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.

Wealth of Information

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)Enriched reading, or just reading for the rich?

According to the online version of Women's Wear Daily, periodical publishers have launched four journals targeting readers who want ads touting Hermes and Harry Winston, not clip-out coupons. Bloomberg Terminal subscribers, who dole out $20,000 annually for the service, now receive Bloomberg Pursuits magazine (see "TUOL" post 1/27/12). WWD reports the demographics for BP magazine are 90 percent male whose average earnings are in the neighborhood of $452,000, which is a very nice neighborhood.

Get ready in September for Du Jour magazine in your mailbox, that is, if your mailbox is attached to a home that would sell for $1.5 million or so, and your income averages $5 million. Time, Style & Design is being marketed by Time magazine to a half-million readers eager to check out the latest Bulgari ad. And ForbesLife will now be available on newsstands, so pick up the latest copy, which includes an article by billionaire Warren Buffett and profiles the Bottega Veneta Suite at Florence's St. Regis.

Women's Wear Daily couldn't help but boast about the good fortune of its own W magazine, which has seen a 20 percent jump in ad pages.

The rich may be different than you and I, but the hard-working staff at "TUOL" is content with its current periodical perusing, though admits it's getting harder to find the spoon and the oar in the Highlights picture puzzle page.

Hearst Magazine Shopping in Paris

Image via WikipediaCar & Driver and foreign editions of Elle magazine are among the periodicals that may be joining the Hearst Corp. stable of more than 200 magazines, according to Bloomberg News.

France's largest publisher, Lagardere, is negotiating with the New York-based Hearst for a possible cash purchase of its international magazine titles, Bloomberg reports. The move would enable the French media giant to focus on its book publishing and domestic periodical holdings.

Were the sale to go forward, Lagardere would attempt to retain editorial control of Elle.  Cosmopolitan and Good Housekeeping are among the journals owned by Hearst.

Hollywood Reporter Undergoing Transformation

Image via WikipediaDecimated from staff cutbacks fueled by shrinking advertising lineage and battered by online competitors, including IndieWire.com, TheWrap.com, and Deadline.com, the five-time-a-week Hollywood Reporter is fighting back by converting itself into a slick, glossy large-format weekly magazine, according to a story in The New York Times.


Photo spreads, feature articles, and analytical stories about the dream industry, along with a Web site redesign and a focus on breaking news will be the order of the day for the new Hollywood Reporter. The printed daily version will be supplanted by a daily digital edition in PDF format.


Razorfish pocketed a tidy sum to redo the Reporter Web site, and plans are to boost the editorial staff to approximately 70 people, according to the Times article. Seems like a lot of trouble to go to just to be able to cover a creatively and financially bankrupt industry responsible for 3D tripe such as Piranha.

Nation to Launch Media Blog

Image via Wikipedia

The Nation has hired former Editor & Publisher Editor Greg Mitchell to write and edit the "Media Fix" blog, which is set to launch in April.

The blog promises to examine the best and worst of print, digital and broadcast media doings. Presently, the blog has a Twitter feed: @MediaFixBlog. "TUOL" welcomes another watchdog to the media kennel, but keep your mitts off our cool gavel logo.

Ax-Wielding at BusinessWeek Not Over Yet

Image via CrunchBase

Approximately a month before the debut of Bloomberg BusinessWeek, the magazine has trimmed its editorial staff by 30, according to a report in today's New York Times.

Bloomberg L.P. purchased BusinessWeek in December 2009 (see "TUOL" post 10/14/09), a month after the financially strapped business journal roughly 25 percent of its staff of 400.  The latest round of layoffs purportedly is not a cost-savings measure, but rather, an attempt to curtail overlap with the content of Bloomberg News, which is little solace to those who were jettisoned.

Read Now, Pay Later...

Image by Doug Greenberg via Flickr

Time was when magazine journalists fretted about "bingo" or "idiot" subscription cards falling out of magazines and annoying subscribers when readers opened the periodical to peruse their painstakingly detailed articles.

Nowadays, magazine writers  are more concerned about finding a forum for their lengthy works and getting paid for their efforts. "The News Frontier" Jan. 11 column featured on the Web site of  the Columbia Journalism Review offers a prime example, or a cautionary tale, depending on your viewpoint, of this phenomenon, in the case of "Finding Dolly Freed," written by award-winning author Paige Williams, currently executive editor of Boston magazine.

Freed achieved notoriety in 1978 when she published Possum Living: How to live well without a job and with almost no money, a "how-to" guide that tracked the lifestyle she and her father lived in rural Pennsylvania. Freed dropped out of the public eye following multiple tv appearances and an award-winning documentary about her.  The re-issuance of her book caught the attention of Williams, a former Nieman fellow and National Magazine Award winner, which resulted in a 6,000-word profile of Freed and her philosophy. Williams flew to Houston to meet with her subject in preparing the piece.

Here's the rub: despite her pedigree, Williams was rejected by one publication after another, including The New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, and Texas Monthly, which led to her self-publishing the piece on a Web site created for her, paige-williams.com, that archives other articles of hers as well.

Visitors to the Web site will find the following message in a sidebar to the article: "Finding Dolly Freed" is a piece of independent journalism that cost more than $2,000 to produce. To help the writer recoup her expenses and perhaps bank a small paycheck, please click here and pay whatever amount you'd like. Think of it as Radiohead journalism! Thank you in advance." Visitors so inclined are then led to a Pay Pal page.  Thus far, she has drawn 3,000 unique visitors, but received contributions from 34 readers totaling $423.

Makes it easier to understand why journalists ranked 184 on the list of the 200 worst jobs (see "TUOL" post 1/7/10). Incidentally, the devoted "TUOL" staff won't receive a plugged nickel for this post or any other illuminating tidbit, but that discussion is for another day, dear readers.

The Atlantic's Prize Pundit Playlist Puzzling

What do Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Karl Rove, and Charles Krauthammer have in common?

True, they are all annoying, but that's not what "TUOL" meant.  These print and/or broadcast pundits, along with The New York Times' columnists Paul Krugman, Frank Rich, and Thomas Friedman, The Washington Post's George Will, and The Atlantic's hometown favorite Andrew Sullivan comprise the top 10 members of "The Atlantic 50"--the nation's most influential commentators who shape national debate, in the lofty estimation of the magazine (http://www.theatlanticwire.com/people/index/).

To arrive at the list, the magazine surveyed 250 Washington "insiders," compiled and analyzed data gauging each commentator's audience, and partnered with Postrank, a company that filters social media data. There's political balance on the list. What's troubling, however, is the expanded view toward what constitutes a journalist/commentator/pundit.  Karl Rove, who occasionally seeks sanctuary in the editorial pages of  The Wall St. Journal when not dodging Grand Jury subpoenas? Glenn Beck, the weepy, self-professed "rodeo clown" who besmirches the good name of rodeo jesters everywhere?

When did the "best and the brightest" get supplanted by the "loudest and the dumbest"?

New Playboy CEO Seeks to Energize Bunny

Last week, Playboy Enterprises tapped Scott N. Flanders to be its new CEO. Since 2006, Flanders has been CEO of the Irvine, Calif.-based Freedom Communications, the country's 14th largest media company. Before that, he was CEO and President of Columbia House Co., the mammoth direct marketer of music and videos. He also is the former president of MacMillan Publishing, the world's largest computer and reference publisher.

Flanders, a C.P.A. and law school graduate, has a storied track record of increasing revenues at these varied enterprises. In a recent interview with FOLIO Magazine, he blamed the advertising recession for Playboy Magazine's sagging sales. Although, he remains a "big believer in print," he acknowledged that "Playboy is having to shrink to grow in the future." Note to Mr. Flanders--the demographic attracted to the magazine hates the word "shrink." Flanders predicts that Playboy will rebound and characterizes himself as a "change agent" at every media company he has led.

With Playboy trading at $2.84 a share on the NYSE, his initial challenge may be to airbrush the magazine's financials to attract a buyer. Flanders will make his debut at Playboy at the same time as Miss July.