Mag Ads Get Sophisticated Industry to Use Print to Tactical

Mag Ads Get Sophisticated Industry to Use Print to Tactical Advantage
By Stephanie Clifford
The International Herald Tribune
NEW YORK: Readers of the latest issue of People magazine may have been startled to open to a bulky page in the middle and hear Natasha Bedingfield's latest pop song start playing out loud. It was courtesy of a large ad for Verizon Wireless's music download service - and a tiny sound board and speaker wedged within the pages of the magazine.

Or perhaps readers have gotten used to such sensory affronts from their reading material. With blinking lights, pop-up ads, kiss-on lipstick samples, scratch-off scents, melt-in-your-mouth taste strips, and even pocket squares, advertisers are stuffing magazines full of just about anything to make their advertisements stand out.

One reason for the phenomenon is better technology, which makes it less expensive to put unusual objects in magazines and which helps advertisers create more sophisticated inserts. Improvements, say, in hiding fragrance samples under peel-off strips has also reduced the backlash from people with allergies.

But there is another dynamic at work: with so much of the publishing industry shifting toward the Web, magazine executives are trying to use their print products as a tactical advantage. Not only are they reminding advertisers that magazines are good places to attach things, but they are also seeking out and conceiving of these projects.

"For us, it's be clever or die," said Peter King Hunsinger, the publisher of GQ, which tucked fabric pocket squares into 19,000 April issues for a Lexus promotion.

And advertisers are looking for concrete returns on these creative ads, many of which use coupons or other incentives to drive consumers to Web sites or stores, where the effectiveness of the ad can be measured.

"The days of just trying to be creative and doing these without a serious commitment to marketing results are gone," said Mike Maguire, the chief executive of Structural Graphics, a company that produces three-dimensional ads, like pop-up panties for a Fruit of the Loom advertisement.

Advertisers have been trying to stand out from the pack since the perfume strip was invented in 1979, when the scent was "so strong that "you could kind of smell it before you even opened the magazine," recalled Diane Crecca, vice-president of sales, marketing and business development at Arcade Marketing, which invented the scent strip.

The technology for shampoos or lotions was not much better. "They would sometimes burst inside the magazine," said Agnes Landau, senior vice president for global makeup marketing at Clinique. "There was a little bit of a backlash from the customers at that point because they didn't want the magazine being damaged."

The advertisers also were not thrilled, because the samples they included were subject to an extra fee from the Post Office. Arcade Marketing executives studied what the Post Office's definition of a "sample" was. By 1997, it had devised a thumb-size packet that could withstand pressure without bursting, so could offer advertisers sampling without the excess charge.

More technology advances on the chemical side, like being able to affix face powder to a piece of paper, led to powder, lipstick, and even nail-polish samples. Perfume samples now can be contained beneath seals and wrapped in little packages, a relief to allergy sufferers.

But how much more can magazines take? "The biggest issue for editors and, of course, publishers, is how many there are," said John Fennell, associate professor of magazine journalism and Meredith chair in service journalism at the Missouri School of Journalism. "They break up the editorial in the book - you're paging through the book and you have big, stiff cardboard things in the middle. So as much as they make money, there's a sense of, how many can be put in the book without their being an overload."

The beauty business has led the charge on free samples in magazines. More than 1,000 department-store fragrances and 800 eye shadow shades have been introduced in the past five years, according to NPD Group, a market-research firm, and their manufacturers are eager to make their ads stand out.

"In addition to giving consumers a chance to use your product, it's an arresting, cut-through the clutter advertisement," said Katie Devine, product director for Aveeno Facial Care at Johnson Johnson Beauty Care. Devine said that Aveeno offers samples in magazines of "essentially any product that's a big marketing focus for us," and that coupons with samples have two to three times the redemption rate of those without.

Allure, a women's magazine that focuses on beauty, has seen a 20 percent increase in product-samples-as-inserts over the last two years, according to its publisher, Nancy Cardone. "It's become so dramatically effective in beauty that two years ago we developed an issue that we promote as our sampling issue," Cardone said.

But many of the more unusual inserts are coming from outside the beauty industry. Scratch 'n' sniff has given way to scented ink. Batteries have become small enough that an advertisement can light up or carry a sound chip. And taste, which had no place in magazines until recently, has been conquered by First Flavor, a company in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania, that packages dissolving taste strips. Welch's Grape Juice ran an ad in People in February with the strips, and Jay Minkoff, the chief executive of First Flavor, said that the company was working on several more food-category advertisements.

Taste strips and musical ads come with a relatively big price tag, another reason publishers are seeking them so aggressively. For Clinique, the cost of an insert with a sample is three times that of a normal ad, according to Landau. The cost of a flavor-strip insert, which typically includes First Flavor's production costs, special printing, and an advertising-insertion charge, said Minkoff, "roughly doubles the cost" of a single-page advertisement in a national magazine.

Because of the revenue potential, publishers are going to great lengths to attract elaborate campaigns. The publisher of Cosmopolitan, Donna Kalajian Lagani, bought special equipment that could affix product samples directly to a magazine page, rather than to a card insert - a big cost for Cosmopolitan, but a money saver for advertisers.

"Clients are looking to us to come up with solutions on how to communicate to our readers," Lagani said. "We've really changed the way we go to market."Despite the expense, advertisers seem to be trying to outdo one another in the complexity of their inserts. Take the MasterCard "Priceless Search" campaign, which is running in several Condé Nast magazines' April issues. The ads, conceived by MasterCard and McCann Erickson, feature a sealed envelope with an instant-win game piece inside, on heavy paper stock. MasterCard ran 12 million of the advertisements. "We've done inserts before, but never to this level of sophistication and complexity," said Chris Jogis, vice-president of United States brand marketing for MasterCard.

It took MasterCard two years to pull off the project. The assembly process required the ad to be printed, the envelopes to be printed, and the envelope inserts to be printed, then the whole piece assembled, before the ads were sent to the magazines' binding plants. The instant-win program, too, required several security measures, including a team of overseers at the magazine-binding plant to make sure the three winning pieces were distributed randomly. All the printing had to be done in accordance with Condé Nast's equipment.

All the work was meant to drive traffic to MasterCard's "Priceless" Web site, where MasterCard could offer more information to its visitors, and Jogis said the company was seeing good results so far.

And the media director at Lexus, Andrea Lim, said she was happy to see that the pocket square promotion in GQ had driven traffic to Lexus's Web site. Lexus made an the extra 2,000 pocket squares available online, which were claimed in 30 hours after the ads hit.

"We're not finished - that's for starters," Lim said. "We liked this idea so much that in the first meeting, after we decided it's going to be the pocket square, we're like, then next year it's going to be x. We just keep trying to raise the bar."

Newsweeklies Continue Long, Slow Print Goodbye

Newsweeklies Continue Long, Slow Print Goodbye
U.S. News cuts ratebase, frequency as pressure on category mounts.
By Bill Mickey
FOLIO: MAGAZINE
http://www.foliomag.com/2008/newsweeklies-continue-long-slow-print-goodbye

The newsweekly category continues to churn-and cut ratebase. U.S. News & World Report is reportedly the latest to lop a chunk of rate base as well as cut frequency. The magazine adjusted rate base from 2 million to 1.5 million and frequency from 46 issues to 36, according to a Mediaweek report.

The magazine declined to comment.

Newsweeklies, perhaps more than any other magazine sector save for technology titles, have been under constant pressure in recent years to change as the big three (Time, Newsweek, U.S. News) retool their print designs, ratebases, print dates-anything, it would seem, to adapt to the digital age.

Time and Newsweek have already both gone through rate base reductions of their own. Time was the first to go in early 2007, slashing its circulation from 4 million to 3.25 million. Newsweek followed later that year, trimming 16 percent to 2.6 million.

And the changes didn't stop there. Time went on to shift its on-sale date from Monday to Friday, boost its newsstand price by $1, and significantly redesign both the magazine and Web site.

'Net Effect

The actions reflected the impact the Internet has had on the category, and how the publishers have struggled in taming the dynamic between the print and digital products. As Time's managing editor Richard Stengel said at the 2008 DMA Circulation Day event recently: "There's no news that breaks in print anymore. Print takes the facts and adds insight. Online is for the 'what' and print is for the 'why'. The magazine puts it in context and that's why we see them as complementary brands."

Newsweek also unveiled a redesign of both the magazine and Web site around the time it cut its rate base. "Some people in our business believe print should emulate the Internet, filling pages with short, Web-like bites of information," editor Jon Meacham wrote in his editor's note announcing the redesign. "We disagree. There is a simple idea behind the changes in the issue of Newsweek you are holding: we are betting that you want to read more, not less."

As for U.S. News & World Report, this latest move is another in a long series of changes for the magazine. In 2005, U.S. News president Bill Holiber announced a strategic shift away from print to focus more on Web business, giving print room to provide more analysis-and letting Time and Newsweek fight for a broader readership.

"At times it may come across as being not the most exciting product, but it's a very well-thought-out, information-driven product," Holiber said. "As we move in this direction, I think you'll see more information on the page. I think Time and Newsweek are battling it out, trying to be all things to all people. They want to be big-very, very big. We've found there's a certain type of consumer we attract, and that's who we're focusing on: 'Give me the facts, I'll decide.'"

However, with the appointment of Brian Kelly to editor a year ago, the magazine has moved decidedly in the direction of more service journalism, ramping up its production of "Best-of" issues.

And, as it turns out, no one wants to be very, very big anymore.

Optimism and the Digital World

Optimism and the Digital World
By L. GORDON CROVITZ
Wall Street JournalApril 21, 2008; Page A15
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB120873501564529841-lMyQjAxMDI4MDI4MTcyMzE1Wj.html

In the 1850s, James Rothschild complained that it was a "crying shame that the telegraph has been established" because suddenly anyone "can get the news." The Rothschild banking empire was built through private couriers who ponied from one European trading center to another, profiting from market-moving news about business and trade. The telegraph ended such exclusive access. Almost as annoying, information became a constant. Rothschild complained, "One has too much to think about when bathing, which is not good."
This early Information Age became real time when Queen Victoria sent President James Buchanan the first trans-Atlantic cable. "The Atlantic is dried up, and we become in reality as well as in wish one country," editorialized the Times of London. "The Atlantic Telegraph has half undone the Declaration of 1776." Tiffany's crafted jewelry out of unused cables, and a popular novel of the era was "Wired Love," a Morse Code-era version of online matchmaking. The telegraph shrank the world, upended business practices, democratized information and confounded government regulators.
Today's digital world makes these challenges of the telegraph era seem quaint. Modern-day Rothschilds, and even the more workaday among us, are tethered to BlackBerrys. Our digital-native children simultaneously instant message one another, listen to iPods and watch videos - while doing their homework. Scientists now suspect that this next generation may be developing a different brain structure, reflecting online activity from toddler age.
This Information Age and how it affects us as consumers, businesspeople and citizens seems like a timely topic for a new column. My sensibility on these issues is that of a media practitioner for some 25 years so far, running media and information businesses, including as a former publisher of The Wall Street Journal. The focus will be on the accelerating impact of new technology. This column will also comment on public policy, seeking to discourage restraints on innovation while protecting sometimes conflicting concerns such as national security and privacy.
The media was one of the first industries to be roiled by new digital technology. Retailer John Wanamaker once quipped that he knew that half his advertising spending was wasted - he just didn't know which half. As a result of the efficiency of the Internet and other targeted media, many newspapers, magazines and broadcasters have had large declines in revenues and profitability. The largest media company in the world is Google, which produces little original content and indeed would instead call itself an engineering company. Silicon Valley is driving consumer choice and behavior at least as much as Madison Avenue.
We have many new choices in how we access news, information and entertainment. The number of professional journalists continues to fall, but the potential good news is that technology makes it possible for anyone to write and build an audience. New forms of online journalism are already filling the gaps. It was a Barack Obama-supporting blogger, citing her journalistic duty, who broke the recent big story of his comments in San Francisco about the bitterness of small-town voters.
There are hard questions to consider. For example, does the easy availability of information necessarily mean the advance of knowledge and wisdom? Endless information from many sources may or may not be as trustworthy as information handled by trained editors or through analog-era processes like academic peer review or independent ratings of financial instruments. Part of the answer may be new tools to capture the wisdom of crowds, such as the information art form exemplified by Wikipedia. The good news is that almost all public information is now available at the click of a mouse; the bad news is that unfiltered information overflow can leave people as confused as James Rothschild once was.
Despite the importance to the economy of technological innovation, public policy often stymies entrepreneurs. Rules for telecommunications, intellectual property and even immigration need to be updated for today's technologies - indeed to make tomorrow's technologies possible. Likewise, national security now depends on how well information dots about threats are gathered and connected. This requires a sophistication about mining and linking information through open, yet secure, systems that often conflicts with the hierarchical culture of government bureaucracies.
Still, technologists are optimists, for good reason.
My own bias is that as information becomes more accessible, individuals gain choice, control and freedom. Established institutions - governments, large companies and special-interest groups - need to work harder to justify their authority. As information and knowledge spread, financial and human capital become more global and more competitive. The uncertainties and dislocations from new technology can be wrenching, but genies don't go back into bottles.
The First Law of Technology says that "with every change in technology that affects consumer behavior, we always overestimate the impact in the short term, but then underestimate the full impact over the long term." The original dot-com era a decade ago was overhyped, but by now the Web has become a utility, increasingly available anywhere for any purpose. This is the Information Age, yet we're just beginning to gather the information and understanding to know how it changes our lives.

The State of Digital Magazine Delivery, 2008

The State of Digital Magazine Delivery, 2008
How much circ should be digital and whether they should be new subs or converts.
Jane E. Zarem
FolioMag.com

Digital magazines are booming. The anecdotal and statistical evidence is overwhelming. Why? Analysts point to a variety of reasons, from a new generation of readers wanting a "high-fidelity" experience that combines elements of both print and online media, to the comfort level younger readers have with all things digital, to the natural synergy digital magazines have in the b-to-b space.

Whatever the reasons, the effect is obvious. Digital magazines appear not to be the transitional technology that they were perceived as not too long ago but are, instead, a hybrid technology of choice for many publishing brands and consumers.

There is no question that the growth has been remarkable, even putting aside the hype from the suppliers. Four of the major providers-Texterity, Nxtbook Media, Olive Software and Zinio-reported a combined 585 digital titles in 2005. This year, those same four suppliers report a combined 2,718 titles. And that almost certainly understates the total number of digital magazines, considering some longstanding vendors such as Qmags or Advanced Publishing weren't included, nor were the slew of vendors that have cropped up in the last couple of years, nor were the increasing number of printers that offer such solutions, nor were the magazine companies that produce their own digital replicas, such as 1105 Media.

Why do they opt to produce digital editions? Many reasons. Consider Playboy, for example. It has about 60,000 digital readers on a total circulation of more than 2 million, and it's mostly incremental readers. Phyllis Rotunno, senior VP of subscription circulation, is surprised more magazines haven't picked up on the digital trend. "It's a low cost of entry," she says, "and you really don't have anything to lose. Digital has been a great outlet for us, and we're happy with it."

"The number of publications that are moving into their initial digital effort is still very significant," says Steve Paxhia, lead analyst in the Publishing Strategy & Technology Practice at The Gilbane Group. "While the base isn't large, the number is actually growing quite nicely. It's safe to say that it is growing in excess of 25 percent per year."

And as that growth continues, Paxhia sees three predictable steps in the assimilation of digital-magazine technology:

1. People tend to accept the technology with which they're most comfortable. That would be a replica or facsimile-a post-process digital version of a print publication. That preserves the browsing metaphor that print readers get from a physical magazine, and it also offers scanability.

2. Often what happens, and it could happen simultaneously, before, or after launching a digital version, the publisher puts some or all of the magazine's articles on its Web site. That doesn't preserve the formatting and navigation of the digital edition, but the content is accessible and searchable. You then have both ends of the continuum, but that often becomes an internal bifurcation of the publisher's digital strategy.

3. Having the two ends of the continuum start to come together-blending the digital magazine and the Web site-is what many customers really want. Readers want to be able to search when they want to search and browse when they want to browse and contribute when they want to contribute.

Some of the Trends

The digital-magazine market has been vibrant for less than five years, but it nevertheless has enough maturity to have developed some interesting and important trends. Publishers are starting to realize, for example, that this isn't simply a plug-in technology. It requires focus and attention for the initiative to be successful. "It must be considered a standalone product that gets its own energy from the sales and marketing staff," says Nxtbook Media's marketing director, Marcus Grimm. "That will determine the success or failure of the digital publication."

Also, the technology has gotten much more robust in the last couple of years. Vendors can add RSS feeds, enhanced ads, and many more bells and whistles, while the publisher still needs to supply only a PDF of the magazine. That means that small publishers who can't afford to dedicate the resources necessary to keep up with cutting-edge trends can also participate.



"As the Internet continues to evolve, the high-fidelity experience has become very important to consumers," says Zinio CEO Rich Maggiotto. "The magazine layout is quite conducive to that and can become a graphically intense, rich media experience. Some content providers realize that they must expand to rich media in order to ensure against audience erosion. Others are slow to move. At the end of the day, though, publishers are content creators and audience builders. They have a brand, a trusted brand, not a magazine."

In large part, the industry is still being shaped by the needs of the marketplace, according to John Blanchard, VP of operations at Reed Business Information. "Quite frankly, I don't think it's moving fast enough," he says. "Digital edition vendors are monitoring the needs of the publishers and modifying their platforms accordingly. I'd like to see them come up with more innovative ways to use the technology and then integrate it within the publishing platform."

Defining the audience and finding the "sweet spot"

No one believes that digital will replace print. Yet kids 18-34-which Stephen Bernstein, president of Zenbu Media, calls "the sweet spot for digital"-are techno-savvy, on the computer a lot, and like their information portable. "And as the technology continues to improve, which all technology does, it will make them even more excited about reading in a digital format," he says.

On the other hand, Texterity's Cimarron Buser believes that trade magazines are "the sweet spot"-at least in terms of acceptance. "B-to-b publishers have found digital delivery useful because of the cost savings and the ability to reach out internationally," he says, "and advertisers seem to be responsive in that arena." The readers-whether consumer or b-to-b-are also responsive. Key findings published in Texterity's "Profile of the Digital Magazine Reader 2007" indicate high overall satisfaction with digital magazines (see chart, right).

Nxtbook's Grimm agrees. Nxtbook's clients are about 90 percent b-to-b. The company has been growing 30 percent for the last three years in both readership and revenue-a trend Grimm expects to continue. "Every month, more than a million people read a Nxtbook," he says, "and they stay inside for five minutes compared to the average stay of less than a minute on a Web page. The click-through rates are also higher. It's just a different type of experience." So he believes the b-to-b sector is "a natural" for digital delivery.

Of course, taking into account Zinio's 300 publisher clients that represent 850 mostly consumer digital magazines-a number projected to reach 2,000 titles by the end of the year-the consumer market looks like a "sweet spot," too.

Nevertheless, with the exception of portability and speed of receipt, there aren't a lot of reasons to prefer digital unless there is value added beyond the publication itself. "We've learned over the last year that it really isn't about pulling a print reader to digital or getting a digital reader to convert back to print," says Grimm. "It's really about giving the product to both audiences in the way that they prefer to receive it." And a reader may prefer one at one time and the other another time.

"Digital editions by themselves won't drastically increase your circulation," confirms Peter Spielvogel, director of product marketing at Olive Software. "You will find some environmentally conscious people who prefer to receive only a digital edition. The real value comes when publishers embellish their offerings with multimedia ads or content, adding more value for both readers and advertisers and attracting a more technology-oriented subscriber."

It's Web 3.0, and Someone Else's Content Is King

It's Web 3.0, and Someone Else's Content Is King
Without Original Reporting, How Long Can the Aggregation Party Last?
By Matthew Creamer
http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=126364

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- When Tina Brown launched a publishing venture a decade ago, she used glossy paper bound between celebrity-splashed covers filled with long articles written by big-name, big-dollar contributors who spent weeks or even months reporting and crafting their stories. Here's how she'll probably do it in 2008: Hire a few editors to handpick stuff already kicking around the internet that will be ranked or graded, perhaps in some slickly designed graph.

Whatever you think of Ms. Brown and her so far skimpily detailed plans to launch an IAC-backed news-aggregation site, you have to admit her shift in purpose from producing original content to curating it is a sign of the times -- end times maybe -- for media as we've known it. Ms. Brown is the woman, after all, famous for presiding over the most magazine-y of magazines, The New Yorker and Vanity Fair, two books whose deep reporting, extensive fact-checking and long stories have no digital-world analogs. But with the expensive pursuit of professional content failing to jibe with profitability, media entrepreneurship looks to be reduced to a meta role of repackaging what's already out there.

Welcome to the era of the aggregator.

Stealing others' thunder
If Web 1.0 was about old-media companies making half-hearted gestures at that online thing and Web 2.0 was a brisk reminder that, dot-com bust notwithstanding, the internet is a very real and open thing where walls and control don't work well, then part of Web 3.0 will be about figuring out how to monetize that openness. Euphemisms aside, the next chore for media outlets will be trying to sell ads against other people's content in addition to their own. Aggregation, not as a sidelight but as more of a focus, is a mission change for media, and there's a case for it, to be sure. Time and attention have limits, but the universe of content, it seems, does not. So finding a way to quickly and cleanly deliver relevant news is important. But there are also potentially large societal costs, and success is by no means guaranteed.

The portals and blogs, in very different ways, introduced the role of sifting and collating. Then mainstream media started to figure it out as a way to add more eyeballs and improve their performance on search engines. And as aggregation and curation took a front seat, deep investments in news-gathering became few and far between.

The Pew Center's most recent edition of its annual report on journalism, as gloomy a document as you'd imagine, noted that news organizations continued to tear down their walls. Eleven of 24 major news sites linked to off-site stories, up from three the year before. Yet the focus of reporting narrowed because of the attrition of news-gathering resources. The other side of that coin is that more organizations are getting hip to the reality that they can't depend on being destinations, so they're adding to their websites features that facilitate sharing and aggregation in ways that often take the content and the reader off-site. In short, they're finding ways to make their product an easily transportable commodity.

Why pay more?
The dynamic was summed up neatly in an October 2007 column in Vanity Fair by media pundit Michael Wolff. His observation that "news seems ever more valueless" bled into the conclusion that value resides in the organization of news. A sharp piece of analysis, the column doubled as an announcement of Mr. Wolff's new venture. Newser.com presents its version of the top stories of the moment in an image-heavy grid. When you move your mouse over a block, up pops a small window containing a summary of the story, a link to the source and an ad, perhaps for a brand such as Verizon or T-Mobile. It's not an industrial-strength collector like a Google News; it's more selective and it's probably more carefully presented. Mr. Wolff balks at the term "aggregator" but he doesn't quite have a concise descriptor for what Newser is.

The problem, of course, if you care about things like a robust economy of information, is that this prizes the organization of news stories, not their creation, begging pressing and ultimately depressing questions for the future of news. If aggregating is becoming the best way to make money from content, who's going to undertake the costly business of creating that content?

Asked whether, as a conten provider of the old school, he ever finds this state of things depressing, Mr. Wolff argues that the wealth of content on the web from both professionals and the legions of bloggers and other formerly-known-as-amateurs effectively is creating a golden age for content. "I'm tired of that New York Times argument that only the following kind of people create quality content. The range out there is remarkable ... and it's cost-free."

Then there's the question for the burgeoning business of aggregation itself. "The space is heating up," as Mr. Wolff puts it. So how do you grab enough consumers' eyeballs to get advertisers interested? That's no mean feat when you consider the fragmentation on the web in general and, in specific, among the growing number of sites purporting to be the last word in telling you what you need to read. It's a universe of boundless competition.

Evidence not all in yet
Newser has had some early success. Unique visitors jumped from 352,000 to 658,000 between January and February, according to ComScore. But pointing to the popularity of the websites of The New York Times or CNN, MediaVest VP-digital director Mo Renganathan isn't yet convinced consumers will support aggregation. "The general population hasn't migrated to the news-aggregator mentality in any broad sense. It'll be interesting to see how it transitions over time. I don't know if it'll flip."

Chris Tolles, CEO of Topix.com, a site that organizes news stories by ZIP code, argues that you need one of three things to succeed: an unusual approach like that of the immensely popular Digg, whose users vote stories up or down and thus allow the community to determine the most important news; a technology, such as Topix's artificial intelligence; or a content differentiator such as the Huffington Post's stable of celebrity bloggers.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, he is bearish on the chances of survival for Ms. Brown's venture. Asked if her penchant for drumming up attention in the offline world will translate to a digital environment, he wagged: "You can't translate that buzz while using other people's content." (An IAC spokesman declined to make Ms. Brown available for an interview.)

He's not alone in his skepticism. Gabe Rivera, founder of Techmeme, a popular destination for those who want a snapshot of news and discussion around Silicon Valley, was blunt. "I expect efforts in news aggregation by established media companies to fail overwhelmingly," he wrote in an e-mail. "Successful aggregators have largely come from (1) enterprising individuals; (2) pioneering new concepts; and (3) [those who are] motivated by ownership of their project. Most big-media news-aggregation projects, lacking all three elements, are doomed. I expect somewhat better things from independent projects. Most will still fail -- that's typical in this space."

It's a tough assessment from someone who's made aggregation work, though it's perhaps not as bleak as the overall outlook for journalism, which has to come to grips both culturally and economically with a new model that's summed up by Pew like this: "There is no single or finished news product anymore."

No argument here. So go ahead, pass this along. Digg it. Share it on Google Reader or on Facebook.

Please.

Now fashion mags make models 'fatter'

Now fashion mags make models 'fatter'

Fashion magazines are manipulating images of skinny models to make them look "fatter" than they really are.
The move is a response to critics who blame images of so-called "size zero" models for the rise in eating disorders in young girls.

The fashion industry has long been accused of making models and actresses look thinner and is now using the same techniques in reverse to deflect criticism


Belinda Coleman, of the retouching agency The Shoemakers Elves, said there was a trend towards presenting less "extreme" images of thinness and of enhancing figures. "Where models are looking particularly gaunt, magazines are saying, 'We can't have that - fill out their chests,'?" she said.

"It is now deemed just as negative to be too thin as too fat. Every¬one is scared of being highlighted as the magazine or label that promotes very thin girls, so they are being a lot more careful about the images they present."

Another agency, the iWanex Studio, boasts a portfolio of "before and after" images of celebrities that it has retouched for magazines. In one of the "after" photographs, the thighs of Cameron Diaz, the actress, have been visibly widened, her arms filled out and her stomach made smoother and rounder, with her prominent hip bones from the "before" photograph erased.

Nicky Eaton, the head of press and PR at Condé Nast, which publishes Vogue, GQ, and Glamour, also confirmed that images of models were enhanced to make them appear fuller-figured.
"There have been cases where models are booked way ahead of a shoot and then they turn up two months later looking less healthy and perhaps a bit underweight. We wouldn't be happy showing them that way, so it is then that we would need that person to look a little bit fuller."

But Susan Ringwood, the chief executive of the eating disorder charity Beat, condemned the practice. "Altering models' bodies to appear fuller-figured proves that the industry acknowledges there is a serious issue with projecting images of very thin models, but [it is] missing the point," she said. "They should be using naturally healthy models in the first instance, instead of having to make them look that way."

In 2003, Kate Winslet, who has defended fuller-figured women, appeared on the cover of GQ in a picture that had been altered without her knowledge to make her appear much slimmer.
The following year, Keira Knightley was shocked after appearing with an enhanced bust on posters for the film King Arthur. Last year, however, she dismissed reports that her image in adverts for Chanel's Coco Mademoiselle perfume had been enhanced, despite speculation that she was made to look curvier.

This month, the Periodical Publishers Association (PPA), which represents the magazine industry, appealed for the introduction of a voluntary code regulating the use of digital manipulation and is to hold discussions on the issue with magazine editors.

The New Rules of Media

The New Rules of Media
by Mark Glaser
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/
Last week, I had the honor of giving a speech at Arkansas State University, as part of their Lecture & Concert series - at least, once I made it through the mechanical mayhem of American Airlines cancelling dozens of flights the same day I flew out. I also got to address a few classes in the College of Communications there, and meet with students who put together the school newspaper.

It was heartening that out in the middle of the heartland of the U.S., classes on citizen journalism and public affairs reporting are being taken seriously. Plus, the students who work on the school newspaper (and who get paid to do so!) have been adding lots of original video reports to the newspaper's website.

As with my visit last year to Ball State, I heard the same complaints from professors who say that students like to use technology for fun and socializing but don't consider the journalistic possibilities of social networks, YouTube and other new technology. This is a gap that needs to be closed at schools teaching journalism.

I want to share some of the main points of my talk at Arkansas State, much of which I have discussed in detail here on MediaShift, but haven't really brought together in one place.

Change in Media Usage
Before I get into the rules, I want to give some important background into the major shift going on in media usage - especially as it relates to journalism and news. There is a move away from traditional media and toward online media.

These figures come out of the new State of the News Media 2008, from the Project for Excellence in Journalism.


> Newspapers ended 2007 with 8.4% less circulation daily and 11.4% less Sunday than in 2001. Plus, print newspaper ad revenues experienced their worst drop in more than 50 years, according to the Newspaper Association of America.

> The main TV network news programs averaged 23.1 million viewers a night, a drop of 5%, or 1.2 million viewers compared with data from 2006. Over the past 25 years, the audience has fallen around 1 million per year.

When I interviewed NBC anchor Brian Williams a couple years ago, he boasted:

On some nights we split an audience three ways of 30 million Americans, and I don't need to tell you that you can't come close to that audience in any other medium. The fact that 'Nightly News' most nights leads the pack by - I don't know what the numbers are - makes us the largest single source of news in the United States by an enormous margin. There's no newspaper, there's no website, there's no news site that comes even close.

That might be true, but it's an audience that is decreasing - and getting older - each passing year.

> In traditional broadcast radio, total reach went from 95.3% of Americans to 93.3% - not as harsh as other mediums.

> The major newsmagazines - Time, Newsweek, and US News - have seen flat circulation for the past several years. They would be down even further except that they give big discounts to people on subscriptions.

> Meanwhile, online news consumption is up. In 2000, 60% of people said they had got news online ever; 22% said they did it "yesterday" - a gauge for regular readers. In late 2007, the number who got online news ever was up to 71% and 37% said they were online for news "yesterday."

This shows a big change in attention: People's habits are changing, as they go online for news more often and regularly.


> In advertising, Borrell Research says that local online ads brought in 32% more money in 2007, hitting $7.5 billion, while national ads saw a 20% increase in revenues. A Veronis Suhler Stevenson study found that consumers were spending 17% of their media consumption time with the web - but the medium made up just 8% of total ad expenditures. That gap means there's even more growth ahead for online ads, as marketers realize they need to spend more money where people are spending their time.

The New Rules of Media

1. The Audience Knows More Than the Journalist
(News Is a Conversation and Not a Lecture)

In 2002, Dan Gillmor was live-blogging a speech by Qwest CEO Joe Nacchio at the PC Forum conference. Nacchio was complaining about how hard it was to raise capital. Meanwhile, Buzz Bruggeman wrote in to Gillmor, noting that Nacchio had made hundreds of millions of dollars at the company, and Gillmor posted that in an update to the blog. Soon, the room quickly turned hostile to Nacchio and he was pushed out from the company not long after that.

The lesson is that when an audience is wired, and there's a "backchannel" of knowledgeable people, the people on the dais can often feel the wrath.

In the world of journalism, there's a tradition of the news reporter or anchor or editor or producer being the font of all knowledge, telling the rest of us what's going on in the world. The journalist has the answer, and they are sharing it with us in a news report.

But the truth is that the audience, and its collective wisdom, knows more, and can add knowledge to a particular subject. They might not be a trained journalist but they can still be an expert, similar to the sources most journalists use on a regular basis.

And rather than being a one-to-many broadcast, news is now a conversation that might start with the journalist, but it lives on in extended form online. The audience can help with story ideas, comments, corrections, addendums and updates.

More recently, BusinessWeek reporter Sarah Lacy was interviewing Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the South by Southwest conference. Lacy tried injecting her own personality into the interview, and audience members quickly started using blogs and Twitter to communicate their displeasure with her performance. Lacy would have been better served letting the audience jump in much sooner and ask their own questions.

2. People Are in Conrol of Their Media Experience

No longer do people rely on TV Guide to program their lives around their favorite TV shows. Now they can use a digital video recorder or watch shows on-demand online and fit their TV watching into their lives. The people are taking control and watching, and listening to what they want when they want - and on the devices they want. And that goes for TV as well as radio and audio, with podcasts allowing people to listen on their own time and fast-forward or rewind shows at will.

What do we gain? We get more control of our lives and our media experience and we are no longer slaves to programmers. But what do we lose? We are losing shared experiences, where we all watch the same shows at the same time, or watch the same sporting events together. And our "water cooler" talk has a new etiquette, where we must tell people not to ruin our favorite shows because we're taping it to watch later!

3. Anyone Can Be a Media Creator or Remixer

The price for media creation and distribution has dropped to the point where many more people can afford to get a digital camera, videocamera or editing software, and post it online at hundreds of media-sharing sites. Plus, almost every cell phone on the market has built-in cameras and videocameras so we can capture and share our experiences.

It only takes a minute to set up a new blog on Blogger, upload a video to YouTube or record a podcast and let people subscribe to it online. Not only are amateurs being noticed by their work posted online, but they are also changing the agenda in politics. For example, last year Philip de Vellis posted his own homemade video ad for Barack Obama, a mashup of a speech by Hillary Clinton and the infamous "1984" Macintosh commercial for the Super Bowl.

De Vellis was not a political consultant and worked on the ad on his own time. But the strength of his work made people take notice, and it became the talk of the campaigns as it spread virally online. The video has now been viewed on YouTube alone nearly 5 million times.

One important point to keep in mind is that anyone can create or remix their own media, but it still takes skills to use those tools and stand out from the millions of others who are doing the same thing.

4. Traditional Media Must Evolve or Die

This has been a Silicon Valley mantra - "evolve or die" - because of the amazing speed of innovation and change in the technology business. Now the media business must live by the same rule, as technology becomes such an important part of news dissemination and analysis. Yahoo was once seen as an innovator in the Valley just a few years ago, and now it's slipped, it hasn't kept up with changes like social networking, and it is a takeover target for Microsoft.

Let's look at a case study for traditional media evolution: The New York Times. The newspaper has tried a lot of different approaches to doing news online. In the mid-'90s, it launched an online-only publication called CyberTimes (of which I was a contributing freelance writer). Later, it put up a pay wall around archives and Op-Ed columnists called TimesSelect to try to offer it as a free add-on for print subscribers. The idea was to prop up the diminishing print subscriptions rather than innovate online.


But eventually, the Times learned that traditional media must live in the digital world on its own terms. They dropped the TimesSelect experiment and opened up all online archives. A few years ago, the Times wouldn't consider running blogs, and now it has dozens of them. Plus, the Times allows comments on many stories posted online, and even has a My Times personalized page that lets you create a start page with other sources outside of NYTimes.com content.

But the evolution that traditional media must make is not just in adding new features; they must change their mindset, their ideas and their ways of doing journalism to new ways.

5. Despite Censorship, The Story Will Get Out

Time and time again, repressive governments have tried to block websites or technology but have failed to supress them. Most recently, China has blocked YouTube because of videos of the recent unrest in Tibet. But people in China are savvy and know how to view blocked sites by using the Google cache - pages that Google saves that you can view by doing simple web searches and clicking on "cache." Or there are proxy servers that are located offshore from China, letting people view news, video and more that might be blocked in China.

Last year, when monks were protesting in Burma, the ruling junta cracked down and foreign journalists were hard-pressed to get the news out. Tourists who were there took video and told the stories online, getting around censorship. Independent blogger Jotman, based in Bangkok, went undercover to tell the story of monks who were in hiding.

This rule goes beyond the heart-breaking stories that happen under repressive regimes; it also applies to new technology that can't be suppressed. For instance, once people figured out how to share digital files - music, movies, software, etc. - there is no way that technology can be reversed. The music business has found this out the hard way, trying everything in its power to litigate against file-sharers, shutting down sites such as Napster, but not really changing the way people share music online.

Similarly, Viacom has sued YouTube over copyright infringement, and even if it won the $1 billion it seeks, and even if YouTube eventually shut down over legal problems, there would still be people sharing copyrighted video online. Once the technology genie is out of the bottle, there's no way to put it back in.

6. Amateur and Professional Journalists Should Work Together

The longtime antipathy between bloggers and mainstream media journalists has been misplaced and wrong-headed. The early bloggers believed that traditional media was flawed and would be replaced, while journalists ranted about bloggers being full of hot air and working in their pajamas. Now, there are more journalists blogging than ever, and independent blogs are now hiring journalists. The lines are more blurry than ever between bloggers and journalists - if there ever was a reason to draw a line in the first place.

The reality now is that both sides of this old argument can learn from each other. Bloggers can learn about being fair and having ethical standards, while journalists can learn the "incremental journalism" of bloggers, adding facts, analysis and aggregation over a period of time.

7. Journalists Need to Be Multi-Platform

It's not enough to be a broadcast journalist, a print journalist or a photojournalist in the digital age. Now, journalists need to learn a host of skills to reach different audiences. A student studying print journalism should learn how to be on camera and how to shoot video and photos. A person studying broadcast journalism should learn how to write for the web, and how to moderate an online forum.

I hear from people working in mainstream media all the time who are looking for good community moderators. That's a skill that will be increasingly important for young journalists to learn. Plus, every journalist will need to know how to be a freelancer (as there's a good chance they'll be laid off or between jobs at some point), how to design or run a website, and run their own business.

But no matter the import of knowing the new technology and working the web, students must still understand basic journalism skills - no matter the medium. It's crucial that those skills, those ethics, that fairness, is not lost in the rush to new technology.

I'm one of the few people in journalism who actually has a positive outlook for new graduates getting out into the job market. If you can learn multi-platform skills, learn how to deal with an online community, learn new ways of doing journalism in collaboration with the audience, you will be in demand at traditional media outlets. And this is the best time in history for new journalists to make their own way, start their own media outlet and get noticed.

Panel Exploring the Future of Magazines

Channel Partners Explore Magazines' Future
By Karlene Lukovitz
http://news.ipda.org/april-08/mar-08/magazines-future-panel.html

Will the Internet spell the end of print magazines?

The answer to that oft-posed question is a resounding "no," according to John Loughlin, executive VP and general manager, Hearst Magazines. In fact, to the contrary, the Internet "is in the process of reinvigorating the magazine business," he says.

Loughlin, one of several speakers on a panel exploring the future of magazines that was moderated by Peter Kreisky of The Kreisky Media Consultancy, reported that Hearst sold 1.6 million net paid subscriptions on the Web last year, generating $20 million to $30 million in revenue. These were not "cannibalized" from existing customers, he stressed: Between 80% and 90% of the new subs came from consumers who had no previous history of transactions with Hearst. Loughlin added that he'd seen similar patterns while working at other major publishing companies.

Hearst uses every opportunity to drive traffic to its sites, and promotes buying issues at retail on all of its magazine sites. The Web is particularly powerful for generating new retail and subscription customers because it exposes new prospects to magazine content in a format that avoids the interference of "brand bias," Loughlin said. Young people often perceive an established magazine as being "their father's or mother's magazine," he explained. But when they experience the title's content in the nontraditional format of the Web and like that content, "all of a sudden, it's not my father's brand anymore."

Web aside, Loughlin stressed that consolidation of publishers, retailers and industry suppliers is "painful" and will inevitably continue-but that its upsides are that it will force all parties to strive for constructive change and it's also likely to make change more feasible.

"There are fewer companies, and we may be reaching a point where there are sufficiently few of us to get something done," he said. "We've been talking about moving from a push to a pull system for 20 years. Consolidation may drive us all more quickly to a demand-driven world."

Changes that must be made, he said, include continuing to improve newsstand efficiencies, optimizing magazine mixes at retail, "rationalizing" the number of titles at retail based on consumer demand, eliminating redundancies in field force, back office and data collection and distribution functions, and going to pass-through RDA.

Other panelists' viewpoints on what's ahead for magazines:

* Jamie Carey, VP, newsstand for Barnes & Noble, Inc.-noting that B&N is enjoying the best financial status in its history, in no small part because of the 5,000+ magazines it carries-expressed the hope that publishers will continue to invest in their print platforms, and not lose focus to digital formats.

Carey noted the potential for selling magazine subscriptions at retail. "Subscriptions account for 85% of [circulation], and we could help [publishers] sell them," he said. "It would be great if, five years from now, we were a big subscription source." He added that there is also considerable potential in bookazines and other innovations. "A lot more could be done," he summed up.

* Glen Clark, president of The News Group in North America and executive VP of The Jim Pattison Group, called for "sweeping changes" to simplify and modernize the system, including eliminating all unnecessary costs, partnering to further reduce waste, facilitating industry-wide adoption of SBT, and maximizing sales while optimizing efficiencies. Clark also called for a single discount rate and making RDA a discount off invoice.

He said that professional wholesalers will continue to reinvest in the business through technologies and services, and predicted that by 2012, efficiency levels will reach the 50%+ level, even as sales are enhanced. He sees a "restructured and reenergized" supply chain and a business able to "recapture and extend retail space."

* Rich Jacobsen, president and CEO, Time/Warner Retail Sales & Marketing, stressed magazines' unique engagement with consumers and said it's time for the industry to focus on "leading with our positives, as other leading categories do."

He agreed with a point that's been expressed by Curtis Circulation executives regarding efficiencies: The focus should start with the largest-selling titles, because this is the point of greatest leverage. If the efficiency levels of just the top six selling newsstand titles could be raised to the efficiency level of People Weekly (now at 52.2%), 150 million magazines per year would be taken out of the system, yielding about $32 million in savings for wholesalers and roughly $25 million in marginal net improvement.

Jacobsen noted that the category flourishes most within retailers that are "passionate" about the product, and observed that one of the plusses of Wal-Mart's magazine supply chain sustainability initiative is that it has engaged the retailer with the category and created a feeling of "ownership" toward it.
He also suggested that the industry should explore ways to leverage magazine sales innovations at retail, such as upsells,to reduce its dependency on the Postal Service.

Magazine Editors Explain Weird Cover Numerology

BoSacks Speaks Out
Magazine Editors Explain Weird Cover Numerology

John Koblin of the New York Observer recently asked the following excellent question about magazine covers. Why all the MEANINGLESS NUMBERS?

I have wondered for years about that. I can only guess that they are an effective sales tool. But if a cover states 785 fashion and beauty tips like Lucky did, is that really possible? Is it really readable once you are in the magazine? Do these claims have any read editorial integrity? Or like the cover of Men's Health that offered 1,293 tips on something or other, is there anyone out there who has the patience to read or even scan 1,293 of anything?

I paraphrase Winston Churchill when I say that magazine covers "are a puzzle, inside a riddle, wrapped in an enigma". I have been studying them for years. I used to post in my office wall in several huge publishing houses every cover produced and the sales results of those covers. I would sit and ponder the variables and the results with friends, publishers and editors alike. Yes, there are "supposed" patterns of success to deduce. But there is no real universal truth or rule. In my studied opinion each success is title independent. What works for one niche does not necessarily work for another. That is sad but true.

Here are some of the answers or explanations from the horse's mouths:

"It's both a promise to the reader and a great graphic device."
"I have to like the number. Sometimes I'll have 75 items and I'll like number 67 better."
-Kate White, editor, Cosmopolitan

"The smaller the number and the more specific, the better."
-David Zinczenko, editor, Men's Health

"With the bigger ones we'll take an average where we say, 'O.K., we have 8 tips per page and 140 editorial pages and hence we have 1,100 tips in the magazine.'"
-David Zinczenko, editor, Men's Health

"Our research department literally just counted the number of products we had in the issue and that's the total we had," of the "218 Best Buys"
James Baker, editorial director of Real Simple

"We'll assign a research assistant or a hapless intern to try to count up most of the tips in the magazine and find some way to quantify for the cover of the magazine,"
-David Zinczenko, editor, Men's Health"

We decided in August or so that we wanted to do 365 beauty ideas in the beauty section for our January [2008] issue. The beauty department commissioned 365, and there was some last-minute talk if there should be 366 beauty ideas for the leap year, but we decided against it."
-Cindi Leive, editor, Glamour

"We'll assign a research assistant or a hapless intern to try to count up most of the tips in the magazine and find some way to quantify for the cover of the magazine."
-David Zinczenko

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.

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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.
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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.