.
According to media reports, the staff of this monthly boasts all of the camaraderie of the crew in "Mutiny on the Bounty."
By now, it's almost tangential whether you think Portfolio is publishing a high-quality magazine. (Isn't that what it's supposed to do anyway?) The bad vibes surrounding the magazine are starting to snowball.
The magazine born in a publicity blitz is discovering that there is a down side to hype.
Portfolio's camp has a different, more reassuring, take. Its editors suspect that a handful of unhappy staffers are complaining to media writers, who are only too happy to fan the flames against a magazine that an industry has grown to envy and hate.
"There is not a 'crisis' at all," said Perri Dorset, Portfolio's spokeswoman. "Everyone here is working hard. Outside the media bubble, people are talking about the stories in the magazine."
Dorset pointed out that many of the articles in the second issue got a favorable reception, citing Daniel Roth's "Chrysler's Extreme Makeover," Franz Lidz's "Crisis at Yankee Inc." (which I read as an ambush of Yankees owner George Steinbrenner) and Matthew Cooper's look at Mitt Romney. See earlier column.
Portfolio Publisher David Carey chimed in via e-mail: "On the 11th floor of Conde Nast, there is not an ounce of concern; everyone is very pleased with the September issue and October's too. I could not in fact imagine that our ad pages could possibly be stronger for a new product -- we are setting a pace the company has never seen before.
"All the hubbub is totally inside the media beltway in New York," he wrote. "If there is a theme for your piece -- which I'm not sure I understand why you're [doing it] -- [it] is how all this coverage is a textbook tempest in a teapot."
Living up to the hype
The magazine born in a publicity blitz is discovering that there is a down side to hype. A year ago when it was staffing up, the title crowed every time it managed to woo a well-known business journalist from a competitor. To the chagrin of rivals, Portfolio not only poached people, but exploited these situations to make some noise.
But all of that would be chalked up to street smarts if Portfolio's first issue had been spectacular and lived up to its billing. The debut was castigated by critics for being the "un-" magazine -- unfocused, unwieldy and uninspiring.
The second issue was a better read, indicating that Portfolio will likely improve in the months ahead. Portfolio assembled a group of respected professionals, and they should begin to develop some momentum.
It's still hard to believe that a monthly, which has published a total of two issues, can seem so important. Yet Portfolio has taken on the aura of a big-budget Hollywood production, where pandemonium appears to be everywhere. Unfortunately, the magazine raises comparisons with "Heaven's Gate" and "Gigli." (Do you even remember the latter's plot line?)
There were constant whispers that the staff was rife was dissension. Portfolio folks preferred to pooh-pooh such talk by pointing out that this is what happens when you collect so many talented and strong-willed editors and writers.
But the bloggers' unconfirmed reports of internecine warfare seemed legitimate when Editor Joanne Lipman forced out her top deputy, Jim Impoco. Adding to a sensibility straight out of "Dallas" or "Dynasty," Impoco exited in dramatic fashion just days before Portfolio was poised to roll out its second issue.
This was clearly a time when Portfolio's brain trust should've been focused on trumpeting stories, not rationalizing the sudden departure of its second-most important news executive. If Portfolio had covered itself, you can bet that one of its writers would have filed a 5,000-word article along the lines of "Portfolio Hoisted on its Own Petard."
The rest of the media can save Portfolio the trouble of publishing a gloom-and-doom story. We've seen our share lately: The New York Observer's Michael Calderone, who has been pushing out stories with an end-of-days tone, wrote that the perception was that "chaos is reigning" at the magazine. PR Week's Aarti Shah said Portfolio is struggling with an "identity crisis." The New York Post's Keith J. Kelly said that the second issue "misses" again.
Portfolio Publisher David Carey and public-relations chief Perri Dorset, who used to work at the New Yorker (also a unit of Conde Nast) are two of the best people in New York at their respective publishing jobs. Lipman earned a stellar reputation as a creative journalist, if not a micromanager, during her days at The Wall Street Journal (which, like MarketWatch, the publisher of this column, is owned by Dow Jones & Co.
Commentary: Its staff conjures up scenes from 'Mutiny on the Bounty'
By Jon Friedman, MarketWatch
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/conde-nasts-portfolio-reaching-point/story.aspx?guid=%7B1F3EE0B3%2D079E%2D475E%2D8F60%2D7420CE72B531%7D
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Conde Nast's Portfolio magazine is getting a bad rap and a bad rep.
I'm not referring to its overhyped launch, the debatable quality of the articles, a decline in ad pages from the first issue or even its unambitious Web product. The No. 1 question dogging Portfolio is whether it can repair its image as an out-of-control mess.
According to media reports, the staff of this monthly boasts all of the camaraderie of the crew in "Mutiny on the Bounty."
By now, it's almost tangential whether you think Portfolio is publishing a high-quality magazine. (Isn't that what it's supposed to do anyway?) The bad vibes surrounding the magazine are starting to snowball.
The magazine born in a publicity blitz is discovering that there is a down side to hype.
Portfolio's camp has a different, more reassuring, take. Its editors suspect that a handful of unhappy staffers are complaining to media writers, who are only too happy to fan the flames against a magazine that an industry has grown to envy and hate.
"There is not a 'crisis' at all," said Perri Dorset, Portfolio's spokeswoman. "Everyone here is working hard. Outside the media bubble, people are talking about the stories in the magazine."
Dorset pointed out that many of the articles in the second issue got a favorable reception, citing Daniel Roth's "Chrysler's Extreme Makeover," Franz Lidz's "Crisis at Yankee Inc." (which I read as an ambush of Yankees owner George Steinbrenner) and Matthew Cooper's look at Mitt Romney. See earlier column.
Portfolio Publisher David Carey chimed in via e-mail: "On the 11th floor of Conde Nast, there is not an ounce of concern; everyone is very pleased with the September issue and October's too. I could not in fact imagine that our ad pages could possibly be stronger for a new product -- we are setting a pace the company has never seen before.
"All the hubbub is totally inside the media beltway in New York," he wrote. "If there is a theme for your piece -- which I'm not sure I understand why you're [doing it] -- [it] is how all this coverage is a textbook tempest in a teapot."
Living up to the hype
The magazine born in a publicity blitz is discovering that there is a down side to hype. A year ago when it was staffing up, the title crowed every time it managed to woo a well-known business journalist from a competitor. To the chagrin of rivals, Portfolio not only poached people, but exploited these situations to make some noise.
But all of that would be chalked up to street smarts if Portfolio's first issue had been spectacular and lived up to its billing. The debut was castigated by critics for being the "un-" magazine -- unfocused, unwieldy and uninspiring.
The second issue was a better read, indicating that Portfolio will likely improve in the months ahead. Portfolio assembled a group of respected professionals, and they should begin to develop some momentum.
It's still hard to believe that a monthly, which has published a total of two issues, can seem so important. Yet Portfolio has taken on the aura of a big-budget Hollywood production, where pandemonium appears to be everywhere. Unfortunately, the magazine raises comparisons with "Heaven's Gate" and "Gigli." (Do you even remember the latter's plot line?)
There were constant whispers that the staff was rife was dissension. Portfolio folks preferred to pooh-pooh such talk by pointing out that this is what happens when you collect so many talented and strong-willed editors and writers.
But the bloggers' unconfirmed reports of internecine warfare seemed legitimate when Editor Joanne Lipman forced out her top deputy, Jim Impoco. Adding to a sensibility straight out of "Dallas" or "Dynasty," Impoco exited in dramatic fashion just days before Portfolio was poised to roll out its second issue.
This was clearly a time when Portfolio's brain trust should've been focused on trumpeting stories, not rationalizing the sudden departure of its second-most important news executive. If Portfolio had covered itself, you can bet that one of its writers would have filed a 5,000-word article along the lines of "Portfolio Hoisted on its Own Petard."
The rest of the media can save Portfolio the trouble of publishing a gloom-and-doom story. We've seen our share lately: The New York Observer's Michael Calderone, who has been pushing out stories with an end-of-days tone, wrote that the perception was that "chaos is reigning" at the magazine. PR Week's Aarti Shah said Portfolio is struggling with an "identity crisis." The New York Post's Keith J. Kelly said that the second issue "misses" again.
Portfolio Publisher David Carey and public-relations chief Perri Dorset, who used to work at the New Yorker (also a unit of Conde Nast) are two of the best people in New York at their respective publishing jobs. Lipman earned a stellar reputation as a creative journalist, if not a micromanager, during her days at The Wall Street Journal (which, like MarketWatch, the publisher of this column, is owned by Dow Jones & Co.
Digitally challenged Time Inc. past prime?
Digitally challenged Time Inc. past prime?
By Matthew Flamm
http://www.newyorkbusiness.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070819/FREE/70818004
Time Magazine continues to lose ad pages despite its radical re-engineering of five months ago, and Fortune, Money and Business 2.0 have suffered double-digit advertising slides in the first half. But the decline of some of Time Inc.'s core print properties is an old story at the company.
A more troubling issue is that even with traffic increasing at key Web sites and an all-hands-on-deck approach to reinventing itself as a multiplatform content company, ad revenue at the No. 1 magazine publisher grew only 1% in the second quarter. For a business under pressure, that's not good enough.
Time Inc. Chief Executive Ann Moore has staked her legacy on transforming the enterprise into a 21st century publisher and making it the profit machine that it was when she took the reins five years ago.
But Time Inc. got a late start out of the digital gate. Ms. Moore's critics complain that she wasted resources launching the ill-fated Life newspaper supplement and the low-margin women's title All You when she should have been focused on the Web.
Her defenders argue that she was hamstrung by parent company Time Warner's decision to give AOL control of Time Inc.'s Web sites, a relationship that has been unwinding for the past two years.
Either way, the publisher is still paying the price.
"Time Inc. has yet to find a central digital strategy for itself," says Alan Schanzer, managing partner of digital media planning firm MEC: interaction.
He says that People.com missed the chance to own the entertainment news category. It ranks second in unique visitors after gossip upstart TMZ. He adds that Time.com faces competition from myriad other news and information sites. And CNNMoney.com combines four different business magazine brands--Fortune, Money, Fortune Small Business and Business 2.0--which, he argues, have little to do with each other.
Ms. Moore declined to be interviewed, but a Time Inc. spokeswoman responds that Time.com is growing rapidly, that People.com owns its category in terms of viewer engagement, and that CNNMoney. com's related brands amass a huge audience. That site's net revenue is up 68% this year. SI.com is another success, adding 18% to the bottom line this year at the Sports Illustrated brand. Traffic across all of the publisher's U.S. Web sites now averages 20 million unique visitors a month.
"That's more than our five nearest competitors in magazine publishing combined," a spokeswoman writes in an e-mail.
An upswing
Time Inc. executives also argue that the most recent quarter shows a turnaround. Though revenue was flat at $1.3 billion, operating income before depreciation and amortization grew 12% to $302 million--the first quarter of double-digit growth since 2005--with help from lower restructuring charges. Digital ad revenue, for the second quarter in a row, has more than made up for the decline in print ad revenue. "We're growing again," says a spokeswoman.
Some observers are impressed with Time Inc.'s progress. "Time Inc. has been as aggressive as any company--or more aggressive--at stabilizing print brands and diversifying in digital," says Reed Phillips, a managing partner at investment banking firm DeSilva & Phillips.
Others maintain that the publisher hasn't been aggressive enough. Unlike most of its privately held competitors, Time Inc. faces pressure from analysts and investors. Some of them say it is neither a strategic fit within Time Warner nor a growth business, and should be sold off.
Speculation about Time Inc.'s future has been fueled lately by talk of succession plans at Time Warner. Analysts consider heir apparent Chief Operating Officer Jeffrey Bewkes more open to spinning off divisions than Chief Executive Richard Parsons, whose contract expires next May. That assessment has sparked rumblings about Ms. Moore, whose contract runs through 2009.
She has been unequivocal about staying to its end and has talked about planning for a successor.
Insiders believe that Mr. Bewkes will need to deal with problems at AOL before he gets to Time Inc., Time Warner's smallest division.
A Time Warner spokesman voices support for the division. "Time Inc. is making good progress," he says.
But it doesn't bode well for the publisher that Ms. Moore's tenure has been marked by an up-and-down quarterly performance, in contrast to that of her predecessor, Don Logan. Under Mr. Logan, the company posted 41 consecutive quarters of profit growth.
The roaring '90s
Mr. Logan had the advantages of a booming ad market, big-ticket acquisitions--and Ms. Moore. As president of People from 1993 to 2001, she consolidated the title's hold on popular culture and created juggernaut franchises Real Simple and InStyle.
Critics say that her accomplishments on the digital side have been too little, too late. "Management is simply not getting the job done fast enough," insists Pali Research media analyst Richard Greenfield in an e-mail.
In the rapidly changing media landscape, the mighty Time Inc. may have to get used to looming less large.
"Are they at the point where they're a must-buy?" asks David Smith, chief executive of media- buying firm Mediasmith Inc., which places clients' ads with Time.com and CNNMoney.com. "No. But they're folks we've got to give serious consideration to, and, for them, that's huge progress."
By Matthew Flamm
http://www.newyorkbusiness.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070819/FREE/70818004
Time Magazine continues to lose ad pages despite its radical re-engineering of five months ago, and Fortune, Money and Business 2.0 have suffered double-digit advertising slides in the first half. But the decline of some of Time Inc.'s core print properties is an old story at the company.
A more troubling issue is that even with traffic increasing at key Web sites and an all-hands-on-deck approach to reinventing itself as a multiplatform content company, ad revenue at the No. 1 magazine publisher grew only 1% in the second quarter. For a business under pressure, that's not good enough.
Time Inc. Chief Executive Ann Moore has staked her legacy on transforming the enterprise into a 21st century publisher and making it the profit machine that it was when she took the reins five years ago.
But Time Inc. got a late start out of the digital gate. Ms. Moore's critics complain that she wasted resources launching the ill-fated Life newspaper supplement and the low-margin women's title All You when she should have been focused on the Web.
Her defenders argue that she was hamstrung by parent company Time Warner's decision to give AOL control of Time Inc.'s Web sites, a relationship that has been unwinding for the past two years.
Either way, the publisher is still paying the price.
"Time Inc. has yet to find a central digital strategy for itself," says Alan Schanzer, managing partner of digital media planning firm MEC: interaction.
He says that People.com missed the chance to own the entertainment news category. It ranks second in unique visitors after gossip upstart TMZ. He adds that Time.com faces competition from myriad other news and information sites. And CNNMoney.com combines four different business magazine brands--Fortune, Money, Fortune Small Business and Business 2.0--which, he argues, have little to do with each other.
Ms. Moore declined to be interviewed, but a Time Inc. spokeswoman responds that Time.com is growing rapidly, that People.com owns its category in terms of viewer engagement, and that CNNMoney. com's related brands amass a huge audience. That site's net revenue is up 68% this year. SI.com is another success, adding 18% to the bottom line this year at the Sports Illustrated brand. Traffic across all of the publisher's U.S. Web sites now averages 20 million unique visitors a month.
"That's more than our five nearest competitors in magazine publishing combined," a spokeswoman writes in an e-mail.
An upswing
Time Inc. executives also argue that the most recent quarter shows a turnaround. Though revenue was flat at $1.3 billion, operating income before depreciation and amortization grew 12% to $302 million--the first quarter of double-digit growth since 2005--with help from lower restructuring charges. Digital ad revenue, for the second quarter in a row, has more than made up for the decline in print ad revenue. "We're growing again," says a spokeswoman.
Some observers are impressed with Time Inc.'s progress. "Time Inc. has been as aggressive as any company--or more aggressive--at stabilizing print brands and diversifying in digital," says Reed Phillips, a managing partner at investment banking firm DeSilva & Phillips.
Others maintain that the publisher hasn't been aggressive enough. Unlike most of its privately held competitors, Time Inc. faces pressure from analysts and investors. Some of them say it is neither a strategic fit within Time Warner nor a growth business, and should be sold off.
Speculation about Time Inc.'s future has been fueled lately by talk of succession plans at Time Warner. Analysts consider heir apparent Chief Operating Officer Jeffrey Bewkes more open to spinning off divisions than Chief Executive Richard Parsons, whose contract expires next May. That assessment has sparked rumblings about Ms. Moore, whose contract runs through 2009.
She has been unequivocal about staying to its end and has talked about planning for a successor.
Insiders believe that Mr. Bewkes will need to deal with problems at AOL before he gets to Time Inc., Time Warner's smallest division.
A Time Warner spokesman voices support for the division. "Time Inc. is making good progress," he says.
But it doesn't bode well for the publisher that Ms. Moore's tenure has been marked by an up-and-down quarterly performance, in contrast to that of her predecessor, Don Logan. Under Mr. Logan, the company posted 41 consecutive quarters of profit growth.
The roaring '90s
Mr. Logan had the advantages of a booming ad market, big-ticket acquisitions--and Ms. Moore. As president of People from 1993 to 2001, she consolidated the title's hold on popular culture and created juggernaut franchises Real Simple and InStyle.
Critics say that her accomplishments on the digital side have been too little, too late. "Management is simply not getting the job done fast enough," insists Pali Research media analyst Richard Greenfield in an e-mail.
In the rapidly changing media landscape, the mighty Time Inc. may have to get used to looming less large.
"Are they at the point where they're a must-buy?" asks David Smith, chief executive of media- buying firm Mediasmith Inc., which places clients' ads with Time.com and CNNMoney.com. "No. But they're folks we've got to give serious consideration to, and, for them, that's huge progress."
Prediction: 'Watershed Moment' For Online Advertising in 2011
Prediction: 'Watershed Moment' For Online Advertising in 2011
By Jason Fell
http://www.foliomag.com/viewmedia.asp?prmMID=7973#
A recent report indicates that online advertising will continue to grow at a rapid pace over the next five years, and predicts that it will reach nearly $62 billion in 2011, replacing newspapers as the largest ad medium.
The report, private equity firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson's Communications Industry Forecast 2007-2011, shows that advertisers have noticed the consumer shift to online content and have been putting considerably more money into digital marketing, including pure-play Web sites and digital extensions of traditional media. Online advertising is expected to grow by more than 20 percent per year. The report describes the change as a "watershed moment in communications history."
Total consumer magazine spending-including print and digital platforms-increased only 1.9 percent in 2006 to $23.96 billion, the report says. Advertising expenditures rose only 3.3 percent last year to $13.15 billion. Total spending on b-to-b media-including print publications, trade shows and e-media-increased 5 percent in 2006 to $23.58 billion. Advertising expenditures increased .9 percent last year to $9.05 billion. That's a sharp decline from 6.4 percent growth rate in 2005 due, mainly, to a strong shift in marketing budgets online, the report says.
"We are in the midst of a major shift in the media landscape that is being fueled by changes in technology, end-user behaviors and the response by brand marketers and communications companies," VSS executive vice president and managing director James Rutherford said. "We expect these shifts to continue over the next five years, as time and place shifting accelerate while consumers and businesses utilize more digital media alternatives, strengthening the new media pull model at the expense of the traditional media push model."
Meanwhile, the continued migration of magazine/newspaper consumers to online products represents a threat to traditional news organizations, according to a recent study by researchers at Harvard University's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. The study, "Creative Destruction: An Exploratory Look at News on the Internet," examines traffic at 160 news-based Web sites between April 2006 and April 2007.
While Web sites connected to traditional news organizations are growing, sites of the major non-traditional news disseminators-including aggregators, bloggers and search engines and service providers-are growing at a faster pace, the study says. For instance, news aggregator site digg.com saw its unique monthly visitor total jump from less than 2 million to more than 15 million, the report says. Reddit.com and topix.net grew from less than 50,000 visitors a month to more than 700,000
By Jason Fell
http://www.foliomag.com/viewmedia.asp?prmMID=7973#
A recent report indicates that online advertising will continue to grow at a rapid pace over the next five years, and predicts that it will reach nearly $62 billion in 2011, replacing newspapers as the largest ad medium.
The report, private equity firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson's Communications Industry Forecast 2007-2011, shows that advertisers have noticed the consumer shift to online content and have been putting considerably more money into digital marketing, including pure-play Web sites and digital extensions of traditional media. Online advertising is expected to grow by more than 20 percent per year. The report describes the change as a "watershed moment in communications history."
Total consumer magazine spending-including print and digital platforms-increased only 1.9 percent in 2006 to $23.96 billion, the report says. Advertising expenditures rose only 3.3 percent last year to $13.15 billion. Total spending on b-to-b media-including print publications, trade shows and e-media-increased 5 percent in 2006 to $23.58 billion. Advertising expenditures increased .9 percent last year to $9.05 billion. That's a sharp decline from 6.4 percent growth rate in 2005 due, mainly, to a strong shift in marketing budgets online, the report says.
"We are in the midst of a major shift in the media landscape that is being fueled by changes in technology, end-user behaviors and the response by brand marketers and communications companies," VSS executive vice president and managing director James Rutherford said. "We expect these shifts to continue over the next five years, as time and place shifting accelerate while consumers and businesses utilize more digital media alternatives, strengthening the new media pull model at the expense of the traditional media push model."
Meanwhile, the continued migration of magazine/newspaper consumers to online products represents a threat to traditional news organizations, according to a recent study by researchers at Harvard University's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. The study, "Creative Destruction: An Exploratory Look at News on the Internet," examines traffic at 160 news-based Web sites between April 2006 and April 2007.
While Web sites connected to traditional news organizations are growing, sites of the major non-traditional news disseminators-including aggregators, bloggers and search engines and service providers-are growing at a faster pace, the study says. For instance, news aggregator site digg.com saw its unique monthly visitor total jump from less than 2 million to more than 15 million, the report says. Reddit.com and topix.net grew from less than 50,000 visitors a month to more than 700,000
Natural Selection
Natural Selection
By William Powers, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
http://nationaljournal.com/powers.htm#
The latest media moan, heard this week wherever two or more newspaper lovers were gathered, was about the suddenly smaller New York Times. As of several days ago, the great daily is one and a half inches skinnier side to side, the same size as other previously downsized broadsheets, including The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal.
All the evidence points to newspapers heading down the fast track toward extinction. But are we really looking at all of the evidence?
It was another excuse for media people everywhere to wonder aloud: Are newspapers dying? A headline on the Editor & Publisher website captured the mood. "Today, A Smaller 'NYT': Tomorrow, None at All?"
All the evidence points to newspapers heading down the fast track toward extinction. But are we really looking at all of the evidence? A piece in the newly svelte paper suggests that maybe the herd is thinking about the past, present, and future of newspapers a bit too, well, narrowly.
On the front of The Times' science section was a story about Gregory Clark, an economic historian at the University of California (Davis), who has proposed a new solution to one of history's great puzzles: Why, beginning about 200 years ago, did some societies abandon centuries of subsistence farming and poverty -- starting the Industrial Revolution and, in the process, achieving "amazing affluence"?
As Times reporter Nicholas Wade cogently explained, Clark's core idea is a Darwinian one. In England, where industrialization began, poor people died in greater numbers than rich people and left behind fewer children. As the rich people's descendants multiplied, they filled various social and economic niches that the poor had previously filled. And as the descendants of the well-off fanned out, they took with them inherited traits and behaviors that had allowed their successful ancestors to thrive. Those abilities gave them the wherewithal to invent something new -- the hardworking, thrifty, upwardly mobile middle class. And the rest is history. At various points during the day that Wade's story was published, it was the most e-mailed piece on The Times' website.
This is just a theory, and it has nothing to do with newspapers per se, but bear with me. We know that people who habitually read newspapers are slowly dying off. And we know that the descendants of those people, younger folk, don't read newspapers nearly as much. Many view papers as a symbol of stodgy old ways of living and thinking. The Internet is where the action is. One might therefore hypothesize that human beings are evolving away from newspapers because we have discovered a new tool that is much more useful in the Darwinian struggle for success.
There's just one problem with that theory: The most successful people on the planet today, the equivalent of the rich people in the Clark study, still rely on the information that newspapers provide to rise and prosper. Up-to-date information is the coin of the realm, and it's rare to meet a successful person who doesn't follow the news. They may not get it from the hard-copy newspaper, but most online news originates in traditional newspapers and newspaper-related organs such as the Associated Press. In other words, the basic product the papers produce still helps the fittest to thrive.
We even have a recent case study of two separate human gene pools taking radically different approaches to the idea of newspapers. Rupert Murdoch, the 32nd-richest person in the richest nation on Earth, wanted to own a famous, and famously troubled, newspaper, The Wall Street Journal. The Bancroft family, which had owned the paper for decades and made a mess of it, didn't want to own it any more.
As a group, the Bancrofts were not thriving in the Darwinian sense the way that the Murdochs were, not by a long shot. They couldn't figure out how to make this tool work for them. The Murdochs looked at the same tool and were certain they knew exactly what to do with it. They would use it to get even richer.
So what's more reliable: the behavior of the Murdochs, the Sam Zells, and the other Darwinian alpha types who still see competitive advantages in newspapers, or a bunch of sad-sack journalists who claim that their profession is dying? You do believe in evolution, don't you?
By William Powers, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
http://nationaljournal.com/powers.htm#
The latest media moan, heard this week wherever two or more newspaper lovers were gathered, was about the suddenly smaller New York Times. As of several days ago, the great daily is one and a half inches skinnier side to side, the same size as other previously downsized broadsheets, including The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal.
All the evidence points to newspapers heading down the fast track toward extinction. But are we really looking at all of the evidence?
It was another excuse for media people everywhere to wonder aloud: Are newspapers dying? A headline on the Editor & Publisher website captured the mood. "Today, A Smaller 'NYT': Tomorrow, None at All?"
All the evidence points to newspapers heading down the fast track toward extinction. But are we really looking at all of the evidence? A piece in the newly svelte paper suggests that maybe the herd is thinking about the past, present, and future of newspapers a bit too, well, narrowly.
On the front of The Times' science section was a story about Gregory Clark, an economic historian at the University of California (Davis), who has proposed a new solution to one of history's great puzzles: Why, beginning about 200 years ago, did some societies abandon centuries of subsistence farming and poverty -- starting the Industrial Revolution and, in the process, achieving "amazing affluence"?
As Times reporter Nicholas Wade cogently explained, Clark's core idea is a Darwinian one. In England, where industrialization began, poor people died in greater numbers than rich people and left behind fewer children. As the rich people's descendants multiplied, they filled various social and economic niches that the poor had previously filled. And as the descendants of the well-off fanned out, they took with them inherited traits and behaviors that had allowed their successful ancestors to thrive. Those abilities gave them the wherewithal to invent something new -- the hardworking, thrifty, upwardly mobile middle class. And the rest is history. At various points during the day that Wade's story was published, it was the most e-mailed piece on The Times' website.
This is just a theory, and it has nothing to do with newspapers per se, but bear with me. We know that people who habitually read newspapers are slowly dying off. And we know that the descendants of those people, younger folk, don't read newspapers nearly as much. Many view papers as a symbol of stodgy old ways of living and thinking. The Internet is where the action is. One might therefore hypothesize that human beings are evolving away from newspapers because we have discovered a new tool that is much more useful in the Darwinian struggle for success.
There's just one problem with that theory: The most successful people on the planet today, the equivalent of the rich people in the Clark study, still rely on the information that newspapers provide to rise and prosper. Up-to-date information is the coin of the realm, and it's rare to meet a successful person who doesn't follow the news. They may not get it from the hard-copy newspaper, but most online news originates in traditional newspapers and newspaper-related organs such as the Associated Press. In other words, the basic product the papers produce still helps the fittest to thrive.
We even have a recent case study of two separate human gene pools taking radically different approaches to the idea of newspapers. Rupert Murdoch, the 32nd-richest person in the richest nation on Earth, wanted to own a famous, and famously troubled, newspaper, The Wall Street Journal. The Bancroft family, which had owned the paper for decades and made a mess of it, didn't want to own it any more.
As a group, the Bancrofts were not thriving in the Darwinian sense the way that the Murdochs were, not by a long shot. They couldn't figure out how to make this tool work for them. The Murdochs looked at the same tool and were certain they knew exactly what to do with it. They would use it to get even richer.
So what's more reliable: the behavior of the Murdochs, the Sam Zells, and the other Darwinian alpha types who still see competitive advantages in newspapers, or a bunch of sad-sack journalists who claim that their profession is dying? You do believe in evolution, don't you?
AJR Facing Major Debt -- But CJR Says It's In The Black
AJR Facing Major Debt -- But CJR Says It's In The Black
By Joe Strupp
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003628948
NEW YORK While American Journalism Review is apparently $200,000 in debt with threats of closure, its counterpart, the Columbia Journalism Review, is having its best financial year ever, according to Executive Editor Mike Hoyt.
Hoyt, who has led the newsroom for four years, says his publication is about $50,000 in the black, with estimates of a $40,000 surplus in 2008. "We feel like we are on a roll," says Hoyt, noting the economic turnaround is based on a mix of some staff cuts and fundraising increases. "We didn't replace three editors, but we have been able to add some reporters and we've done a lot of fundraising."
Hoyt's assessment follows a report in The Washington Post today that AJR is about $200,000 in debt and may face closure if the deficit is not reduced.
Both AJR and CJR have benefited in recent years from a fundraising project led by former Philadelphia Inquirer executive editor Eugene Roberts, who has headed a group of news veterans in raising some $2.5 million for both publications since 2004.
Roberts was not surprised at today's report that AJR was in trouble, saying the publication will always struggle given its continued advertising revenue battles.
"It is an ongoing thing," Roberts told E&P. "Neither magazine gets enough advertising to be self-sustaining, they need to be supplemented each year."
Roberts, who launched the fundraising effort three years ago as part of a group that included former Associated Press President and CEO Louis Boccardi and Time Inc. Editor-in-Chief Norman Pearlstine, said the initiative has so far raised about $1.25 million for each, with more likely to come. The group also helped increase circulation efforts as the magazines went to alternative monthly production schedules.
Tom Kunkel, AJR president, told the Post it is "more likely" that the magazine will be able to continue publishing next year, but that he must close the deficit, which represents about one-fourth of its annual budget.
"It's always been 'The Perils of Pauline' with the finances of a journalism review," Kunkel, dean of the journalism school at the University of Maryland, whose foundation has owned the review for two decades, told the Post, adding that there is "no guarantee" of survival but "we haven't been given a drop-dead date or anything like that."
Hoyt reserved comment on AJR's operation, other than to say, "we wish AJR the best, I think they are very good." As for his magazine and Web site, he says the economic news is the best in the magazine's history. "As far as I know, this is the first time we have been in the black," he said, noting the publication's $2.3 million budget and eight-person staff. "The first time in history."
He said that the magazine and Web site had both undergone redesigns this year, adding that a subscription drive helped bring in some 6,000 student subscribers in the past two years. The bi-monthly publication's circulation is about 19,000, he said.
"Advertising revenue has been stable in print, and online we have a single source advertiser for the first time," Hoyt said.
AJR faced another challenge this year, after Santa Barbara News-Press owner Wendy McCaw, embroiled in a year-long labor battle with employees, sued the review after it published an article in 2006 about her paper's problems.
By Joe Strupp
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003628948
NEW YORK While American Journalism Review is apparently $200,000 in debt with threats of closure, its counterpart, the Columbia Journalism Review, is having its best financial year ever, according to Executive Editor Mike Hoyt.
Hoyt, who has led the newsroom for four years, says his publication is about $50,000 in the black, with estimates of a $40,000 surplus in 2008. "We feel like we are on a roll," says Hoyt, noting the economic turnaround is based on a mix of some staff cuts and fundraising increases. "We didn't replace three editors, but we have been able to add some reporters and we've done a lot of fundraising."
Hoyt's assessment follows a report in The Washington Post today that AJR is about $200,000 in debt and may face closure if the deficit is not reduced.
Both AJR and CJR have benefited in recent years from a fundraising project led by former Philadelphia Inquirer executive editor Eugene Roberts, who has headed a group of news veterans in raising some $2.5 million for both publications since 2004.
Roberts was not surprised at today's report that AJR was in trouble, saying the publication will always struggle given its continued advertising revenue battles.
"It is an ongoing thing," Roberts told E&P. "Neither magazine gets enough advertising to be self-sustaining, they need to be supplemented each year."
Roberts, who launched the fundraising effort three years ago as part of a group that included former Associated Press President and CEO Louis Boccardi and Time Inc. Editor-in-Chief Norman Pearlstine, said the initiative has so far raised about $1.25 million for each, with more likely to come. The group also helped increase circulation efforts as the magazines went to alternative monthly production schedules.
Tom Kunkel, AJR president, told the Post it is "more likely" that the magazine will be able to continue publishing next year, but that he must close the deficit, which represents about one-fourth of its annual budget.
"It's always been 'The Perils of Pauline' with the finances of a journalism review," Kunkel, dean of the journalism school at the University of Maryland, whose foundation has owned the review for two decades, told the Post, adding that there is "no guarantee" of survival but "we haven't been given a drop-dead date or anything like that."
Hoyt reserved comment on AJR's operation, other than to say, "we wish AJR the best, I think they are very good." As for his magazine and Web site, he says the economic news is the best in the magazine's history. "As far as I know, this is the first time we have been in the black," he said, noting the publication's $2.3 million budget and eight-person staff. "The first time in history."
He said that the magazine and Web site had both undergone redesigns this year, adding that a subscription drive helped bring in some 6,000 student subscribers in the past two years. The bi-monthly publication's circulation is about 19,000, he said.
"Advertising revenue has been stable in print, and online we have a single source advertiser for the first time," Hoyt said.
AJR faced another challenge this year, after Santa Barbara News-Press owner Wendy McCaw, embroiled in a year-long labor battle with employees, sued the review after it published an article in 2006 about her paper's problems.
Study: TV is taking a back seat to Web, mobile
Study: TV is taking a back seat to Web, mobile
By Georg Szalai
Aug 22, 2007
NEW YORK -- Personal time that consumers spend on the Internet is rivaling their TV time, with user-generated content and networking sites among the most popular destinations for entertainment seekers. Plus, people seem more open to mobile content and are looking for more traditional entertainment offerings on their mobile devices than previously thought.
These are among the findings of a new IBM survey of consumer behavior in the digital age, which suggests that studios, advertisers, ad agencies, content distributors and other industry players must continue to adjust their business strategies amid changes in media usage and consumers' increased expectations for control and community.
Among key lessons for studios: Make your content available everywhere, but don't expect to get paid for every platform. And keep an eye on key influencers on the Web to succeed in creating word-of-mouth.
The survey is part of an IBM study on the future of advertising, set to be released in the fall, and it showed that consumers are divided over their preferences for free online content with ads or subscription fee-based content without commercials. About a third is for free content, but about 20% are willing to pay for the HBO-style model, according to IBM.
"Given the rising power of individuals and communities, media and entertainment industry players will have to become much better at providing permission-based advertising and related consumer-driven ratings services," said study co-author Bill Battino, communications sector managing partner at IBM Global Business Services.
In the latest sign of television's decline as the primary media device, 19% of respondents said they spend six hours or more each day on personal Internet usage. That compares with 8% who said so about the TV. One to four hours of TV usage was reported by 66%, compared with 60% for the Web.
"The Internet is becoming consumers' primary entertainment source," said Saul Berman, IBN Media & Entertainment Strategy and Change practice leader. "The TV is increasingly taking a back seat to the cell phone and the personal computer among consumers age 18-34."
The number of TV viewers using DVRs continues to expand, with 24% of U.S. respondents saying they have a DVR and watch 50% or more of TV programming in replay mode, IBM found. Of those viewers, 33% said they are watching more TV since owning a DVR, in line with other recent studies.
Australians show opposing trends from the U.S., with most respondents preferring live TV and replaying less than 25% of programming, according to IBM.
Watching video content on the Web is a popular activity these days. An average of 67% of consumers surveyed by IBM globally said they have watched or want to watch online video.
For video content online, the most popular destinations are user content-generated sites like YouTube, with 39% of respondents saying that's where they go most frequently. TV network sites (33%), search engines (32%) and social-networking sites (28%) are the next most-popular locations for Web video offers, according to the IBM study.
In the U.S., 26% said they have contributed to a social-networking site, and 7% have done so to a user-generated content site, compared with Australia, which has a leadership position in these areas with 36% and 9%, respectively, the survey found.
As far as mobile video is concerned, an average of 35% surveyed globally by IBM said they have or want to watch mobile video. Seven% report having a video-content subscription for their mobile phones. Nearly a third of U.K. users said their mobile consumption ate in their TV viewing time, according to IBM.
Battino said his team was surprised that shortform content tailored to the mobile device was less popular than they had expected. About half of users said they prefer to access traditional video offers like TV shows on their mobile.
Could this lead consumers to one day watch more movies in mobile form as well? "We think that will be a natural progression from watching TV shows currently," the IBM expert said, adding that the under-20 age demographic especially loves portability of content. "They may start a film at home and then watch it on a laptop or cell on the go," he said. "And they like to watch in discreet time segments," meaning they might watch a movie in several 20-minute sessions.
The lesson of the IBM survey for studios is to continue making content available on various platforms. However, "don't expect consumers to spend incrementally on different devices," he warned. "People want to pay for content once and then move it" to whatever device they like.
Also, online ratings, reviews and word-of-mouth continue to emerge as key drivers of boxoffice success in the digital age, he added.
"Magnets," or online opinion leaders, are fast emerging as key influencers that media and entertainment companies must keep in mind when promoting their content, the IBM expert said. "Some companies have started putting such people on their payroll," he added without providing examples.
Battino said he thinks there is "very strong" consumer interest in day-and-date VOD releases by cable operators, which are testing such offers with studios. Hybrid purchases like allowing a movie buff to buy a ticket for a film plus get it on DVD at a theater as well also will be a wave of the future, he predicted.
Among key digital age gadgets and services, portable music offers are among the most popular, with 23% saying they are using them, according to the IBM survey. Also, 11% reported using a PC-based music service, and 18% reported an online newspaper subscription.
The online survey was conducted between mid-April and mid-June by the IBM Institute for Business Value and generated 885 responses in the U.S., 559 in the U.K., 378 in Japan, 338 in Germany and 263 in Australia.
By Georg Szalai
Aug 22, 2007
NEW YORK -- Personal time that consumers spend on the Internet is rivaling their TV time, with user-generated content and networking sites among the most popular destinations for entertainment seekers. Plus, people seem more open to mobile content and are looking for more traditional entertainment offerings on their mobile devices than previously thought.
These are among the findings of a new IBM survey of consumer behavior in the digital age, which suggests that studios, advertisers, ad agencies, content distributors and other industry players must continue to adjust their business strategies amid changes in media usage and consumers' increased expectations for control and community.
Among key lessons for studios: Make your content available everywhere, but don't expect to get paid for every platform. And keep an eye on key influencers on the Web to succeed in creating word-of-mouth.
The survey is part of an IBM study on the future of advertising, set to be released in the fall, and it showed that consumers are divided over their preferences for free online content with ads or subscription fee-based content without commercials. About a third is for free content, but about 20% are willing to pay for the HBO-style model, according to IBM.
"Given the rising power of individuals and communities, media and entertainment industry players will have to become much better at providing permission-based advertising and related consumer-driven ratings services," said study co-author Bill Battino, communications sector managing partner at IBM Global Business Services.
In the latest sign of television's decline as the primary media device, 19% of respondents said they spend six hours or more each day on personal Internet usage. That compares with 8% who said so about the TV. One to four hours of TV usage was reported by 66%, compared with 60% for the Web.
"The Internet is becoming consumers' primary entertainment source," said Saul Berman, IBN Media & Entertainment Strategy and Change practice leader. "The TV is increasingly taking a back seat to the cell phone and the personal computer among consumers age 18-34."
The number of TV viewers using DVRs continues to expand, with 24% of U.S. respondents saying they have a DVR and watch 50% or more of TV programming in replay mode, IBM found. Of those viewers, 33% said they are watching more TV since owning a DVR, in line with other recent studies.
Australians show opposing trends from the U.S., with most respondents preferring live TV and replaying less than 25% of programming, according to IBM.
Watching video content on the Web is a popular activity these days. An average of 67% of consumers surveyed by IBM globally said they have watched or want to watch online video.
For video content online, the most popular destinations are user content-generated sites like YouTube, with 39% of respondents saying that's where they go most frequently. TV network sites (33%), search engines (32%) and social-networking sites (28%) are the next most-popular locations for Web video offers, according to the IBM study.
In the U.S., 26% said they have contributed to a social-networking site, and 7% have done so to a user-generated content site, compared with Australia, which has a leadership position in these areas with 36% and 9%, respectively, the survey found.
As far as mobile video is concerned, an average of 35% surveyed globally by IBM said they have or want to watch mobile video. Seven% report having a video-content subscription for their mobile phones. Nearly a third of U.K. users said their mobile consumption ate in their TV viewing time, according to IBM.
Battino said his team was surprised that shortform content tailored to the mobile device was less popular than they had expected. About half of users said they prefer to access traditional video offers like TV shows on their mobile.
Could this lead consumers to one day watch more movies in mobile form as well? "We think that will be a natural progression from watching TV shows currently," the IBM expert said, adding that the under-20 age demographic especially loves portability of content. "They may start a film at home and then watch it on a laptop or cell on the go," he said. "And they like to watch in discreet time segments," meaning they might watch a movie in several 20-minute sessions.
The lesson of the IBM survey for studios is to continue making content available on various platforms. However, "don't expect consumers to spend incrementally on different devices," he warned. "People want to pay for content once and then move it" to whatever device they like.
Also, online ratings, reviews and word-of-mouth continue to emerge as key drivers of boxoffice success in the digital age, he added.
"Magnets," or online opinion leaders, are fast emerging as key influencers that media and entertainment companies must keep in mind when promoting their content, the IBM expert said. "Some companies have started putting such people on their payroll," he added without providing examples.
Battino said he thinks there is "very strong" consumer interest in day-and-date VOD releases by cable operators, which are testing such offers with studios. Hybrid purchases like allowing a movie buff to buy a ticket for a film plus get it on DVD at a theater as well also will be a wave of the future, he predicted.
Among key digital age gadgets and services, portable music offers are among the most popular, with 23% saying they are using them, according to the IBM survey. Also, 11% reported using a PC-based music service, and 18% reported an online newspaper subscription.
The online survey was conducted between mid-April and mid-June by the IBM Institute for Business Value and generated 885 responses in the U.S., 559 in the U.K., 378 in Japan, 338 in Germany and 263 in Australia.
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