BoSacks Speaks Out: The Passion of Steve Jobs

BoSacks Speaks Out: The Passion of Steve Jobs
I am sending out this article specifically because of the following statement by Steve Jobs:
"It doesn't matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don't read anymore," he said. "Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don't read anymore."

That is such a damning statement, and it goes beyond the fact that people don't read. Here is an industry titan who has the skill set to develop a "reader" that could/would/should be successful but won't because "people don't read". Fact or fiction this industry giant won't spend the energy and resources to attack and improve the technology because it doesn't make business sense. He may be right and he may be wrong, but I find it a statement of supreme consequence.

"Why join the navy if you can be a pirate?"
- Steve Jobs


The Passion of Steve Jobs
By John Markoff

Even more than when he's performing on stage, Steven P. Jobs's passion for personal computing comes through when he talks about the years he spent cajoling his designers to build what he presented today as the world's "thinnest" computer.

Along with David Pogue, the Times technology columnist, I spent a half-hour with Mr. Jobs after he introduced the MacBook Air this morning at the Macworld Expo. And as is frequently the case with Apple products, he pronounced the three-pound aluminum-clad portable to be one of the best things his company has ever designed.

"I'm going to be the first one in line to buy one of these," he said. "I've been lusting after this."

The company's design team went through roughly 100 design prototypes to find the right form, he said. Both he and his lead designer, Jonathan Ive, were not certain that they would be able to fit the computer into the package that they came up with.

Earlier, during his keynote presentation, Mr. Jobs went to great lengths to extol the engineering effort that had gone into reducing the size of the basic computer to fit inside the computer, which tapers in thickness from .76 inch down to .16 inch. The circuit board is about the length of a pencil, he said, and he brought Intel's chief executive, Paul S. Otellini, on stage to congratulate him for his company's work in significantly shrinking the packaging of the Core 2 Duo microprocessor that the MacBook Air is based on.

Still, the machine is a reversal of field for Mr. Jobs, who in the past has insisted that less-than-full-featured laptops are undesirable. Today Mr. Jobs was unwilling to compare the MacBook Air to the original Dynabook vision, a portable prototype idea first conceived of by the computer scientist Alan Kay. He would go no further than asserting that this is the most elegant computer the company has created, right down to the four rubber footpads that support it.

Some of the competitors' machines are so flimsy, he said, they require a fifth or even sixth pad to keep from sagging.

Mr. Jobs can be like that when he assesses the competition.

Today he had a wide range of observations on the industry, including the Amazon Kindle book reader, which he said would go nowhere largely because Americans have stopped reading.

"It doesn't matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don't read anymore," he said. "Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don't read anymore."

He was equally skeptical about Google's decision to develop smartphone software. Google bought a small start-up called Android several years ago, and a team of developers is now putting the finishing touches on an open-source smartphone operating system designed to rival both the iPhone and Microsoft's Windows Mobile software.

"Having created a phone, it's a lot harder than it looks," he said. "We'll see how good their software is and we'll see how consumers like it and how quickly it is adopted." In seeking not to get locked out of the mobile phone world, "I actually think Google has achieved their goal without Android, and I now think Android hurts them more than it helps them. It's just going to divide them and people who want to be their partners."

One of the remarkable qualities that Mr. Jobs has is his ability to continue looking forward and not focus on the past. For its Apple TV set-top box, "Take Two" is a great example of the computer impresario's ability to recast an anemic first effort with great fanfare. Apple not only cut the price of the box from $299 to $229, it entirely revamped the user interface to a simple text display that is stark even by Mr. Jobs's Spartan aesthetic.

The message now is that when it comes to television, the solution is "all about movies." That can be seen in the movie icons that now fill the screen of the Apple TV display, allowing viewers to choose and rent titles to download.

The model will not extend to cable television, he insisted. "We're not going to go there with the cable cards," he said, referring to the relatively open cable industry connectors that are gradually allowing companies like TiVo to replace the standard set-top box. "That whole industry, their go-to-market strategy is pretty loopy, and it's fractured," he said. "Our model is like DVD."

Mr. Jobs saved his greatest compliment today for his former archrival Bill Gates, who has now largely retired will retire from Microsoft this summer.

"Bill's retiring from Microsoft is a big deal," he said. "It's a significant event, and I think he should be honored for the contributions he's made."

Keeping Print Afloat

Keeping Print Afloat
By Marie Griffin
B-to-b publishers have gotten used to the idea of advertising dollars migrating to the Web, but none wants to see vast sums of money moving out of print. As the economy becomes less certain, though, b-to-b publishers are aware that advertisers could make sudden shifts in strategy and budgets.

"Online will take care of itself," said Alan Robinson, group publisher of Reed Business Information's EDN. "We can hardly keep up with the demand. When you're talking about print, though, you have to ask yourself how it's going to survive."
There's no foolproof way to prevent a rush of revenue out of print, but some publishers are being more proactive than others, making sure their sales and marketing teams are consistently reinforcing print's value within the advertising mix.

Robinson and his team are using two strategies to keep Reed Business' electronics flagship, EDN, viable in print. First, they invest in content that lends itself well to the print medium. Second, they provide advertisers with research to prove it matters.

"Our approach really calls for print execution," he said. "EDN is written by electronics engineers. The editorial is in-depth and solutions-oriented, and it delves into the complex issues engineers must design around today. This type of information is hard to absorb on the Web."

EDN's research backs up the common wisdom that businesspeople use print early in the buying cycle. "Our team is going around with the readership study to explain to buyers that key decisions are being made early in the design process. That's when engineers turn to peers and trade journals," Robinson said.

At e.Republic, Exec VP Don Pearson and his team don't try to protect their print advertising. Instead, they build print components into integrated, multimedia programs.

"In this day and age, there really is a glut of information on the Web," Pearson said. "If you want to drive traffic to your online assets, either on your own site or on our site, you still need to grab people's attention. An e-newsletter is one tactic, but print is another element."

For e.Republic's 3-year-old Digital Communities quarterly publication, Web site and events, Pearson created a set of tiered, multimedia sponsorship packages at three different spending levels. All include print, online, live events and custom publishing. "The print ads are not closing the program, but advertisers are going for the comprehensive value proposition that is designed to produce results," he said.

Gary Rubin, chief publishing and e-media officer at the Society for Human Resource Management, uses words like luxurious and pleasurable to describe the experience he wants readers to get from HR Magazine, and he insists this direction makes good business sense.

Although some advertisers are pulling away from print to buy more online advertising, "I still have a $10 million-plus magazine, and it's a good, profitable business," Rubin said.

"I'm creating this luxurious reading environment-with thought-provoking stories, pull-out quotes, great photographs and illustrations-so that the magazine has a larger, more engaged audience," he explained. "And advertisers follow readers."

Like Robinson, Rubin makes sure to back up his beliefs with hard evidence. "We commission a third-party readership study every two years," he said. "By almost a four-to-one ratio, people prefer reading our magazine as compared to the next largest competitor."

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Co-manufacturing Takes Shape
By Mark J. Miller
http://www.btobonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080111/MEDIABUSINESS/162119816/1106/FREE
Production executives are in a constant search for ways to save money. In recent years, the sharing of different parts of the production and distribution chain with other publishers and other titles has helped ease the financial burden. First, there was co-palletization and co-mailing. Then there was co-binding, and now co-manufacturing has entered the publishing world's lexicon.

The term has been bandied about for nearly a year by printing and magazine manufacturing executives, and the concept can take a variety of forms. One saved Reed Business Information $15,000 in three months during a test the company ran on 24 of its titles.

Reed moved some of its monthlies to Fry Communications where it already had several of its titles printed. The idea was to build a large enough mass to make creating an internal mailing pool of just Reed publications cost-effective.

Reed standardized the paper and trim size for all 24 titles. Then, to be as efficient as possible, it loaded all the titles into a single print line to run basically one right on top of another.

"We wanted to take a look at what would happen if we printed our monthlies there at the same time and created co-print pools essentially," said Paula Gordon, Reed's director of manufacturing. The company's test ran from September to the end of December.

Each week, Reed created different test pools. Tuesdays and Thursdays are big print days for its monthlies, so production executives would constantly be looking at how many titles it could close on those days in order to be part of that week's mailing group.

Gordon said Reed locked out publications that failed to close on schedule. "We would just automatically knock some out that didn't adhere to the schedule," she said. "We're keeping close track of what we're actually saving with the books we pool and what we could have saved if those other titles had closed on time."

Noting Reed's savings in the first three months of the test, Gordon said, "In 2008, more magazines will be included, and we're thinking of co-binding some of those titles and then co-mailing. So we're taking it to the next `co-level.' "

Gordon added that it would have been easier to start with weeklies, but the titles were too spread out in terms of geography.

"As postage goes up and paper goes up, more and more money-saving partnerships will occur between publishers and printers," she said. "Big, little-it doesn't matter; we all want to save money."

Alan D. Snyder, prepress operations manager at Fry, said most experiments like this come directly out of specific money-saving conversations with clients and trying to find ways to maximize their spending with the printer. "Publishers used to have a lot of say in what they printed on, and that power is tightening up, I'm sure," he said. "They can't be liberal about their sizes, and texture and that sort of thing [anymore]."

Among the services that Fry offers is selective co-binding, in which titles run simultaneously on the press and the printer selectively binds different titles in different ways. This saves a publisher money in make-ready costs.

BoSacks Readers Speak Out: Quebecor, Publishing Success, and Car Parts

BoSacks Readers Speak Out: Quebecor, Publishing Success, and Car Parts
www.bosacks.com

Re: BoSacks Readers Speak Out: On Quebecor, Magazines, and Steve Florio
Boman, I've been in this industry for 35 years. Like you I have seen a lot of ink poured onto billions of pages. The continued consolidation of the industry from all sides and all suppliers bodes ill for our continued success. There are so many aspects of our ability to make a profit that are under attack that I despair of ever breathing correctly again.

It's the paper problem. Paper makers have a right to make a profit too don't they? It's the printer problem. Shouldn't printers be able to make a fair profit? It's the advertisers. Shouldn't they be able to maximize their dollar investment and get accountability for money spent? It's the generational reading trends. Still an unknown but sizable problem for the printed page.

The Quebecor situation is just one item of hundreds that is putting continued pressure on a fragile industry at a unique moment in time. How do we continue under such diverse unfriendly conditions? For my part I don't blame anyone or any part of the industry. It seems to just be what they call a perfect storm.
Submitted by a Senior Multi-Title Publisher)

Re: BoSacks Readers Speak Out: On Quebecor, Magazines, and Steve Florio
Bo: As someone who has worked for both printing and publishing companies over the last 34 years, I feel obligated to chime in on the current hype about Quebecor World. Quebecor World has provided publishers and catalogers with a valuable service for a long time, they have kept the cost of printing competitive. IF RRD, Quad and other large printers had their way, our costs would be significantly higher. To rationalize where Quebecor World is today, we have to take history into account. First lets realize that the US plants started as WA Krueger, then became Ringier America and then World Color before becoming Quebecor World. Lets talk about the fact that the previous owners were interested in making money by any means and did not keep up with technology or invest in their infrastructure. Lets face it, by the time Quebecor purchased World Color, the plants and equipment were becoming obsolete and were in desperate need capital expenditures and improvements. Lets think about the determination and faith that it took to consolidate plants and purchase a huge amount of equipment to bring them up to today's quality and efficiency levels. They accomplished this in a remarkably short period of time and while there were specific problems along the road they have reached the pinnacle only to have the financial bridge for the cost of modernization collapse. Lets also ask if the current financial situation might be different if not for the tremendous problems caused by the sub-prime mortgage segment. As one who prints with Quebecor World, RRD, Quad and several other printers, I do not look forward to the demise of Quebecor World and especially if another major printer becomes the owner. I hope that the financial turmoil can be overcome for all of our sake. Lets hope that printing doesn't follow what's happening in the paper industry with mega-mergers and consolidations.
(Submitted by an Industry Supplier)

Re: BoSacks Speaks Out - 3 Concepts for Every Publisher's Success
I'd suggest three other points:

1. Content isn't important; creating something that interests an audience is. When you drain the blood out of the activity and leave it as a set of numbers, it's going to fail.

2. Having targets isn't important; you want an audience that really wants to hear what you have to say.

3. Long term profitability and innovation may not go out of style, but they are meaningless when they aren't an organic part of pleasing the customer. Profitability is a byproduct of pleasing customers and running a business smartly.
(Submitted by an Industry Writer)


Re: BoSacks Speaks Out - 3 Concepts for Every Publisher's Success
Bo, Simpler words couldn't tell the story! A sound business model and a template for success applies no matter what we're talking about. You can only "push" so much information - it's the end-users' desired "pull" that sustains that publishing entity. You've got to have them engaged, once you do and you continue to fuel that engine, then it's perpetual . . .
Submitted by an Industry Supplier)

Re: Print is Dead: Long Live Print
It's the first time I have read something we can all agree on, right Bo? Just give it a little time and what is old will be new again. And that goes for print and pretty glossy pictures.
Submitted by a paper Supplier)


Re: For magazines, New Year of Challenges
Bo, Don't you love challenges?
Sounds like a motivational seminar from the 60"s.
Submitted by a senior paper person)

Re: For magazines, New Year of Challenges
Here is a shortened view of the top three challenges for 2008
1. Paper
2. Advertising
3. Postal
Pretty much in that order in my opinion.
(Submitted by a Senior Paper Person)


RE: MPA Magazine 'Readers' Are Now Called 'Users' - Gen Y Loves Luxury Paper
Why not just call them the audience? It works for all the types of media,
and calling them users creates the wrong emphasis on the specific
technology, and not the unifying concept of communications.
Submitted by a Writer)


RE; you see this in FOLIO?
I was idling around the newsstand at lunch and was surprised to see the December issue of Hemmings Motor News sitting there, weighing in at 696 pages. Hemmings is basically an antique car and car parts directory. Looking for an antenna for that 1964 Corvair? Find it in Hemmings.

The curious thing is why the print publication is still thick as a phone book. If ever there was a publication to become disintermediated by the Internet, this is it. Hemmings is a place where you go to find things you are looking for, not for random discovery. And, in fact, it has a robust Web site, claiming to be the "world's most comprehensive and informative web site of its kind, featuring over 30,000 searchable cars-for-sale ads, 10,000 Car Club listings," etc.

Maybe it's because car collectors are old and don't use the internet. Nope, we know that all age groups are active users of the Web. Maybe the Hemmings brand is so strong that they can REQUIRE classified advertisers to use print if they want to advertise online. Not so-you can advertise online exclusively. I just don't get it. Why is their print edition so robust? Any ideas?
Submitted by a Senior Publishing Executive)

Memo Pad: Portfolio Numbers, Please...

Memo Pad: Numbers, Please...
By Stephanie D. Smith
NUMBERS, PLEASE: Portfolio has published six issues since its debut in April, but so far, the jury remains out on whether consumers are reading the Condé Nast business title. Sources close to the magazine and with access to circulation figures say the title has collected around 300,000 subscriptions and, on average, sold 85,000 newsstand copies an issue. They also estimate Portfolio's single-copy sell-through percentage is between 15 and 18 percent (a Portfolio spokeswoman declined to comment on the numbers). The magazine has attempted to pop at newsstand by using more abstract cover images, but in recent issues has moved toward a single image - the January cover was the first to feature a close-up of a human.

A new magazine's sell through percentage is naturally lower than that of an established title, since most publishers tend to blanket newsstands with issues for maximum visibility while assessing where the magazine sells best. John Harrington, editor of magazine industry newsletter The New Single Copy, believed Condé Nast would be satisfied if Portfolio's sell-through were in the mid-20 percent range. As a new title matures, a successful one should increase that number to around the 30 percent range or higher. "Fifteen percent certainly wouldn't make them happy," said Harrington.

Portfolio's circulation, as with most business magazines, is based largely on subscriptions, so its newsstand performance is not the only judge of the magazine's circulation strength. "It's somewhere in between a business and a men's or lifestyle magazine, in terms of how they're positioning it. So it's a little harder to judge than normal," added Harrington. "Because it's a unique editorial package, I would think the company would be prepared to give it more time and would not apply normal expectations to it."

It may be too early to tell if Portfolio will meets its circulation targets - or what those targets could be for the future - but publisher David Carey already has his advertising goals in place for 2008. After posting 655 ad pages for all of 2007, the goal is to snag 900 pages this year, when Portfolio will publish 12 issues. Of course, Carey has more on his mind now than Portfolio - on Monday he was given responsibility of Wired Media and The Golf Digest Publications, which previously reported to outgoing group president Mitchell Fox

Observations from a Curious Mind

Observations from a Curious Mind
Posted by Courtney Smith
As the Governor of the American Advertising Federation's District 14, I attend numerous events each year. This past June in Louisville, KY, the hours spent sitting at banquet rounds filled with half eaten salads listening to the illuminating thoughts of industry experts, needless to say, caused my mind to wander away from meeting agendas and how Roberts Rules of Order works like I was supposed to be doing as a District leader. I found myself unable to stop searching for connections between the nuggets of cutting-edge research, opinions from self-proclaimed industry thought leaders and intimate after-hours conversations inspired by open bars and the brief escape from "real life" back home. I filled many a quad pad page pondering the collective idea pool that was brewing amongst the creative constituency in attendance; it's these thoughts, observations and questions that I share with you here. For today, my first thought on the list.

1) As long as a product provides value, it will be rewarded with loyalty.One of the keynote speakers said this in his speech. It seemed like a no-brainer to me, but the more I thought about it the more I realized that sometimes clients don't get this. What it says to me is that marketing is not a rainmaker and can't make a bad product better - period. Consumers are smarter than you think, and will not be loyal to anything that doesn't give them something unexpected in return. I think it's true of services too; isn't it always about value? Value-add, value-driven, values-based - we need to be careful how we use this word, because it's a damn good one that will lose its meaning if the industry adopts it deeper into its buzz word virtual dictionary. In other words, don't devalue value.

Thought number two on my list of things to ponder I am sure will cause much debate. After all, it pits the creative world against the measured world of interactive and summons the core of what clients in my experience want to know about their marketing efforts - how do I know this is going to work?

2.) The moment the metrics become more important than the message, it spoils the gift to the user and becomes counterproductive. I heard this in a keynote given by David Verklin, founder of CaratUSA and wanted to put him on TIVO pause as soon as these words left his mouth. Finally, an industry professional that wasn't trying to crack the metrics nut and put a barcode on creative! As I thought about the meaning of his words, it made me reflect on my own habits as a consumer and put them into the context of how we build and market brands for our clients. After all, the thing I usually remember when I see an incredible piece of creative for the first time isn't the product or service's name or website address. . . it's the way it made me feel when I was tickled, saddened, outwitted or touched in some way by the magic of how a simple phrase, imagery and copy worked together in harmony to tell its story. This feeling has never been something that could be measured with unique urls or click-thru ratios, but it is what I want to experience when I come across this brand again. So how do clients know if what we're doing for them will really work, if brands live in our heads and names and url's are hard to remember? We have a saying in the office that for every great gift you've ever received in your life, you will never, ever forget who gave it to you. Think about it. If what you receive is something that personifies you, celebrates you, is unexpected and makes you take notice, the giver will live in infamy in your head forever. The same is true of great band marketing. When your approach is thoughtful, your audience is understood intimately and the delivery is just right. . . the same magic can be gifted to an audience. At the end of the day, if clients just had faith in what we as marketers with integrity are spending our precious brain cells strategically creating in this space, then the answer to their question will be paid back with long-term customer loyalty and increased profits. This takes time and considerable patience however - but I guarantee that the results will last a lifetime.

Print is Dead: Long Live Print

Print is Dead: Long Live Print
By Jonathan Weber
We all know by now that the future of media is online, and I'd be the last person to deny the significance of the changes wrought by the Internet. But I think one of the most interesting things to emerge in the media business this year will be a comeback of sorts for print.

Print, of course, hasn't exactly gone away - magazines and newspapers still account for more then a third of worldwide ad revenues - but the chatter in the industry suggests its death is just around the corner.

In the U.S. especially, the newspaper business appears to be in a free-fall, with many big papers reporting year-over-year revenue and circulation declines of ten per cent or more - shocking numbers indeed for century-old businesses. The big magazine companies, and especially kingpin Time Inc., are under ever-growing financial pressure; nobody would be surprised if the new CEO of Time Warner sold the magazine unit.
Yet the story in the field, especially outside of the big coastal media hubs, is quite different from what the media news websites would lead you to believe. If you want publicity in Anytown, USA, the best way to get it, still, is a story in the local newspaper. And if you're selling advertising to local businesses, a lot of your clients still want to be able to hold that ad in their hands.

At NewWest.Net, we're actually launching a print magazine in a few weeks; print was always part of the plan, and everything we have experienced so far suggests that this is a sound strategy. Even though, as a company, we are "online first" in almost every respect, we still expect the print magazine to generate substantially more ad revenues in its first year than our three-year-old online publication.

Another project that I'm involved with, a local newspaper startup in northwestern Montana called the Flathead Beacon, also illustrates this point emphatically. Even though a strong website was launched concurrently with the print paper last spring, and online is considered central to the strategy in every way, the print accounts for the vast majority of the revenue. I'm sure that will change eventually - but not this year, or next, or even the year after that.

I think a big part of the gap between perception and reality when it comes to print media has to do with a set of expectations that have developed from what were, in retrospect, very specific and unusual circumstances.

Newspapers have been in steep decline for half a century, when measured by the percentage of the population that regularly reads a newspaper. But in the U.S. that decline in readership has been accompanied by consolidation, with most cities being reduced to one newspaper from two or three or four. The surviving ones, not surprisingly, became extremely profitable; the issue for most newspapers today is not that they are not profitable, but that they are much less profitable than they were before.

Similarly, it's not that newspapers today no longer have influence, it's that they have relatively less than they had before. Magazines had a golden age back in the 1960s, when publications like Esquire and Playboy almost defined their era, intellectually and culturally. The fact that they no longer carry the clout they once did doesn't mean they have no future. The success of Felix Dennis' The Week suggests that even the hoary newsmagazine, seemingly the most antiquated species in the entire magazine firmament, can be reinvented and made relevant.

Media consumption is extraordinarily habit-driven, and old habits die hard. Maybe, once the people who grew up on Facebook are running all the local businesses in town, those businesses will lose their affection for the slick, well-produced color print advertising that still dominates many markets. But that time is quite a ways off still. And in the meantime, as the excitement surrounding new forms of media begins to wear off a bit, there will be a renewed appreciation for the power of a highly flexible, portable, shareable, high-definition technology known as print.

---
Jonathan Weber is the founder and editor in chief of NewWest.Net, a regional news service focused on the Rocky Mountain West in the United States. He was previously the co-founder and editor in chief of the Industry Standard

The Quest for the Perfect Cover

The Quest for the Perfect Cover
Publishing Executive Magazine
By Jan V. White
When a magazine's cover "worked," we can never determine for sure exactly what worked. Was it the photo? Was it the subject of the cover story? Was it the big type run in process yellow? Surveys can be taken, focus groups convened, but experience teaches that you can't escape flying by the seat of your pants. That's another way of saying that we depend on the editor's gut feeling. I was one of the judges awarding "best cover" medals in an intramural competition at a publishing company large enough to warrant such an act. The company's owner-who ought to know given his company's output-told me that the only factor he could be sure of is the coquettish, come-hither look in the model's eyes. (That is a somewhat frustrating criterion if your product doesn't deal with that kind of subject.) Here are four cover stories to illustrate the complexity of the problem.

1. One cover stands out vividly from the thousands in my half century of magazine-ing. They were refurbishing the newsstand in the Stockholm airport terminal, so their magazines were spread out on the sidewalk. The standout was greenish all over: in the picture, the logo, the type, the coverlines. It was the Swedish Golf Digest, so its greenness was perfect for its subject. The cover carried all the usual elements, but they were blended by the color, and that simplicity popped it out from its surrounding, gaudy competition. Less is more, but can you imagine the arguments before they agreed to go with it?

2. In the late '90s, there was a period of intense competition among three women's general-interest weeklies in Norway. One of them decided to abandon fashionable elegance and do some hard-selling by covering the cover with as many pictorial and verbal appeals as they could squeeze in, using every color (especially process yellow), typeface, angle, overlap, silhouetting, shadow and trick. The startling difference created enormous curiosity, and their sales skyrocketed. The other two quickly latched onto the technique in their own variations, and after a few issues, the only way to tell them apart was to decipher the logos.

3. Newsstand sales are vital to magazine circulation in Brazil. The problem with selling them in São Paulo is that the pollution sneaks dirt between the pages, and who wants to buy a soiled copy? Therefore, plastic-bagging is essential. But if the issue is bagged and you can't flip the pages while you're browsing at the newsstand, how do you know what's inside? Coverlines-lots and lots of them. Nevermind that your product is stylish and elegant, and the gorgeous cover subject is ruined by all that type. All that type is inescapable, given the outside sales conditions, like it or not.

4. A few years ago, I came across a unique cover problem in Ecuador. All the covers of the local, general-interest weekly newsmagazine bore pictures of partially clad young ladies, though there was one issue on the wall in the editor's office that showed jungle guerrillas with guns. That had been an experiment and a circulation disaster. The mail system could not be depended on to deliver magazines, and newsstands were few, because they required a lot of investment. Circulation depended on boys who bought a handful of copies to peddle in the streets. The cover with the boy-oriented guerrillas was a failed attempt to appeal to these newsboys. Convinced that they couldn't sell a magazine that lacked a pretty model on the cover, the newsboys refused to buy any themselves.

No matter what you put on the cover, keep the six functions of covers in mind:

1. Familiar recognition from issue to issue (that's the brand)

2. Emotionally irresistible (that's the image's appeal)

3. Arousing curiosity (that's to pull the casual glancer in)

4. Intellectually stimulating, interesting (that's to promise benefits)

5. Efficient, fast, easy to scan (that's showing off the service)

6. Worth the investment of money and time (that's the "What's in it for me?")


No wonder that the cover is a complicated puzzle. But all these qualities are essential, so they must be borne in mind when the inevitable arguments arise.

Four reasons not to judge your cover on-screen:
1. The screen is the wrong size, no matter how big it is. You can't see it intimately as if it were in your hands.

2. It lacks scale because it is isolated in its own magic electronic world, so you have nothing real to compare it to. You can only guess at type sizes and hope they're OK.

3. It glows in vivid colors that will inevitably turn disappointingly dull when printed in ink. A hard-copy printout may be closer.

4. Worst of all, it is virtual. It is just an illusory likeness of the physical paper product that your potential buyer will ultimately be holding. If you are producing magazines on paper, think and remain conscious of "paperness" all the time.

Four ways to judge your cover:
1. Covers are the prime sales tool that must be judged realistically both for content as well as form (i.e., what they show and how they show it). Never trim a printout, mount it beautifully, and display it with its alternates on the finely polished surface of the conference-room table. Designers love to do this, because to them, the cover is enormously important (and so it is, but not necessarily for their reasons). That framing, matting and mounting in a formalized presentation cheats you into believing that what you are being shown is "art" that you must judge on aesthetic grounds, liking it or loathing it . . . "Can we make the type a tad redder?" Few magazines qualify for covers that are "art."

2. Instead, ask the designer to print out all the alternates as hard copy, trim them accurately to magazine size and glue them onto old issues, so you can see them as close to the real thing as possible. Now, toss them on a tabletop, so they flop around and overlap like real magazines do.

3. If you can spare the time, go to the local drugstore or bookstore, and sneak your upcoming issue in among the other magazines on the racks. Does it hold its own or does it disappear? To ensure that atmosphere of realism, I persuaded that multititle publisher to invest in a full-color, life-size photomural of a newsstand and have it permanently installed. We attached clips and glass shelves on it to hold the mock-ups. The realistic circumstances not only improved the noticeability of the covers, but reduced friction between art/edit/circulation/management, because everybody could see what the reality of selling was about.

4.If selling on newsstands is not your problem, but competition among executives is, gather copies of what your targets might be reading, including your competition, of course. Mock up an executive's in-box or tabletop arrangement in some way, and place yours among them. That is the realistic way to judge your cover. Keep that still-life stack for next month's headaches.

Three fixes-avoiding a weak cover:
1. If the cover pops out from its background, don't weaken it by fussing with it. You've probably done something courageous (like that all-green Swedish Golf Digest) and deserve congratulations. Leave well enough alone.

2. If it is invisible like wallpaper, decide what element is worthy of becoming dominant by enlarging, by isolating, by more controlled color, by more clever wording. . . . Do it deliberately, strongly, with conviction. The great thing about seeing the sketch cover in its realistic setting is that it warns you away from itsy-bitsy decisions that don't matter. To succeed out there, you have to realize that you are making a poster, albeit in miniature. A billboard.

3. Check out the suggestions about the four type sizes. (See related content.) A magazine is first and foremost a physical product, so experiment with it as such and be sure to make the most of its capabilities. Unfortunately, every decision will demand a price. Example: The spectacular, shiny coverstock that helps the colors vibrate is so slippery that the magazine falls on the floor. To whom are you catering? Youngsters don't mind bending down to retrieve it, but seniors will let it lie there, because it is too damn much trouble. It is all really psychology, isn't it? Well, of course it is! Publishing is a form of person-to-person conversation. The cover triggers it.

Jan White, the author of the book, "Editing by Design," lectures worldwide on the relationship of graphic design to editing. After 13 years with architectural magazines at Time Inc., he established his own publication-design firm in 1964. He has written dozens of books on editing and design techniques.

Dennis Web Ads to Pass Print

Dennis Web Ads to Pass Print
By Martin Stabe
Dennis Publishing has predicted that it will generate more than half of its advertising revenue from online within two years.
Dennis chief executive James Tye told Press Gazette that about a third of Dennis's advertising revenue currently comes from digital advertising - but said that figure that will pass the half-way mark by 2009.

With about half of revenues coming from circulation, digital advertising now accounts for about 15 per cent of Dennis's total revenue.

Massive change
Tye said: "To put it in context, if you look at what we were doing in 2004, our total revenue was 35 per cent print advertising and four per cent digital - and in 2008 the budgeted numbers will be about 24 per cent print and 14 per cent digital, so that's a massive change".

According to accounts filed in October with Companies House, the privately held company which still lists founder Felix Dennis as its sole shareholder saw pre-tax profits increase from £361,000 in 2005 to £2.06m in 2006 on turnover rising from £61.25m to £62.28m.

"What has not changed is that more than half our revenue has historically come from our readers and continues to come from our readers - either from subscriptions or on the newsstand," said Tye.

Dennis's news digest The Week posted a 19 per cent increase in its last ABC audit this summer. Elsewhere, declining circulations have been offset by increasing cover prices.

Online-only titles
Dennis has been adapting to its changing business by focusing on new, online-only, titles like digital lads' mag Monkey and technology site ITPro.

This year, Dennis's Skunk Works development unit launched five new websites, including Know Your Mobile, which now has more than 200,000 monthly unique users.

An additional 10-strong product development team, headed by Bruce Sandell, is set to launch a series of larger-scale products in 2008. It will focus largely on digital products and is expected to launch its first product in February.

The new investment will come out of profits from Dennis's UK operations, rather than the £120m it raised by selling its US arm, said Tye.

Bespoke system
Dennis has also been reorganising its internal operations to adapt to a more digital focus, Tye said.

Four of Dennis' titles now have a new cross-media content-management-system known as Project Latitude. Some of the software for the bespoke system, which is to be rolled out to 14 additional titles, was written by Computer Shopper editor Paul Sanders following close consultation with other editors in the group.

Advertising at the start of online videos is not currently a major source of Dennis's digital revenue, but Tye said he expects this to change. A new three-member video production team shoots and edits videos across the group's titles.

"We still want our journalists to be competent or excellent in video presentation - but we can't expect every journalist to do that, or they'll end up doing three jobs," Tye said.

Tye has risen through the company since starting as features editor of Windows magazine and a stint as editor of PC Pro before moving into management

BoSacks Speaks Out: Quebecor Financial Fortunes Dwindling

BoSacks Speaks Out: This is an interesting article, discussing Quebecor World's problems, mostly from a local perspective, which is why I liked it, written by a local newspaper reporter. The plant it discusses is the Merced plant, a printing facility that I have visited and printed at.

Perhaps, in this case, I'm stuck in a past era, but it is very hard for me to imagine Quebecor World just disappearing from the publishing scene. I suppose it can happen as the author suggests, but an overnight closure would be devastating to more than the people and families who work at the Merced plant. The ramifications to major and minor publishers would be unprecedented and I doubt that a "here today gone tomorrow" scenario is a possibility.

Admittedly something needs to be done, it could be creative financing, governmental bailout, a few more plant closings, sale of componants, or a combination of all. The molecular details of saving a giant printing corporation falls, just short of my expertise, but an overnight global death seems to me unlikely. More likely will be the slow death of a thousand cuts.


"If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character...Would you slow down? Or speed up?"

Chuck Palahniuk (American freelance Journalist, Satirist and Novelist. b.1961)



Quebecor financial fortunes dwindling: Web revolution hurting traditional business models
BY Scott Jason

Merced Sun-Star - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) Quebecor World Inc., one of the largest commercial printers, is spinning its presses at a time when paper is becoming passe.


The multinational corporation -- with a 900-employee plant in Merced -- prints major magazines, such as Newsweek, Time and The Economist, phone books and glossy advertisements.

But in the Digital Age, it's faced with declining demand and rising competition. As the parent company in Canada fends off rumors of bankruptcy, a local Quebecor spokesman insists the Merced plant will keep churning out its contracted printing.

Quebecor World's stock has plummeted from about $15 a share at the beginning of 2007 to $1.79 when Friday's New York Stock Exchange closed. Less than two weeks ago, the company hired its sixth CEO in four years and declared a net loss of $315 million during the third quarter.

Shortly afterward, a plan to sell its European printing division -- touted as the key to financial stability -- soured.

With a C ranking, the lowest possible, from Standard & Poor's stock report this month, some Canadian financial analysts have even speculated that the Quebec-based printing company -- even with more than $6 billion in revenue last year and a former Canadian prime minister as chairman -- may be headed for bankruptcy.

Word circulated earlier this month that the Merced plant, a giant presence in the local economy for decades, might close its doors. (Only Foster Farms, with 3,500 employees, has more private-sector workers in the county.)

Company officials vehemently denied the closure reports, calling the notion "rumor and speculation ... absolutely incorrect."

Company spokesman Tony Ross said the changes at the corporate level haven't had an impact on the Merced plant's operations. He refused to discuss the problems. "I'm not going to get involved in a conversation about the industry," he said. "I choose not to at this particular time."

He wouldn't speculate about whether local employees are concerned about Quebecor's stability. Over the past year, however, the corporation closed three plants in the U.S., two of them in the magazine group.

Such assertions about major factories leaving Merced surface from time to time around Merced and rarely prove true, Economic Development Manager Frank Quintero said.

After hearing the most recent speculation, he e-mailed the company's human resources department, which also debunked it.

Still, companies sometimes do leave the Cooper Avenue industrial park. There's the tombstone from the Unilever plant where spaghetti sauce was made by 124 full-time employees. Nearby, Sierra Beverage remains quiet after being shuttered earlier this year.

Quintero looks at the upside of the vacancies. "We see it as an opportunity: 53 acres to bring in another manufacturer to the community," he explained. "The average Merced resident thinks, 'What's wrong with our economy? What will shut next?'"

As the parent company's new CEO, Jacques Mallette, tries his hand at solving Quebecor World's woes, the impact of the local operation, often referred to as Color Press by longtime locals, is obvious and significant: tax revenue, prestige and jobs.

If the printing presses were to shut down, Merced's unemployment rate would rise by a whole percentage point.

The Cooper Avenue factory maintains a low profile as it hauls in rolls of paper the size of picnic tables, spins them through the multistory printing presses and ships the glossy finished products out to readers across the West Coast.

With the exception of a company spokesman who refused to discuss changes and problems at the corporate level, no company officials local or in Canada returned phone calls during the last week for this article.

Despite the official silence, Quebecor's impact on Merced speaks volumes.


Merced's type of business
World Color Press decided to build a press facility in Merced during the late 1970s, a time when the city, the Chamber of Commerce and other companies were actively searching and courting major manufacturers.

Then-City Manager Allan Schell recalled that the company also considered nearby cities before settling on Merced, possibly because of the easy railroad access. Decades later, railroad tracks were routed into the facility to make deliveries even easier.

Just as now, Merced was looking to improve its budget through sales tax revenue and jobs. It found a winner with the printer. "It was humongous," 77-year-old Schell remembered. "That's a word I don't normally use."

The printing plant began accepting applications during the summer of 1981 for the initial 100 jobs, considered to be high-level and well-paying. More than 650 applied the first day, and 2,500 had returned job applications by the week's end, according to Sun-Star reports at the time.

By September 1981, the plant began printing issues of TV Guide, its major client, and expanded its operation by adding presses over the next two decades.

Because it's within the city's redevelopment area, the company's taxes were pumped into renovating the downtown area to attract more businesses, Schell explained.

The success of the current downtown can be partially attributed to the print shop's presence.

In 1999, Quebecor Printing paid $870 million and merged with World Color Press to become Quebecor World, Inc.

The new company also assumed the $1.3 billion in debt from World Color Press. By then, the Merced plant was up to 800 employees, and a $20 million press was installed that added another 100 positions.

On its Web site, Quebecor asserts that it's the largest printing operation for magazines, catalogues and directories, which are published with the help of 29,000 employees spread across 120 worldwide sites.

Chances are many of the magazines on coffee tables and in doctors' offices across the West Coast were printed in Merced.

Read all over
The Merced plant's presses rarely stop rolling, and the company is focused on making sure every site is meeting its full potential.

A company newsletter from October informs employees that they can pocket a $350 check if the plant exceeds a target of doing 20 percent better than projected. As of August, it reads, the company was 30 percent above its target.

The company is also using the Six Sigma approach to business, pioneered by Motorola, which strives for near-perfection in business processes. Success with the program could mean $7.6 million in savings, according to the newsletter.

The Merced complex's assessed value in 2006 is listed at $151.6 million, said Quintero, the city's economic development manager, adding that more than $63.7 million has been invested in the plant since 2000.

The facility is No. 1 on the city's property tax sheets, bringing in $1.6 million every year that's divided among various agencies.
Quintero estimates that each position at Quebecor has led to a job-and-a-half of new industry. Employees buy homes, groceries and cars, powering the local economy.

Those are all ripple effects of what can't be seen by the drivers who pass by Quebecor's back wall, a view along Santa Fe Drive that only hints at the plant's size.

The presses and office were built on a deep, 500,000-square-foot concrete slab to support the mammoth steel structures. By comparison, the SuperTarget slated for Atwater will be 178,000 square feet.

In an aerial shot of Merced, the white roof of Quebecor's 47-acre complex is easily spotted. No buildings stand out nearly as much.

Inside the building, there's a one-desk reception office with a black printing press on a mantle. Magazines printed by the Merced division flank the antique. Titles include Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, Entertainment Weekly, The Economist and Time. And that's just a sampling.

Corporate changes
Quebecor's online press release archive for 2007 has recently been filled with carefully couched news of reversals, though its spokesman said he can't expand on what's been happening.

In October, the company told shareholders it would pay dividends. Because of regulatory requirements, it suspended payment in late November until mid-2008, when finances could be sorted out.

At the beginning of November, the company announced that it would sell its European printing division to Roto Smeets De Boer for $341 million, which would help reduce its debt and was considered key to its 5-Point Transformation Plan by providing financial flexibility.

That fizzled in mid-December after RSDB's shareholders voted against the deal.

Next, the company decided it would refinance its accounts in November. By the next week, that plan was canceled.

Four days later, CEO Wes Lucas told the company's board that he was leaving to pursue other opportunities after joining the company in May 2006.

Jacques Mallette, chief financial officer and executive vice president, was promoted to fill the vacancy in the Montreal office. It remains to be seen what his first actions will be.

Back in Merced, Quintero monitors Google news alerts for Quebecor and many of Merced's other major players so he can keep up on the latest developments.

While he's aware of what's been happening at the corporate offices, he said his focus is on making sure the Merced plant can be as efficient and profitable as possible. "We can't influence what happens in their headquarters," Quintero explained.

The city is working to install a traffic signal at the corner of Cooper Avenue and Highway 59 because Quebecor employees have complained that the traffic makes getting to work slower.

With many manufacturing industries facing tough times, Quintero said it makes even more sense for city leaders to diversify local business into technology, research and innovation.

Otherwise, "Stop the presses" may mean a headline none of them wants to see.


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

More bad news for Quebecor World as CEO jumps ship

ROBERTO ROCHA
The Gazette; CanWest News Service contributed to this report

http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/business/story.html?id=8f2968d7-0c30-43db-8121-0de48f0c9f92
Tuesday, December 18, 2007



CREDIT: CHRISTINNE MUSCHI REUTERS
Quebecor World CEO Wes Lucas stepped down yesterday after only a year and a half on the job.

Adding to a laundry list of bad news, the chief executive of Quebecor World resigned yesterday, leaving the troubled printer in the hands of its chief financial officer.

CEO Wes Lucas stepped down "to pursue other opportunities," as the company faces a liquidity problem and a near-junk stock battered from months of bad news.

Lucas leaves the top post after only a year and a half on the job.

Mallette, former CEO of folding carton-maker Cascades Boxboard Group Inc., has been with Quebecor since 2003.

Quebecor World also announced yesterday the resignation of Reginald Brack as a director, the second board member to step down in less than one month.

Quebecor World's shares lost 10 per cent of their value yesterday, closing at $1.57.

The stock was worth $15 seven months ago.

Quebecor World has been losing money for the last three quarters, shocking the market with a $315-million (U.S.) net loss in the third quarter

The latest setback saw Quebecor World fail to sell its European operation to Dutch printer RSDB NV for $341 million U.S. RSDB shareholders rejected the offer.

"I saw this coming two years ago," said billionaire money manager Stephen Jarislowsky, whose firm Jarislowsky Fraser Ltd. manages 4.3 million Quebecor World shares.

"If a company has too much debt and expanded too fast, it was bound to go bad, especially in this business, which is a shrinking business," Jarislowsky said.

"People don't like to pay for all the new equipment it needs," he added.

The printing company is now saddled with $2.4 billion U.S. in debt, which the firm has been unable to unload after a $750-million refinancing plan also fell through.

Millions of dollars have been spent to overhaul the commercial printer, which is battling industry trends, including shrinking demand, overcapacity and cutthroat pricing.

Analysts have speculated that Quebecor World will either be privatized by parent company Quebecor Inc. or be sold to one of its competitors.

Possible buyers would be Montreal-based Transcontinental Inc. or Chicago's R. R. Donnelley & Sons Co.

rrocha@thegazette.canwest.com

© The Gazette (Montreal) 2007

In the End Is freedom just another word for nothing left to lose?

BoSacks Speaks Out: As someone who circulates the world's oldest e-newsletter, I understand the concept of this article completely. As is written below:

"There are only three ways to pay for media, I pay, you pay, or someone else pays."

"Talk about your plenty, talk about your ills, One man gathers what another man spills"
Jerry Garcia


In the End Is freedom just another word for nothing left to lose?
by Joe Mandese
http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.san&s=71711&Nid=37733&p=204904


It's been said, there's no free lunch. But how many people know where that phrase originates from? It comes from a time when bars and taverns would put out sumptuous free lunches to entice the working crowd in for a midday pint or two. The practice, not unlike the more contemporary "happy hour," appeared to give something away for free, but it was really just an early example of grassroots promotional marketing. Nowadays, the term "no free lunch" is used broadly to describe any kind of value exchange where someone appears to be getting something for free, but - knowingly or unknowingly - pays an implicit price. The reality is there is also no such thing as free media. It may seem free to a user, but somewhere, somehow, someone is funding the cost of producing and disseminating it.

"There are only three ways to pay for media," consultant and author Shelly Palmer declared last year while moderating a discussion on the subject at the OMMA Hollywood conference in Los Angeles. "I pay, you pay, or someone else pays." The pronoun in Palmer's model depends on who the speaker is, but assuming it comes from the point of view of a media content owner, the economics work thusly.

>> I pay: The media content owner eats the cost of producing and/or distributing content for free, because doing so generates other economic benefits

>> You pay: The consumer pays directly for the cost of media content either via subscription services or à la carte purchases

>> Someone else pays: Typically, sponsors or advertisers who want to associate their brand or brand message with media content provided free to the consumer

"No matter what economic formula you use, media content comes with a price," says Palmer, "And ultimately, it comes down to one of those three models, or some hybrid version of them."

As such, Palmer says the notion of free media isn't really all that new. Obviously, the commercial media marketplace has long provided content for free, or been significantly subsidized by advertising. But even seemingly free forms of media content, such as public broadcasting, comes with a price. Public television, for example, exploits at least two of the models. Consumers pay directly by making contributions to public broadcasters. Someone else pays - both government tax dollars and corporate underwriters - to provide content to the public.

Palmer scoffs at the notion that Radiohead's "pay-what-you-want" album sales model is at all a breakthrough. While a third of consumers who downloaded the band's latest album paid something for it, the real point of the model was to get the band's music heard to generate residual sales in the form of concerts and merchandising.

"It's really the Jerry Garcia model," says Palmer, referring to the late lead guitarist of the Grateful Dead, who encouraged deadheads to record the band's live performances and distribute and share the recording for free, because it would generate a broader marketplace for the band's music and concert tours.

As far as media content formats go, the music industry has been the canary in the coal mine of free media models. The incursion of illegal and illicit peer-to-peer file sharing networks has essentially killed the "you pay" model and has sent record label executives in search of new economics. One model that seems to be working is the "someone else pays" version. Free, ad-supported music download sites like SpiralFrog are popping up to offer an economic solution in which everyone seems to win. Music labels and performing artists get paid by a cut of advertising revenues. Advertisers get valuable advertising impressions and goodwill from consumers. Consumers get free music and clean consciences.

Ultimately, the "someone else pays" model works because consumer attention has an intrinsic economic value for advertisers, sponsors and corporate underwriters. In its extreme, some developers have even tried paying consumers directly or indirectly for their attention. During the late 1990s, PeoplePC gave personal computers away to consumers who agreed to look at advertising on their desktops, while NetZero gave them free Internet access in exchange for advertising exposure. The most aggressive example of the pay-for-attention model, perhaps, was Nat Goldhaber's Cybergold, a company that was founded on the premise that it would pay consumers cash for their attention to advertising messages. None of the pay-for-attention models tried so far have been successful, but companies continue to explore new variations on old themes.

"Some people think free is not a model, but it is a perfectly valid one," says Palmer, who circulates his own newsletter and video series to 50,000 subscribers daily - all for free. "All the things that come with that notoriety are the spoils of the cost," he says, noting that the provision of free media content has boosted sales of his book, as well as his demand and fees as a speaker and a consultant. Invite him out for happy hour and maybe he'll tell you all about it.

Joe Mandese is Editor of MediaPost.

107 Magazine Predictions for 2008

107 Magazine Predictions for 2008
By Dylan Stableford
http://www.foliomag.com/2007/107-magazine-predictions-2008

It's that time of year again, when magazine editors and publishers reflect on the perennially "crazy" year past ("What the hell just happened?") and bravely look to the future. Questions are pondered ("Which magazines will fold? Which will survive? And just how will Jann Wenner commemorate the Rolling Stone's 41st anniversary?"). Answers are elusive. Nonetheless, FOLIO: asked some of the media industry's best and brightest to send us their predictions for 2008. Their responses follow, largely unedited, in the order they were received.

NAME: Andy Cohn
TITLE: VP, publisher, the Fader2008 PREDICTION: Even more magazines will fold in 2008 than in 2007. They will mostly be magazines that are established titles part of larger publishing companies who are steeped in the traditional (i.e. antiquated) model of publishing. Niche, targeted titles (yeah, like mine) will continue to thrive based on our ability to adapt to the challenges posed by the drastic changes taking place within the industry.

NAME: Emily Gordon
TITLE: Managing Editor, Print; editor, emdashes.com2008 PREDICTION: Magazines and movie studios will lease celebrity wombs for launch tie-ins, following the success of Jamie Lynn Spears' efforts for Juno. Magazines will both thrive and multiply, they'll just be tinier--five of them will fit in an iPhone case--and printed in OED-sized type, thanks to a new Lasik procedure that permits super-microscopic reading. A surprise change in campaign-financing rules will limit candidates' ads to text messages sent on the hour to every American through November 2008 (on the half hour for registered Independents); staffers will spend their time developing elephant and donkey emoticons and abbreviations for "reduced carbon emissions" and " Iraqi interim government," and there is no option to unsubscribe.

NAME: Rex Hammock
TITLE: President, Hammock publishing and Rexblog blogger2008 PREDICTION: I'll admit, I haven't yet figured out what exactly happened in the magazine-world in 2007. I think it was a fairly decent year for magazines, except I'm fairly certain that Samir Husni and I are the only two people alive who think that. Last year, I predicted that David Carey would be the magazine dude-of-the-year. I think I was right. So, for 2008, while I don't have actual predictions, I do have wishful thoughts in the guise of predictions:1. There won't be a recession in 2008.2. Despite the lack of a recession, paper prices will fall.3. Magazine websites will no longer be measured by page-views, allowing Forbes.com (and others) to stop using pageview-inflating "slide shows."4. Steve Jobs will make an announcement on January 15 that will change everything we think about the portable digital devices we formerly called laptops -- and, therefore, the concept of eBooks and digital magazines.5. No one in Britney Spears family will appear on the cover of a magazine in 2008.6. The Titans will go 14-2 during the 2008 season. Oh, wait. That's for another wisful thinking list I'm keeping.

NAME: Andy Borowitz
TITLE: Creator, BorowitzReport.com2008 PREDICTION: Rupert Murdoch will reduce the size of the Wall Street Journal by removing the facts.

NAME: Mark Newman
TITLE: Editor, Southern Breeze2008 PREDICTION: With as many times as I've been laid off from huge, multinational publishing companies, I would not hazard to guess about the future because I've been knocked around too much by the past!

NAME: Maer Roshan
TITLE: Editor-in-chief, Radar magazine2008 PREDICTION: Dave Zinczenko will get his own show on NBC.

NAME: Paul Conley
TITLE: Owner, Paul Conley Consulting2008 PREDICTION: 1. I'm more than a little worried about b-to-b publishing revenue in 2008. Print advertising will continue to shrink, and I think it's going to be a tough year for online advertising too. Even worse, as we've seen in the past, tough times in b-to-b often lead to ethical disasters. I predict that as money grows tight, more publishers will cross the ad/edit line and engage in the sorts of behaviors that embarrass us all. 2. It's hard to launch new products when b-to-b editorial staffs are as lean as can be. But with little evidence that revenue will rise, I don't expect an increase in hiring. Rather, I predict smart publishers will turn to more creative and low-risk methods. I expect an increase in outsourced deals in which publishers offer a revenue split to freelancers to create and manage new online products.

NAME: Samir Husni
TITLE: Mr. Magazine2008 PREDICTION: Only two people can tell you the future: God and a fool ... Since I know I am not God, I am not going to make a fool of myself ... however, the magazine business will still be alive and kicking...more will be born than die ... Happy New Year.

NAME: Bob Sacks
TITLE: President/Publisher Magazine consultant2008 PREDICTION: The writers' strike will end and the public will in droves not return to TV as it was. Prime time will get shorter and shorter as it nears its death knell. The public at large moves onto the more stylized, personal, leisure time pursuits of MeMedia. Newspapers continue the trend to be magazines, and magazines become more focused and highly niche-ified. Time Warner will continue to go to the gym and shed off its excess weight, becoming a leaner and more focused fighting media machine. The Social networking hubbub will mature, peak, drift and then meld into what it should have been all along - a niche group of (fill in the blank) music listeners, readers, dentists, or manically connected wannabes. Next year will be like this year, except more highly concentrated, with more old time magazine standards fluttering before our eyes and evaporating in a cloud of shareholder smoke. Samir Husni, Mr. Magazine, will admit that BoSacks has been right all along. Oh yes, and that in 2008 BoSacks will send out the 13,500th edition of the oldest known e-newsletter on the planet.

NAME: Jason Chupick
TITLE: Co-Editor, PRNewser2008 PREDICTION: Magazines will continue to push writers to blog when many don't want to, yet they won't put the push behind them to generate much traffic. Portfolio is a good example, as were the Business2.0 blogs. The quote I've been honing is something like "take your rightful place in the media-eat your lunch or someone else will." PR for media properties who put content online in realtime works, and you can see it work. It's a matter of having the eye to know what parts of the content will get the blogosphere, link aggregators and even competing MSM interested (as is the case when brokering a scoop to get credit) excited.

NAME: Joe Ciarallo
TITLE: Co-Editor, PRNewser2008 PREDICTION: Just like Brandon Holley went from Jane to Yahoo and Erick Schonfeld from Business 2.0 to TechCrunch, we will see more print people move to online media. Whether it is because of publications shutting down, as it was with Brandon and Erick, or because people want to get "ahead of the curve," the digital shift will continue in a big way, and we will see several more high profile journalists start their own blog network, ala Om Malik and GigaOM. From a PR perspective, journalists will continue getting flooded with pitches, both good and bad, and the lines between media, advertising and PR will continue to blur.

NAME: Melissa Walker
TITLE: Former editor, Elle Girl, and author2008 PREDICTION: Brandon Holley leads Yahoo to new levels of editorial success with her crack team of smart-girl editors who miss Elle Girl and Jane.

NAME: Lance Ulanoff
TITLE: Editor-in-chief, PC Magazine2008 PREDICTION: Magazines are cool again. With advertisers and marketers stinging over diminishing digital returns, many will return to their tried and true friend: the print book. This will have positive and negative repercussions. Readers will heartily embrace thicker books and glossy ads, but marketers still won't have learned how to measure impact. By the end of the year many will be trying to come up with a grand plan from print-ad response measurement and others will go crawling back to the Web. End result: The Web continues to grow at a healthy pace, but magazines recoup just enough advertising to find new life and live to fight another day.

NAME: Keith Kelly
TITLE: Columnist, New York Post2008 PREDICTION: Chaos and confusion and uncertainty around every bend. CEOs on the hook and under fire. Mergers, shutdowns, selloffs. In other words, pretty much like this year, only worser. Meanwhile, in a big surprise, ad pages rise by 4 percent for magazines, a beneficiary of the lingering writers strike and saturation of TV and radio markets with political ads.

NAME: Jonathan Simpson-Bint
TITLE: President, Future US2008 PREDICTION: In terms of magazines, I think the web will bite harder on specialist press in '08. I don't have a crystal ball, but it seems like as fast as we're all running to build content and community, the aggregators are running faster and getting smarter. They're our biggest enemy, no question. Oh, and the economy. Mustn't forget that. R********s often help specialist press as they tend to focus people back on the things they really care about, but a major r******** will be bad news for everyone.

NAME: Jamie Lendino
TITLE: Editor, SmartDeviceCentral.com2008 PREDICTION: 2008 *should* be a banner year for mobile TV in the U.S., but it probably won't be. Right now, U.S. carriers still treat mobile TV like a rare and amazing invention, despite the fact that Asia and Europe have broadcast it for years. As a result, U.S. carriers price it accordingly. Unless they lower service costs, add more live TV channels and full-length programming, and stop relying on recycled, three-minute, "bite-size" clips that few people want, mobile TV here in 2008 will look a lot like it does in 2007.On the other hand, the iPhone flung open the gates for the mobile Web, letting folks access real desktop Web sites on the go. Plus, regular cell phones are already getting more capable Web browsers and higher-resolution screens. That's great for reading the New York Times. But the industry needs to go a step further and add Flash and Javascript support, so that more of these sites look right on 2-inch and 3-inch LCDs. Combine that with a slew of publications going mobile, including Esquire, Slate, and Time magazine, and 2008 could finally be the year of the mobile Web.

NAME: Henry Donahue
TITLE: CEO, Discover magazine2008 PREDICTION: 2008 is going to be a surprisingly good advertising year for magazines. Ignoring the useless hype that pits print and online against each other, publishers will continue to get better at selling integrated packages that highlight the strengths of both forms of media. At the same time, the election year will drive a surge in corporate image advertising, particularly on the topics of energy conservation and the environment.

NAME: Reed Phillips
TITLE: Managing partner, desilva + phillips2008 PREDICTION: Last year, I said I'd be watching with great interest the possible sale or break-up of the Tribune Company. Now, I think it is safe to predict that the company will be sold any day now. [EDITOR'S NOTE: Less than an hour after Reed sent this over, prediction #1 came true.] My prediction for 2008 is that by year-end valuations for newspapers, specifically, and print media, in general, will start to rebound.

NAME: John Brady
TITLE: Editorial consultant, visiting professional at Scripps School of Journalism2008 PREDICTION: In the year ahead, I envision Newsweek pulling ahead of Time magazine as the leading newsweekly. The redesign of Newsweek strikes me as being more successful than the overhaul of Time in the past year. Time's choice of columnists (especially William Kristol, not to mention the ongoing silliness of Joel Stein) has diminished the magazine's core credibility; and the featurizing of the news is too random and at times too frivolous for the hardcore news reader. Look for a shakeup in the upper upper ranks of the magazine before year's end.

NAME: Rachel Pine
TITLE: SVP, branding and partnerships, Doubledown Media2008 PREDICTION: In 2008, we will see the first stirrings of privacy as "the new black." While social networking will still be huge, it will start to favor smaller communities made up of people who are invited to join because they are part of a particular affinity group. These people will be of tremendous value to marketers and will not be interested in activities such as "friending" a ham sandwich. A decline in the number of people who are willing to blog/comment/post video, etc for free on sites that are profiting others. In short, 2008 will be the year that a lot of online trends (and the people who use them) will begin to normalize. Having 236,258 Facebook friends does not make you popular. Creating content that generates ad impressions that pay someone else is, for the most part, ridiculous.

NAME: Jim Spanfeller
TITLE: President and CEO, Forbes.com2008 PREDICTION: If history looks back at 2007 as the tipping point for interactive media and the ad dollars that have migrated to the Web, pushing it to a position of prominence as a central media platform for advertisers, 2008 will be the year of the Interactive Marketer. CMOs now get the Web and have personal experience around its ability to power their brands, activate their customers and fuel their data analysis and marketing allocation optimization. The Web is still only at the beginning of its evolution and will remain a source of media innovation for some time, but the focus going forward will be less about the media and more about the marketer. The digitization of media will continue to disrupt the traditional media model and we will see more "late to the party" web acquisition and initiatives from major media players. From this perspective, 2008 will be a make or break year for companies like Time Warner and many of the major newspaper companies in the country.

NAME: Simon Kelly
TITLE: Chief Operating Officer, Story Worldwide2008 PREDICTION(S): 1. Brands will stop dipping their toes in the water and jump in with both feet, realizing they can turn themselves into fully-fledged media channels, supported by an 'Authority to Publish' that is rock-solid.2. Several large brands will appoint digital agencies will provide the lead AOR direction. Sadly only a few will be brave enough.3. Clients will realize that the usual branding agencies' approach to organizing hierarchies of brands and sub-brands is like re-arranging the deckchairs on the titanic. Pretty, organized, but liable to sink at any moment.4. Someone will make sense of Facebook.5. Web 2/3.0 will become 4.0 by March and then we can all move on as it'll become Web whatever. It just is.6. The penny will drop that that technology-based digital solutions are not the answer. We've been to this dance before - CRM was supposed to be the new nirvana but only resulted in enabling marketers to slice and dice to the Nth degree but delivering nothing of value to the customer. Web whatever is in danger of repeating the same mistake. Brands need to step up and own this transition otherwise Microsoft/Yahoo/Google et al will convince everyone there's no alternative to the latest technology solutions, forgetting the customer's information needs in the process. Publishers can help. Brands need to publish.7. OTT (Over The Top) delivery on the back of cable/broadband into the home will change the relationship between consumers and the networks.8. None of the above will happen and something new will emerge unexpectedly, making a mockery once again of the current state of things and any attempt to predict the outcome.

NAME: Ron Mwangaguhunga
TITLE: Co-Editor, FishbowlNY2008 PREDICTION: 2008 will be the year of luxury magazines just as the United States heads into a recession. The big topic will be whether or not all the excess is necessary, and does it stir class resentments. Lou Dobbs will probably chime in with some interesting analogies to Nero's Rome. Vogue's September 2008 issue will probably weigh as much as a Jaguar - the car not the animal. The Wall Street Journal will ramp up its luxury and fashion reporting with a big presence behind the tents-and at the parties-at Bryant Park Fashion Week. And NBC Universal will purchase TheStreet.com, making Jim Cramer a rich(er) man.

NAME: Neal Ungerleider
TITLE: Co-Editor, FishbowlNY2008 PREDICTION: As much as it surprises me to say this, 2008 will prove to be a good year for the Wall Street Journal. Despite News Corporation's many faults, the WSJ has been treading water during the past five years of Bancroft ownership and was in dire need of vision. The combination of Rupert Murdoch's advanced age (76 years old!) and the massive sums of money spent on acquiring Dow Jones point to the fact that it's a legacy purchase more than anything else. The WSJ is blessed with an intelligent, strong-willed and competitive newsroom (and, yes, op-ed staff) who will ultimately be able to rein in the hijinx of News Corp.'s bean counters and Harvard MBA yahoos. The combination of the Wall Street Journal's talented staff with News Corporation's endlessly deep wallet will be beneficial for the newspaper, the parent corporation and the general public-something none of us thought just three months ago.

NAME: Jeffrey S. Klein
TITLE: Chairman, 1105 Media2008 PREDICTION: There will be a modest economic downturn, but it will wreak havoc with ad budgets which are the easiest line item to be cut by short-sighted CEOs. As a result, the reallocation of ad budgets from print to online will continue at a dramatically faster clip than it has these past few years. Publishers who develop innovative new web products and services will be rewarded with increased online revenue growth, but it won't be enough to sustain overall profit margins.

NAME: Julia Allison
TITLE: Editor-at-large, Star magazine; columnist, Time Out New York2008 PREDICTION: Spurred on by Jennifer Love Hewitt standing up for herself on her blog (and reaping the rewards-a TMZ apology doesn't come easy!), celebrities and public figures will realize that they actually have efficacy to counter the gossip disseminated by the MSM, tabloids, and the blogosphere. Previously, their choices were A) hire a publicist or B) remain silent. This year, with the advent of unbelievably simple blogging/video posting tools, we'll see celebrities-for the first time ever-directly communicating with the public. This will in no way stem our desire to discuss these celeb's lives-it will just add a new perspective. Think about it-a three minute YouTube video that Britney/Lindsay or Paris made herself? The entire country would watch, no matter how terrible the lighting.

NAME: Ed Sussman
TITLE: President, Mansueto Digital2008 PREDICTION: Mainstream media will step into social networking in a big way, leveraging the unique advantages of established communities of readers drawn together by powerful brands and content. (Fair disclosure: FastCompany.com, a pioneer in this approach since 1997, will vastly expand its website early next year to blend in content and community.) While some big brands might leverage pure plays such as Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn to build their communities, many others, eager to reap the commercial benefits of social networking, will build their own networks. In order to achieve scale and create a good experience for their readers, some powerful brands might band together to link their networks, creating effective competitors to the pure plays. If successful in banding together, the dynamic that allowed Yahoo and Google to become more powerful than most of the brands they aggregate, will not be repeated. If unsuccessful, established brands will once again cede a big chunk of online ad revenue to the pure plays.

NAME: Paul Calento
TITLE: SVP, strategic development, InfoWorld2008 PREDICTION: "Measured" growth in b-to-b media will be modest, with expansion coming from under-the-radar opportunities, like new events, new category expansion, or integrated packages around new media types (mobile, video, etc.). Traditional, print-centric b-to-b media will continue to homogenize and struggle, as the opportunities for margin (both for media and their advertisers) fragment, creating growth for the most nimble. From an investment and/or private equity perspective, one existing Tier Two non-tech-focused media company, will be merged or repositioned with underperforming social media assets (second or third tier players, i.e. a company less known than a Facebook or LinkedIn) to increase valuation and audience acquisition (which will translate into monetized revenue in 2009). Many of their competitors will dismiss this move and open themselves up to challenges in the coming years. While a challenging year, those that embrace the diversification of media will see new revenue and expanded margins.

NAME: Chaunce Hayden
TITLE: Editor, Steppin' Out magazine2008 PREDICTION: Howard Stern will go back to terestrial radio by June 2008 ... and Sirius will be no more. I also predict Howard Stern will break up with Beth Ostrosky by November 2008 over his not wanting to have children ... a real sticking point.

NAME: Frank Locantore
TITLE: Director, the Paper Project, Co-op America2008 PREDICTION: The Green Predictions for 2008 can be summed up thusly: growing momentum. We'll see that the increased attention towards the environment over the past year will continue and gain build in 2008. This momentum will become increasingly evident. One Warning: Beware the paper supplier that tells you that burning trees and tree parts (biomass, or biofuels) is carbon neutral. They are selling you a bill of goods that will eventually harm your brand. (See Locantore's expanded predictions here.)

NAME: Chris Shannon
TITLE: Managing director, Berkery Noyes2008 PREDICTION: On the consumer side, M&A will be as busy as it was last year, as far as what's in the funnel. Strategic buyers will make a comeback and play larger role in 2008. Everyone out there that's either buying or selling it has to have a digital component. Next on the priority list for buyers is a mobile component. If you have a magazine to sell, the ones that have a Web site and even just the beginnings of a mobile product definitely have an advantage.

NAME: Laurel Touby
TITLE: mediabistro.com founder and senior VP2008 PREDICTION: A few predictions and some advice ...1. We're hearing that while print budgets are freezing, online budgets are growing considerably.2. The smart companies will leverage their print brands and invest not just by hiring more digital people, but by TRAINING their current teams;3. The smartest magazine companies will simultaneously hedge their bets by purchasing dot.coms that add digital heft and the revenue streams that their print brands aren't (yet) providing; Publishers/Owners, look to acquire sites that have created strong brands, community-style traffic, buzz and multiple revenue streams. Don't be stuck in your magazine-y minds. Buy companies that are going beyond same-old, same-old business models (i.e. be sure the sites don't merely rely on ad sales). Some that are doing it right: Babble.com, TheKnot.com, Etsy.com, JPGmag.com!4. Mag editors need to wake up. It was really cool in 2001 to hate the web. Now, it's really cool to be webby, but you're mostly faking it. You pretend you've embraced digital, but c'mon and admit it, you barely look at your own web site. Coming soon: Every editor will be called upon to be a producer of online content in some fashion. Don't just talk the talk anymore. Surf, read, go to conferences, learn what HTML is and does, learn how to play with images, how to use video, how to build your audience on MySpace. The days when editors are working in print alone are over. Get thee to www.8020publishing.com right away!!