As the Magazine World (In)terns

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Magazine monolith Conde Nast is dropping its intern program at the end of this year, according to Women's Wear Daily (www.wwd.com).

Wary of a rising industry trend and itself mired in two lawsuits brought by two former interns alleging they were paid below minimum wage during their apprenticeships, Conde Nast has opted to discontinue its internship program, the WWD article reports. Lawsuits against the magazine publisher brought by former W intern Lauren Ballinger and one-time New Yorker intern Matthew Lieb are still pending.

Hearst has been sued by a former Harper's Bazaar intern and Fox Searchlight settled a lawsuit brought by two former interns, among other media conglomerates that have operated training programs accused of under-paying interns.

Conde Nast Resurrects M Magazine for Rich Guys

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M magazine, published by Conde Nast's Fairchild division, has risen from the ashes of its economic recession-fueled extinction in the early '90s and hits newsstands next week, the New York Post's "Media Ink" column reports.

The quarterly periodical is targeting men who earn $200k and above and is eying circulation figures of 75,000, according to the Post column. Editorial Director Peter Kaplan said the hoped-for audience consists of "affluent trailblazers who want to look under the hood." Yeah, people in the publishing industry  talk like that.

Hollywood actor and under-the-hood-looker Bradley Cooper, star of such trailblazing films as The A-Team and The Hangover, will grace the cover of M's premiere issue.

Magazines' Last Stand at the Newsstand?

(Photo credit: Longzero)Half-year figures are in from the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) and newsstand sales for periodicals overall are grim.

As reported by Women's Wear Daily's Web site, Conde Nast flagship magazines Vogue and Vanity Fair respectively experienced 16.5 percent and 18.8 percent declines in newsstand sales, according to ABC unaudited Rapid Report data. Newsstand sales at InStyle dropped 4.5 percent and People StyleWatch plunged 3 percent. Holding one's own is what passes for good news for print magazines nowadays, so Conde Nast's W Magazine's 2.2 percent slippage in sales compared to the first half of 2011 is almost cause to pop the champagne corks.

Meanwhile, paidcontent.org reported this week on circulation figures for digital-replica magazines, which doubled their market share in North America last year. Digital replicas overall account for 1.7 percent of the industry, up from less than 1 percent a year ago.

No surprise to learn that the largest circulation among digital replica magazines are found in Game Informer Magazine, Maxim and Cosmopolitan.

Newstand Sales of Glamour Unsightly

Image via WikipediaGlamour Magazine, Conde Nast's best-seller on newsstands, has suffered a 17 percent decline in sales over the first third of 2011, according to the WWDMedia Website.

With a $3.99 price tag, the drop-off in sales means a loss of newsstand revenue of more than $1.5 million. The Website post cited Audit Bureau of Circulations Rapid Report figures showing average sales of Glamour over the first four months of this year were 459,000, compared to 550,900 during the comparable period in 2010.

Glamour cover girls in 2011 have included actresses Reese Witherspoon, Emma Stone and Kate Winslet, along with the omnipresent Kim Kardashian. In contrast, fashion magazine Vogue experienced a 20 percent boost in newsstand sales during the first four months of 2011, but Elle's sales dropped 7 percent.

Virtual Newsstand Aim of Joint Venture of Media Conglomerates

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Four media giants that focus on magazines and the newspaper-heavy News Corp. are joining forces in a joint venture to create a digital newsstand.

Conde Nast, Time, Inc., Meredith, the Hearst Corp. and News Corp. visualize creating an industry-standard platform and an online store, similar to iTunes, where the media consortium can sell  publications to consumers who can view them on their cell phones, electronic readers, the Internet, and other digital devices yet to be devised.  The media moguls believe advertisers will pay a higher price for placement in these digital publications.

The joint venture is thus far, nameless, and none of its members has disclosed a dollar amount they expect to contribute to the effort. However, Time, Inc. executive veep John Squires will serve as the venture's interim general manager.  The success of the project is dependent on the willingness of Amazon's Kindle e-reader and Apple's iTunes to adopt the joint venture's technology standards.

"TUOL" finds it hard to imagine digitally reading magazines in the bathroom and laments the likely extinction of magazine newsstands where cranky vendors short-change the customers and yell at them not to thumb through the adult periodicals.