Print More Trusted Source of Information Than Internet

Print More Trusted Source of Information Than Internet
MediaVest Study: Consumers Cite Health as the One Area Web Rules
By Nat Ives
http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=126001

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Reinforcing print publishers' frequent assertions of relationships with readers, new research by MediaVest suggests that readers trust print more than the web in almost every area.

People are seven times more likely to turn to print publications like Vogue for fashion and beauty content, according to new research from MediaVest.
Print's fashion and beauty coverage took the trust prize by the widest margin, outstripping readers who trust websites more by 24%, according to the study of 1,500 adults 18 to 54, which was complemented by analysis based on a Mediamark Research database. People are seven times more likely to turn to print for fashion and beauty content, the research found.

'Personal experience'
"Print offers something very, very unique, specifically around trustworthiness and authoritativeness," said David Shiffman, senior VP-connections research and analytics at MediaVest. "The personal experience people have with it is very different from what they're looking for and getting in the digital world."

The web beat print for trustworthiness in one area: health and wellness, where readers preferred digital sources such as WebMD by 3%.

"The research is going to help publishers develop and steer their content in the appropriate direction," said Robin Steinberg, senior VP-director of print investment at MediaVest. "When most magazines first launched their sites, they didn't have the correct approach of utility, immediacy and customization. They were basically taking content from the magazine and putting it online. Research such as this helps publishers to create online environments and experiences that align with user expectations of the online world vs. the offline or in-book."

The MediaVest study also found:
There remains very low duplication between the audiences for print publications and their online companions. Duplication ranged from 1% to 6% for every category except entertainment, where some titles reached duplication rates of 10%.

Print titles should deliver something different with their online extensions, according to 79% of respondents who were dual magazine and digital users. But only 44% said they strongly believed that publishers' sites really offer something unique.

Print will never die. Only 12% of respondents said they strongly believed that a publisher's site could easily replace the print product within the next five years.

Recession Could Bring More Mags

Recession Could Bring More Mags
Digital Media Prospers, Traditional Suffers In Recession
by Erik Sass
A FULL-BLOWN RECESSION WOULD PROBABLY take a substantial bite out of traditional media, according to a survey of industry analysts and independent researchers. But digital media will benefit from these draw-downs as financially strapped marketing executives shift dollars online, seeking more transparent measures of ROI. In many cases, a recession would simply accelerate a long-term trend that is already underway.

Of course, the $64,000 question is: are we actually headed for a recession, defined as two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth? While this issue is beyond the scope of this article, recent headlines are discouraging. On Monday, JP Morgan Chase bought Bear Stearns for a negligible $2 per share, and last week Standard & Poors said banks still stand to lose up to $285 billion from bad sub-prime mortgage loans, further tightening the global credit crunch. On the consumer side, the Conference Board's monthly Consumer Conference Index fell to 75 in February, down sharply from 87.3 January--reaching its lowest level since November 1993. And manufacturers are reporting lower sales in the automotive, technology, and packaged goods categories.

Some ad agencies are already feeling the squeeze, according to a global survey by ICOM, a network of independent agencies. The ICOM survey found that six out of 13 American ICOM member agencies said their clients were already cutting back budgets, with an average reduction of 34%. Most of the burden fell on print and broadcast.

So what would a recession mean for traditional media? TV and consumer magazines should be able to hang tough, say industry observers--but it's not a pretty picture for radio and newspapers.

TV
TV may eke out some growth in 2008, according to Vincent Létang, a senior analyst with Screen Digest, a global media research firm based in London. Létang predicts 1.5% growth in U.S. TV ad revenues in 2008, thanks to big boosts from the Olympics and the presidential election. But the hangover will come in 2009, he added, as the weak economy and lack of big events drive marketers to freeze and maybe even slash broadcast budgets. As revenues stagnate, Screen Digest sees TV's share of total U.S. ad spending falling from 43% in 2008 to 41% in 2012.

Magazines
In the event of a recession, consumer magazines will continue to vary in terms of success, according to Samir Husni, the chair of the journalism department at the University of Mississippi, also known as "Mr. Magazine." "Luxury magazines are fairly recession-proof, and can really weather any market, because the upscale advertisers don't get affected nearly as much," but "the mass magazines are going to see a slowdown in terms of ad pages." To make up the revenue shortfalls, many magazines will raise their newsstand prices, a trend that's already in motion. While this will produce a short-term slump in newsstand sales, Husni said magazines typically rebound within 6-12 months.

On a somewhat surprising note, Husni also expects the recession to spur the launch of new magazines. Pointing to past recession launches like Fortune, Esquire, and Entertainment Weekly, he explained that the weak advertising environment lowers the competitive bar for entry to the magazine business. That is, while big publishers struggle to maintain expensive operations, new titles can sneak in and carve out a niche. "Then when the market recovers, they ride the upward trend with everyone else."

Newspapers
In the event of a recession, the outlook is considerably gloomier for newspapers and radio, where revenues are already declining because of long-term secular trends, which were in evidence well before the economy began to sputter.

After slipping 1.68% in 2006, total U.S. print newspaper ad revenues tumbled an alarming 9% during the first three quarters of 2007 compared to the same period in 2006, to $30.5 billion (fourth-quarter figures aren't yet available). "And that was in relatively good economic times," observed Ken Doctor, a newspaper analyst with Outsell, Inc., who said "a recession would simply compound the structural change of readers and advertisers moving from print to online."

Newspaper woes are due mostly to competition from the Internet, where online classifieds, for example, provide a superior platform for matching individual buyers and sellers of goods and services. Thus, print classifieds--a traditional mainstay of newspaper revenues--fell over 15% in the first three quarters of 2007 compared to 2006, to $10.2 billion. Meanwhile, national and retail categories are posting single-digit declines, as online search and display ads give big advertisers a more precise view of ROI. Between this earlier trend and new data showing a decline in retail consumption, Doctor forecast "a deepening, accelerating slide in newspaper revenues," although he wouldn't venture a prediction in percentage terms.

Radio
In a recession, radio is in the same boat as newspapers, although maybe not the sinking end. Despite impressive reach--with nearly 94% of the U.S. adult population listening to radio at least once a week--radio recently seems to be losing its charm for key advertisers, for reasons that have nothing to do with the economy at large. According to the Radio Ad Bureau, total revenues fell 2% to $21.3 billion in 2007, and Marci Ryvicker, a radio analyst with Wachovia Capital Markets, predicts that even with political ad spending, revenues will fall at least 1% in 2008.

The big blows for radio are coming in the local ad market, where--like newspapers--radio suffers in comparison with interactive media: total local revenues fell 2% in 2007, to $15.1 billion. "In general, the traditional local ad market remains under attack from more targeted media," Ryvicker observed, adding that "we anticipate the reallocation of ad dollars to new media to continue for the foreseeable future."

Internet
As indicated, analysts expect digital media to win big during a recession. True, Internet revenues plunged 27% during the 2001 downturn, but they reason that the Internet has proven itself as an advertising medium in the intervening period (Google, for example, saw total ad revenues rose from $66.9 million in 2001 to over $16.4 billion in 2007). In the event of another downturn, analysts expect marketers to turn to the Internet's superior targeting and metrics to maximize ROI.

But there's some disagreement about where, exactly, all the cash will go. In a recent note, Forrester Research predicted that cost-per-action marketing (principally search) and online direct marketing (including email) will be the biggest beneficiaries. That agrees with a survey of marketers by the Direct Marketing Association which found that, even as 47% of marketers anticipate a recession, 50% said they would spend more on email marketing, 44% plan to spend more on database segmentation, and 35% plan to spend more on search optimization.

Forrester also predicted more spending on social applications that allow advertisers to launch low-cost word-of-mouth, viral, and buzz marketing campaigns. Forrester says these kinds of social campaigns are more likely to get the consumer to consider a product than traditional brand advertising--a key advantage when consumers are guarding their pocketbooks.

Forrester sees less of the new money going to online branding, principally display advertising. But some executives say this ignores growing interest in the Internet as a branding tool. Sarah Pate, CEO of AdMission, boasted that "the accountability of many of the new branding models has already brought more budget from some of our larger national consumer clients for 2008."

Can We Do That Measurability Thing?
Well before the current economic woes set in, some traditional media strove to adopt digital measurement techniques that would allow them to compete with the Internet. But it now looks like the new metrics will have only limited availability through most of 2008, meaning the Internet will still run the table on measurability, at least for the time being.

TV advertisers have been guardedly optimistic about Nielsen's C3 commercial ratings, promising to measure audience exposure to commercial pods, but in February Nielsen sent a letter to clients conceding that there were systemic problems in the delivery of these ratings and advising of further delays. A series of phased improvements at 20-day intervals will take at least until July to get the system up to speed. Meanwhile, the Media Rating Council continues to audit Nielsen's C3 system, meaning media buyers are using unaccredited ratings as currency for ad buys.

Radio broadcasters hung their hopes on Arbitron's Portable People Meter, a passive electronic measurement device that will eventually replace the old-fashioned paper diaries filled out by listeners from memory. But problems with the PPM panels have kept Arbitron from meeting its target sample sizes, prompting the company to delay deployment in the country's biggest markets by 3-9 months, including New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, all now scheduled to get PPM ratings in September 2008.

Magazine advertisers have also pushed publishers to begin producing more rapid and precise measures audience and circulation. The Magazine Publishers of America recently responded to these demands with its plan to solicit proposals for a new audience metric derived from Internet surveys about readership. But this project is in its infancy, and is unlikely to bear fruit before the end of the year. Meanwhile, the Audit Bureau of Circulations has succeeded in signing up most major publishers for its new Rapid Report service --but a recent note from ABC urging publishers to turn in data in a more timely fashion suggests the service is struggling to fulfill its mission.

For Newspapers and Radio, Online Growth Isn't Enough

In the event of a recession, the rising Internet tide may well lift all boats, including Web revenues for newspapers and radio. But it's unlikely that growth in these areas will offset losses due to structural and cyclical downturns, as their contribution to total revenues remains small.

Ken Doctor of Outsell, Inc. noted that most big newspaper publishers' online revenues have dwindled from the robust rates of 20%-30% a few years ago to a more modest 8%-15% per year. The slowdown is bad news, he went on, because most publishers still derive less than 10% of their total revenues from online advertising.

Meanwhile, according to Wachovia's Ryvicker, the majority of big radio broadcasters get at most 1%-2% of their total revenues from online business. Non-spot revenues, including online, grew 10% to almost $1.7 billion in 2007. However, online radio revenues accounted for no more than $500 million of that, or just 2.3% of the total. Furthermore, broadcasters remained locked in a battle with recording artists over royalties for songs played online, which could jeopardize future growth.

BoSacks Speaks Out: The Economy, the Recession and Publishers

BoSacks Speaks Out: The Economy, the Recession and Publishers

We are clearly headed into some dicey economic times. For some of us a recession will create new problems of instability where we are already under stress - from new competitors, the internet, and the demand for accountability. At the same time some of us will not only survive, but will actually thrive and prosper even under the conditions of a recession. How can this be?

There are lots of factors, but I put most of it down to creative management, market position, and stamina. Stamina is the easiest to understand. It is the wherewithal to have dogged determination to succeed.

Stamina is not enough though, you also need the proper market position, which is where you are in the "food chain" of information distribution. Do you own your media segment? Do you have a commanding share of your particular niche? Do you have the best editorial/content? If so, you have the proper market position.

And lastly, creative management. Do you have managers with the wit, the vision and, most importantly, the flexibility to adapt to changing market conditions?

Oh yes, and then there is luck. But a good deal of luck is recognizing any of the above conditions as it is flying by or landing near you. Once there is recognition, there needs to be an action plan to use that luck. And that brings us back to creative management,stamina, and market position.

What do you think?

Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)


Bad news for Big Media
By John Simons, writer
http://money.cnn.com/2008/03/23/news/companies/simons_media.fortune/index.htm

The Following few paragraphs represent a synopsis of the full article:

As the United States slips into recession, advertising spending is set to fall - spelling trouble for traditional media companies already battered by Internet upstarts.

(Fortune) -- Media industry watchers are no longer debating whether the United States economy is in recession. Rather the question is, "how bad will it get?" If recent trends continue, the outlook is likely bleak for broadcasters, magazine publishers, newspapers, cable operators and the conglomerates that own them.

Advertising spending - the fuel that powers the media and entertainment industries - is poised for a downturn as corporations and consumers grow frugal. Cutbacks in consumer spending are expected to take a toll on everything from Disney's theme parks to Time Warner's magazines and News Corp.'s newspapers, according to analysts.

After some detail the article went on to conclude the following:

Cowen and Company analyst Doug Creutz is preparing for a rougher ride for this recession. "Our industry thesis is informed by our view that a recession in 2008 is likely, and that its impact could be more severe than those experienced in either 1990-91 or 2001," he says.

Creutz does see some companies' weathering and even prospering during a downturn. He likes Viacom's prospects, for instance, because cable networks can rely on subscriber and affiliate fees to help offset an advertising slowdown.

For the complete article: http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=vd4eclcab.0.0.cuf4zubab.0&p=http%3A%2F%2Fmoney.cnn.com%2F2008%2F03%2F23%2Fnews%2Fcompanies%2Fsimons_media.fortune%2Findex.htm&id=preview

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

Then Think about this paragraph from the Wall Street Journal

IN THE LEAD
Executives Find Ways To Keep Moving Ahead Despite Economic Fears
By CAROL HYMOWITZ
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB120631928861158351-lMyQjAxMDI4MDI2NDMyMTQ5Wj.html

The collapse of financial titan Bear Stearns last week heightened concerns among executives across industries that the U.S. economy is in a recession. The mess on Wall Street has made it difficult for companies to get financing to do deals; slowed sales of cars, clothing, other consumer goods; and prompted managers to scuttle hiring plans and consider layoffs.

The worst thing business leaders can do, however, is panic, especially because the length and severity of a slowdown is impossible to predict. Here are some management lessons gleaned from recent events to help executives navigate successfully in coming months.

After some details the article goes on the following thought, a great one for all publishers:
Look overseas for growth. The weak dollar and continued growth in India, China and other emerging economics are a boon to small, and some big, U.S. companies with broad global reach. Cleveland-based Horizons, a maker of specialty metals and aluminum, expects overseas sales, which already account for 25% of its revenue, to double this year after also doubling in 2007. The company started expanding overseas five years ago -- first to Western Europe, Japan, Korea and Russia, then to Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Egypt and India.
"We'd be scrambling now if we weren't already global," says Wayne Duignan, director of international sales.
For the complete article:
http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=vd4eclcab.0.0.cuf4zubab.0&p=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle_email%2FSB120631928861158351-lMyQjAxMDI4MDI2NDMyMTQ5Wj.html&id=preview

Periodicals Postal Rate Hikes Confirmed

Periodicals Postal Rate Hikes Confirmed
Increase to take effect May 12.
By Joanna Pettas
http://www.foliomag.com/2008/periodicals-postal-rate-hikes-confirmed

The Postal Regulatory Commission has determined that the postal rate hike for Periodicals proposed last month-the first mandated to be tied to the Consumer Price Index-does not violate the new postal law and will go into effect on May 12.

Periodicals rates will increase on average about 2.72 percent according to the Postal Service, though David Straus, ABM Washington Counsel, estimates an increase of nearly 2.9 percent for almost all Periodicals, the difference being that a limited number of out-of-county pieces and in-county qualified publications now receive a discount.

According to the postal service, "Interested persons were given the opportunity to comment on the notice adjustment. Most of the comments focus on planned increases for specific rate categories or products. None claims that the planned increase for any class violates the price cap."

Under the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, the Postal Service may "bank" the difference between the CPI cap and the implemented price changes, which means that the .18 percent difference between the rate hike and the 2.9 percent CPI can be added to the CPI for rate hikes within the next five years.

Also under the new law, the Postal Service has extensive flexibility to vary rates within classes as long as the class average is CPI-limited. However, Straus says that the increases within the Periodicals class this time, at least, are very nearly across the board, with extremely small variations among different publications.

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The Economist Seeks Termination of Printing Agreement with Quebecor World
Publisher looking to end contract, but says it is open to new arrangement.
By Jason Fell
http://www.foliomag.com/2008/economist-seeks-termination-printing-agreement-quebecor-world

The Economist is looking to terminate its contract with commercial printer Quebecor World, but says it is open to discussing how to continue the relationship, according to a statement filed jointly by the companies. Quebecor World filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this year.

According to a court filing, The Economist wants to terminate its print agreement at the expiration of the initial term in September. The printing agreement would continue to be valid until then.

The Economist argues that it is being harmed by some of the automatic legal protection that the printer has received under its bankruptcy agreement. According to the filing, the magazine "is not seeking to enforce a monetary claim against the debtors of their estates. The Economist merely seeks to exercise its contractual right to terminate the printing agreement."

"We understand and respect the decision taken by The Economist and we will continue to provide them with the top quality product and service they expect," Quebecor World Magazine Group president Doron Grosman said in the joint statement. "We will also work with them in the coming months to prolong and extend our mutually beneficial partnership."

A Quebecor spokesperson could not immediately be reached for further comment.

In the court filing, The Economist does not say why it is seeking a termination of the printing agreement. A spokesperson for The Economist declined to comment.

Quebecor World, one of the world's largest printers, announced its bankruptcy filing in January and its entering into a $1 billion financing deal with Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley to help finance the company's operating needs. Earlier this week, the ailing printer said that, under bankruptcy protection, it would delay the release and filing of its 2007 financial statements until the end of April.

Social Networking Spawns New Print Mags

Social Networking Spawns New Print Mags
Former Conde Nast VP Mitch Fox Named President of 8020 Publishing
By Nat Ives
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Two months after Condé Nast let go Mitch Fox -- the former Vanity Fair and Details publisher who had risen to group president and publishing director -- he is returning to the magazine business, but in a very digital, user-generated way.

'Participant publications' like JPG aren't subject to mag industry rules about maintaining the division between editorial and advertising, so they can, and do, let marketers sponsor editorial sections.

Mr. Fox is moving to San Francisco as president-CEO of 8020 Publishing, whose high-polish travel and photography titles consist entirely of content submitted online and voted into their pages by online readers.

"The thing that appealed to me most was that all of the fundamental components that needed to be proven, to show whether or not this kind of modern media company could work, have already been proven," Mr. Fox said. "I just spent 18 years in the traditional magazine business, and it was exciting and I loved it, but now I want to be part of a media business that builds its properties in a whole new way."

Because 8020's "participant publications" are created by crowds, aren't part of the American Society of Magazine Editors and aren't subject to society rules about maintaining the division between editorial and advertising, they can and do let marketers sponsor editorial sections. The 16th print issue of JPG magazine will include themed sections such as "Fresh," "Human Impact" and, sponsored by Pentax cameras, "On the Go." Users who have joined jpgmag.com post fitting photos, then hope their fellow users vote their image into the bimonthly magazine. The themes in the third issue of Everywhere magazine will include "Jetset Weekend," sponsored by Expedia.

Samsung used JPG's site and print edition to advertise a new cellphone with a high-end camera, porting reader submissions to its own microsite and sponsoring a section called "Emotion Capture."

"What marketers are looking for are engaged audiences," said Chris Andrew, VP-group director for media at Digitas, where he is responsible for Samsung. "We're looking for beyond-the-banner advertising. For the type of atmosphere that we live in right now where everyone wants a little bit of fame, JPG and Everywhere make everyone a content generator."

Death of Print? Not at News Corp in Britain

Death of Print? Not at News Corp in Britain
News International unveils 'biggest printing plant in the world'
By Patrick Smith

Journalists at News International's four national newspapers will face wide-ranging changes when the company moves all printing from its Wapping headquarters in April.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BoSacks Readers Speak Out: Mag Industry Successes, Kindles, Ziff and more

BoSacks Speaks Out; My good friend Peter Meirs of Time Inc fame has created a short video that I think is really worth viewing. He was the chair of an excellent group discussion on digital magazines at the Publishing Executive trade show last week. Every time Peter and I get together in the same room, there is a wonderful time warp of sorts and our conversations careen towards that semi-accurate future of our business. I know that together we have conceptualized many reading devises that are 25 years or more on the horizon. When we do this, I know we are not wrong, we are just not right yet.

Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature's inexorable imperative.
H. G. Wells (1866 - 1946)

BoSacks Readers Speak Out: Mag Industry Successes, Kindles, Ziff and more
www.bosacks.com

Re: BoSacks Speaks Out: Review of the Kindle
and i would tell you that the magazine publishers don't want digital magazines to work. i really suspect they have no clue what to do with them since they don't get paid to make them work . . . but the kindle tells another wonderful story: linux works and works well, and great things can be built with it . . . i took windows off my two notebooks and i don't crash and i don't lose wireless signals.
(Submitted by an industry researcher and daily morning IM pal of BoSacks)

Re: Book lovers have emotional bond with paper
bob, this is absurd . . . i have always loved magazines, books and newspapers, now, i love my kindle . . . what a great way to buy and read books, especially if you are a 2 or more books per week reader, as i am.
i have no doubt that some years from now, most people will be doing most of their reading on egizmos . . . regards
(Submited by a Publisher)


Re: BoSacks Speaks Out: Review of the Kindle
you sir, are a voice of reason . . . the sony is a model t . . . and yes it is . . . . too bad u didn't have a kindle with you which is the tucker of e-book readers.
(Submitted by an industry pundit and writer)

RE: Book lovers have emotional bond with paper
Bo - I could not get into the show this week to hear your talk but hope that you would have talked about the Amazon Kindle - perhaps outfitted in full body armor. I have used the Kindle for a few months and it has become a must carry along. It has not 'replaced' the paper book nor do I feel it will ever do so. The Kindle is not all that useful on the beach (sand would not be a good thing). It is not yet readable in the dark (I cannot believe they did not find a way to offer even a light extension since the technology offers no backlighting). The graphs and photos do not work well at all. The wireless access is surprisingly fast and versatile and the bookmark, dictionary, notes and other features are quite intuitive (which is good since I hate reading directions). Most of all as with any first generation application it will be refined, they will get it better the second time around and likely the third time will be the charm. It is here to stay. Embrace it folks. It's not the end, it's only the beginning.
(Submitted by a longtime print and now marketing application guy)

Re: BoSacks Speaks Out: Review of the Kindle
I like mine as well, cool, but the back lighting real big disappointment, mags a total bust.
(Submitted by a Senior Director of Manufacturing)

Re: BoSacks Speaks Out: Review of the Kindle
Bo, I saw you at the show last week and was very impressed. Your three lectures were the best of all the meetings that I attended. But for me it was more the sum of the parts. Your keynote, then the Bo-epaper dissection and predictions and followed by your key trends of the industry, blended for me into a terrific forecast of where I need to apply my energy as a publisher and career focused family man. Many thanks for the very rational approach to a confusing business forecast. I guess I'm trying to say that you grounded me, and I need that.
(Submitted by a multi-title Publisher)

Re: Mag Industry Inches, With Some Success, Toward Efficiency
This is fascinating, and I've anticipated it for well over a decade.
If only the distros would buy all the copies -- like any rational business -- instead of the
consignment shellgame -- they would make it their business to get sell through up. Same should go for the stores.

I've been selling a significant portion of my niche titles NO RETURNS (at 75% off cover) for a decade. Some of the larger niche distributors (notably, XXXXXX) now request no returns contracts with all their vendors. (I was the first to suggest it to them, by the way.) These distributors that buy "no returns" from me keep the copy count really, really tight, but their sell through is great. I get a steady source of income in a timely fashion and they get a really excellent discount. Win-win-win.

Oh, and why should I, the publisher, pay for shrink? It's utterly beyond my ability to
control. If someone steals a box of cookies at Safeway, does Safeway tell the cookie company "too bad, it didn't scan?" Or if someone breaks a box of eggs, does Safeway tell the egg farmer -- "too bad, you should have made the eggs harder to break?"

BTW, I think if we are to be faced with shrink and SBT then we should get *paid* net 30 days from when the issue scans. Live by the scan, die by the scan, indeed.

P.S. I would dearly LOVE the big chains and distros to regulate for 50% sell through. It's
been my goal for years; I have tiny niche titles and I need to actually make *money* on newsstand.
(Submitted by a multi-title Publisher)

RE: ziff davis media files for bankruptcy
Do you know if the big creditors are printers? At first I thought it was strange that they were going to write off so much in return for the big majority stake in common stock. On reflection, it started sounding like someone pretty desperately needed those publications to keep printing, and that might well describe major printers who would be hard pressed to see that much business suddenly drop off the revenue side, which would smack their own stock prices.
(Submitted by a Writer)

RE Why do good magazines die
Bob: Greatly enjoyed your column which I read in a place I never bring my laptop.

My business depends in part on digital information and the web but I am
certain the flight from print is folly. Smart people will be making money
from print for as long as people can read - the written word is the basis of
our civilization and print is still the one of the best technologies for
disseminating and preserving the written word.

My motto in this business has always been, "first figure out what you want
to say, then figure out how to make it pay." The trouble with a lot of
corporate information businesses is that the decision makers really don't
care about the products. Editorially driven information enterprises are the
kind I love.

I just signed up for your newsletter. My interest in paper and pulp is due
to my involvement in a timber magazine, not as a potential buyer of paper.
(Submitted by an Unknown)

RE; Does the next generation read?
Finally I have a few moments to respond to your question of October, 2007 "Does the Next Generation Actually Read?" which you posed in Publishing Executive.

The one word answer is "Yes".

However they do not read useless words which still fill the gaps between ads and pretend to be of importance.

They want the information they need and they do not care whether it comes to them in leather bound, gold leaf, low acid content volume, which they physically have to access somewhere or visually in pictures or abbreviated in an IM. They can't waste their time with what the publishing industry habitually tries to pass off as important knowledge.

Their generation has to absorb about 10 times the knowledge we did and they have to do it in much shorter time. I like to compare our knowledge transfer industry (schools) as the most inefficient time spent in our lives. It is as if we tried to eat all we will need for the rest of our lives in the first 20 years. It does not work. They can no longer spend 20 years to learn all that we will need to know for the rest of our lives. Most of what the next generation will have to know has not even been invented yet. They will need access to knowledge instantly, whenever, and wherever they are.

I have just begun the 32nd year of publishing Futurific Leading Indicators. Part of the reason our very small circulation is reaching a new high every month is our formula for reporting news by:
eliminating all the unnecessary words to get the story across.
we also skip all self-serving, promotional verbiage that helps to fill news pages.
we make sure to eliminate all dead-on-arrival news items. These are items that are done with and have no impact of the future.
we do not promote any creed, politics or products.
we do not entertain, distract or create hype of any sort.

After this filtering we are left with bare facts that are organized in a logical format which continues and refines the picture we are presenting, month after month.

For these 32 years, our only agenda has been, and continues to be, to accurately forecast the future. It can be done . . . and somebody had to do it.

Hope this answers your question.

Keep asking why.
Yours for a better future,
(Submitted by a President)

Husni Vs. BoSacks - The Whole Experience vs. the Hole Experience

The following terrific exchange is from Samir Husni's Blog. It is clearly part of an ongoing and and very public debate between myself and my good friend Samir. If you ever get the chance to see us do this in action, please do not miss it. It has always been the highlight of any event or trade show we have been invited to attend. I kid you not.

Captain Renault: What in heaven's name brought you to Casablanca?
Rick: My health. I came to Casablanca for the waters.
Captain Renault: The waters? What waters? We're in the desert.
Rick: I was misinformed.
Casablanca (1942)


The Whole Experience vs. the Hole Experience
Posted by Samir Husni
http://mrmagazine.wordpress.com/
My friend Bob Sacks discovered a major gap in his e-paper experience. For years he has been predicting the future of mass reaching magazines and books to be on-line or through some usage of an electronic device such as the Sony Reader or Kindle. Well, Bob had the chance to put his predictions to practice and lived to write about it. He summed his e-reader, the Kindle, experience as such:

·The Ebook experience is excellent and enjoyable. It was book like and yet had features that no book has.
·The Enewspaper experience was fair. With a newspaper the expected visuals, photos and charts were non existent and that colored my reading and my expectations.
·The Emagazine was a complete flop.

To say I told you so will be entirely unfair. But, what I have been saying for years is that the new technologies are yet another way to spread the word and to have content delivered to readers and viewers. It is a new way and not a replacement or even a substitute. Each media must present the entire whole experience on its own. No media should be made to be like this or that. If we are working so hard to invent a medium that looks like paper and feels like paper, why bother? We have paper, so there is no need to reinvent the wheel.

Well, folks, click here to read Bob's entire review of the Kindle and enjoy the "hole" in his "whole" experience.

BoSacks Reply to "The Whole Experience vs. the Hole Experience"

Samir;
The fact that the magazine experience was a dud in the Kindle does not mean that the digital magazine experience cannot be achieved. It can be and it will become a wonderful experience. There are many flaws in this first generation e-paper reader, and all of those flaws are based in the design elements. But first we must acknowledge that the e-paper reading experience was excellent. The fact that Amazon stripped out the design elements from the files supplied does not mean that they can't and won't be included. If that is your only argument, you are very misinformed.

The digital magazine is alive and well. It grew over 115% last year, with at least 15 bona fide suppliers, and is expected to grow exceptionally for years to come. That growth is not based on epaper, but when the next generation of e-paper is available in 2011, the growth will be astronomical. It is fair to ask the question, WHY? There are many reasons - ease of use, connectability, newsworthiness - but perhaps above all is cost. Have you been tracking the cost of making magazines? These crippling costs combined with horrific inefficiencies of distribution will force publishers to offer better quality and more targeted print products at extremely high price points. The only answer for most of the magazine world will be digital editions. No, print is not going to go away. But it will not be the dominant information distribution vehicle. The publisher, the advertiser nor the reader can afford the print only world.
by BoSacks March 13, 2008 at 5:32 pm

--------------------------------------------------
My Dear Bob
Here you go again . . . putting words in my mouth, well putting words on my blog is more accurate . . . The debate is not whether digital magazines are well and alive, or whether e-paper will be here or not . . . The debate is about a new form of media which is being born to add to the rest of the media and not to REPLACE them . . . The digital magazine experience like Monkey magazine and other is a completely different experience than reading Maxim in print for example. Different media, different audiences . . . each and every medium, new or old, born or yet to be born, must try to create a complete whole experience and not just a "hole" in the experience . . . Whether print, broadcast, digital or whatever the new technologies will bring, if that medium does not create a complete wholesome experience with its audience it will be doomed . . .
All the best my friend,
Samir

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

My very dear friend Samir:

Write this down. You are correct about digital magazines having the ability to be different than print magazines. It can be very different, as is Monkey, or it can be a simple replica of a printed magazine. Most likely digital magazines will be fully media enriched, to take advantage of the new electronic medium that they ride upon, and to maximize the media possibilities. Your original position of shear enjoyment was that in my report on the Kindle epaper platform it was not a very good magazine experience. No it wasn't. But it will be, and my point in our exchange was that when that does happen correctly it will be as an epaper platform with full digital magazine functionality.

So to sum up this wonderful and informative exchange, you agree that digital magazines are and will be successful. You don't agree that epaper and digital magazines will someday replace the majority of printed magazines.


I'll go you one giant step further, my research with media Ideas ( http://www.media-ideas.net/ ) points out that the market for printed periodicals will further decrease by 15% through 2016 in North America and Europe (0.7 probability). And that within twenty five years, only 10% of the paper-based magazine industry will remain (0.6 probability).

Atlantic Assures Fans It Hasn't Sold Its Soul

Atlantic Assures Fans It Hasn't Sold Its Soul
Britney Cover Is Relevant to Venerable Title's New Aims -- a Hoped-for Return to Profitability
By Nat Ives

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Longtime readers of The Atlantic are likely to do double takes when they see Britney Spears on its next cover -- a rarified piece of media real estate more often occupied with subjects such as Pakistan's A.Q. Khan, the biological basis for morality, the human qualities of George Washington or, in 1996, "Why Americans Hate the Media."

Britney Spears will land on the cover of The Atlantic.

At 150 years old, The Atlantic remains an intellectual journal of public affairs and culture. But owner David Bradley also wants it to end a long spell in the red. So in the past year it poached Justin Smith from The Week to become its president; committed to moving its ad-sales team from Washington to New York while integrating digital and offline efforts; abandoned its online pay wall to lure more visitors; placed new emphasis on events including the Aspen Ideas Festival; and commissioned a magazine redesign.

Now the Britney cover story is bound to attract new attention to The Atlantic. The magazine maintains that the issue's editorial is not driven by Mr. Smith's ambitious five-year business plan, the redesign or any of the rest -- but it arrives at a time when The Atlantic's pages and newsstand sales are down, while celebrity titles are still going stronger than any magazine category.

Same perpsective
James Bennet, editor of The Atlantic since March 2006, said the Britney cover flows from the same rich artery as every Atlantic piece, and not just the Marilyn Monroe or Humphrey Bogart stuff from decades back. He also meant cover packages such as the exploration of possible pre-Viking contacts between the Old and New Worlds or the 1999 cover story on new theories of infectious disease.

"We are focusing The Atlantic really on what it does best, I think -- which is bringing its intelligence to bear on really important subjects, the most significant subjects in politics, business and the broader culture -- and making provocative arguments," Mr. Bennet said.

The title has undoubtedly caught new wind lately with high-impact pieces such as last December's "Why Obama Matters" and the March issue's "Marry Him," about settling for "Mr. Good Enough." The Britney feature, for its part, is a serious look into her hangers-on and the businesses that they build on her back; if it happens to help reverse The Atlantic's recent 5.4% decline in newsstand sales, so much the better.

But will core readers and advertisers stay true?

This is the question for magazines on the remake. The answers, especially amid the broader media-world transformation, can be brutal.

Subscriber revolt
Britney is "not anything that would interest me," said Richard Adin, 60, a Poughkeepsie, N.Y., business owner who said he's read The Atlantic for about a decade and holds, as the title confirmed, a subscription through 2016. "If I were looking at it on a newsstand I wouldn't buy it. It's bad enough when Britney takes up space in my New York Times."

Reader's Digest, another venerable brand, recently tested its longtime readers with a new logo, the first back-cover ads in 85 years and a design intended relate to younger readers. Nothing was done casually. "We carefully considered the reaction of our many older readers, because they're valuable to us," said Eva Dillon, president and group publisher. "Once you become accustomed to something, you don't like to see it change."

Rishad Tobaccowala, the ad guru in charge of the Denuo Group, said he trusts The Atlantic to handle pop well. "I believe it's in their core wheelhouse," he said. "But over time it's also consistent with them making their magazine current and compelling with today's trends."

Magazines' covers are still their most public face, however, so Britney's prime Atlantic position will draw notice from several sides. When Howell Raines was executive editor at The New York Times, many reporters resented his push for more pop-culture news, such as the front-page Britney feature "Schoolyard Superstar Aims for a Second Act, as an Adult" in October 2002. Even Vanity Fair, a magazine explicitly fascinated by stars and starlets, caught darts when it put Paris Hilton on the front.

The Economist has made its feeling on Britney covers clear: harrumph. "If she re-emerged as the head of the World Bank, we'd consider it," Editor in Chief John Micklethwait joked last month in a MarketWatch column lauding his magazine's sober judgment.

New goals
The Britney piece easily meets Atlantic editorial standards, said Mr. Smith. But its pop-culture hook happens to be relevant to the magazine's new aims, such as that hoped-for return to profitability or even simple ad-page growth.

Ad pages at The Atlantic have slid in recent years, dropping 1% each in 2007 and 2006 after a 12.6% drop in 2005, according to the Publishers Information Bureau. By comparison, the U.S. edition of The Economist, which competes for some of the same readers and advertisers, posted an 8.5% gain last year, a 1.1% increase in 2006 and a 1.9% slip in 2005.

"We think the brand's relevance has a broader appeal than the current footprint," said Mr. Smith. "You could argue that doing a story on the celebrity economy and the new paparazzi economy is a broadening of the footprint."

Here's hoping Mr. Adin, the Atlantic subscriber, continues to find what he likes -- despite Britney's April beachhead. "If it's one issue, I don't care," said Mr. Adin. "If this is the new direction, they may as well just call themselves one of Rupert Murdoch's tabloids."

BoSacks Speaks Out: Review of the Kindle

BoSacks Speaks Out: Review of the Kindle
Publishing Executive Magazine
By BoSacks
http://www.pubexec.com/story/story.bsp?sid=92800&var=story

This is a review of the Kindle Epaper reading device. There are by necessity two parts to this review - the review of the Kindle and the review of the Epaper. If I were reviewing a new state-of-the-art MP3 player, I wouldn't have to describe to you the inherent value and functionality of music, what it is and what it does - you already know. Everybody is familiar with music and it requires no descriptors on my part. Not so with epaper and epaper devices. Both are new to the public and both require understanding and explanation.

I have read three novels, two magazines and one newspaper on the Kindle. (I thought a page-turning series of an original pulp fiction giant was the right choice for reviewing an Epaper device. I chose Edger Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars series. Mr. Burroughs was a product of his time and, as such, was clearly a racist and a staunch sexist. But those attributes aside, he could sure tell a fanciful and exciting story.) My reactions to the three publishing types are as follows:

The Ebook experience is excellent and enjoyable. It was book like and yet had features that no book has.
The Enewspaper experience was fair. With a newspaper the expected visuals, photos and charts were non existent and that colored my reading and my expectations.
The Emagazine was a complete flop. All that was delivered was straight text in ebook format. What distinguishes a magazine from other formats, among other attributes, is the design element. The Kindle magazine experience is completely devoid of style and design. This is either an oversight by Amazon or just plain uninformed laziness. I will assume that they received appropriate XML files from the magazine publisher, which should contain all the elements of proper magazine and page construction. Just a little more effort on someone's part and the magazine reading experience would have been better. Now is the time for publishers to start to strategize how they will reconstitute their franchise into a pleasant epaper experience.

Epaper in this device exceeded my expectations. Epaper, just like real paper, does not have under-panel, background lighting. In fact it has no light emission at all. It works on the ambient light or reflective light available in the room you are in just like real paper. The refresh rate or the time it takes to change pages is no longer and perhaps quicker then the time it takes to turn a traditional page. The type was crisp and wonderfully variable. With the ease of two flicks I had a range of font sizes at my command. The substrate background was acceptable, but could be brighter and whiter, more in line with the Sony Ereader.

The bottom line in this review of the Epaper experience is a resounding success, and it will only continue to get better.

The rest of the tale is the actual functionality of the machine called a Kindle. This, too, will improve over time and is not a bad submit for a first edition. But I do have some issues with the design and instrumentality. Unlike some other reviewers, I did not find the Kindle ugly, but neither is it of a completely compelling design like the iPod. The Kindle comes with a quaint querty keyboard that was easy to use and necessary to have for the purchase of titles while on the road. It also comes equipped with a nice pocket book sized 6-inch E-ink display, 256MB of internal memory, which they say and I believe, holds 200 books. It is also equipped with an easy to reach scroll wheel and a standard mini USB port. It has a 3.5mm headphone jack, SD slot for extended external memory, and is connected for downloads via cell towers that transmit data over a network called EV-DO data. I am being specific about the data delivery because in my case I live in a rural area of New York. Here I have spotty cell service, but no EV-DO data, so in order to get my Ebooks delivered via the data network, I had to drive 13 miles to a town with greater population and therefore greater cell service. Once in range, the 5 books I ordered downloaded in seconds.

Another great feature is the inboard dictionary. At any time you can use the scroll wheel to highlight a sentence and the dictionary provides you with information about any complex words on that line. It was both useful and functionally easy. You wouldn't believe it but John Carter of Mars has an even more extensive vocabulary than Bosacks. I kid you not.


I have two major gripes about the Kindle. In the designers' zeal to make it easy to turn pages, they made it too easy. There is little room on either side of the kindle to hold the Ereader comfortably without accidentally changing pages either forward or backward. This made for an annoying experience of continually having to flip back. The other area of needed improvement was the leather cover/carrying case. The Kindle is not secured in the case. It just rests there and slides out much too easily. Call it paranoia if you like, but I was constantly worried that this $400 plastic device was going to drop out of the case and drop on the floor with a crunch from it and a yowl from me.

With all that said. I loved the overall experience of Epaper and this new device. I would bet that the revised version will fix all the mechanical idiosyncrasies, and I will be more than happy to report on that when it becomes available. But right now the Kindle version 1 is sold out, and that bodes well for Amazon and the fledgling Ebook industry.

BoSacks Readers Speak Out; Time, Newsweek, Teens and Google U

BoSacks Readers Speak Out; Time, Newsweek, Teens and Google U

Subject: Re: Time Vs. Newsweek: Battle Of The Print Dinosaurs
Bob: To paraphrase Montaigne, whether poring over TIME or N/W on the bathroom throne, or reading all the Oscar Gossip online, we are still sitting on our ass. The author reminds me of the spoiled creatures who write reviews of new vehicles for car magazines, wondering why the manufacturers offer limited GPS options, or could find only 6 more horsepower than last year.

Didn't TIME deliberately pare their circ base to contain costs and get more right with ABC? I can't imagine that they would have lost so much more readership proportionately to N/W in an even race on level ground. As logical references go, it is non sequitur.

Yes, I read more news online, and eschew gossip as best I can, but I haven't cancelled my subs to newsweeklies. They offer perspective, and insight, maybe because they have to be good and be right between the event and the print deadlines. 3.2 million readers are counting on it and paying for the privilege.
(Submitted by a self-diagnosed dinosaur, retired)


Re: Time Vs. Newsweek: Battle Of The Print Dinosaurs
Not in a million years will I pick up a print copy of these two magazines, but I'm in love with Newsweek.com!!!!
(Submitted by an Online Production Manager

Re: Time Vs. Newsweek: Battle Of The Print Dinosaurs
Bo- I'm not sure if my attitude is tainted as a publisher or not. I used to love both titles. I would read both on a regular basis. Now I find I almost never read either. Why is that? The internet? I couldn't really say. I continue have great respect for both houses, but my addiction and their usefulness or my lifestyle/needs have changed.
(Submitted by a multi-title Publisher)

Re: BoSacks Readers Speak Out: Snakes, Music, Publishing and Reading
This is a sad commentary about how the printing business has turned into the "business" of printing. Many of the big printers today--except for the one that sprouted out of the cornfields in the Midwest--are run by MBA suits who don't know anything about it. To them, a magazine or catalog is just another widget to be counted and counted, and they push and push, to produce more and more, with less and less. At the end of the day, they are only concerned with showing a profit since that is what will ultimately feather their pockets. So in order to achieve that, they shut down plants, lay off employees, and in the process, they have destroyed the business. With that goal achieved, the MBA suit walks away with a multi-million dollar bonus in his pocket. "What a world, what a world."
Submitted by a Senior Production person)

The inside baseball character of replies to replies can get tedious, I know. So this will probably remain between you and me, and that's fine. While Senior Production Person makes some valid observations, I believe he misses the point and wanted to run my POV by you.

Yes, MBA's and similarly soulless types pocketing obscene amounts of money is an offensive reality. But it is the nature of American business, not just the American printing business. Change it if you can and more power to you. But Wall Street might be a more fruitful starting point than Printer's Row.

As to the continual push to print more and more for less and less, my fellow reader puts the arse before the torse. Could it be that the amount of money that Senior Production Persons will pay their printer might have something to do with this state of affairs? And perhaps the overall nature of the marketplace? "Mmmmm, could be." (Bugs Bunny - American cartoon rabbit and personal role model). Ben Franklin, patron saint of American printers, got it only 2/3's right when he enumerated the things in life that are certain. Actually, there are three: death, taxes, and lower printing prices. There is less, and the customers want more. So, we do more with less.

As for the outrage over the fact that, "at the end of the day, they are only concerned with showing a profit," well, duh! The same is true for the beginning of the day, noontime, and the commute both ways. The first condition necessary to doing a good job is having a job. Whether you are a CEO, a production person, or a pocket feeder, that means contributing more than you are paid. That means making a profit. Call it feathering your nest or feeding your family. Either way, there is nothing shameful in it. In business, it is a moral obligation. That obligation can be met humanely or inhumanly but that is a question of execution and personal responsibility. The goal itself remains honorable.
Submitted by a Printer)


Re: U.S. teens stumped by history Survey
There's absolutely no question that the liberal arts, including history, are essential to every student's education. But this story suffers from serious flaws.

First it offers no points of comparison. Do today's teenagers know less history and literature than teenagers did ten years ago? Do today's teenagers know less history and literature than people in their 40s or 50s?

Second, the survey methodology certainly influenced the results. Who among us is willing to focus carefully when answering 33 multiple choice history questions in a random phone call from a stranger?

Finally, which of the results indicates "stunning ignorance?"

-Half of the respondents knew the dates of the Civil War.
-Three quarters knew when Columbus sailed.
-Three quarters correctly identified Adolf Hitler.
-40 percent were familiar with Ellison's "The Invisible Man."
-Half were familiar with Job.
-80 percent were familiar with "To Kill a Mockingbird."
-Virtually all identified Martin Luther King from his famous speech.

Would we expect any random group of American adults to score much better?

This story is cut from a well-worn mold . In a few months we'll hear how ignorant American students are about geography. Then another group with an axe to grind will find another subject in which American teenagers are woefully underinformed. Common Core, the organization behind the survey, owes their extremely important cause less sensational and more serious treatment. And we're as "stunningly ignorant" as the kids we're snickering at if we swallow this stuff without thinking about it first.
Submitted by a Publisher)

Re: Google U
"It is quaint that people speak of separating dogma from education. Dogma is actually the only thing that cannot be separated from education. It IS education." - G. K. Chesterton
In his Google U essay, Jeff Jarvis (the creator and original Managing Editor of Entertainment Weekly, whose early version of that title was hipper and more insightful though perhaps less commercial than the magazine's current iconic incarnation) has discovered home schooling. Welcome aboard!

As the failure of the model enforced by the government schools and the culture at large becomes more obvious to more people the collapse of that model becomes more and more of a likelihood; a consummation devoutly to be wished. I'll take Mr. Jarvis' comments as a positive sign, especially considering his track record for getting in front of cultural trends.

The educational system as it currently exists does not, cannot, and will never provide actual education. According to the model of its founder, John Dewey, it provides indoctrination for the production of usable, lead-able citizens. According to the wishes of the teacher's unions, which appear to be modeled on the coal miners, it provides gainful employment for life for anyone willing to keep paying their dues and pass along whatever drivel is put in front of them. According to the pleasure of academics and administrators, it provides a cocoon safely insulated from the demands of the real world and protects their phoney baloney jobs. For politicians, it provides another means of access to taxpayer dollars and a power base built on spending those dollars. But education? Sorry, wrong number. . . .
Submitted by a Printer)

Re: In men's magazines, a question of size
Bob; With the seemingly perpetual increases in paper and postal costs, the next major "universal" trim-size reduction (from the current 10.5" short-cutoff) will be the aptly named "handbag" size. Unfortunately, there is not currently a "natural" press-cutoff within the U.S. web-offset world to deliver this product efficiently. I know this because we looked at producing such a product. It is my understanding that the current U.S. titles -- produced at the handbag trim size -- are printed on short-cutoff presses. The oversized sigs (i.e., at 10.5" + trim) are sent to the bindery...where the book is trimmed to the smaller 9" trim size. This is a huge -- and expensive -- inefficiency/waste. For my project, which was ultimately tabled, the other option was to look at a rotogravure scheme. Alas, the relatively small print order did not justify this.

It is my prediction that the handbag trim size will become a viable option -- and viable press platform -- in the not too-distant future. This will occur when one (or more) of the major magazine publishers "challenges" one (or more) of the "Big 3" -- RRDonnelley, Quad Graphics and Quebecor (?) World -- to convert a significant portion of their press platform to a 9" trim-size press cutoff...in exchange for a very robust portion of their titles/print order. Only a large -- and committed -- publisher volume would justify the significant investment that this would represent to any one of the printing Big 3. Could another candidate (e.g., Brown Printing), beyond the Big 3, emerge to seize some of this "new" trim size volume? Maybe...but less likely. And one of the Big 3 already has its hands full with financial challenges.
Submitted by a Dirctor of Operations)

BoSacks isn't cheap but he can be had for free

BoSacks isn't cheap but he can be had for free
Hear/See Bosacks Live for Free in NYC

Friends, I have cajoled the powers that be at the Publishing Business Conference & Expo on March 10th through 12th in the New York Marriott Marquis Times Square to offer my readers free admission to see one of my lectures and hang out with fellow publishing executives. The free pass also includes entrance to the mighty exhibit hall.

In my opinion the exhibit hall alone is worth the price of admission. Since I started my career I have absorbed an enormous amount of information at various publishing exhibit halls by talking to the vendors and seeing the latest and greatest "things" available. You have heard me say before that the future is here now, but it is not widely distributed. Well, the future is usually at the exhibit hall first.

So, you get all that and it's free, and you get to see me, too. I am giving three lectures in two days. Come and see Bo live and in person.

The sessions I am giving are listed in the brochure as:


E-Paper and the Future of Publishing
Focus: Book & Magazine
Monday, March 10, 2008, 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM

Industry veteran, guru and "Profit Prophet" Bob Sacks (aka BoSacks) will present a lively and critical look at e-paper in its current forms, including a hands-on exploration of Sony's Reader and Amazon's Kindle, and their current and future impact on book and magazine publishing. Sacks will also share his insights and predictions on what you can expect from e-paper in the not-so-distant future.

Or:

5 Key Future Magazine Trends to Plan for
Focus: Magazine
Tuesday, March 11, 2008, 3:00 PM to 4:00 PM

The periodical publishing industry has entered a new period of change. There is much uncertainty today about how the magazine will evolve, how it will be paid for and how it will remain relevant. We look at the 5 key issues that will affect our industry over the next decade and provide actionable advice to help keep publishers prepared in defining their own future.

· David Renard : Co-founder, mediaIDEAS
· BoSacks Co-founder, mediaIDEAS

Or:

Keynote Panel: Magazine Publishing in the Digital Age
Focus: Magazine
Tuesday, March 11, 2008, 8:30 AM to 10:00 AM

What publishers should be doing now.
· Steve Palm : President and CEO, NewBay Media
· Robert Sacks : Co-Founder, mediaIDEAS
· John Sateja : Senior Vice President for Information Products, Consumer Reports
· Rich Zweiback : Executive Director of Manufacturing, Lebhar Friedman
· Ned Borowsky :President and CEO, North American Publishing Co.


All you have to do is register your name at this URL and use the discount code: BOSACKS08 http://www.publishingbusiness.com/

If you need any help or have questions send an email to my buddy Matt Steinmetz at msteinmetz@NAPCO.com Regardless of what you hear about other editors, Matt is OK in my book.


Two more items that might work for my readers:

If you are interested in going to the whole shebang They will offer you their lowest conference rate -- discount code: BOSACKS200 ($200 off Full Conference Pass, pay only $595)

Or, you want to just attend the Digital Magazine Symposium, chaired by Peter Meirs of Time Inc fame, $75 off -- discount code: BOSACKS75 ($75 off Digital Magazine Symposium, pay only $120)

Requiem for Old-Time Radio

BoSacks Speaks Out: I'm not sure why I chose to send out this article. It is not about our industry or at least not directly. But it is about the decline and inevitable diminishment of a big part of the media industry. And that recognition is important. Not that it is about us, put perhaps that there are lessons to be learned so that it doesn't become us.

"Ronald Reagan has held the two most demeaning jobs in the country; President of the United States and radio broadcaster for the Chicago Cubs."
George F. Will (American editor and news commentator b.1941)

Requiem for Old-Time Radio

Hit hard by the music world's fragmentation, it's handicapped in making a Web transition
by Jon Fine
BW Magazine

I remember what we now call "terrestrial radio" with ridiculous fondness. I recall huddling with it long past bedtime, the volume set low, hoping to hear something I loved. Thus the truism of how radio is the most intimate medium: You're in bed with the lights out, the music and the DJ's voice going straight into your brain, the images created are yours alone.

I remember, with terrible pangs of longing, my first days as a college radio DJ. Doing a 3 a.m. to 6 a.m. slot in a small town in Ohio, even if, during those still and wintry nights, I could have been the last living person on earth for all the people who were actually listening.

All of which testifies to how old I am. Realities of the music world-the explosion in both expression and availability, first on independent labels and now everywhere, thanks to the Internet-began overtaking commercial radio stations well over 20 years ago. (I feel profoundly sorry for anyone whose musical universe is limited to the shrunken playlists of commercial radio, given the bounty available elsewhere.) There was a complicated blood bond that budding music geeks of the 1970s and '80s formed with radio, which today seems quaint. You loved radio for first opening up a world; you hated it for falling behind what was actually going on.
That's the emotional aspect of this medium, which almost certainly has more songs written about it than any other. Or at least it's me acknowledging my complicated feelings about it. The market is less sentimental. Rush Limbaugh may still mint millions, but a private equity firm that ran stock analyses of key publicly traded media companies in the past five years found that the worst-performing sector was radio, which managed the neat feat of underperforming newspaper companies. (This helps explain why radio giants Clear Channel (CCU) and Cumulus (CMLS) are in the process of going private.)


"THE MODEL IS BROKEN"
Flat industry ad revenues began a steady slide into negative territory beginning in May of last year, and January's decline was 6%. But monthly falloffs in local advertising, which accounts for around two-thirds of radio revenue, began surfacing regularly in '06. (These figures come from trade group Radio Advertising Bureau, which tracks the top 150 U.S. markets.) So much for thinking radio's losses might have been early indicators of recession. "It used to be a leading indicator," says Marci Ryvicker, a Wachovia Securities (WB) analyst who covers radio. "The model is broken. The negatives you saw in 2006 had nothing to do with the economy." She's expecting radio revenues to fall at least 1% in '08, and don't forget that this is despite sky's-the-limit campaign spending we're seeing this election year.

"The biggest failure of many broadcasters is understanding how much the environment has changed," says Clear Channel Radio CEO John Hogan. Clear Channel, long a flash point for listener anger over homogenized and overformatted airwaves, has beaten the industry's revenue performance in the past two years. For 2007, though, Hogan concedes that this meant his company's revenues dropped only slightly.

As with newspapers, small-market radio stations have been insulated from their bigger brethren's woes. And radio still boasts the odd trump card, formats that make up in uniqueness what it has lost in monopolized distribution: morning zoo DJs, rush-hour drive time, the Limbaughs of the world, and local talk. But of all major consumer media, radio is the least suited to an online transition.

Industry executives fiercely deny this point, but consider the landscape. Newspapers' ills are well-documented, and I've had much sport with them in this space. But the local paper's Web site is almost always the dominant local online entity. Newspapers churn out tons of original content daily. Radio is built to a large degree on music it doesn't own and syndicated talk shows. Both are available in countless venues online, which means radio Web sites have less unique stuff to attract audiences. And stations aren't structured like newspapers. While their profit margins are much higher-try 40% and up-they also have much smaller news organizations and fewer bodies to create new content that can be slapped up online. Ryvicker says radio companies that are doing well in the Web are getting 1% to 2% of revenues from it. Hogan says Clear Channel Radio will get 5% of revenues from its 1,005 Web sites "very soon" but isn't there yet. (Radio executives also extol the revenue potential of radio stars turning up on cable, à la Imus, or on local TV, but few can make that leap.)

By comparison, the big newspaper companies get about 8% of total revenues online, according to public companies' comments and an analyst tracking the industry. It says something about radio that a commonly cited star example of its online efforts is the not-for-profit npr.org, which has Web traffic growth most companies would envy. (HD radio, a newish technology that opens up spectrum on the dial for more niched music offerings, requires consumers to buy equipment and is considered a revenue nonstarter even by some industry executives.)

And another thing: I haven't even mentioned iPods or satellite radio.

U.S. teens stumped by history survey

U.S. teens stumped by history survey
By Sam Dillon Published
Fewer than half of American teenagers who were asked basic questions about history and literature during a recent telephone survey knew when the Civil War was fought, and one-quarter thought that Christopher Columbus sailed to the New World sometime after 1750, not in 1492.

The results of the survey, released Tuesday, demonstrate that a significant proportion of American teenagers live in "stunning ignorance" of history and literature, according to the group that commissioned it. Known as Common Core, the organization describes itself as a new, nonpartisan research and advocacy organization that will press for more teaching of the liberal arts in American public schools.

The group argues that President George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind law has impoverished America's public school curriculum by holding schools accountable for student scores on annual tests in reading and math but in no other subjects.

Politically, the group's leaders are strange bedfellows. Its founding board includes Antonia Cortese, the executive vice president of the American Federation of Teachers, the union that is a powerful force in the Democratic Party, and Diane Ravitch, an education professor at New York University who was assistant secretary of education under George H.W. Bush. Its executive director is Lynne Munson, a former deputy chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities and former special assistant to Vice President Dick Cheney's wife, Lynne.

"We're a truly diverse group," Munson said. "We almost certainly vote differently, and we have varying opinions about different aspects of educational reform. But when it comes to concern that all of America's children receive a comprehensive liberal arts and science education, we all agree."

Today in Americas
Clinton and Obama clash on health, trade and rival tacticsSurgeon accused of hastening patient's death to retrieve organs soonerWarrantless searches removed from legislation in MexicoIn the survey, 1,200 17-year-olds were reached by telephone in January and asked to answer 33 multiple choice questions about history and literature, which were read aloud to them. The questions were drawn from a test administered by the U.S. government in 1986.

About a quarter of the teenagers surveyed were unable to correctly identify Adolf Hitler as Germany's chancellor during World War II, instead identifying him variously as a munitions maker, an Austrian premier and the German Kaiser.

On literature, the teenagers fared even worse. Only four in 10 could pick the name of Ralph Ellison's novel about a young man's growing up in the south and moving to Harlem, "Invisible Man," from a list of titles, and only about half knew that in the Bible, Job is known for his patience in suffering. About as many said he was known for his skill as a builder, or his prowess in battle, or his prophetic abilities.

The history question that proved easiest asked the respondents to identify the man who declared, "I have a dream." Ninety-seven percent of teenagers correctly picked Martin Luther King Jr.

About eight in ten teenagers, a higher percentage than on any other literature question, knew that Harper Lee's novel, "To Kill a Mockingbird," is about two children affected by the conflict in their community when their father defends a black man in court.

In a joint introduction to their report, Cortese and Ravitch did not directly blame the No Child law for the dismal survey results, but argued that the law has led schools to focus too narrowly on reading and math, thereby crowding time out of the school day for history, literature and other subjects.

"The nation's education system has become obsessed with testing and basic skills because of the requirements of U.S. law, and that is not healthy," Cortese and Ravitch said.

A string of studies have documented the narrowing of the American public school curriculum since Bush signed the U.S. law in January 2002. Last week, the Center on Education Policy, a Washington research group that has closely studied the law's implementation, estimated, based on its own extensive survey, that 62 percent of school systems nationwide had added an average of three hours of math or reading instruction each week, at the expense of time spent on social studies, art and other subjects.

But the Bush administration and some business and civil rights groups warn against weakening the law, arguing that students need reading and math skills to succeed in other subjects.

Snakes on the Plains

BoSacks Speaks Out: I just love a good headline and because of that I had to send this out. It is also an interesting question about " Truth In Journelism" in this article. I leave it up to your good judgement. Is this a headline story? Is this any kind of story at all?

"After my screen test, the director clapped his hands gleefully and yelled: "She can't talk! She can't act! She's sensational!""
Ava Gardner (American film Actress of the 1940s and 50s who, despite her renowned beauty and sensuality, successfully resisted being typecast as a cex symbol. 1922-1990)


Snakes on the Plains?
BY Allan Mutter
http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/


The morning got off to a nasty start for ophidiophobians in Oklahoma City when they opened Friday's newspaper to see a headline sprawled atop page one warning: "Big snakes could slither into state."

The problem with the alarming spread in The Oklahoman - replete with the headshot of a frightening-looking Burmese python - is that the danger of a snake invasion is really quite remote, as the newspaper's own story makes clear.

So, why did the Oklahoman play this non-story in the sensational fashion it did? I left a phone message for editor Ed Kelley and, so far, haven't heard back.

But I did have an interesting conversation with zoologist Gordon Rodda of the U.S. Geographic Survey, one of the scientists whose research formed the basis for the story. Here is what he said:

The USGS undertook a study of what climates in the United States theoretically could support the spread of a growing population of non-indigenous Burmese pythons that have taken up residence in the Florida Everglades. The areas warm and humid enough to support the non-poisonous constrictors could include Oklahoma, depending on how global warming shakes out over the next 100 years.
"But, if the implication in the newspaper story is that it is going to happen next Thursday, that's irresponsible," said Gordon. "It is a very dramatic way they portrayed it."

The particular irony of the Oklahoman's story is that it was so thoroughly reported by staffer Josh Rabe that no reasonable editor could have inadvertently misconstrued its significance.
In but one example, Josh quotes a local snake expert as saying it is "just absurd" to fear a Burmese python invasion in Oklahoma. "If you put one out in the front yard on a day like today," said snake breeder Bob Clark in a week when low temperatures were in the mid-20s, "you would have a snake-sickle by the end of the day."

To be sure, an onslaught of Burmese pythons would terrifying. The snakes can grow to lengths of 20 feet and become as fat as a telephone pole, says Gordon. Although the creatures are not poisonous, they instantly wrap themselves around their prey, squeezing the life out of the victim before gulping it down.

Although the snakes are capable of traveling as far 20 miles in a day, Gordon can't imagine them bellying all the way from Florida to Oklahoma City. "It is unlikely they would keep moving long enough in the same direction, given the randomness of their movements," he explains.
If the danger is negligible of telephone poll-sized Burmese pythons slithering 1,500 miles from the Everglades to Oklahoma City, then why would the newspaper have played the story in the way it did?

"With newspapers," says Gordon, "it's their business to make a big deal out of things."

Is it any wonder why four out of five people don't trust the media?