UPDATE: iPad
Everyone in the media industry will be waiting with baited breath as Apple unveils its tablet computer today (live here at 10am PST)
Will the Apple tablet save publishing? No.
It will force them to get off their collective duffs and start investing in defending their brand digitally, but just like the music industry the business [...]
“On each occasion, I was politely told that the typical buyer of advertising space lacked the time and intelligence to grasp complicated ideas such as I had just presented. Nor in six years was any notable investment made in a dedicated sales staff, reader research or web development for I.D.”
“Imagine going to a hospital and [...]
Folio Magazine has their annual Magazine and Media Predictions for 2010 (here) and there are a few choice quotes I’ve highlighted below. I’ve got a few of my own predictions:
Slightly down is the new up.
We will see fire sale buyouts (a la Business Week) of a few big titles rather than shuttering (a la Gourmet).
More [...]
Mediaite picked up a story that Perez Hilton ran about Men’s Health using the same coverlines from 3 years ago (here) on their December issue and they have a quote from Zinczenko defending the practice.
Most magazines recycle coverlines. Maybe there’s a little rewording or maybe they just lift one off an old cover, but it’s [...]
In a interview with Blackbook (here) George Lois doesn’t pull any punches on the state of magazine design today. I was at the SPD awards ceremony when he received a lifetime achievement award of sorts and remember getting so charged up after listening to him talk and watching a video Fred Woodward shot. Of course [...]
Story here: http://www.theadventurelife.org/
It’s not huge news that a magazine just folded but a big deal in my universe since I worked for Outside and Men’s Journal.
All magazine categories are simply too crowded for the number of readers and advertisers available. Men’s Journal was started when Jann couldn’t buy Outside back from Larry Burke. Jann sold [...]
Financial times is reporting that Rupert Murdoch’s eldest son Lachlan is closing in on a joint offer for a group of trade magazines owned by Nielsen Business Media (here). There’s no telling if PDN will be a part of the sale but the story goes on to say that Nielson would like to shed the [...]
Kevin DeMaria, former Art Director at Gourmet Magazine took photographs of his final days at the magazine (here).
I almost wrote a piece not too long ago about food magazines because I’d unsubscribed to Gourmet but then discovered that having access to millions of recipes online is really a pain in the ass and what you [...]
“The Economist has launched a single copy subscription service in the U.K. that allows readers to order just one copy of the magazine for home delivery the next day. Readers can place an order online or via text message for a copy of the latest issue of the weekly publication. The cost of the delivered [...]
Ah bummer the perks at Condé are over. I used to love a good client lunch or wrap dinner. I suppose the thousand dollar sushi wrap dinner is out the window now.
…It used to be that on Monday mornings, the flower deliverymen would clog the elevators while they brought fresh bouquets for editors’ and publishers’ [...]
A group led by the private-equity firm InterMedia Partners and InterMedia’s luxury magazine publisher, Uptown Media, has reached an agreement to acquire Vibe and its Web site. The new owners say they plan to relaunch Vibe.com in the next few weeks.
They intend to bring out the print edition only at the end of the year [...]
I think that magazines need to spend more time and effort on the distribution problem. The less time people spend around newsstands and the less there are of them means that they need to seek alternate ways to allow consumers to browse and buy a single copy of a magazine. Also, the inefficiency of shipping [...]
Fortune magazine dips into the archive to pick out 20 great images shot on Kodachrome (here) after Kodak announced it was going to discontinue producing the film.
The Atlantic has an excellent story (here) on retooling the newsweeklies to compete in the internet economy.
In the digital age, with its overabundance of information, the modern newsweekly is in a particularly poignant position. Designed nearly a century ago to be all things to all people, it Chaplin-esquely tries to straddle thousands of rapidly fragmenting [...]
Did you know that writer Dan Baum once turned down $90,000 to write a 30,000 word story for Rolling Stone to instead take a contract with The New Yorker where he wrote 30,000 words a year for that same $90,000. The contract was up each year and after 3 short years Editor David Remnick called [...]
I love seeing incredible photography in a well designed page. In the end the design can make or break the impact of the photography. There’s some great designers out there but it usually comes down to whether or not the editor will let them do their thing.
You can see some of the photography nominees for [...]
Esquire editor David Granger must have an innovate or die policy with his cover creation. Awhile back they started stuffing the coverlines behind the subject to give it a 3-d effect (which I think is brilliant), but now they’ve gone on and done flashing E-Ink, cover flap mini mag advertisement, perforated/tearable and now shot one [...]