by Grayson Schaffer

On Tuesday, New York Magazine announced that it had signed longtime contributor and well-known photojournalist Christopher Anderson as the weekly magazine’s first-ever “photographer-in-residence.” In a statement released to the British Journal of Photography, New York said the 41-year-old Brooklyn-based shooter would tackle a “broad array of subjects in a full range of styles, from photojournalism to portraiture to conceptual work.” Anderson will now work exclusively for New York, at least where print magazines are concerned. The odd thing, here, is that the era of the staff photographer was supposed to have ended when National Geographic gradually moved away from the practice. We called Anderson to try and make sense of the sudden turn of events.

Grayson: Congrats. We thought the staff photographer position had gone the way of the film camera, what happened?
Christopher: I’ve had a close collaboration with [photography director] Jody Quon and [editor] Adam Moss for quite some time. They came to me and asked if I would consider taking this kind of position as an experiment—a way to reaffirm the magazine’s commitment to exciting photography. It’s a great opportunity.

Grayson: What are the specifics of the arrangement that you can share?
Christopher: The amount of time is, as of yet, undetermined. We’re going to see how it goes for at least a year.

Grayson: As much as you can produce for them? Are you like an all-you-can-eat buffet of photography?
Christopher: Well this is the real world, and of course they’re going to want to use me as much as they can. It is, in that sense, an all-you-can-eat buffet. But I don’t think that was the point. The idea wasn’t to say “Let’s put him on staff so we can use him up as much as we can.” The point was to have my undivided attention. We want to see if working together in a concentrated way like this can produce some interesting work over time.

Grayson: So it looks more like a professor’s chair than a hamster wheel.
Christopher: Right. They have my undivided attention, but I also have theirs. As a freelance photographer, you spend a lot of time trying to drum up business—shooting just to eat. Now I feel like I can focus on the creative side. I genuinely like working with that magazine, and I love the current projects they’re presenting me with. You might think your hands would be tied and you’re owned by them, but in a weird way I feel much freer.

Grayson: Why do you think staff jobs went away in the first place?
Christopher: There were never many to begin with, though there were some contracts. I used to be on contract at Newsweek. But the implosion of the publishing industry in general, and the photography industry specifically, led to the end of that practice. In the end, it’s cheaper for magazines to use freelancers. It makes economic sense.

Grayson: So how does this arrangement make economic sense?
Christopher: I don’t know that it does. It’s kind of an experiment. But my sense is it’s not about economics. It’s hard to put an exact price on the value of this kind of collaboration. This is more about a creative partnership. I think that they’ve looked at models of how this is done before, particularly by the New Yorker. That magazine has had a long tradition of staff photographers over the years: Richard Avedon, Gilles Peress… and I think this is sort of that New Yorker model where it’s about letting my identity stay independent, even though I’ll be attached to the magazine.

Grayson: They’ll probably end up with some great work to show for it.
Christopher: I hope that that will be true. I also hope that I can produce some great work for myself. I see this as a mutually beneficial relationship.

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Here’s the annual Advertising Age list of hot magazines for 2011:

No. 10: The Economist
“increased its paid subscriptions another 5% in the first half and grew total paid circulation 3%”

No. 9: This Old House
“custom video series for Walmart, Home Depot and Jim Beam helped increased digital revenue 25% year over year”.

No. 8: The New Yorker
“single-copy sales rose 1.2%, despite a $1 price hike”

No. 7: National Geographic
“Newsstand is up 5%; ad pages are up 14%”

No. 6: Monocle
“Revenue is rising; profitability arrived last year”

No. 5: Vanity Fair
“99% of Vanity Fair’s subscriptions are paid for directly by the subscriber”

No. 4: Garden & Gun
“ad-page growth on a tear, circulation still climbing and a National Magazine Award for General Excellence”

No. 3: Food Network Magazine
“ad pages through October surged 13.8%”

No. 2: Time
“16.1% newsstand gain”

The Magazine of the Year: Vogue
“increased its January-to-October ad pages more than 9% — to 2,125″

The Editor of the Year: Tyler Brule, editor in chief and chairman, Monocle magazine
“Monocle charts the media trend that’s e-free, profitable and going global.”

The Publisher of the Year: Kim Kelleher, worldwide publisher, Time

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Heidi: The content for the health service magazine relies heavily on the art. How do you keep coming up with fresh ideas for the same stories?
Sarah: That’s one of the biggest challenges. We really work as a team on our art and photography. We also look to photographers to come up with creative, fresh ideas when we feel like we’ve hit a wall. But honestly, coming up with fresh ideas is one of the highlights of the job.

Are you part of the early editorial process?
Yes, I’m usually at the early planning meetings, along with my design director, Theresa Griggs, and we’ll shout and scream when we think the visuals are going to be amazing.

How much outdoor shooting do you do in L.A. during the winter, since you are on the East Coast?
We shoot a lot of our fitness features in L.A. or Florida during the winter months.

I saw that James White shot the cover for Men’s Health and your cover. How much crossover is there between the titles? Do you collaborate much?
Brenda Milis, the Men’s Health photo director, and I always enjoy working together. It’s fun to collaborate on a project for both magazines. Last year, we did joint covers with stars from the Twilight movies. We had Ashley Greene on our cover, and Men’s Health had Kellan Lutz. And each magazine used both stars for their fashion stories—Greene starred in the Women’s Health story, while Lutz starred in Men’s Health’s.

Are you looking for beauty photographers as well as fitness ones?
Yes, I love beauty photography. For example, I’m a huge fan of Donna Trope, who has shot for the magazine a few times. I like for our beauty photography to have a little humor or be a bit cheeky and not just be straight beauty, if it works for the story.

What resources do you use to find new talent besides e-mail and mail promos?
I look at ad campaigns, look books, Le Book creative, and portfolio reviews at schools. I love the way New York magazine found Danny Kim at a portfolio review. And just think about how many more talented people are out there! Also, I try to go to the current photo shows at the museums and galleries to get inspiration.

How much stock are you running?
I would say we run about 30 percent stock.

How often do you open e-mail promos, or is that relegated to other staff?
I always look at promos. But my staff is great about telling me when they see or meet someone they like.

If I want to shoot for you, what’s the best way to get your attention?
The best way is to e-mail me a few favorite shots and a link to an easy-to-navigate website. I’d much prefer an e-mail over a cold call.

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front cover(right) : Todd Baxter back cover(left) : Chris Anthony

Blink magazine a labor of love by Korean native Kim Aram. The magazine features personal work by emerging, established and undiscovered photographers. Issue 5 has just been released.

Heidi: How do you select the images, do you choose a theme for each issue?

Kim: I trust myself. It’s simple, some work makes my heart beat really fast. I study it and ask myself: Are you going to spend $10,000 on this photograph? Even if I think I’d spend $1000, I would select it.  That said, we don’t pay for any of the images. I try and make sure that the images don’t bore me, gathering work for Blink is like collecting art for a gallery of sorts. I do have one rule: I don’t accept commissioned work. I accept only personal work. When selecting work, a resume, a career, receiving awards doesn’t affect my choices. I  sincerely love portraiture, I think the human being is the most interesting subject in this world. There are no themes for each issues. I actually considered it but thought that giving themes for each issues would put limitations on select artwork and there were already so many magazines doing that format with themes.

Maleonn

How many submissions would you say you turn down?
I turn down quite a few. It doesn’t mean that I don’t like their work. I just don’t want to be a lazy editor. I also have another rule, I promised by myself  to include one out of every 50 submissions for BLINK.  I try to pick just one or nothing among  the 50 It’s  just like non-objevtive promising. I can’t respond to  all of  the submissions. Please excuse me for that, I do respect all artists.

What in your eyes is the most exciting aspect of photography for you right now?
Everyone has camera now. It means everyone is able to take a photograph.
It seems like it’s a fair chance for everyone to be creative. That said,  it’s that tiny little  thing which not easy to achieve to make your photograph different. That is exciting. Artists need to have their own eye and point of view for creating their own world.

Suzanne Jongmans

Where can I find a copy of the magazine in the US? Or do I have to subscribe? Do you have a digital version as well?We are working on an ipad version of BLINK, so I will start to publish a digital version of BLINK but I am still examining it thoroughly because I believe in the high value of a paper magazine. You can get your own copy on the website at www.blinkreflex.com We have a safe and fast paypal and can send anywhere in the world.

I am making a distribution list for other countries now. The problem is it’s very expensive to ship. We don’t have a lot of money or a big staff. I do ALL the publishing for BLINK. I do the design layout, select the artwork, contact the artists, direct exhibitions, promotion, business, publisher’s talks at galleries and the marketing. I did send the magazine to art fairs and galleries because I really would love to give BLINK to people so they can feel the paper in their hands, see it with their own eyes. I know if they just grab BLINK, their next move is falling love with BLINK. Some people promised me they would bring BLINK to their venues. I was so naive, after receiving magazines, they didn’t contact me. I was disappointed in them and disappointed in myself. I really need some people I can trust.

Before doing this project, what did you do for a living?
I worked as the art editor for an art magazine called  PHOTO+. The  publisher of the magazine was crazy about MONEY. He always talked about MONEY, MONEY. He probably still does, and he didn’t respect art or the artists. I thought I was a part of his magazine but he said it’s all  his own and I am just his robot. One day I finished all my work and I decided that it’s time to quit. I said to him “bye fucker.” Photographers, don’t send your work to them.

Galleries and media in Korea are so miserable. They built their own art world which puts some distance between the public and art. Someone with money or professors come into power and the result is “boring!” They have to wake up. I am on a mission to build up brand awareness about BLINK.
We support young talented artists who can’t have opportunity to show their work to the world because of boring professors and directors, galleries, magazines here.

Mat Szwajkos

Were you always involved photography somehow?
When I was kid, I always trusted that I was an artist. Being a photographer was high priority but I had to let it go for financial reasons. (here, being artist much worse than other countries.) I spent less time making my own artwork,  I spent more time appreciating  artwork by other people. I began writing about photography too, just some impressions about their work. I did this for free and  I kept the focus positive. Art is so much about personal taste and preference. I do think photography is like poetry and one image can speak over a thousand words. Just like the old saying. hahaha”

Thomas Rusch

Do you shoot as well?
Yes, for fun. I take daily snaps which give me inspiration I use my Sony Ericson x1(mobilephone). Sometimes I do self-portraits year after year. If I have more time for myself, I will do my own photographic work but I would never be featured in BLINK. A lot of magazines make me sick. It looks like those magazines exist for their own photographer or art director’s work. MEDIA has to have huge responsibility to the public, there are so many swindlers out here. They have to give the media space to other talented artists and the public.

Jennifer Garza-Cuen

For your facebook and twitter feeds where is that content coming from? selected artists? fans? Do you feed those outlets in between issues with work you liked but did not select for the printed edition?
I don’t post anything about featuring artists for the next issue. It has to be a secret before being published. Sometimes I use Facebook to help me select an artist. I have so many friend requests from Facebook I am in a panic! I don’t use twitter to search for artists. I tweet information about BLINK and news of featured artists and other happenings in art world, or readers of BLINK. I tweet in Korean so would not be worth it to people who can’t read Korean. You can have a conversation with me about BLINK via direct message, I use that a lot or if you want to update news about BLINK, If you want, like BLINK on facebook at here or see it here

Diana Scherer

Where is your funding coming from since you have no advertising?
That is the biggest difficulty. I spent 15 years of my savings to create and publish BLINK. I am waiting for sponsors or advertisers. If I get over the break-even point with BLINK, I am going to bring down the price of the magazine or increase its circulation. Last month I recruited donations with Korean version of Kickstarter and I got one third of the cost for publishing ISSUE 5 covered. THANK YOU to all who donated! I was so grateful. You can still donate on the website.If you donate, I will put your name and your message on the bottom the website page. If you donate over $30 your name and message will be in the magazine as well as you will get the issue.

I do offer space on BLINK for ads for a reasonable price. The most I would include is 10 pages advertisement for BLINK and I will be very discriminating about what advertising I accept.

Artists and galleries can advertise and show their own work. I do send BLINK to galleries, collectors and artists of all over the world. I just gather what I love and show it to this world while kicking the boring daily routine out with great artists whom I love, support and take care of. I do this for one simple reason, the photographs make my eyes happy. BLINK is myself and I am BLINK.

Nathan Perkel

What is the best way to submit work to you?
Simple. It’s a two step process: First, see ‘Take a look inside of BLINK‘ videos and sample spreads of images on the website. (I make a video which shows the  issue.) Second, ask yourself: “Is my work really harmonious with work of featured artists on those previous issues?” Not all work is right for BLINK. but that doesn’t mean that your work is not good or not perfect, it just not for BLINK. I can’t answer all the submissions, I don’t mean to be rude but it’s fairly impossible. Please contact me via email as well: editor.aram@gmail.com

Karen Hsiao

Olivier J. Laude

information about bookISBN 978-89-965709-5-0
100 PAGES(8mm. both sides covers)
21 X 29.7 CM
500 GRAMS
COLOR OFFSET
text of interviews with artists in english

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Magtastic Blogsplosion has reviews of the Newsweek (here) and New York Times Magazine (here) redesigns. Newsweek is worth paying attention to as Tina Brown was named EIC after it was merged with The Daily Beast. Tina famously broke the ban on treating photography seriously in The New Yorker by hiring Richard Avedon. That was after she put Vanity Fair on the map. Of course that was a different era in magazines and now that we have the internet to contend with who knows if she can right that old ship.

Magtastic says the photo editing is well done and the journalism is solid but there’s some “poor-taste news-related gossip” sprinkled in there that weakens the whole package. Personally, I really like the idea of combining the far reaching seo baiting Daily Beast with serious journalism and photography of Newsweek. And, I agree they should stay separate. Online should up-sell the magazine and drive traffic to the newsstand for important stories. Now that the entire issue can be downloaded to an pad or phone, the online presence should drive that not invade it. Combining forces does not mean you have to mash it all up, instead attract the different audiences and sell them something.

The New York Times Magazine famously doesn’t have to compete on the newsstand with other magazine so they can do whatever the hell they want inside. That leads to outstanding journalism and photography within an “aimless” (as magtastic calls it) overall package. The review the review of the redesign goes on to say the there’s a surprising “lack of hard-hitting photojournalism” and the “images are small and feel distant, used more to break up the page than to illuminate the story.” That’s going to be a real shame if this redesign uses photography as decoration for some art directors grid. In this day and age printing images at less than full bleed in a magazine is a complete waste of time. Let’s hope they come to their senses.

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I heard from an agent who sent me this clause from a “non-modifiable” agreement that Meredith Corporations pushes which basically says they can sell the images of photographers who shoot for them to third parties for anything they choose, including advertising. We’re curious if anyone has gotten it removed or if people are just saying eff-it and shooting for them anyway? After seeing this the agent declined the shoot.

b) Creator further hereby grants to Meredith a non-exclusive ongoing, unlimited, non-cancellable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use and sublicense the Works, including, but not limited to, the rights: i) to reproduce the Works or portions thereof in all forms, works and derivative works; ii) to edit, abridge, adapt, translate, or modify or alter the Works; and iii) to publish or authorize publication of the Works in any media now known or hereafter developed, throughout the World.

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Ok, this is pretty funny and weirdly interesting. Glossed Over “live blogged” her reading of the September issue of Vogue:

10:37 a.m.: Nearly 200 pages in and I’m not even all the way through the table of contents. More coffee, please.

11:14 a.m.: Has Bebe stopped selling shirts? I ask because neither of the models in their ad are wearing one.

11:49 a.m.: So I’ve never read any of Franzen’s books, but this quote is unwittingly trenchant commentary about Vogue:

“We’re unprecedentedly rich and free; why is everyone so miserable?”

For real.

Read it (here)

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The Daily Beast is reporting that Sidney Harman–-a 91 year old billionaire who made his fortune partially as the Harman in Harman/Kardon–purchased the magazine from the Washington Post Co., yesterday for a dollar. They’ve also gotten their hands on the 66 page sales memo that was given to prospective buyers and paints a clearer picture of the debt he assumed as well:

Revenue dropped 38 percent between 2007 and 2009, to $165 million. Newsweek’s negligible operating loss (not including certain pension and early retirement changes) of $3 million in 2007 turned into a bloodbath: the business lost $32 million in 2008 and $39.5 million in 2009. Even after reducing headcount by 33 percent, and slashing the number of issues printed and distributed to readers each week, from 2.6 million to 1.5 million, the 2010 operating loss is still forecast at $20 million.

Dig deeper into the document and the numbers get worse. Newsweek lost money in all three of its core areas in 2008 and 2009: U.S. publishing, foreign publishing and digital. Even with the smaller guaranteed circulation, it still retains $40 million in subscription liabilities owed to readers. And then there’s Newsweek’s lease foibles: last year, it paid $13 million in rent, a startling figure for a company of its size.

More here.

NY Magazine’s Daily Intel does a little head scratching at the logic of buying the magazine without a way to shore up back office expenses by combining it with another magazine like the recent BusinessWeek purchase by Bloomberg.

It’s quite possible this will remain a pet project for the new owner and a radical turnaround is not in the cards, but wouldn’t it be awesome if he hired someone to implode the business model and find a new path. My previous back of the napkin calculations into running a magazine tell me that a very tiny percentage of the expenses are the actual content.

[For fun, here's what Newsweek had to say about the internet in 1995.]

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Here’s something interesting. Photographer William Hereford thinks that videos presented in magazines are treated as an afterthought (agreed!) and should be integrated into the layout. As a proof of concept he got off his ass and made this video. I think he’s onto something.

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Here’s an argument for Roger Black’s template design in magazines that I found on
POP Photographers on Photography.

JB: The predictability of the grid allows the photography to break free of the expected.

TM: Yes, they use a repeated, somewhat predictable and definite grid and style. You kind of recognize it so the focus goes back to the photography because you know what to expect of the typography. If you’re constantly up and down and all over the place, it becomes why is this photo up here? And then the photography can’t be exciting because it needs to anchor the page. When you have a structure, it becomes about the content and you forget about the design.

Maybe we will start seeing DOP’s on top of the masthead just below the editor.

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The iPad has the potential to save the magazine industry, may become an important marketing tool for photographers but is a complete waste of time (good for consumers, bad for work).

A lot of ink has been spilled over the anticipation, launch and criticism/joy over the iPad and now that the dust has settled I wanted to offer my own take on the device.

For Work

My first thought with the device out to the box was to use it as a way to get work done when not at my desk. I ran into two major problems with this. 1. It’s difficult to carry around because there’s no handle and it doesn’t fit in your grip so well. 2. It sucks to type on and if you spend all day typing emails like most people these days, you will add hours to your work day trying to type on this thing. So, basically it’s worthless for work. I can’t imagine a single photo editor using one and given the fact that most businesses are many years behind in even updating browsers it’s unlikely in a corporate setting it will be used for anything except testing.

Another big issue with using something like this for work is how bad the web surfing is. I don’t find it to be very quick online, the size of the screen compared to the real estate most sites are using causes lots of problems and lack of support for flash makes the online experience full of holes. Now, I really don’t want to debate the flash vs html in the comments here but I think there’s a lot of misinformation about the two. First of all flash is not going anywhere online. Here’s a couple articles that address this (Giz Explains: Why HTML5 Isn’t Going to Save the Internet, The Future of Web Content – HTML5, Flash & Mobile Apps) and most experts seem to agree (“I’m often asked “Will HTML5 replace Flash?” on the Web. The quick answer is no.” – TechCrunch story) that flash cannot be unseated as one of the standards widely adopted languages on the web.

One point that seems to get everyone fired up is html vs. flash in building websites. I have my own reasons for choosing flash, but I’ve seen horrible and awesome in both so there’s really no point in debating it. Each has its benefits. I will say that flash changed the website viewing experience for photo editors which up until Livebooks started building sites was excruciatingly horrible. I’m on record saying how much I loved flash sites as a photo editor way before I got into building websites. I’ve seen some excellent html sites but the ease at which you can build a site in html leads to many, many more diy’ers creating junk and leading to an overall feeling among photo editors that html sites were low class. One thing worth noting from all the hubbub about the two languages: “few people realize is that while H.264 appears to be an open and free standard, in actuality it is not. It is a standard provided by the MPEG-LA consortsia, and is governed by commercial and IP restrictions, which will in 2014 impose a royalty and license requirement on all users of the technology.” So, there’s more trouble brewing for video down the road.

For Looking At Pictures

The iPad is awesome for thumbing through images. The guardian eyewitness app, which showcases some of the best news photography is an excellent example of this. You scroll through a selection of images with the flip of a finger and can turn the captions on with a single tap. Horizontal images seem to look the best and holding it in the orientation feels natural to me and seems easier to do the swipes and taps.

The big question on everyone’s mind seems to be how can a device that shows off photography this well be used to land jobs. Since I don’t think you will find many PE’s and AB’s using one it’s more likely that a photographer will have one at a meeting or in their kit on set to show additional work. And, I think for showing off multimedia this will become the de facto portfolio as it seems nearly perfect for that. Some people have suggested shipping them around like portfolios and I’m not sure that’s such a great idea. You’ve got to worry about the battery if the thing is accidentally turned on, you’ve got to prepare for people who are technologically inept and I don’t think there’s a way to take over the device and not allow other uses besides looking at the portfolio. The other problem with an iPad as a portfolio is how hard it is for people to change their ways. Someone who is used to great success finding the perfect photographer for a project by calling in books is not going to trust a new method immediately. Also, you’ve got a pretty small screen compared to most books as Zack Seckler over on The FStop points out:

I got in touch with four art buyers at top ad agencies and they all seem to agree that print still offers a superior viewing experience. A glowing screen just doesn’t compare to big beautifully printed images on luxurious paper. If a client is looking through books, deciding to whom to grant a big budget project, a 9″ screen won’t hold up well against rich detailed prints nearly twice it’s size.

Check Zack showing off the image and video capabilities:

Sweet!

For The Magazine Industry

I’m pretty optimistic on the iPad as a savior of sorts for magazines and newspapers. First off, it really is a consumer device. Horrible for work, but awesome for watching videos, looking at images and reading text. It doesn’t hurt that surfing the web is not so great too. In fact a closed environment like this is perfect for publishers (a closed system also prevents content from getting ripped off). And, here’s the thing, this is what magazine people do best, package content. The challenge is whether they can create a workflow and design template that allows them to create stories that flow from print to all the different devices that will soon be available. Dell is building a 5 inch tablet (here), Google has one (here) and European publishers are backing a WePad of sorts (here).

I checked out several magazines on the device and my favorite by a long shot was Time. The Popular Science app has been receiving the most buzz because they set out to redefine how a magazine behaves on the pad and take advantage of the technology but I found myself gravitating towards a traditional magazine experience only enhanced. Time nailed the navigation, you swipe sideways to advance through the issue you swipe up to read more of a story, you rotate the device to activate some of the advertising. The photography looks stunning and the packaging of content is perfect for something like this. The other magazines I checked out on the iPad: Dwell, Outside and the Zinio Reader magazines were a disappointment and amounted to not much more than scanned pages. I’m guessing everyone is cautious to see if the device actually gains traction.

Here’s an overview of the Art Direction by Brad Colbow:

The linchpin to the whole deal for magazines is reach of the device. All of the magazines have been roundly criticized for their pricing which is something I’ve touched on before. It’s sort of like magazine companies saying you have to install a $500 newsstand in your house and then pay them $5 an issue to deliver magazines. It seems absurd to me, but I wonder if someone will break ranks and show how many eyeballs you can attract with pricing. The WePad is looking to bundle with content so you essentially pay for subscriptions to major publishers and the pad comes free. This is the business model that will surely get these things in the hands of lots of people. Of course this all relies on advertisers responding to the traditional method of display advertising which will never be back to the levels it once was. I do think there’s more of an opportunity for consumers to be exposed to advertising in this situation and certainly this kind of advertising has the opportunity to be more interactive and interesting.

The iPad is perfect for those 15 minute to 1 hour interactions you love magazines for. If magazine publishers can figure out an efficient workflow, attractive pricing and the devices can reach critical mass we will have a savior on our hands.

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Excellent interview with the former founding Art Director of Monocle, Ken Leung over on Cultures In Between. Here’s an excerpt:

What has been Monocle’s distinguishable strengths and differentiated qualities from other titles? Does this also reflect the magazine’s resilience in the print industry?

I think Monocle stands out because it works harder than anyone else. Our stories and artwork are all mostly commissioned meaning it can’t be found anywhere else and that we have complete control over the visual style. We go to places nowhere else has covered and unearth new talents that no one else has discovered.
To me, Monocle’s “resilience” is unsurprising because people are always prepared to buy into a quality product.

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Julie Grahame, EIC of aCurator cites her “frustration with a lack of online destinations that feature full screen images” as the primary reason for founding the magazine. She’s already got Gina LeVay’s Sandhogs project and Stephen Mallon’s Subway Series among others like this one by Aperture Prize Winner Michael Corridore:

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The Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) announced recently that digital replicas of magazines that are requested and paid for will count in circulation figures (here). This is huge news for publishers as it will allow them a new outlet for cheap circulation, something that’s been missing ever since publishing clearing house went down in early 2000 (here). The digital editions of magazines will be counted on the circulation report and broken out like bulk (doctors office, etc.), so it remains to be seen how advertisers will react to the change.

What I hope will happen is that publishers who sell their printed edition at a loss will raise rates there and price digital editions cheap. This should be a no-brainer since the distribution and printing cost of these copies is zero. Sure, it costs something to port it for all these devices but once that becomes a part of the workflow for creating the magazine in the first place (a design that’s flexible) it shouldn’t be an issue.

This still doesn’t solve the problem of missing advertising dollars, but if they can move hundreds of thousands of subscribers to digital editions it will save a lot of money on printing and distribution. If they’ve got any brains they’ll invest that back into content.

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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 model–where you’re forced to buy a bunch of crap to get at the one thing you want–is broken. I’ve long predicted a bright shiny future for people who deal in photography and the tablet is one more device where things shouting for our attention will require creative geniuses to give us arresting imagery.

Designer Joe Zeff has this to say (here):

Watch closely as newspaper and magazine publishers bet their last nickels — not an exaggeration, in some cases — on this new medium. It provides the 50-somethings who run these companies a chance to captivate subscribers and advertisers by returning to their roots — producing and selling the terrific newspapers and magazines that made these brands valuable in the first place. But even better than the original, with up-to-the-minute content that can be individualized for every reader — and advertiser. Happy days are here again, along with the ubiquity, relevance and brand loyalty that has been absent from the publishing world for the past 15 years.

Jason Kincaid over on TechCrunch (here) describes how a tablet will change the way we consume media and a big part of that consumption will be in rich media where text, graphics, audio, video and photography combine to immerse users in a story telling experience.

I for one am looking forward to getting rid of the piles of magazines, browsing an endless newsstand of titles and buying well written, well photographed and well designed stories to read.

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“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 learning from the person holding the scalpel that he really doesn’t see a difference between your hand and your foot; after all, an appendage is an appendage, and a sock can be pulled over any of them.”

Read more (here) via, Magtastic Blogsplosion

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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 photographers will get into the workshop, book writing and teaching side of the photography business. This is proving by all appearances to be super lucrative, but will get very crowded and competitive as people with an impressive oeuvre enter the market.

Photographers who market with ideas and innovation will be snapped up by marketers who need fresh ideas and innovation.

Product photography will heat up as companies realize products online need great photography to convert online shoppers into buyers.

Local markets will go red hot as local online markets get competitive and companies that normally needed no photos for a yellowpage ad now need lots of photography for a nice looking website.

Video goes nuclear, because nothing is commissioned anymore without video and hey, “doesn’t that camera shoot video too.”

Web 2.0 ideas will give way to Web 3.0 which is fundamentally the joining of content with social tools.

–Jim Spanfeller, president and CEO, The Spanfeller Group (formerly CEO of Forbes.com)

Staff sizes will rebound as managers realize that staffs designed for print can’t do print and a whole host of new initiatives on top of that, at least not effectively.

–Tony Silber, general manager, FOLIO: and Audience Development

Only one or two magazines for most major vertical markets will survive.

There will be many changes at the top of editorial mastheads with more e-community management skills supplementing traditional journalistic skills for the winners.

Print will become richer, better paper will be used, graphics will improve, quality of content will improve and distribution/circulation numbers will drop.

–Don Pazour, CEO, Access Intelligence

One hopeful breakthrough: the four color e-reader. It will be really helpful. Some of the big publications will probably get a few hundred thousand digital e-reader subscribers paying anywhere from $10 to $50. This will bring in anywhere from $3 million to $15 million in subscriber revenue. Unfortunately, some of those same magazines have seen their ad revs drop by $100 million. Get the picture.

–Keith Kelly, “Media Ink” columnist, New York Post

Plenty more to see (here).

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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 not unusual to refer to a cover book for inspiration when writing lines. I’ve heard that Time Inc. has a book where words, colors and cover subjects have sales numbers attached to them (that’s why you see so many Jesus covers on Time) for further insight into how things will perform on the newsstand.

The problem is not the recycled coverlines, it’s the recycled content. There are only a limited number of ways you can say the same thing over and over again and magazines keep reaching for the same high performing content to keep the ship afloat a little bit longer. For a magazine like Men’s Health they actually create content specifically for the newsstand and in many cases it’s fluff so they can write a line that contains the magic words “sex, abs, best body, ultimate….” Rodale is notorious for fluffy coverlines that have very little payoff inside (not to mention fake numbers). I think we’re all very aware by now that magazines are digging their own grave.

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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 once back to reality, in an office filled with editors who wanted to cram information in every nook and cranny of the magazine that energy soon drained out. I can’t wait for magazines to stop trying to become websites and go back to being magazines again. George agrees:

“Magazine design is almost an oxymoron with most magazines today. It goes for even a great magazine like Vanity Fair. If you get even one inch of white space to breath you’re lucky. Everybody’s just packing in the information. Most magazines you pick up — you choke to death.”

“They say, ‘People buy magazines to read, for information.’ Well, you buy a magazine not only for that but so you can have exciting visual experiences. They try to jam words and pictures on every square-inch of the page like they’re working on a Web site.”

“Look at Vogue. Oh my God. Vogue and Harper’s once were very well designed magazines. I mean they were exciting to look at. You could not give a shit about fashion and be excited by the whole look of the magazine. You look at Vogue now: it’s not even designed. What a difference. You pick up a Vogue back in the days of [Condé Nast’s Alexander] Lieberman and those guys, and you look at it now, and it’s a disgrace.”

“Very few magazines do you look through — and I’m not talking as a designer, I’m talking as a normal person — do you look through something and you open a spread and it takes your breath away a little bit…

“I know, you’re pressured by your editor. If not the editor, the publisher: ‘Look at all this wasted space here.’ Blah, blah, blah. ‘Your readers want information.’

“Well, oh shit. Go fuck yourself.

“Meanwhile you go to a newstand, there’s about 200 magazines that all look the same. They got pictures of somebody — some asshole — I’ll never understand how editors and publishers think — showing just a famous person with blurbs all over their face. I’ll never understand why they think that would be something people would want to buy. I don’t get it.

“It’s a joke. A couple of years all the editors and publishers [at ASME] invited me to come down and kick their asses about covers. I go down. Standing ovation. ‘Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow!’ Nothing changed. It’s all bullshit.”

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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 it to him when he moved Rolling Stone to New York because he couldn’t afford to keep both magazines afloat in the change of venues. After selling it, the outdoor category started to heat up. Mostly with companies that wanted to be associated with the rugged lifestyle. The advertising they bought was mostly as positioning. When National Geographic launched Adventure in 1999 the outdoor lifestyle category has peaked and was on its way down. I suspect Adventure was more of a reaction to National Geographic shedding millions of readers during the rise of the MTV generation than anything else. That and the average age of their readers made them think they needed to develop another product to attract new, young readers. So, this is all just the natural progression of it all as the category has 1 and a half magazines in it now because Men’s Journal has gone on to position itself as more of a mainstream men’s magazine with outdoor influences.

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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 print publications because “investor focus on its exposure to declining print advertising revenues could impede a successful IPO.”

I don’t know how far from the tree this apple fell, but if Lachlan is anything like his father he will be happy to find out PDN still has pay walls in place and still charges a premium for subscriptions. If anyone is poised to weather the storm it’s niche publications like this. Everyone seems to be talking now about jacking up subscription prices and installing pay walls as a way to remain insolvent and magazines like PDN suddenly seem ahead of the curve since they never bothered to chase numbers by dropping those revenue streams and relying purely on advertising. Much to the chagrin of photographers who dislike all the contests aimed at them I do think the business model for magazines includes a healthy revenue stream off your readers. In the last 10 years most magazines have taken a loss in that department in favor of inflated numbers to present to advertisers. Those days are over. My only advice for publications looking to embrace/monetize their readers is to drop the smugness.

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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 need is an editor and some beautiful photographs to get your mouth watering so I resubscribed. Too bad Si killed it off. I hope they bring it back someday.

via, Will Steacy Blog

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“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 magazine is the same as the newsstand price.”

via MediaPost.

Seriously, American magazines (Anne Moore!?), wake the-f up. If that’s not enough, subscribers can listen to the latest issue on their ipod (the Economist read out aloud word for word by four or five posh sounding British newscasters). What the hell? I just subscribed to a magazine and was told it would take 4 – 6 weeks for the first issue to arrive.

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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’ desks.

…“When a client wanted to go to get Japanese, you used to say, ‘Ooooh! We’ll go to Nobu!’ But it’s so outrageously expensive, now you have to think twice.”

…they would order takeout from Balthazar several times a week. Sandwiches, cheese plates, the works

…“I just found out today that we are on our last batch of Poland Spring,” said the source. “We won’t have any more after this. We have to start drinking tap water.”

via  The New York Observer.

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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 and then publish it quarterly rather than monthly, possibly increasing the frequency after 2010.

via- WSJ.com.

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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 magazines all around the country in hopes that someone will pick one up seems like a place where you can save some cash as opposed to say, cutting your contributors fees. Maggwire is a new site where you can view magazine stories (from their websites) by topic and vote, comment on and share them. I like the idea of an aggregator that only deals in magazine content. Looks like a winner to me.

via, Mr. Magazine.

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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.

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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 micro-niches, a mainframe in an iTouch world. The audience it was created to serve—middlebrow; curious, but not too curious; engaged, but only to a point—no longer exists. Newsweeklies were intended to be counterprogramming to newspapers, back when we were drowning in newsprint and needed a digest to redact that vast inflow of dead-tree objectivity. Now, in response to accelerating news cycles, the newspapers have effectively become newsweekly-style digests themselves, resorting to muddy “news analysis” now that the actual news has hit us on multiple platforms before we even open our front door in the morning.

Bottom line here is that advertising used to be sold on a “hits” basis, but now that hits are practically worthless (blame the ease at which juvenile humor, celebrities drinking starbucks and vitriol can produce millions of hits) it’s engagement and finding or slashing circulation down to an audience that is passionate about the product you produce. This also means they can start discarding all the junk they put in the magazines that caters to a more general interest crowd. Sounds good to me.

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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 to say it would not be renewed. Dan thinks this has less to do with his skills as a writer and more to do with good old fashioned office politics. Dan didn’t work in the New Yorker office, where he discovered they whisper all the time in his several times a year office visits from his home in Boulder, CO, but he failed to integrate himself into the culture that is the New Yorker and blames his demise on that sad reality of magazine life.

You can read the fascinating “inside baseball” account of writing for the New Yorker (here). It was first published as a series of tweets over a week ago and seems to break some kind of code of silence that surrounds the publication. They don’t publish a masthead after all.

Even more interesting and certainly educational for photographers will be his list of successful story pitches (here). Photographers have great stories all the time but I’ve rarely seen a passable pitch from one, so most of the time if I really wanted to get something made I would write the pitch myself. As a side note it’s even worse when photographers take their excellent ideas and give it to a writer who’s not qualified to write for the publication.

Wired, another Condé magazine was written up Sunday in the NYTimes (here), because they have the dubious of being both award winning and advertising losing. I was pointed to this discussion over on Boing Boing Gadgets (here) by Scott Bauer where a former wired.com editor uses that story to take a few digs at the print magazine and then a whole bunch of writers chime in on the comments. EIC Chris Anderson even drops a couple comments one in particular where he attributes the problems between online and print at wired to Condé HQ decisions. More “inside baseball” but interesting nonetheless.

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