Think Ad Revenue Is All Going Online? Think Again.

Think Ad Revenue Is All Going Online? Think Again.
By Melissa Campanelli and Noelle Skodzinski
Publishing Executive Magazine
http://www.pubexec.com/story/story.bsp?sid=107635&var=story

The results of a new study about how the industry sees its future may surprise you. Plus: Industry revenue trends in print, webinars, events . . . and more!

While there is no denying the digital revolution, a new study by Publishing Executive, called the "2008 Publishing Advertising Trends Study," shows that online revenue is not exceeding print revenue for most publishers . . . and the majority of publishers don't expect it to-that's right, ever.

For the study, Publishing Executive worked with independent research company Readex Research to survey Publishing Executives from a variety of industry segments including business-to-business (b-to-b), consumer, association and professional publishing. More than 250 publishers participated.

What did the study's findings reveal? For starters, 89 percent of respondents said their organization's current online revenue does not exceed its print revenue. (In this case, online revenue included Web sites, e-newsletters and webinars/webcasts.) Nine percent of respondents said that their current online revenue already exceeds their print revenue.

While that may not come as a big shock (though the 9 percent whose online revenue already exceeds print may be higher than some of us would expect), this next finding might: More than two-thirds (68 percent) of respondents reported that they do not anticipate their organizations' online revenue will exceed their print revenue in the future. Twenty-eight percent said they anticipate their online revenue will surpass their print revenue.

However, as for the 28 percent of respondents who anticipate that their online revenue will exceed print, they seem to expect the change will occur fairly quickly-74 percent said they expect their organizations' online revenue to exceed their print revenue within the next five years.

The number of respondents who don't think their online revenue will exceed their print revenue may come as a surprise, especially since-at least among b-to-b publishers-magazine revenues were expected to post a 4-percent drop in 2007, while digital content revenue was slated to increase 20 percent, according to statistics from industry association American Business Media (ABM) that appeared in a February 2008 article in Publishing Executive, titled "Special Report: Your Guide to the 2008 Media 'Brandscape.' " ABM CEO Gordon Hughes also stated in that article that digital's growth rate puts it on a pace to surpass print magazines by 2011 at the latest.

Because ABM represents the interests of the business media only, and many larger publishing houses, Publishing Executive designed its "2008 Publishing Advertising Trends Study" to provide an expanded view of the industry. Publishing Executive wanted to find out: Do b-to-b, consumer, association and professional publishers share a common perspective on the future of their products in print and online? And, is the size of your organization a factor in whether you expect your online revenue to surpass your print revenue?

A Closer Look
Breaking the numbers down by type of publication, 93 percent of both b-to-b and consumer magazine publishers said their organizations' current online adverting revenues do not exceed their print revenue. Ninety-two percent of association publishers answered the same way.

What about their expectations for the future? B-to-b publishers' perspective of the future skewed slightly more heavily toward online revenues than the other industry segments. Thirty-six percent of b-to-b publishers said they anticipate that their online revenue will exceed print in the future. Twenty-four percent of consumer publishers and 27 percent of association publishers also expect their online revenue to exceed print.

Company size made a slight difference in respondents' replies, but perhaps not as you would expect. Mid-size companies (defined here as those with revenues between $1 million and $4.9 million) had the highest response rate to the question: In the future, do you anticipate your organization's online revenue will exceed its print revenue? Seventy-six percent said no. At larger companies (those with revenues of $5 million or more), 61 percent said they don't expect online to exceed print revenue. And of the smaller companies (with revenues less than $1 million), 67 percent said print will remain the larger revenue generator.

Tracking Revenue Streams
The study also asked respondents to reveal their sources of advertising revenue in 2007, including Web sites, e-newsletters, webinars or webcasts, print, event and event sponsorships, and reprint/e-print/rights sales.

According to the respondents, print advertising holds the biggest piece of the revenue pie for all types of publishers, bringing in an average of $2.78 million in revenue.

Events, touted by many companies in the industry as a significant growth area, contributed an average of $1 million.

The Web accounted for an average of $550,000 in revenue; e-newsletters, $350,000; webinars and webcasts $330,000; and reprint/e-print/rights sales, $290,000.

Keeping in mind those figures are averages across all survey respondents, the picture changes slightly when you focus in on specific magazine segments. For example, b-to-b magazine publishing respondents, when segmented out from the larger group, reported print advertising generating an average of $4.8 million in revenue in 2007, well above the total group's average. Association publishers followed with $1.8 million, and consumer magazines attributed an average of $1.7 million to print advertising revenue-both falling below the overall average of $2.78 million.

In all categories of publishing, events and event sponsorships followed print as the second-largest revenue source, making the biggest splash in b-to-b, with an average of $2.1 million in revenue being drawn from events and sponsorships-again above the overall group's average of $1 million. Consumer magazines generated an average of $180,000; and association publishers, an average of $560,000.

B-to-b publishers also outweighed other categories in terms of revenue from Web advertising. For b-to-b publishers, the Web accounted for an average of $1.24 million in advertising revenue in 2007-way above the overall group's $550,000 average-while it accounted for an average of only $180,000 in revenue for consumer magazines and $130,000 for association publishers.

E-newsletters were also significant revenue generators for b-to-b publishers, accounting for an average of $1 million in advertising revenue in 2007. Consumer publishers reported no revenue from e-newsletters, while association publishers reported an average of $30,000.

As for webinars/webcasts, b-to-b publishers again reported the highest figures in advertising revenue from this medium in 2007-an average of $900,000-while consumer publishers reported no revenue from webcasts, and association publishers reported an average of $30,000.

Great Expectations? Revenue Growth Predictions
The survey also asked respondents whether they expected their organizations' revenues for certain types of advertising to increase, remain the same, or decrease in 2008 compared to 2007.

Print: A Mixed Bag, but Almost Half Predict Growth. While print naysayers abound in the industry, it seems at least among respondents to this survey, many publishers anticipate print-revenue growth this year-44 percent of respondents said their print ad revenue would increase, while 30 percent said it would remain the same, and 18 percent said it would decrease. Seven percent of respondents said they don't know what to expect.

Looking at print expectations by segment: Almost half of b-to-b publishers (48 percent) said they expect their print revenue to increase, while 28 percent expect it to remain the same, and 23 percent expect it to decrease. For consumer publishers, 47 percent expect it to increase; 22 percent expect it to remain the same; and 15 percent expect print advertising revenues to decrease. For association publishers, 31 percent expect their print revenue to increase, 49 percent expect it to remain the same; and 16 percent expect it to decrease.

Web: Majority Sees Increasing Revenue. According to the study, however, more are optimistic about Web growth. Sixty percent of respondents expect advertising revenue for the Web to increase in 2008; 26 percent expect it to remain the same. No respondents said they expect Web advertising revenue to decrease, but 12 percent said they didn't know, and 2 percent gave no response.

B-to-b publishers, in general (74 percent), expect Web revenue to increase. Consumer and association publishers are slightly less optimistic, with 54 percent of consumer publishers and 49 percent of association publishers expecting an increase in Web advertising revenue this year.

E-newsletters: Predictions Say Growth or Flat, but No Decline. According to the study, more than a third (37 percent) of respondents expect their organization's revenue from e-newsletters to increase in 2008. A slightly greater number (39 percent), however, expects it to remain the same. No respondents expect advertising revenue in this area to decrease.

B-to-b publishers, in particular, expect to see growth here-60 percent of b-to-b publishers expect e-newsletters to bring in more revenue this year. Twenty-five percent of consumer publishers and 24 percent of association publishers expect an increase in e-newsletter revenue.

Events: Some Growth, a Bit of Decline, but Many Foresee a Flat Year. Twenty-seven percent of respondents indicated that they expect revenue from event/event sponsorships to increase in 2008 compared to 2007, while 41 percent expect no change, and 3 percent expect a decrease.

Broken out by category, 33 percent of respondents from b-to-b publishers said they expect advertising revenue from events to increase in 2008, while 25 percent of those from consumer magazines expect event revenue to increase, and 24 percent of association publishers expect growth in this area.

Webinars/webcasts: Not a Pot of Gold for Everyone. Perhaps surprising to some, most respondents do not expect to see increases in advertising revenue this year in webinars/webcasts (both terms were used to avoid exclusion of those who perceive a difference between the two). Just 16 percent of respondents expect to see webinar/webcast revenue grow, while nearly half (47 percent) expect a flat year. Only one respondent reported anticipated decline, but 27 percent said they didn't know what to expect from this revenue source this year, and 11 percent didn't answer the question.

While 28 percent of b-to-b publishers expect revenue in this area to increase, only 12 percent of association publishers and 3 percent of consumer magazine publishers shared this perspective.

The Acquisition Market
The study also examined publishers' immediate plans to expand by acquisition. One-third of respondents said they plan to acquire properties in either print, digital or events in 2008. Almost two-thirds (61 percent) do not have such acquisition plans.

Thirty-nine percent of b-to-b publishers plan to acquire at least one media property in 2008, while 27 percent of consumer and 14 percent of association publishers plan to do the same.

Melissa Campanelli is editor-in-chief of eMarketing + Commerce (eM+C), a Target Marketing Group publication, and a former deputy editor at DM News. She also is author of the books "Entrepreneur Magazine's Open an Online Business in 10 Days" and "Start Your Own e-Business."

Time Warner Tries Metering Internet Use

BoSacks Speaks Out: I think there is much more in this story than meets the eye for every publisher. If we accept the fact that at least part of the future of publishing is digitally related, then this is a very important story. As we move our franchise into a digital broadband environment, then the process our readers use to get our material and the cost for them to do so becomes paramount. And especially so, if we are including our own videos or connections to other broadband services.

Do any of you remember paying for AOL by the minute? Is this a return to those heady days of yore? Ouch!

"I have ever been opposed to banks, - opposed to internal improvements by the general government, - opposed to distribution of public lands among the states, - opposed to taking the power from the hands of the people, - opposed to special monopolies,"
Sam Houston (American General, Lawyer and Politician, 1st president of Texas, (1836-38, 1841-44), 1793-1863)



Time Warner Tries Metering Internet Use
By Peter Svensson, AP Technology Writer
Time Warner Cable starts customer trial with metered Internet access in Texas
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080602/tec_time_warner_cable_internet.html

NEW YORK (AP) -- You're used to paying extra if you use up your cell phone minutes, but will you be willing to pay extra if your home computer goes over its Internet allowance?
Time Warner Cable Inc. customers -- and, later, others -- may have to, if the company's test of metered Internet access is successful.

On Thursday, new Time Warner Cable Internet subscribers in Beaumont, Texas, will have monthly allowances for the amount of data they upload and download. Those who go over will be charged $1 per gigabyte, a Time Warner Cable executive told the Associated Press.

Metered billing is an attempt to deal fairly with Internet usage, which is very uneven among Time Warner Cable's subscribers, said Kevin Leddy, Time Warner Cable's executive vice president of advanced technology.

Just 5 percent of the company's subscribers take up half of the capacity on local cable lines, Leddy said. Other cable Internet service providers report a similar distribution.

"We think it's the fairest way to finance the needed investment in the infrastructure," Leddy said.

Metered usage is common overseas, and other U.S. cable providers are looking at ways to rein in heavy users. Most have download caps, but some keep the caps secret so as not to alarm the majority of users, who come nowhere close to the limits. Time Warner Cable appears to be the first major ISP to charge for going over the limit: Other companies warn, then suspend, those who go over.

Phone companies are less concerned about congestion and are unlikely to impose metered usage on DSL customers, because their networks are structured differently.

Time Warner Cable had said in January that it was planning to conduct the trial in Beaumont, but did not give any details. On Monday, Leddy said its tiers will range from $29.95 a month for relatively slow service at 768 kilobits per second and a 5-gigabyte monthly cap to $54.90 per month for fast downloads at 15 megabits per second and a 40-gigabyte cap. Those prices cover the Internet portion of subscription bundles that include video or phone services. Both downloads and uploads will count toward the monthly cap.

A possible stumbling block for Time Warner Cable is that customers have had little reason so far to pay attention to how much they download from the Internet, or know much traffic makes up a gigabyte. That uncertainty could scare off new subscribers.

Those who mainly do Web surfing or e-mail have little reason to pay attention to the traffic caps: a gigabyte is about 3,000 Web pages, or 15,000 e-mails without attachments. But those who download movies or TV shows will want to pay attention. A standard-definition movie can take up 1.5 gigabytes, and a high-definition movie can be 6 to 8 gigabytes.

Time Warner Cable subscribers will be able to check out their data consumption on a "gas gauge" on the company's Web page.

The company won't apply the gigabyte surcharges for the first two months. It has 90,000 customers in the trial area, but only new subscribers will be part of the trial.

Billing by the hour was common for dial-up service in the U.S. until AOL introduced an unlimited-usage plan in 1996. Flat-rate, unlimited-usage plans have been credited with encouraging consumer Internet use by making billing easy to understand.

"The metered Internet has been tried and tested and rejected by the consumers overwhelmingly since the days of AOL," information-technology consultant George Ou told the Federal Communications Commission at a hearing on ISP practices in April.

Metered billing could also put a crimp in the plans of services like Apple Inc.'s iTunes that use the Internet to deliver video. DVD-by-mail pioneer Netflix Inc. just launched a TV set-top box that receives an unlimited stream of Internet video for as little as $8.99 per month.

Comcast Corp., the country's largest cable company, has suggested that it may cap usage at 250 gigabytes per month. Bend Cable Communications in Bend, Ore., used to have multitier bandwidth allowances, like the ones Time Warner Cable will test, but it abandoned them in favor of an across-the-board 100-gigabyte cap. Bend charges $1.50 per extra gigabyte consumed in a month.

It's not all grim news in magazine land

It's not all grim news in magazine land
Some titles are showing strong gains in ad pagesBy Diego Vasquez http://www.medialifemagazine.com/

It surely seems the worst of times for consumer magazines, suffering as they are from the ad recession and increasing competition from other media. Indeed, over the first quarter of 2008, consumer titles experienced their worst tumble in years, with ad pages down more than 6 percent. Still, a number of magazines are showing strong gains, in some cases double-digit increases in ad pages over the prior-year period.

They include The Economist, OK!, Every Day with Rachael Ray, Women's Health, Wondertime, Men's Journal, Guideposts and Parents, among others. One might write off some of those gains to good fortune, a title being in a category of magazines that's somewhat insulated from the spending cuts that have swept through media and magazines in particular. But that's only a small part of it, if at all. In fact in many cases the gaining titles are in some of the worst-hit categories. By far the bigger factor is what the magazines are doing for themselves. They're investing dollars, they're repositioning, they're creating new voices that reach readers in new ways, they're building staff, they're adding features to their web sites, they're selling aggressively, they're taking chances.

They're heeding an age-old maxim of magazine publishing: Invest during downturns, as others cut back, and you'll win market share. In some ways, the Economist best exemplifies this aggressiveness. The title competes in two of the roughest ad categories, newsweeklies and business titles, which were each down nearly 14 percent over the quarter, yet its ad pages were up more than 5 percent. For that, North American publisher Paul Rossi credits the magazine's ongoing push to build circulation in the U.S. market, which rose 13 percent in second-half 2007, to 720,882, over the year-earlier period, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. "Circulation helps push up our rate base, which is good, but what it really does is grow the readership numbers," he says.
That in turn had made the magazine more attractive to more advertisers. "It allows us to go into other categories. Historically we would get luxury import cars, but now we have more Detroit cars. We can now go deeper into personal finance." "People want to know why we're up in pages," says Rossi. "At the end of the day we have a product that's never been more relevant, and more and more people are finding it."

*** In the case of Women's Health, whose ad pages were up 51 percent over the first quarter, its growth comes from a different way of talking to its readers. If the old mantra of women's titles was to prey on their insecurities, the new mantra, exemplified by the Rodale title, is that it's just fine to be who you are, and we're here to help you be even more. "We're all about it's good to be you. We encourage women and give them all the information we can," says publisher Mary Murcko. "We empower them to challenge themselves a little bit and have the confidence to do what they want and not to be afraid." It seems to be the language women relate to. A sister publication to Men's Health, the title launched in October 2005 with a rate base of 400,000, and that was quickly bumped to 850,000 and then in January to 1.1 million. "We've found our voice and our perspective pretty early in the plot," says editor Tina Johnson. "We've been speaking in the same voice women use to speak to themselves."

***At Every Day with Rachael Ray, where ad pages were up 38 percent in the first quarter, there were several factors at work. Certainly one is that Ray is all over television, and yet viewers never seem to tire of her bouncy good humor. But also the title launched in late 2005 with a very practical approach to cooking: putting interesting meals together in little time, and that set it apart from the traditional culinary titles, where growth had slowed for the most part. But publisher Anne Balaban says it goes beyond that. "Rachael brought a different point of view to the marketplace. She's about 'have fun and if there's something you want to do, it doesn't have to be perfect, just go ahead and do it.'" Thus the magazine's tagline, "Take a Bite Out of Life" "In this economic environment, marketers want to align their brands with something that puts a smile on customers' faces, and that's what we do," Balaban says.

*** At Guideposts, ad pages were up nearly 37 percent in the first three months of the year. Publisher Amy Molinero says sales have slowed for second quarter but are still ahead of a year ago, and that's for several reasons. The magazine has pushed deeper into food, with editorial support, and it's added to its sales staff. "Also, we've done well in the travel category, which is also new," says Molinero. Though the magazine has published for more than 60 years, it only began taking advertising in 2001. It has a rate base of 2.345 million. Says Molinero: "People had never heard of us, and they couldn't believe how long we've been publishing. While everyone else was coming down we were going up. We only had up to go."

*** In the crowded celebrity category, conventional wisdom had OK!, the British import, failing without much ado. The feeling was that it had come too late to the market. Nearly three years later, OK! is still here, and it's showing strong growth, with ad pages up 38 percent in first quarter at a time when the category grew just 2.7 percent in pages. Publisher Tom Morrissy credits that growth to the staff-building that went on in 2007. "We hired 20 sales and marketing people, and we were building programs and planting the seeds. And now they're just starting to sprout. So a lot of the work you're seeing now was accomplished a year ago." He says newsstand sales are up 22 percent so far this year, and the title has now been measured by MRI for the first time. The title has also been adding special issues. That's created a momentum for the sales team. Says Morrissy: "Presenting growth is fun for both the seller and the buyer. It really resonates with buyers who are looking for rays of light in the market."

*** At Men's Journal, which was up 21 percent in pages in the first quarter, publisher Will Schenck credits several factors: "We made a decision last year to try to capitalize on all aspects of the lifestyle of the reader. We've done a good job of developing some new categories, financial services and pharmaceuticals in particular. We've also done well in Detroit." But also helping, says Schenck, is a new corporate department at Wenner Media. "We now have the power of Rolling Stone and the power of Us Weekly to benefit us." It's given the magazine momentum with marketers, he says. "Our magazine is for a guy who's confident, and that breeds sales. Marketers seem to appreciate that. You go into meetings and you talk about it from the perspective of momentum. At the end of the day they don't give a hoot if you're up in ad pages. You're defined by the company you keep."

*** For Diane Newman, publisher at Parents, which is up 19 percent for the quarter, it's all about staying current and in touch with the new moms as they come along. "If the brand doesn't stay current, people can go other places. So we really acknowledge the new mom. We literally target Gen-Y moms. She's very different from the Gen X moms who preceded her," says Newman. "We walked away from what might be traditional sentimental editorial and photography and made it much more relevant for this generation," she says. "Keep it fresh for readers and advertisers, and they totally get it."

Mass-Media Extinction Prediction 'On Target'

Michael Crichton, Vindicated
His 1993 prediction of mass-media extinction now looks on target.
By Jack Shafer
http://www.slate.com/id/2192382/
In 1993, novelist Michael Crichton riled the news business with a Wired magazine essay titled "Mediasaurus," in which he prophesied the death of the mass media-specifically the New York Times and the commercial networks. "Vanished, without a trace," he wrote.
The mediasaurs had about a decade to live, he wrote, before technological advances-"artificial intelligence agents roaming the databases, downloading stuff I am interested in, and assembling for me a front page"-swept them under. Shedding no tears, Crichton wrote that the shoddy mass media deserved its deadly fate.
"[T]he American media produce a product of very poor quality," he lectured. "Its information is not reliable, it has too much chrome and glitz, its doors rattle, it breaks down almost immediately, and it's sold without warranty. It's flashy but it's basically junk."
Had Crichton's prediction been on track, by 2002 the New York Times should have been half-fossilized. But the newspaper's vital signs were so positive that its parent company commissioned a 1,046-foot Modernist tower, which now stands in Midtown Manhattan. Other trends predicted by Crichton in 1993 hadn't materialized in 2002, either. Customized news turned out to be harder to create than hypothesize; news consumers weren't switching to unfiltered sources such as C-SPAN; and the mainstream media weren't on anyone's endangered species list.
When I interviewed Crichton in 2002 about his failed predictions for Slate, he was anything but defensive.
"I assume that nobody can predict the future well. But in this particular case, I doubt I'm wrong; it's just too early," Crichton said via e-mail.
As we pass his prediction's 15-year anniversary, I've got to declare advantage Crichton. Rot afflicts the newspaper industry, which is shedding staff, circulation, and revenues. It's gotten so bad in newspaperville that some people want Google to buy the Times and run it as a charity! Evening news viewership continues to evaporate, and while the mass media aren't going extinct tomorrow, Crichton's original observations about the media future now ring more true than false. Ask any journalist.
So with white flag in hand, I approached Crichton to chat him up once more. Magnanimous in victory, he said he had often thought about our 2002 discussion and was happy to revisit it. (Read the uncut e-mail interview in this sidebar.)
Although Crichton still subscribes to the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, he dropped the Los Angeles Times a year ago-"with no discernable loss." He skims those two dailies but spends 95 percent of his "information-gathering time" on the Web.
He concedes with a shrug that the personalized infotopia he crystal-balled in 1993 has yet to arrive. When we talked in 2002, Crichton scoffed at the Web. Too slow. Its page metaphor, too limiting. Design, awful. Excessive hypertexting, too distracting. Noise-to-signal ratio, too high.
Today he's more positive about the medium. He notes with satisfaction that the Web has made it far easier for the inquisitive to find unmediated information, such as congressional hearings. It's much faster than it used to be, and more of its pages are professionally assembled. His general bitch is advertisements in the middle of stories, and he's irritated by animation and sounds in ads. "That, at least, can often be blocked by your browser," he says.
In 1993, Crichton predicted that future consumers would crave high-quality information instead of the junk they were being fed and that they'd be willing to pay for it. He's perplexed about that part of his prediction not panning out, but he has a few theories about why it hasn't.
"Senior scientists running labs don't read journals; they say the younger people will tell them about anything important that gets published-if they haven't heard about it beforehand anyway," he says. "So there may be other networks to transmit information, and it may be that 'media' was never as important as we who work in it imagine it was. That's an argument that says maybe nobody really needs a high-end service."
It will take a media visionary, he believes-somebody like Ted Turner-to create the high-quality information service he foresaw in his 1993 essay. In addition to building the service, the visionary will also have to convince news consumers that they need it.
Sounding like a press critic, Crichton criticizes much of the news fed to consumers as "repetitive, simplistic, and insulting" and produced on the cheap. Cable TV news is mostly "talking heads and food fights" and newspaper reporting mostly "rewritten press releases," he says.
Crichton suggests that readers and viewers could more objectively measure the quality of the news they consume by pulling themselves "out of the narcotizing flow of what passes for daily news." Look at a newspaper from last month or a news broadcast.
"Look at how many stories are unsourced or have unnamed sources. Look at how many stories are about what 'may' or 'might' or 'could' happen," he says. "Might and could means the story is speculation. Framing as I described means the story is opinion. And opinion is not factual content."
"The biggest change is that contemporary media has shifted from fact to opinion and speculation. You can watch cable news all day and never hear anything except questions like, 'How much will the Rev. Wright hurt Obama's chances?' 'Is Hillary now looking toward 2012?' 'How will McCain overcome the age argument?' These are questions for which there are endless answers. Contentious hosts on cable shows keep the arguments rolling," he says.
Crichton believes that we live in an age of conformity much more confining than the 1950s in which he grew up. Instead of showing news consumers how to approach controversy coolly and intelligently, the media partake of the zealotry and intolerance of many of the advocates they cover. He attributes the public's interest in Mike Huckabee, Ron Paul, and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright to its hunger for a wider range of viewpoints than the mass media provide.
He tosses out a basket of questions he'd like to see the press tackle, some of which I've seen covered. "What happened at Bear Stearns?" got major play this week, after Crichton answered my questions, in a Wall Street Journal series. And I know I've seen "How much of the current price of gas can be attributed to the weak dollar?" answered a couple of times but can't remember where. (Answer: a lot.) But such Crichton questions as "Why have hedge funds evaded government regulation?" and what specific lifestyle changes will every American have to make "to reduce CO2 emissions by 60 percent?" would be great assignments for news desks.
"I want a news service that tells me what no one knows but is true nonetheless," he says.

New study on digital magazine and newspaper editions: growth, trends, and best practices

New study on digital magazine and newspaper editions: growth, trends, and best practices
CAMBRIDGE MA, US: The Gilbane Group announced the general release of Digital Magazine and Newspaper Editions: Growth, Trends, and Best Practices, a pioneering and comprehensive study of the growing market for digital editions of periodical publications, earlier this week.

The study features statistics that, in an industry first, unify audited data from two sources (BPA and ABC) with data from unaudited publications. Highlights from the statistics include:
The number of business-to-business (B2B) publications offering digital editions has increased over 300% from 2005 to 2007, with total subscriptions also increasing over 300%.

The number of consumer publications offering digital editions has increased over 200% from 2005 to 2007, with total subscriptions also increasing over 200%.

Digital vs. print penetration of B2B subscribers is up from 13.3 to 15.0%, while digital penetration of consumer publication subscribers is down from 2.2 to 1.4%.

The 130-page report includes 22 case studies of publishers, representing several dozen digital edition titles, which showcase a number of industry best practices identified by the study's authors. These span a wide range including big-name consumer magazines (Hearst, Playboy), leading B2B publishers (Reed Business Information, American Legal Media), daily newspapers (Toronto Sun, The Guardian), and catalog and directory publishers (Welco, Canadian Donors Guide).

Insights
The report also includes insights from five publishing technology visionaries on the state of digital editions and ideas for how to make them work for publishers. Visionaries include Gloria Adams of PennWell, Brent Lewis of Harlequin Enterprises, Mike Edelhart of Infovell, Peter Meirs of Time Inc., and Marta Wohrle, formerly of Hachette Filipacchi.

Digital Magazine and Newspaper Editions: Growth, Trends, and Best Practices presents data from leading digital publishing companies. Contributors include Nstein, Nxtbook Media, Olive Software, and Texterity (Platinum Sponsors); Advanced Publishing, YUDU Media, and Zinio (Gold Sponsors); and Audit Bureau of Circulations and BPA Worldwide (Data Sponsors).

Authors of the report are Steve Paxhia, director of publishing strategy and technology practice at Gilbane, and Bill Rosenblatt, senior analyst. Both are said to be recognised authorities on publishing business and technology strategy and have worked with many different publishing businesses and technology vendors.

Impressive growth
Said Paxhia, "Our study shows that growth to date of the number of digital publications and the number of digital subscriptions has been impressive. While this paradigm shift is still in its early stages, there are plenty of examples where publishers using today's best practices have generated impressive results. This is the most exciting time to be in publishing since Gutenberg invented the printing press."

Frank Gilbane, CEO of the Gilbane Group, said, "This new report on digital publications illustrates our continued thought leadership in the publishing market, which is embracing many of the content technologies that we have been following since 1993. At the same time, it's only one of several first-of-a-kind market studies that Gilbane Group is releasing this year."

The study is available for immediate download at http://gilbane.com/Research-Reports.html.

IPods, Printing and the Inquisition

IPods, Printing and the Inquisition
Posted by Rupert Goodwins
An enduring question: what happened to Islamic science and philosophy? In early and mid medieval times, it was the best on the planet: any system of knowledge that encompasses algorithms, Algol and alembics gets my vote. But as the West clicked into overdrive, the Islamic traditions calcified and reversed; by the end of the 19th century, the Ottoman empire had gone rotten and collapsed under the pressure of expansionist Europeans and internal reformists. (Final outcome: to be decided.)

One of the more compelling arguments for this sea change is differing attitudes to the moveable type printing press. Although the technology certainly had its problems in the West - publishers still get burned these days through bad decisions, but not quite as literally as before - it became one of the major tools of reformation, gradually unhooking the fingers of church and state from the throat of those with other ideas. It was the primary tool of the Enlightenment.

Over in the Arabic-speaking world, the story was different. The printing press turned up, but failed to make much of an impact: as a result, documents of all kinds remained rare, expensive and tightly controlled. (It's probably wrong to say, as some have, that there was thus no reformation in Islam; Islam is, at least theoretically, non-hierarchical and eschews the sort of church structure that characterises Roman Catholicism. But that really is another story). From my reading, I thought that this rejection was due to a combination of suspicion at what might happen and a much better piece of good old-fashioned guild-style market control by the existing scribes than the Europeans managed.

Not so, says a (beautifully illustrated) article in Saudi Aramco World. The piece argues that the real reason was calligraphy: written Arabic, although composed from 28 basic letters much as is Latin script, is always joined up - with each letter having four ways to join to its neighbour, and each two-letter combination having its own unique shape. Moreover, the choice of which option to take was dictated by ineffable rules of beauty known only to the calligrapher, who choreographed his (oh yes, definitely his) words like so many dancers.

The mathematics of trying to combine all this with moveable type simply defeated the early printers, says the magazine, and the results were so clumsy and crude that the technology was rejected - quite rightly - as unsuitable to the task.

Now, it's true that early European printers managed to get their style together very early on, certainly comparable with hand-written script: did this help acceptance? Hard to argue that it didn't: the Gutenberg Bible went to great lengths to replicate the look of existing manuscripts. But as soon as the press got out into mass production, the quality went through the floor. Take a look at 16h and 17th century pamphlets, and you'll see all the horrors that DTP visited upon us in the 1980s. Nobody seemed to mind much.

But then, it's also true that there are cultural aspects of Arabic that just don't exist for European languages: it could well be that reading badly set Arabic is far more like having your eyeballs sandpapered than the effects of anything you could torture out of Ventura Publisher. And while it's certainly more agreeable to blame cultural lacunae on untransgressable beauty instead of reactionary conservatism, there's no doubt that Arabic is far more complex to set than the latinates.

Let's stay in the 1980s, and the arrival of another new world-changing technology: the microprocessor. It deals in the lingua franca of mathematics, of data represented as 1 and 0. If any rising tide should float all cultural boats, this was it: but apparently not. According to a pseudonymous post by "GT" on their Gatunka blog, the Japanese did remarkably badly from the early days of 8-bit microprocessors. (GT says they are a technical translator working in Japan: certainly seems to know their onions). While the West was busy enjoying the first wave of cheap word processors and general-use computing, the intricacies of entering and displaying Japanese ideograms were simply beyond what that technology could do. You could build a games console, where the few bits of Japanese you needed were represented as bitmaps alongside the rest of the game's graphics, but for text editing on a computer? Forget it. By the time cheap computer technology was up to the job - around 2000 - the West had had general purpose computers at home for long enough for them to have evolved into the central hub for an entire economy. The iPod makes no sense without a home PC: thus, argues GT, the Japanese could not have invented it. That's why Sony got stuck at the Walkman.

Obviously, the social, political and economic implications of being a bit behind with your iPods are substantially different to thoseof abandoning the printing press and the Enlightenment. But both stories illustrate how sensitive technology is to the culture in which it arrives - and how hard it is to avoid naïve assumptions about the interactions between the two (you listening, Negroponte?).

It's particularly important to bear these things in mind if you're an English-speaking jourmalist, finding oneself gifted with the most generally applicable language and (no coincidence) the most advanced technology on the planet. What else am I missing?

What CEOs Need to Know About the Social Web

What CEOs Need to Know About the Social Web
Posted by Tom Weber
http://blogs.wsj.com/buzzwatch/2008/05/05/wisdom-on-crowds-what-ceos-need-to-know-about-the-social-web/?mod=WSJBlog

From blogs and Wikipedia to Facebook and Twitter, each new wave of digital communications generates more upheaval for businesses. In his recent book, "Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations," Clay Shirky explores the ramifications of a world in which people can find each other and collaborate with increasing ease. Mr. Shirky is a writer, consultant and faculty member at New York University (we recently highlighted his comments on the payoff from converting TV-watching time into more productive endeavors).

Buzzwatch recently caught up with Mr. Shirky to discuss how these technologies are changing the equation for companies, managers and CEOs. Read on for Mr. Shirky's thoughts-and don't miss his unusual approach for handling information overload at the end of the interview.

Buzzwatch: Sum up the basic changes you're talking about.

Mr. Shirky: My five word summary of the book is: Group action just got easier. The thesis is that humans are natively good at doing things in groups. We know how to share, collaborate, converse. So whenever you get a new tool or technology that makes it easier for people to share or collaborate, you're going to see a lot more of that going on. The Internet-and increasingly, mobile phones-have provided us with a platform of huge new tools and services to do exactly that. So we're seeing now the first phase of experimentation and people saying, "What can we build on top of these tools?"

Buzzwatch: What does a CEO need to understand about the ways collaboration is changing?

Mr. Shirky: There are two different big things. The first is: Inside your hierarchy is a network. This isn't about networks replacing hierarchies-we're still going to have managers and promotions. But particularly for large companies, there's a lot of value that can be unlocked by letting employees work with one another. There were two research groups at IBM separated by the Atlantic Ocean-one in Armonk and one in the U.K. They were working on the same problem, but of course they didn't know that. They employed a tool IBM built called Dogear, a tagging tool. These two groups discovered-without any managerial oversight-that they were working on the same problem. They said, "Why don't we get together and collaborate?" That's the kind of enterprise value that can't be driven by the manager. In any complicated field, the people you're managing know more about the problem than you do. This is a way of getting at that value.

The outside message is: Your customers, who have previously been relatively separated from one another, with their principal connection to you, may start becoming your competitors or your collaborators. CEOs need to be in the position of understanding what might happen and then try to work out strategies for the threats and for the opportunities.

Buzzwatch: If you could suggest one collaboration tool for businesspeople to get familiar and comfortable with, what would it be?

Mr. Shirky: There's no one tool that does everything. So that's the first thing to understand. That said, one tool I would pick is Flickr. The value of understanding Flickr is in seeing how completely simple participation can be. You take a photo, you upload a photo. Flickr has me-first value. The principal value is to the user. But then you start to see what happens when you add even a little bit of participation to the mix, letting people label photos and comment on photos. You will see how quickly the social component can form around these artifacts.

There's also something that CIOs rather than CEOs need to understand. It's almost universally the case with social software that the software that launches with the fewest features is the stuff that takes off. The shift is from thinking about the computer as a box to thinking of the computer as a door, and nobody wants a door with 37 handles. Twitter has six features, and it launched with only one. A brutally simple mental model of the software that's shared by all users turns out to be a better predictor of adoption and value than a completely crazy collection of features that ends up being slightly different for every user.

Buzzwatch: Apart from the broader business implications, do you see lessons for professional managers? What can a manager learn from self-organizing groups?

Mr. Shirky: What a manger can learn is that self-organizing groups don't stay self-organized very long. This is one of the great myths of this stuff, the hive mind. Go look at the talk pages of any moderately frequently edited Wikipedia entry. When you look at open-source projects, these are not non-hierarchical paradises. These are strongly hierarchically managed projects.

The lesson for managers is that the kind of social issues that create the need for management don't go away. They're going to surface in any large project involving humans. But the skills needed now are different from the ones we're used to. We have a world in which the two classic poles are the micromanager and the grand strategic visionary.

But when people are self-organizing, it requires a management skill that is much closer to facilitation. When you see the really good ones-a Linus Torvalds on the Linux project, or a Teresa Nielsen Hayden managing the comments on Boing Boing-you see people who aren't operating with an ironclad set of rules but are responding situation by situation. To the degree you start opening up to insights of people who don't work for you or you can't control in the same way, that facilitating function becomes a core management skill.

Buzzwatch: Crowds can be wise, but they can also be shallow. What are the downsides in this new environment? What can be done to minimize them?

Mr. Shirky: The downside is that if society does not have the ability to affect which groups do and don't form, it creates negative as well as positive repercussions. I have an example in the book, these pro-anorexia groups. In the past they could not have taken out an ad in the newspaper or met in a church group. The people who control the bottlenecks wouldn't have let them. Now there are no more bottlenecks. It's similar to the way the First Amendment says to society, we can no longer prevent bad speech, so we put society in the position of reacting to bad speech. We can't prevent these things, we just have to react to them. It just takes more attention and more work.

Buzzwatch: How do you personally cope with information overload?

Mr. Shirky: Here I think the lesson is, there is no such thing as information overload. Or rather, we've been in information overload since 1500. Which is roughly the year there was more written material to be read than a human being could read in a lifetime.

What we're dealing with now is filter failure. Imagine going into a bookstore that had no organization, with books being dumped into the street and the store saying, "Wade in and find the management book you want." The bookstore would be as broken as our sense of email is today.

So the single most important change is attitude. We are all having to abandon, a bit at a time, the idea of getting through our email queue. We have to instead say, I'm going to start at the top of my day with the most important stuff and work my way down. And I'm going to accept at the end of the day that I'm not going to be done. For people for whom a sense of completeness is vital, that's a painful shift.

Publishers on Redefining the Role of Print

Publishers on Redefining the Role of Print
Outgoing ABM Chairman: If we don't change, we're 'in trouble.'
By Matt Kinsman
www.folio.com

LA QUINTA, California-The tagline for American Business Media's Spring Meeting is "New Paths To Success." And while much of the conversation revolves around expected topics of video and social media, the changing role of the print product is accounting for much of the conversation as well."There's a lot of talk about Web 2.0 but there is very little talk about Magazines 2.0," says Hanley Wood CEO and outgoing ABM chairman Frank Anton. "If the magazines published two or three years from now aren't different, we're in trouble. "The current magazine model won't take us into the next five years, let alone the next 100 years."

Magazines need to be rethought from top-to-bottom-editorial approach to circulation to folio size, Anton says. "We need to let readers decide the content-instead of one version for 100,000 readers but a lot of custom versions," he added.

"Circulation needs to be reviewed. It's bloated-in some cases by 60 percent or more. Maybe we need to move away from controlled circulation and have people pay for products."Nielsen chairman and CEO David Calhoun said magazines have to be approached in terms of how they complement other media. "I don't believe publications are going away but if they don't understand their role in relation to other media, they will lose," he said. "I hate reading about one form of media losing out to another, and print is always thought about in terms of competing with other media.

In the evolution of the magazine, print will have to assume a role in the bigger scheme. What are its interactions with other media? Each reinforces the other." Limiting Magazine Size and SponsorshipsThick magazines may indicate publication health but they may not be serving time-pressed readers, according to Anton, who says publishers should start thinking about limiting folio size."Our biggest magazines going forward will be 96 pages," says Anton. "Publishers should consider exclusive sponsorship to one advertiser rather than selling many window advertisers."

Brands are interested in becoming part of the conversation both online and in print, according to IBM vice president of marketing Edward Adams-who stressed that doesn't mean violating editorial autonomy but didn't offer an example. "Magazines are important from that independent, authoritative perspective," said Adams. "How do I get embedded in a way that's less an advertising approach? I'm not talking about crossing the church-state line but how do we participate?"

Why The Week is gaining on Time and Newsweek

JON FRIEDMAN'S MEDIA WEB
Why The Week is gaining on Time and Newsweek
By Jon Friedman, MarketWatch
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/why-week-threatening-time-newsweek/story.aspx?guid=%7BDA1F8268%2D151E%2D4520%2DA71E%2DACBAF1712522%7D

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Watch your back, Time and Newsweek.
The Week is here to stay.

This upstart magazine publishes a compilation of the week's biggest news events, culled from media outlets all over the world. Like many mainstream media people, I wasn't bowled over when it was launched in April 2001. It looked busier than a Bloomberg TV screen and seemed to be filled with mostly quick-hitting headlines.

But gradually, The Week grew on me, as it has caught on with the public. Its circulation is now a robust 500,000. Business travelers, a conspicuous segment of the busy and affluent readers targeted by The Week, appreciate the compact way that it presents the news. Watch related video.

These days, The Week, headed by its chairman, Felix Dennis, is also looking strong partly because of troubles at the headquarters of its primary rivals.

When I perused Time's latest issue, I wondered whether the 56-page edition was the smallest one in its modern history. (Time also had the chutzpah to carry a cover blurb for Joe Klein's column proclaiming: "The Incredible Shrinking Democrats.")

Speaking of Newsweek, its employees' hot parlor game is asking one another, "Did you take the buyout?" Enough said on the state of morale at the Washington Post Co.'s

The Week is gaining on its established rivals by subscribing to the most basic tenet in business: Give people what they want.

"The Week is written by a method," said General Manager Steven Kotok. "In 2001, we sat down and asked ourselves, 'What does a busy person want to read?'"

That planning is paying off. The magazine has built a strong readership "during a time when the category showed a net circulation decline," said Kotok. On the ad front, "The Week has grown and is barely down [in the first quarter], while nearly all competitors are down double-digits or worse."

What's the tipping point?
"It's about utility, not achieving an apotheosis of beautiful journalism," he said. "If you write for the reader, you'll always have a job."

That faint sound you hear right now is a thousand establishment journalists reaching for their Maalox. What Kotok brags about is exactly what unnerves many pundits about The Week. They see it as something journalistically unholy because, they conclude, it dumbs down the news to fit a business model.

If this seems familiar to you, merely substitute the words "USA Today" for "The Week." Since its founding in 1982, Gannett Co.'s USA Today has been criticized for making news more palatable to a mass audience who wants the publication to do its thinking for it.
Plus, the naysayers fret, The Week utterly disdains traditional tenets of the craft such as . . . original reporting.

The Week's Kotok, an affable fellow who seems to have a keen appreciation for great writing, makes no apologies. When he and I talked over lunch, he mentioned my recent series on the Economist. Read the column.

"I would cry if the Economist closed," Kotok said. "But The Week performs a different function. The Economist hears everything and gives you one perspective. The Week gives you all perspectives."

Kotok subsequently sent me an email that further points to The Week's DNA:
"My feeling is that The Week starts with what a busy, sophisticated person needs to be well-informed -- which we believe is multiple perspectives on today's current events. And we keep it to just that, and no more, because people today are busy. And because of our reader focus, our readers read every issue. The Economist and New Yorker put in all the content they think is important; in other words, they don't start with the reader's needs."

Easy entry
"We're a populist magazine," he explained. "We really are about the reader. The New Yorker is great to read and rightfully proud of great journalism -- but for its own sake."
The Week has a populist bent throughout its structure, too. "When I was 20, I had 50 people working for me," Kotok, 37, said of his entrepreneurial roots. In St. Paul, Minn., he started by managing a falafel shop and built it up to be a Midwest regional wholesale food business.

"After that, nothing seems hard," he said. "If I get a resume from a college dropout who has an achievement record, he or she definitely will get an interview. I want to hire someone who is hungry, has raw talent and business sense."

To understand where Time and Newsweek appear to have gone wrong with their audiences, you can find an answer in the April 25 issue of The Week itself.

On page 21, it quotes esteemed journalist Herbert Bayard Swope, writing in the Naples (Fla.) Daily News: "I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure -- which is: 'Try to please everybody.'"

Best Magazines of 2007

BoSacks Speaks Out: This is a fine article with the exception of the oft repeated statistics of the Publishers Information Bureau (PIB). These professionally manufactured and distributed rumors of "rate-card reported rates" suggest that the dollars in the statement are listed is if people, agencies and clients were paying list price. Almost no one buys ad pages at rate card prices. Do you?

Now I know that there are some publishers in my database who have told me that they don't break from their rate card. That is fine. But I also know that none of you guys are members of the PIB listings. Are you?

So let's get real. The industry may be up or it may be down, but you will never be able to tell from the PIB revenue statement. What is harder to flummox is the actual page count. That is a much more important statistic for the health of the publishing body politic.


"Disraeli was pretty close: actually, there are Lies, Damn lies, Statistics, Benchmarks, and Delivery dates"
- Unknown


Best Magazines of 2007
By Steve Black -- Library Journal
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6551180.html

Rumors of the death of the magazine are greatly exaggerated. Efforts by some innovative publishers suggest that rather than killing magazines, the Internet may just reinvigorate the medium. The best magazines of 2007 all exhibit responsiveness to readers, often cultivated via their web sites as spaces for reader feedback and contribution, and most have a clear sense of purpose aimed at their specific audience.

Specialty publications elude slump
Matt Kinsman, coauthor of Folio's March 2008 "Magazine Job Report," notes in a blog that a poll of Folio's readers shows that a solid majority of employees in magazine publishing foresee a "nichified" future for magazines. Circulation and newsstand sales of most general interest magazines are falling, in some cases dramatically. According to Folio, Time's circulation dropped 17 percent; Playboy, ten percent; and Reader's Digest, seven percent. The most notable increase in circulation among the top 25 was for AARP's magazines, which enjoy a growing demographic that happens to be very attractive to advertisers (see "Magazines Take a Huge Hit at the Newsstand" by Dylan Stableford, 2/11/08).

Among this year's crop of best magazines, Russia!, Jewish Living, and The Ski Journal exemplify magazines targeted to well-defined niches attractive to specific advertisers. Despite volatility and uncertainty, the advertising market for magazines remains very large. The Magazine Publishers of America (MPA) reports total magazine advertising revenue at $25.5 billion for 2007, an increase of 6.1 percent over 2006, even though ad pages declined 0.6 percent to 244,736.54.

Magazines that ceased publication in 2007 include Cracked, Child, Jane, and Business 2.0, many of which will live on as web sites. Se7en and Muslim Girl, two magazines launched in 2007 and reviewed in LJ, are already suspended. The two most notable magazines to fold were Forbes Inc.'s American Heritage-which was then purchased by Edwin Grosvenor and will continue under his editorial leadership-and Condé Nast's House & Garden (1885-2007), which, the New York Times reported, had a paid circulation of nearly one million at the time it closed.

Expansion online
Publishers' continuing efforts to develop web sites to enhance and strengthen magazines reflect a seismic shift in the magazine publishing industry. While few expect print magazines to disappear, most see an effective web presence as essential to future success. MPA reports 67.5 million visitors to magazines' web sites in 2007. This is up eight percent over the year before, a growth rate three times that for the overall U.S. Internet audience.

As each magazine seeks the ideal relationship of print to online to develop its brand, nearly every magazine has a web site with at least subscribing information, and most offer some content to attract readers. It is rapidly becoming commonplace for publishers to include blogs or other tools to invite readers to communicate with editors and fellow readers. In the future, magazines' survival may depend on their ability to foster reader responses, incorporate reader ideas and suggestions, and even publish their submissions.

The problem with versions
Efforts to blend content and community are blurring the distinction between magazines and web sites, a trend that will intensify as publications cultivate affinity groups through their online presences. A complication for librarians is the fluid state of content available online and how that content relates to the printed magazine. Online content may or may not be referenced in the print magazine, and it can quickly disappear. In Serials Review, Xiaotian Chen documents how accessibility is impacted by inconsistent references from print to online and failed links ("Web-Exclusive Articles in Traditionally Print Periodicals," 12/07). If discrepancies between print and online versions become a significant problem for libraries and patrons, advocacy with publishers and database vendors may be needed. In the meantime, the Wayback Machine can help one find fugitive web-only content.

Reader experiences with web content raise expectations for uncluttered pages and highlighted main points to help cope with information overload. This is reflected in the current fashion of magazines' graphic designs. Glossy and busy are out, despite the exception of Condé Nast's Portfolio. The look in vogue is a shorter, wider format, almost square, with a satin or matte finish throughout and pages with plenty of white space and main ideas denoted in large fonts. The effect is pleasing and easy to navigate, enhancing the format's inherent ability to provide an enjoyable visual and tactile experience. Indeed, the new launches of 2007 are evidence that any rumors of the death of magazines at the hands of the web are overstated.

Antenna. q. $28. Ed: Tony Gervino. www.antennamag.com.
Antenna is a playfully irreverent visual catalog of current fashion for young urbanites. Images of clothing and an unpredictable variety of items are depicted without human models. Antenna's alluring design aesthetic might be characterized as a periodical DK dictionary of urban street fashion, with advertisements. Valuable as a record of pop culture and an entertaining read, Antenna is a worthwhile addition to both academic and public libraries. (LJ online 3/1/08)

Heal: Living Well After Cancer. q. $50. Ed: Debu Tripathy, M.D. www.healtoday.com.
This new magazine from the publishers of CURE: Cancer Updates, Research & Education focuses on the emotional experiences of the over ten million Americans experiencing life after a diagnosis of cancer. Heal is upbeat and inspiring while frankly acknowledging suffering. The subtitled theme is addressed from perspectives categorized as people, body, spirit, knowledge, connections, and transitions. The content, editing, and design all make Heal well suited to its audience of cancer survivors and their loved ones.
Jewish Living. bi-m. $19.95. Ed: Liza Schoenfein. www.jewishlivingmag.com.
One may question the need for yet another magazine with living in its title, but Jewish Living's target affinity group is sufficiently large and well defined to justify the magazine's place in the market. Both the range of topics and the graphic design will be familiar to readers of lifestyle magazines. Those with a casual interest in Jewish traditions and culture will enjoy its light yet substantive perspectives on being a modern Jew in America.

Kitu Kizuri. q. $40. Ed: Angela Ogbolu. www.kitukizuri.com.
With a title meaning "something beautiful or good" in Kiswahili, this magazine underscores the tremendous value of listening to diverse voices. By and for African women living in North America, reflecting challenges in and of Africa, its personal narratives speak to every open-minded, compassionate person. Kitu Kizuri, with its original, perceptive, and upbeat coverage, will enhance any library's collection. (LJ online 4/1/08)

Meatpaper. q. $50. Eds: Sasha Wizansky & Amy Standen. www.meatpaper.com.
If found in a library, Meatpaper would send patrons a clear message that the librarians truly support a collection representing diverse points of view. Personal narratives, journalism, prose, poetry, images, and art criticism examine the role of meat in our culture from a predominantly feminist perspective. This thoughtful, unique, brash, and provocative magazine is not for the squeamish or those who don't wish to have their assumptions challenged.

Monocle. 10/yr. £75. Ed: Tyler Brûlé. www.monocle.com.
Well-researched investigative journalism forms the core of this "global briefing covering international affairs, business, culture and design." Targeting an educated audience with an interest in world affairs, this pleasantly formatted magazine is a desirable complement to the newsweeklies. It provides alternative viewpoints on a broad range of topics with depth and insight, all in a politically neutral style. An outstanding addition to any collection of current affairs periodicals. (LJ 1/08)

Organize. bi-m. $15. Ed: Joyce Dorny. www.organizemag.com.
Much more than a vehicle for advertising closets and containers, Organize presents ideas and interviews about the big questions and small details of keeping the stuff of our lives in perspective and in the right places. While the content may be too repetitive for individuals to subscribe personally, Organize is well suited for patrons to browse in a public library and should be a welcome complement to books on the topic. (LJ 9/1/07)
Outside's Go. bi-m. $17.99. Ed: Kent Black. www.outsidego.com.

Although perhaps of narrower appeal than its successful parent, Outside's Go is an attractively designed and well-organized fantasy excursion into luxury travel. Buy your own island, fish in Oman, ogle a Lamborghini or a platinum watch costing as much, or simply enjoy entertaining stories and images depicting the extravagant lifestyle. (LJ 7/07)

Russia! q. $25. Ed: Michael Idov. www.readrussia.com.
Contemporary essays and photography reflecting Russian culture are published from New York, beyond restrictive influences by the Russian government. The design aesthetic and content reflect hip American expatriates' views of Russian society, written with affection and respect for the Russian people if not for Russian institutions. Russia! provides engaging views of the Russian experience that may be otherwise hard to find in English. (LJ online 4/1/08)

The Ski Journal. q. $39.99. Ed: Jeff Galbraith. www.theskijournal.com.
A self-described coffee-table magazine, The Ski Journal is most notable for the extraordinary photography that accompanies stories about skiers and skiing locations. And it is all about skiing; snowboards need not apply. This beautifully produced magazine deserves to be read by anyone with an interest in ski culture. (LJ 9/1/07)

Author Information
Steve Black (blacks@strose.edu) is a Librarian at the College of Saint Rose, Albany, NY, and teaches a course in serials at the University at Albany. He is also the author of Serials in Libraries: Issues and Practices (Libraries Unlimited) and interviews editors on Periodical Radio

Beer, Blogs And Bias
from the i'll-drink-to-that dept
http://techdirt.com/index.php
The Wall Street Journal has an article focusing on a blog set up by Miller Brewing Company called Brew Blog. There are a few different, interesting points worth discussing here. First, the blog isn't used as a blog about what's going on at Miller Brewing. Instead, Miller hired an experienced reporter, and told him to just cover the beer industry as if he were a beat reporter. In other words, it's reporting news -- and even breaking stories on the competition. In fact, it revealed that main rival Anheuser-Busch was planning a new beer before A-B was able to make the announcement itself. This is certainly a recognition of how content is advertising. The blog clearly isn't "advertorial." It's full-on reporting about the industry, in a way that's interesting and relevant to those in the industry.

What may be even more interesting, though, is what the article says about journalism. In an age in which journalists are whining that their jobs are disappearing, here's yet another example of where suddenly there are new types of jobs for journalists appearing every day. But, even more interesting, is a quote at the end of the article highlighted by David Card. It's from Harry Schuhmacher, the editor and publisher of a fee-based trade publication on the beer industry:

"I tell Miller you're subsidizing a free publication, and it hurts the trade press," he says. "But they don't care."...Mr. Schuhmacher adds that he writes fewer positive pieces about Miller than he once did because he knows Brew Blog will always publish the same stories.

Think about this for a bit. People complain that when you have a company-sponsored publication it will inevitably be biased -- but the sponsorship of that site is totally open and in the clear. The site's content stands for itself. Yet, at the same time, a supposedly "objective" traditional journalist is admitting that he writes fewer stories about Miller because he's upset that it's competing with his own publication. From that, it would certainly seem like the Brew Blog is a lot more credible (it's biases are out in the open), while this fee-based trade pub admits that story choices are sometimes based on personal vendettas.

------------------------------
Copyright Scholar Kicked Out Of Canadian Copyright Panel
from the fair-and-balanced dept
US entertainment industry interests have been pushing for quite some time to get stronger copyright laws in Canada, despite plenty of questions about why they're needed. Thanks to folks like Michael Geist, who has repeatedly shined light on attempts to rush these efforts through, some of these efforts have been set aside until there can be more public debate. But, of course, the industry never rests, and as it's looking to get stricter copyright laws in place in Canada, it doesn't much want to hear from critics who have facts on their side. Geist points us to the rather ridiculous news that a supposedly non-partisan, independent organization called the Public Policy Forum has uninvited a well known expert, Howard Knopf, on Canadian copyright from a symposium being held today. Knopf was going to do a presentation explaining why Canadian copyright law is already stronger and better than US copyright law, and why the US ought to be copying Canada's law, rather than the other way around. However, Knopf believes that PPF was pressured to remove him from the schedule, including removing him from a panel where he planned to debate these issues with a registered lobbyist of the entertainment industry. It's a lot easier to get questionable laws passed when you silence the critics.

5 Key Future Magazine Trends and 8 Ways to Prepare for Them

BoSacks: The Profit Prophet
5 Key Future Magazine Trends,
and 8 Ways to Prepare for Them
Publishing Executive Magazine
http://www.pubexec.com/docs/currentissue.bsp
Last month, I had the pleasure of delivering a lecture at the Publishing Business Conference & Expo with David Renard, my partner at Media-Ideas. Addressing a packed room, we examined the five key issues that will affect our industry over the next decade and provided actionable advice to prepare publishers for that future.

The trigger to these key issues is, simply put, "change." We are faced with changes unprecedented in history. The "screenagers" have been a digital demographic from birth, growing up after the dawn of cellular (1983) and with the Internet (1993). They are a generation comfortable with immediate interaction and virtual access. This is fostering a new generation of readers, naturally adept with technology and comfortable with virtual access to friends, family and the world at large. It also is fostering a change in reading habits. Pixels are being increasingly accepted as a way of life.

Another element of change is the access to connectivity. Wi-Fi and mobile phones allow people to stay connected to friends, family, work and information immediately, almost anywhere.

We have the ability to deliver information to multiple platforms in an instant, on a global basis and, most importantly, in any format the reader requires.

Key Trend #1: Magazines are not changing, how you read their content is.
What is a magazine? We at Media-Ideas believe that for a magazine to be a magazine, it must be metered, edited and have designed content, as well as be delivered periodically to the reader in a format that is date-stamped and permanent. We accept that a digital magazine with those six attributes is a magazine. We further believe that over the next 15 years, digital magazines will grow to become 30 percent of the magazine market. Within 25 years, they will represent more than 75 percent of the market for periodicals.

Call to Action: Publishers must create a specific road map today toward multiplatform magazine publishing and content distribution.

Keeping the structural integrity of a magazine online, with the six components necessary to be a magazine, will help to protect publishers from the leveling force of content aggregation that exists on the Internet today. This will greatly limit a magazine's exposure to the content-dilution factor that is increasingly being played out in the realm of information distribution on the Web.

Key Trend #2: Costs are increasing faster than the traditional magazine business model allows.
Raw-material acquirement is causing paper, ink, printing and shipping costs to increase over the long term. These will be further impacted as ecological concerns grow. The lack of attention to ecology is going to be a major cost. Imagine having to pay carbon offsets for each copy returned.

Call to Action: Sky-rocketing costs will force publishers to become more efficient with distribution. The goal has to be 100-percent efficiency or zero returns (and zero returns means a massive reduction in a publisher's carbon footprint).

Call to Action: Crippling costs will force publishers to offer better-quality, more-targeted print products at even higher price points.

Call to Action: Ballooning costs will force publishers to further espouse digital delivery.

There is little choice. Digital infrastructure is not free, but it is also not burdened with rising paper and other associated analog costs.

Key Trend #3: The control and branding of digital content is a critical battle.
XML, content aggregators and search engines are growing in importance and acceptance. This type of online distribution should principally be considered as a marketing tool to attract new readers. Only the very largest magazine publishers and publishers of addictive niche titles will manage to retain their brand awareness through this information-
distribution model. Digital magazines must become a critical piece of a publisher's digital content-distribution plans over the next two years. Because they preserve the core characteristics of a printed magazine, they are best equipped to retain reader loyalty in a digital world.

Call to Action: The formula construction of a magazine's distribution will become a central battle for relevance. If publishers do not take an aggressive stance, outside forces will steer a solution away from the interests of the magazine industry.

Key Trend #4: E-paper is rapidly developing flexible, color displays.
Although the Amazon Kindle is not ready for prime time, it is a prime example of where we are headed. Our Media-Ideas researchers predict that by 2020, e-paper's worldwide market will be worth more than $20 billion. We further predict that by 2020, the annual global production of e-paper displays will be 500 million units with a unit price of $50. Imagine a piece of paper that is a screen, plasticized at first, but becoming more and more like the pulp we have all grown to love.

Call to Action: If digital magazines have not made sense to you, your readers and advertisers, they will with full-color e-paper. Publishers must be acting on their digital magazine implementation plans today or risk irrelevance.

Key Trend #5: The corporate structure of traditional publishers cannot keep pace with technological changes, causing a misalignment between internal organization and business needs.
In every corner of the publishing organization, employees need a larger skill set-one infused with technology-such as writing a blog, shooting and editing video, and repurposing content. Today's IT departments are ill-equipped to act upon consumer-imposed requirements. It must fall on the business unit to provide the necessary guidance and forward planning.

Call to Action: Type A publishers need to assign business-technology "visioneers" within each unit of the organization who report directly to a C-level executive.

Call to Action: Visioneers are responsible for planning necessary technology and functionality over five years. Both the business units and the visioneers must be partially compensated on each other's success.

Bob Sacks (aka BoSacks) is a printing/publishing industry consultant and president of The Precision Media Group (BoSacks.com). He is also the co-founder of the research company Media-Ideas (Media-Ideas.net), and publisher and editor of a daily international e-newsletter, Heard on the Web. Sacks has held posts as director of manufacturing and distribution, senior sales manager (paper), chief of operations, pressman, circulator and almost every other job this industry has to offer.

Cover Story: The King of Visceral Design

BoSacks Speaks Out: This article made me nostalgic for the era of great covers. That comment may anger a few of my friends, but I think there is an overall lack of great covers. There some good ones out there today and even from time to time some great ones, but they seem so far and few between. Do you agree or am I just in an oddly reflective mood.

Norman Rockwell, George Lois produced some really great work. If you ever get the chance to pass my way up here in the Berkshires, there is the Norman Rockwell Museum outside of Stockbridge, Massachusetts. It is a magazine person's dream experience. The art is fantastic and they were all covers of magazines. I'm like a kid in candy shop every time I go in there. Everybody who is in this business must get there at least once a career.

"I learned to draw everything except glamorous women. No matter how much I tried to make them look sexy, they always ended up looking silly... or like somebody's mother."
Norman Rockwell

Cover Story: The King of Visceral Design
By CHARLES McGRATH
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/arts/design/27mcgr.html?_r=1&ref=arts&oref=slogin
GEORGE LOIS, one of the most influential admen of his generation, is the sort of person who has a dozen brainstorms an hour, at least half of them good and only a few really harebrained. Among the better ones were the early Xerox commercials showing a chimpanzee deftly operating a photocopier, the "Think small" ads for Volkswagen and the "I want my MTV" campaign. He also dreamed up Lean Cuisine and the "I want my Maypo" slogan.
But among certain groups of people - magazine collectors, veterans of the 1960s, admirers of brilliant design - Mr. Lois is best known for the covers he created for Esquire from 1962 to 1972. There were 92 in all, including one that never ran: an antiwar cover intended for the December 1962 issue, which was dropped because the State Department was insisting that American troops would be out of Vietnam by Christmas. Thirty-one of them are part of an exhibition that opened at the Museum of Modern Art on Friday.
The show looks a little like a tidied-up version of a great many college dorm rooms back in the '60s. There on the wall, neatly mounted instead of just torn out and stuck up with tape, are Tricky Dick having lipstick applied, L.B.J. holding a Hubert Humphrey dummy, Andy Warhol drowning in a Campbell's soup can, Muhammad Ali posing as St. Sebastian and a grinning Lt. William Calley, the leader of the massacre at My Lai, with four Vietnamese children. There's also the image Mr. Lois created for the December 1963 issue, in response to a plea from Harold Hayes, Esquire's editor, for something "Christmassy." It shows Sonny Liston wearing a Santa hat - probably the last person white Americans hoped to see coming down the chimney in those days.
Many of Mr. Lois's covers were controversial, not so say irreverent or deliberately provocative. The Liston cover cost the magazine $750,000 in dropped advertising. But they were immensely successful at drawing attention, on the newsstand especially.
"The covers weren't the only thing going on in those days," Byron Dobell, Esquire's managing editor during many of the Lois years, recalled recently. "We thought there was some pretty great stuff inside as well. But the covers proved to be a very effective way of advertising our kind of journalism. They were way out there."

What was remarkable then - and seems even more so now, when virtually every magazine cover is a thicket of text lines running behind or on top of one celebrity or another - is that the Lois covers were virtually textless. They achieved their effect by communicating a single idea through an image. Some were untouched photographs, but, in an era before Photoshop, some were created by the primitive technique of cutting and pasting, using photographs, clip art and sometimes hand-drawn elements.
"I remember when we were doing the Warhol cover," Mr. Lois recalled. "I explained to Andy what I had in mind, and he said, 'Oh, will you have to build a very big can?' "
There is a whole generation of current or recent magazine editors who are Lois admirers, including David Remnick, Graydon Carter and Tina Brown. "George was there during a great age," said Mr. Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair. "You didn't have to put low-grade movie stars on the cover then to move magazines. You could put ideas there."
He added: "George used people like Sonny Liston and Muhammad Ali, so you could say he was using the celebrities of the day. And it was probably a little easier then, because everybody had the same frame of reference. They all read and watched the same things. But George was as good as it got."

Few editors, though, have the nerve to try to imitate what Mr. Lois did. Esquire's May cover this year, of a woman shaving her face, is a sort of homage to the 1965 Lois cover of Virna Lisi doing the same thing, except that in the background there's a lot of busy type needlessly explaining, "We Shot This Image to Catch Your Eye."
Mr. Lois is 76 now, and not quite the hunk he used to be in the days when he was known in the ad business as the Golden Greek. "People see pictures of me back then and ask, 'What happened?' " he said recently. "I'll tell you what happened. Fifty years is what happened." But he still plays full-court basketball - against much younger guys, he's quick to point out - and gets by on four hours of sleep a night.

Mr. Lois grew up in a Greek-speaking household in the Bronx, where his father ran a flower shop, and he is still a bit of a neighborhood guy. He is funny, profane and opinionated, and not shy about poking you in the shoulder or the knee to make sure you're following his point. He talks very fast, in a rumbling New York voice, but his brain works even faster, so that sometimes there's a little lag while the words catch up.

Over a long morning interview - monologue really - that stretched into lunch, prepared by Rosemary, his wife of 56 years, Mr. Lois recalled that Martin Scorsese, a huge admirer of the Esquire covers, seemed crushed when he learned that his idol had spent most of his life in advertising. But Mr. Lois said he didn't see much difference between ads and covers.
"I've always been about the big idea, the big idea," he explained. "I never had any trouble going into a new area. It's all a matter of creativity. I even made a music video once for Bob Dylan, using 5,000 years of the history of art."

The Esquire connection came about, he recalled, in June 1962, when Harold Hayes - a courtly, soft-spoken Southerner who favored white suits even before Tom Wolfe - called looking for advice about covers. When Mr. Lois learned that Esquire covers were conceived and assigned by an editorial committee, he likened the process to gang rape and said to Mr. Hayes: "Is that what you do when you assign a story to Talese or to Mailer - you have a group grope? You need to get one guy who understands the culture, who likes comic strips, goes to the ballet, visits the Metropolitan Museum."

According to Mr. Lois, Mr. Hayes replied, "Hey, pal, could you do me a favor? Could you do just do me one cover - to show me what the hell you're talking about?"
The cover Mr. Lois did - for the October issue, which came out a few days before the Floyd Patterson-Sonny Liston fight that year - showed a Patterson look-alike sprawled, possibly dead, in an empty boxing ring. This was a huge gamble, because most experts had picked Patterson to win. "But I knew," Mr. Lois said. "I just knew that Liston was going to wade through him." Mr. Lois also got lucky when, after a coin flip, he predicted that Patterson would be wearing white trunks.

The cover was a hit, and Mr. Lois had a job, which he kept until Mr. Hayes stepped down in 1972. There were no committees, no group gropes. Mr. Lois dealt solely with the editor , and he likes to say now that Mr. Hayes was one of the few at Esquire who really liked the covers, though people who were there at the time disagree.
Lee Eisenberg, an editorial assistant in the early '70s who eventually became editor of Esquire, said: "The Lois covers were one of the key reasons I and a lot of people there were drawn to Esquire in the first place. We loved them. They set a visual tone that complemented the distinctiveness of the rest of the magazine.

"The only real controversy that I recall was about the Calley cover. There was a lot of argument and bitterness over that, and it was the one time that the privacy of the relationship between Harold and George became an issue. There was an alternative version - the exact same cover but with Calley not smiling - and Harold didn't show that to anyone."
Mr. Lois recalled: "Harold used to say that we were doing was 'pictorial Zolas' - you know, 'J'accuse.' " He added: "People ask me, 'Did you know when you were doing this that you were making an important statement?' Yeah, I knew. I'm a designer. I know what I'm doing. I have designs on things."