MagBlog

Boys and Business – this year's magazine trends

2012-01-25T18:46:00.000Z

The Mag-Dragons have decided. This year’s two course magazines for the Cardiff MA will be for –

• boys in the 12-13 age range, focusing particularly on those who rush to their games console as soon as they get home from school
• young entrepreneurs starting up their own businesses

Both are really interesting ideas for a number of reasons.

A couple of days before students pitched to the Mag-Dragons I had a conversation with Nick Brett, Managing Director of the BBC Magazine Unit and Cardiff’s Honorary Professor of Magazine Journalism, about the current Holy Grails of magazine publishing – a title that captured the attention of teenage boys was one such for many years. Professor Brett’s response demonstrated how times have changed – he hadn’t heard a “holy grail” conversation for a long time; it’s all about capturing the digital space at the moment.

Without any prompting, the teen boy development group did something that combined former holy grail and current concerns – they proposed their title should be screen-first; that is, not primarily a print magazine. It sounds odd to admit it, considering how fervently we preach the digital message to our students, but this is a first for the Magazine MA. Naturally it will require some tweaking of the assessment schedule and criteria – and thought about how to incorporate some print elements that test their editorial and craft skills – but nothing that we cannot and should not do. In fact it is an inevitable and necessary development.

The business magazine is another first by virtue of being strictly business. Another odd admission, since we stress the B2B career pathway from the very first day of the course. This idea feels very zeitgeisty though and the winning pitch came on the same day that David Cameron launched Start Up Britain – something our on-the-ball students included in their presentation.

There’s still a massive amount of development and refinement to do on both titles but they are very exciting ideas. Each of the six groups pitching had individual development sessions with Professor Brett the Friday before the Mag-Dragon panel and at the end of next week the two amalgamated groups will present their research and development findings to Mel Nichols, former Editorial Director of Haymarket and, like Nick Brett, the over-seer of countless launches, relaunches and projects that didn’t quite make the grade.

I hope the students appreciate the level of access they are getting with these and the many other people who will help them during the Magazine MA – I don’t think I even saw anyone that high up until I’d been working at Emap for a couple of years!

Magazine Brand Definitions, cont'd

2012-01-25T18:37:00.000Z

"Does the magazine brand transcend the delivery platform?" asks James Papworth on the PPA website.

The answer is surely self-evident – of course it does, always provided that the magazine's Brand Definition includes a strategy for every platform it will appear on. And that means working out what those platform users want.

Interestingly, Papworth notes that a recent study of magazine readers shows they spend 65 minutes with the print edition and 200 minutes with the app version (the source of this data is not revealed but the illustration shows the iPad version of GQ, which may or may not mean anything).

And as he sensibly comments:

This does not undermine the appeal of the printed version. Readers read it for 65 minutes because it takes 65 minutes to read. They spend 200 minutes with the tablet version because there is 200 minutes of entertainment and information to be gleaned.

His conclusion, by the way, is the same as mine. Great minds ...

Magazines as Brands (again)

2012-01-25T00:55:00.000Z

On the very day I tell MA Magazine Journalism students about Brand Definition, Bauer make this anouncement:

Bauer Media, the media group behind Grazia, FHM and Closer magazines, and radio stations Magic 105.4 and Kiss, is restructuring its commercial operations into platform-agnostic sales teams focused around individual brands. (via Media Week)

The move is not designed to reduce headcount, but instead aims to create commercial specialists who are able to knowledgably sell across a particular brand's integrated portfolio of digital, print and broadcast operations.

There were a couple of other interesting snippets in the release too:

• Clare Chamberlain has left Immediate Media, the lovechild of BBC Magazines and Magicalia, to take up a role at Bauer as Sales Director.
• Mark Frith, the guiding hand behind Heat for so long, has re-joined Bauer as an editorial director.

The Great War and the Illustrated Press

2011-12-16T20:12:00.000Z

This call for papers is taken wholesale from the excellent ECREA mailing list. The conference seems to be a rare opportunity to widen the field of Magazine Studies: " the illustrated magazines conveyed images of the war that were shared by European societies both during and after the conflict. This symposium aims at seizing the opportunity of this anniversary to shed new lights on the European and American illustrated press, including its function and its influence on the cultural representations of the nations before, during and after the war."

The Great War and the Illustrated Press, June 5th, 6th and 7th 2013

We are pleased to announce an extended Call for Paper for the symposium organized by the OPIIM, LabSIC, MSH-Paris Nord, and Université de Paris-XIII

The year 2014 will commemorate the anniversary of the beginning of the Great War. This will be an opportunity to review our most recent knowledge about this event. One could assume, considering the amount of books published on the matter, that everything has already been said during the last twenty years concerning the cultural history of the Great War, leaving but few uncharted areas. However, as far as the iconography is concerned, there are only a few studies that have contributed to such historiographic developments, if we except those published by Laurent Véray on animated images, from news bulletins (1993) to fiction movies (2011). In the case of illustrated press, this fact is particularly striking. Although this field has benefited from more recent approaches (Beurier, 2007), it still lacks a broader, European point of view (Tomassini, 2007). It also lead to very few comparative works as it has been the case for the 1870 War (Martin, 2006). Yet, the illustrated magazines conveyed images of the war that were shared by European societies both during and after the conflict. This symposium aims at seizing the opportunity of this anniversary to shed new lights on the European and American illustrated press, including its function and its influence on the cultural representations of the nations before, during and after the war.

A research following various lines:

1. Before the war started, we need to look at the visual culture of the pre-war societies. What about the “in-war images”? Is the public used to violence, to what extent and under which visual format? What are the kinds of information and images that make you sell more out of one event? To what extent the coverage of preceding wars (1870-1871, Balkans, colonial events) did introduce certain visual habits that reappeared between 1914 and 1918? Besides, magazines enable us to investigate the mental preparation to war. In the case of France, unlike what was long thought, there was no will for revenge. However, to what extent the veneration of the army that dominated illustrated press in the years 1910 can be understood as a psychological preparation? Was it also the case in other European countries?

2. Concerning the time span of the Great War, an account is needed on the articles and documents written by the illustrated press on the event. What are the most favourite themes in the various European countries? How do the words and images convey the violence of combats or occupation? How can they be analyzed in terms of gender? How the colonial soldiers are viewed? How important is the part played by the aesthetics of war in photography? What lines can be drawn in terms of chronology? It is also important to understand the links between the illustrated press and the war in the context of a history of the medium. To what extent did the Great War stimulate editorial changes, modifying the magazine’s conception, reversing the common hierarchy between photography and paintings, or creating new practices in journalism (as it has been the case in France)?

3. A third period ought to ponder upon the legacy of the war. What is the impact of the latter in the illustrated press of the years 1920, both in Europe and the United States? From a national point of view, what are the contents and representation of the Great War in the magazines that were issued afterwards? Did the photography play an important part in the reintegration of soldiers? What representation of the conflict or Nation does it convey? Is there a possibility left to forget about the war, or deny it; or on the contrary, is violence voluntarily shown? Here, the circulation of images is worth a specific study: did the numerous journalistic (Témoignage, 1931) or editorial (Krieg dem Kriege, 1924) publications have an influence on after war illustrated magazines? How do images circulate? From and up to where? Through which pattern or changes? In between which countries? Similarly, up to what point the iconographic legacy of the Great War is used without change in the following conflicts (Rif War, Civil War in Russia)? How far can it be traced as we close in on World War Two?
Eventually, from the point of view of media history, there subsists an uncharted area concerning the legacy of the Great War in terms of press professional practices. More precisely, it can be wondered why photojournalism had disappeared in France until the end of the 1920s and the issue of the Vu magazine in 1928 by Lucien Vogel. Similar observations can be made in other countries. What happened in the meantime? What became of the magazines that relied on pictures in the war time? How did they evolve to meet their readers’ needs? Did they learn from their war experience in terms of professional and editorial practices? How did famous post war photographers like André Kertesz use their experience of the Great War in their work? Last but not least, it can be asked whether there exists a possible link between information such as delivered by the Great War magazines and journalism today (such as the importance of amateur photographers, or pictures bringing back images of the Great War)?

Contributions on Eastern Europe and/or North America will be particularly welcome.

Travel and hotel costs of invited presenters will be refunded.

The symposium will take place in June, 5th, 6th, 7th 2013 in the MSH-Paris Nord. The articles selected by the scientific committee will be published in 2014.

The projects (250 words) must be sent to joelle.beurier@eui.eu andkarine.grandpierre@univ-paris13.fr before February 25th, 2012.

Scientific committee : Pr. Jean Jacques Becker (Paris X), Pr. Christian Delporte (Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines), Pr. Bertrand Legendre (Paris XIII), Pr. Jean-Claude Lescure (Cergy Pontoise), Pr. Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink (Sarrebruck), Pr. Marie-Eve Therenty (Montpellier), Pr. Luigi Tomassini (Bologna).

----------------
ECREA-Mailing list
----------------
This mailing list is a free service from ECREA.
---
To unsubscribe, please visit http://www.ecrea.eu/mailinglist
---
ECREA - European Communication Research and Education Association
Postal address:
ECREA
Université Libre de Bruxelles
c/o Dept. of Information and Communication Sciences
CP123, avenue F.D. Roosevelt 50, b-1050 Bruxelles, Belgium
Email: info@ecrea.eu
URL: http://www.ecrea.eu
----------------

The toybox as a toolbox

2011-12-05T15:31:00.000Z

When I was much younger I had a wooden chest full of Meccano, the metal version with proper nuts and bolts; when my son was a bit younger he had a big box full of Lego, standard bricks and special kits all mixed up together.

In both cases we could build things, make structures that were stable or unstable, see how to fit pieces together to achieve a particular end – and learn about the physical world through play. The toybox became a toolbox without us even realising.

I got the same feeling watching our postgraduate Magazine students put together podcasts under the watchful eye of Broadcast tutor Emma Gilliam. The toybox was full of microphones, buttons, knobs, faders, flashing lights – all the paraphernalia of a radio studio control board. Under Emma’s practised eye the students built soundscapes that began to fit together into a structured whole; they adjusted bits that didn’t work and reinforced bits that did. Just like playing with Meccano and Lego, the words and voices and technology merged into a tremendous learning experience.

I loved being in the studio, listening and watching as Emma brought everything together. It was a great example of what we strive to do in the Cardiff postgraduate journalism courses – break down silos, work together and adapt the techniques of one medium to the needs of another.

But – and this was an uncomfortable thought – would we have been doing this if Rupert Murdoch hadn’t battered down the walls of trade union demarcation at Wapping?

Luckily I found an answer while reviving an old Palm m500 that had fallen out of favour. In the Wordsmith app I had written some extracts from the Penguin edition (1967) of The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. On page 222 they wrote:

“The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.”

In other words, if it hadn’t been Rupert, it was a historical inevitability that it would have been someone else.

Somehow, that made me feel better.

Whole lotta Economist

2011-12-02T14:27:00.000Z

Image via WikipediaLeafing through last week's Economist (you know how it is, always too much to read in seven days) I settled into a very interesting feature about the economic advantages of diasporic communities (Weaving the world together, p 76, 19/11/11) – only to find myself somewhat distracted by the cross heads.

Whoever subbed it had used:

The immigrant song
In through the out door
Bringing it all back home
Going to California
Ramble on

Need a clue? Two words – Led Zeppelin

Whoever you are, thanks for a case study I can use in the second edition of Subediting For Journalists.

First you get your MA, then you get the job

2011-11-29T19:33:00.000Z

A lovely coincidence today.

At 10.30am GMT Ganesh Ananthasubramanian became the first ever recipient of a Masters in Journalism from Cardiff University (his friend Naimul Karim was awarded the second ever, just seconds later ...)

The Bute Building, home to Cardiff University's School of Journalism

Ganesh gained a postgraduate diploma in journalism from the Asian College of Journalism, Chennai, and came to Cardiff to write up his dissertation project, which was about Cardiff City FC (the Bluebirds). During his time here he took in several of Arsenal's matches at the Emirates and, most memorably for him, bumped into Rahul Dravid making his way across Bute Park, from the Swalec Stadium to his hotel. This was an encounter that would never happen in India, so Ganesh came halfway round the world to meet one of his country's best cricketers. (The following day he saw his national team lose yet again to England.)

Image via Wikipedia

Dravid in action

At 7.15pm GMT I got an email from Ganesh saying he had been offered a job as a reporter-cum-subeditor on Sportal, an Indian sports website.

Job done!

More on how to make money from a magazine

2011-11-28T14:15:00.000Z

Fascinating interview with Andrew Rashbass, chief executive of The Economist.

Lots of good stuff about print, the web and apps, but set in this very revealing context:

[Rashbass] is also convinced, on the basis of the rise in digital subscribers having had a relatively minor effect thus far on print sales, that there is little migration. The magazine is enlarging its audience.

He sees this as evidence of a phenomenon that he terms "the mega-trend of mass intelligence". People are "smarting up" rather than "dumbing down".

There are no longer elite media and mass media because more and more people are mixing and matching, "going to art-house movies and Spiderman". People are no longer easily categorised.

Read the whole interview on the Guardian website.

How to make money from adverts and digital subscribers

2011-11-28T13:55:00.000Z

Publishers, are you seeking the formula for a successful magazine?

One that will achieve "double-digit ad revenue increase" in the worst recession for decades AND "grow print subscriber numbers ... by 3% year on year to 1,486,838 in the first half" AND be able to say "We are discovering great opportunities in digital ... For us, as for many publishers, digital is not a zero-sum game."

NOW THE SIMPLE ANSWER CAN BE REVEALED – BE THE ECONOMIST.

The bare facts can be ascertained in this Guardian report but the underlying format is this:

1) Be about something people need or want to know

2) Invest in good journalists who can research thoroughly and write clearly

3) Have a plan and execute it well

4) Sell the information you have gathered for what it is worth

A SIMPLE IDEA! Yet all too often overlooked.

For more information, send £12 here and read everything that comes your way.

Content and intention in magazines

2011-11-23T22:19:00.001Z

Cover of Roger McGuinn

McGuinn in his Byrds phase

At a Roger McGuinn gig in Aberdare recently I picked up a free magazine called Properganda, the strapline of which reads Shouting About Specialist Music.

After a quick flick through it, the magazine snob in me turned up his nose and made me put it down – it was all over the place designwise.

A few days later I picked it up again and started reading. The snob kicked in again, telling me what I’d say to students who started a feature that way or brought themselves into the story so egregiously.

But after a while the snob’s voice faded away and I became engrossed in the material. This was a magazine made by people who loved music and knew a lot about it. My magazine snob had given way to the tyro mandolin player who wanted to get hold of – no, make that had to have – the two Bill Monroe tribute cds put out by Rebel. Mike Scott’s project putting the words of WB Yeats to music sounded interesting too … could his version of The Song of Wandering Aengus possibly be as good as Donovan’s?

Cover of Donovan

I went out to the hazel grove ...

The experience made me realize all over again that the absolute focus of magazine journalism must be on content and intention –

• the intention must be a clear and driving force;

• the content must be compelling.

But what do we mean by compelling in this context?

Here’s a microthesaurus: authentic, raw, devoted, knowledgeable, passionate, committed, well crafted, skillful story telling.

Woman’s Weekly: 100 not out

2011-11-18T11:12:00.000Z

To celebrate the centenary of Woman’s Weekly, Radio Wales invited me to contribute to a breakfast show slot discussing the magazine. Naturally I said yes even though I know next to nothing about the title. My first reaction was to rush out and buy a copy (good move – the 1911 launch issue is replicated inside) and my second was to email Diane Kenwood, the editor, to ask her what the secret is.

Diane was kind enough to refer me to the editor’s letter in that first issue. At considerable length the editor had set out a manifesto for the magazine, which was to be a practical publication for ordinary women, not the lady in the mansion. Down the years, the editors had stuck to that mission until the line reached Diane, who was clearly doing the same – Woman’s Weekly was one of two titles in the sector to increase its ABC figure in the most recent audit (the other being Hello, which is interesting).

But sticking to the last does not mean turning out the same style of shoes – clearly editors had adapted the magazine to reflect the changing needs of its readers. Open the centenary issue and the first thing you see is a QR code that takes you to a mini-documentary charting the development of the publication you have in your hands – these readers are not stuck in the past.

That was two useful reminders of the principles I posited in my last post:
1) a kiss-me-quick pitch (“A practical magazine for ordinary women”)
2) having a clear mission and fulfilling it.

An even more useful reminder came in the Swansea studio I shared with a lady who had been featured on the cover in 1941, when she was three years old. She looked like a “typical” white-haired granny; it was easy to imagine her staying at home and making jam. However, while we were talking off air I learned that she and her husband had, after retiring, gone to Albania to run an orphanage. They had been there all through the Balkan war and through the Kosovan uprising. Out of their pensions they were still supporting two of their former charges through university.

Listening to her story made my life seem about as purposeful as something from an obsolete Innovations catalogue but I took a third great magazine precept from it:

3) never underestimate your readers.

2011-10-20T13:55:00.001+01:00

Another Magazine Academy has come and gone, and what have we learned?

Sheffield University won the Student Magazine category with Poppy, produced by Jess Coyne, Jess Ballinger and Jenny Carrington-Elson. Many congratulations to them and to their tutors Jonathan Foster and Yvonne Illsley. Their mag had an extremely good concept (a cheerful weekly for lonely service wives) and some well sourced real life content.

I would love to direct you to the magazine but unfortunately it does not have a working website.

Cardiff achieved a Highly Commended with Wonder Girl, a result that is no less than the hard working team deserved. The judges specifically mentioned the many "little touches" that made it stand out, so perhaps those late, late nights in MagLab were worth it.

The New Digital Product category was won by Festival Business, another well pitched concept, from PMA Media Training. (@Festival_Biz on Twitter)

The take-away
I have been to most, if not all, the Magazine Academy events and I'm beginning to see a pattern – which is that there is no clearly discernible pattern. But here are some instant tips:

1) A "kiss-me-quick" concept.
The judges, like readers, don't have time for a background briefing on what the magazine is about. The concept must be simple, clear and capable of being depicted on ...

2) An iconic front cover
We all know the front cover is the hardest working page in a magazine: for MagAcad entries it has to capture genre and content immediately.

3) Production values aren't necessarily important
If points 1) and 2) are not in place, it won't matter that the type is well set, widows and orphans have been eliminated or that your copyright-cleared pictures are crisp and undistorted.

4) Judges seem to like adverts
Perhaps including scans of display advertising gives the magazine an air of commercial reality? Personally I am never convinced by the inclusion of ads in course magazine, but that's just me.

5) If you are rich and a sponsor you can get away with a great deal
Including, if you are Felix Dennis, reciting your own poetry and keeping hungry people from mouth-watering food for an inordinate length of time.

Felix's big take-away was that media companies exist to make money and he bet students their tutors had not told them that. Sorry Felix, that's a bet you would lose. I'll accept your house on Mustique.

How to have fun ... on the Magazine option

2011-09-27T12:35:00.007+01:00

1) Think creatively

http://youtu.be/Fe9AAfGgJuU

2) Set yourself a crazy time limit and push print to the limit (USA version)

Longshot (48hr Mag Project) - a pocket documentary from ricky montalvo on Vimeo.

After all that effort they got a cease-and-desist notice from CBS, who have a current affairs programme called 48 Hours.

You can read all about it in my forthcoming book!

3) Repeat the idea in the UK
http://www.flamingomagazine.com/a-48-hour-magazine

4) With this result
http://issuu.com/tcolondon/docs/make-shift

5) And this insight

Power of print

Finally, the power of the print magazine was really clear to see. Lots of people asked how they could see the magazine, and while they were relatively interested in the idea of an online magazine, it was the free print magazine that they got really excited about. Around half the people I spoke to said they’d be coming back to pick one up, even though they’d be able to see it online.

http://www.stackmagazines.com/content/blog/

She magazine bites the dust

2011-08-05T10:51:00.001+01:00

After multiple relaunches and makeovers since its birth in 1955 (thanks Magforum!) She magazine has finally hit the buffers – Hearst Magazines UK (the combo of NatMags and Hachette Filippachi) closed it with immediate effect.

Read Lara O'Reilly's news story about the closure in Media Week.

With a circulation of 144,583 it's probably not surprising the well-produced glossy could not survive but I know the real reason Hearst closed it – because I cited She's most recent relaunch in my forthcoming book Magazine Journalism – due out in November – and they wanted to spoil it for me!

Oh my god we shot Esquire in the foot

2011-05-11T09:38:00.000+01:00

Image by Susan NYC via FlickrNot long ago I showed my students some of George Lois's classic covers for Esquire and they got very enthusiastic about them, aided most helpfully by Andrew Losowsky's great interview with Lois in Gym Class magazine.

Then on Monday I read a MediaGuardian interview with Alex Blimes, the new editor of Esquire's UK edition, in which he describes the cover of his first issue:

"It's a sexy pinup shot ... It's supposed to be fun, bright and colourful and stand out from what other magazines are doing. Some people will think it's too laddy but that's because they have been conditioned to think there's a need to be too cool all the time. That is the trouble. We have been conditioned to think we shouldn't like this. Well, sod it, I do like it."

Leaving aside the strangely reactionary Daily Mail-like overtones of this statement, I fear for the future of Esquire. Previous editor Jeremy Langmead's first issue was notable (in my eyes) for not one but two pieces of advice about the correct length and type of sock to wear if you wanted to achieve success in business (a theme mocked in A A Gill's first column), but at least he had a different perspective. Running for the safety of a "sexy pinup shot" is the acme of shortsightedness.

Apart from the lack of imagination in putting a lingerie model on the cover ("licking her lips and pulling her bra strap in a saucy way" – is this Donald McGill reincarnated?), there was the highly unfortunate coincidence of Blimes's interview appearing on Monday followed by news of Kelly Brook's miscarriage on Tuesday. In essence "we" (that is, we men) were being invited to salivate over a woman who has just endured one of life's most harrowing misfortunes. Too cool?

Image by lawrence's lenses via FlickrBack in magazine land, I am also stumped by this statement:

"Somewhere along the line upmarket men's magazines got a bit scared and didn't want to be associated with downmarket men's magazines ..."

Er, yes?

Tell you what, read the interview for yourself , look at the magazine and then ask yourself, "Didn't James Brown do this in 1994?" That's 17 years ago.

[Oddly enough Gym Class has a short interview with the current creative director http://www.gymclassmagazine.com/index.php/archives/378/. The accompanying page shots do, I have to admit, look pretty good.]

Magazine front covers: adapt or die

2011-04-15T10:33:00.001+01:00

The front cover is the most important page in the magazines – that's one of the lessons we drum home to students on the MA/PgDip in Magazine Journalism at Cardiff Journalism School. It's a lesson that is repeated by just about every one of the many industry speakers who visit Cardiff.

But a couple of pieces of recent research show that it's only true for print magazines on the news-stand.

Kevin Sablan's Almighty Link site carried a piece about newspaper front pages that holds lessons for any print publication going online – or probably for any online journalism, whatever the "home" platform. Seven well considered points about what a "front page" means to online readers: The front page isn’t what it used to be

I found the piece above via Adam Tinworth's blog, introduced with the comment: "I've seen this clearly in our metrics. Front pages of websites just don't really matter." Given Adam's position as Editorial Development Manager at Reed Business Information we know those metrics are extensive and reliable.

Then, as if to confirm the line of thought, Ellie Behling asked "Are publishers paying attention to what consumers want from iPad magazines and newspapers?" on her blog. Analysing a recent survey, Behling quoted Zinio's global executive vice president and chief marketing officer Jeanniey Mullen: "It's not about necessarily just shopping for the cover anymore; you might be looking for fish recipes."

This doesn't mean our insistence on the importance of a front cover is wrong; in fact while single copy sales are under pressure – or falling – the front cover of a print magazine becomes even more important. But it does underline two points:
1) what has been found to work in print may not transfer directly to a digital platform
2) if the front page can be a Tweet, a Facebook stream, search engine results, a text message, a Flipboard panel, RSS feeds or an Instapaper collation magazines need to be showing their faces on all of them.

Magazine format could save newspapers

2011-04-14T23:11:00.001+01:00

Ken Doctor, the Newsonomics guru, envisages a digital future for newspapers based firmly – it seems to me – on traditional magazine principles: niche specialisation –

"packages assembled with key target readers — by interest, of course, but also by age, gender, relative affluence, and more — in clear mind."

He calls it the "digital cafeteria".

What do you think?

iPad magazines need a mix of content

2011-04-14T11:35:00.001+01:00

The nearly-always-reliable David Hepworth has come up with an interesting thought about reading journalism on the iPad, and that thought is: keep it simple.

On the one hand, we have new ventures like The Atavist presenting long form stories in innovative ways and on the other we have the need for what Hepworth, referring to a very plain story from The Economist's iPad edition, calls

"Self-contained, looks long enough to read in kettle-boiling time ..."

This immediately reminded me of one of the findings in Joke Hermes's study of the way readers actually use magazines, Reading Women's Magazines. A key point was that they were "easy to put down" -- that is, if a more urgent task came along, the magazine could be abandoned without worrying about finding one's place again or losing a line of deep thought.

As far as iPad content is concerned, it won't be EITHER one OR the other, of course. Print magazines run short kettle-boiling pieces mixed with longer sit-down and concentrate reads and there's no reason why that principle should change.

The Listener in digital form

2011-04-04T16:09:00.001+01:00

The Listener, published by the BBC from 1929 to 1991, has been made available in digital form. It must represent a fantastic mine of information for anyone researching magazines or British middle class/intelligentsia culture. I remember reading it in the library at UEA when I was an undergrad – certainly some excellent writing/journalism.

http://gale.cengage.co.uk/product-highlights/history/the-listener-historical-archive.aspx

Journalist grumbles – Guess the year

2011-03-17T14:37:00.000Z

During the research for a new edition of Subediting For Journalists I have come across these gems. Guess the year:

"This book must not be taken as an inducement to young persons to enter journalism. Unhappily the field of employment is becoming more restricted owing to newspaper amalgamations ...
"... we are discovering that our calling, like industry at large, is subject to economic law. 'Rationalization' is spelling tragedy to many. It would be for the good of the public, and of the journalist, if the old competitive and independent days were restored ..."

These quotes are from the second page of Sub-Editing: A Book Mainly For Young Journalists by F J Mansfield (of the editorial staff of The Times, lecturer and examiner in Practical Journalism at the University of London and President of the NUJ 1918-1919).

The year?

1931. The French have a phrase for this: Plus ça change (plus c'est la même chose).

(Open Libary catalogues a 4th edition of this book published in 1946. On page viii of my edition Mansfield refers to "this year 1931.")

Great Rare Books may have a copy for sale but it took so long to download the details I gave up. Try for yourself here: http://www.greatrarebooks.com/Catalgoue_Yearwise/Eng_Books_Old/Books/eng-old-books/computer-science,-information-n-general-works/News%20media,%20journalism%20&%20publishing/Sub_Editing_%20-%20F_J_Mansfield.pdf

Mapping the Magazine 3

2011-03-15T10:54:00.000Z

It's all beginning to happen in the build up to Mapping the Magazine 3.

More details:
http://mappingthemagazine.blogspot.com/2011/03/25-papers-at-mtm3.html
http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/jomec/conference/mappingthemagazine/index.html

How to make a magazine in 115 seconds

2011-03-07T11:17:00.000Z

One of my international students just found this video about Little White Lies, the indy cinema magazine.

It's a brilliant two minute summary of a two month production process and well worth a look:

Magazines as brands: 1 tip

2011-02-18T11:01:00.000Z

"Magazines are brands" has become a mantra among editors and publishers. My students hear it all the time from well-placed and successful industry visitors. Felix Dennis says it, so it must be true.

And it is.

But it is important to remember that being a brand, per se, is not a sufficient condition for success, however you judge that slippery concept.

That's why this quote from a marketing newsletter is so relevant:

... a good lesson for brands. The truth is, consumers really are not that into you. They are into what you can do for them. And so what? Is it necessary for a brand to be loved -- or just well-used?

In context this does not refer to magazines, it's about a wine promotion, but nevertheless the few minutes it takes to read the whole post will be minutes well spent: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=145232

Magazines as apps: 10 tips

2011-01-31T14:05:00.001Z

Interesting observations about the many ways magazines can morph into apps:

http://joezeffdesign.com/10-takeaways-from-the-spd-judging/

I sometimes get the feeling we are back at the dawn of Quark, when everyone did graduated colour tints in boxes just because they could. But with more computing power, obviously ...

And from the same author ...

http://joezeffdesign.com/a-recipe-for-hotcake-selling-magazine-apps/

iPad demands a new paradigm from magazines

2011-01-18T17:53:00.003Z

The paragraphs below are from a comment to a post on Khoi Vihn's subtraction blog. The post itself was about how current iPad iterations of magazines aren't really working very well.

It caught my attention because I think the writer has identified a large element of what makes magazines different. If you accept this, you can perhaps start to think about different ways of delivering that kind of content, different frequencies and quantities of delivery and, as another comment suggests, different ways of rewarding reader behaviour (in the same sense that Gowalla and Foursquare "reward" users.

"From my limited perspective, it seems like magazines are unique in their combination of rich art and photos (compared to newspapers), great content layout, focus on a niche, and in-depth articles. I think the idea of an ‘issue’ collecting various articles together once a month is more of an outdated constraint from the print era than something that consistently provides value in and of itself.

"If you look at it that way, then I think ‘magazines’ as a content-rich source of detailed information about a narrow interest are great. I don’t know if there are any publishers willing to take that far a step back to realize it and act on it though. This may be a golden opportunity for a new wave of tiny media startups without the overhead of traditional publishers."

Great magazines, by MagForum

2011-01-11T14:15:00.000Z

A lovely post from MagForum here, looking at great magazines and magazine editors of the 20th Century. I posted something on these lines last year but this is much, much better!

http://magforum.wordpress.com/2011/01/08/the-best-in-magazines-of-the-20th-century

Vice – the future of magazines?

2010-10-22T12:35:00.002+01:00

A recent piece in the Independent profiled Vice magazine and its editor Andy Capper.
The article touches so many points that reflect on modern journalism it's worth reading for that alone, even if you're not bothered about magazines (although I assume that most people who stumble across this blog will be).
A few extracts:

This month, Vice's British operation moved into large new offices on the site of a former Shoreditch dairy, opening 25 film-editing suites in the process. Capper, who began his journalistic career covering court cases in Lancashire, hopes to create something of the charged atmosphere of a newsroom. Potentially it will be a magnet for young British multimedia journalists.

[Ian] Hislop is Capper's "main hero", for "how he looks into stories and reports things outside of the Max Clifford world of media". He cites Private Eye as "the best British magazine" and would like Vice to be regarded as "a young person's Private Eye", later expressing an ambition to be seen as "a young person's CNN".

[Capper] claims that news stories of interest to young people are being ignored by a mainstream media distracted by celebrity journalism. "The obsession with celebrity at every single news outlet has worked to our benefit. You get guys with these amazing stories that no one will print and we become an outlet for them," he says, adding that Magnum, the photographic agency set up by Henri Cartier Bresson and Robert Capa, "send us their stories, where before they were sending them to The Observer or the Telegraph."

Find the full article at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/press/substance-over-style-hipsters-bible-vice-magazine-is-making-documentaries-about-war-zones-2112119.html

Success for Cardiff at Magazine Academy

2010-10-14T12:37:00.000+01:00

Cardiff students from the Postgraduate Magazine Diploma won two major awards at Magazine Academy last night.

Our course magazine re:new took top prize in the New Digital Product Concept category. The website involved the whole re:new team but was steered to its prize-winning form by the hard work and dedication of Aimee Steen and Josie Allchin. Associate lecturer Simon Williams must also take a bow for his invaluable input and without Ruth Harrison, whose idea it was, there would have been no magazine.

This year's Magazine Academy saw a new award – the opportunity for shortlisted students to become editor of 100 Voices, a multimedia magazine launched by Redwood Publishing for Barclays Bank (catchline: "By students with more sense than money"). I am proud to say that, after a round of searching interviews, Angharad Jones is the first winner of this fantastic prize.

Our other course magazine, ivy, was also shortlisted – given the level of competition Magazine Academy inspires this is a major achievement in itself.

Perfect timing for the 40th Anniversary of the Centre for Journalism at Cardiff University.

Josie Allchin, Aimee Steen, Ruth Harrison and Angharad Jones at the Magazine Academy awards in Vinopolis

A new "metaphor" for magazines: 2

2010-10-13T09:25:00.000+01:00

Lo and behold, another voice adding to the debate about reinventing media forms and formats for new platforms – but Steve Smith also considers the possibility of rediscovering formats that have been tried before.

After the App Frenzy... A New Medium

Print appears to be alive and well

2010-10-12T23:04:00.000+01:00

At the start of a new term at Cardiff University I wander into newsagents looking for something with which to dazzle our fresh cohort. As we are in one of the messiest economic messes ever messed I didn't have high hopes but without trying at all hard I came out with quite a haul of new titles, in print, on paper.

To wit:
Clint – a pulp-style comic for adults who like graphic novels and the movies that derive from them. Features an impressive new strip written by Jonathan Ross and has even roped in Huw Edwards to "present" one section.

Company High Street Edit – a beautifully produced offshoot of Company (and not the first issue, as it turns out, but new to me).

Oh Comely – I'm still not sure what it's about but it's lovely, and independent (and not the first issue again; I bought the second). The website declares "oh comely is a magazine about people and their quirks and their creativity, rather than money and what it can buy".

X magazine – obviously I had to cheat for this one as it's only available in Tesco. However, the fact that it is a tv tie-in/brand extension is interesting, even if all of the people featured in the first issue seem to be connected to Simon Cowell in some way.

I have heard or read about other new print titles (Privateer among them, although £9 for the launch issue seems to represent the outer limits of affordability) so my conclusion must be that the death of print has been much exaggerated.

At least that's what I told the students ...

A new "metaphor" for magazines

2010-10-12T22:36:00.000+01:00

The ever-reliable Mindy McAdams has posted about the need for news organisations, and magazines, to come up with something utterly new for the new tablet-based platform(s) that are beginning to wash around us (see the @Yelvington post that inspired Mindy).

I mention this because there's something in the air around metaphors and the way we read or interact with things. (David Hepworth has also been thinking about magazines on the iPad and in Zinio.)

I don't have an answer. I'm not even sure I know what questions to ask but my model is radio. Radio survived talkies and the telly and the internet and now seems to be getting a whole new lease of life via digital broadcasting/narrowcasting. Think Last.fm and Spotify – the power to "broadcast" has shifted from the corporation/dj to the consumer. What's the equivalent in magazine terms?

No new newspaper news under the sun

2010-08-13T15:17:00.000+01:00

OK, this is about newspapers but when was it written?

"... the market has become even more intensely competitive in response to a number of coinciding factors: economic recession, with its severe impact on advertising revenue; a shrinking market also caused by recession, plus the apparent loss of the newspaper-reading habit among younger people ...the sudden and exponential growth in other, more interactive forms of electronic communication ..."

A CLUE
Not today, not yesterday, not last year, not even this century.

Give up?

Meryl Aldridge wrote it in her paper The tentative hell-raisers: identity and mythology in contemporary UK press journalism, published in Media, Culture & Society, Volume 20, number 1, January 1998.

To look at it another way, if it appeared in an academic journal the basic research/facts were probably known two years (or more) before publication, so the UK newspaper industry has had at least 14 years to sort out its digital strategy and address declining circulation in a meaningful way.

No new magazine ideas under the sun

2010-08-13T12:25:00.002+01:00

Here's a description of a popular magazine that summarises material that has appeared in other publications: "A paradigm of compilation, classification, and sub-editing ..."

Can you guess what it is yet? Sounds like The Week, doesn't it, but the magazine referred to here is the Review of Reviews, founded in 1890 and surviving until 1936.

According to Laurel Brake, whose work Subjugated Knowledges (1994) I quote from, the Review of Reviews was also "notably oriented to the needs of the new profession of journalism and the exigencies of the methods of production for which rapid reference is essential." In other words, it was the Wikipedia of its day.

The founding editor was WT Stead, one of the founding fathers of the Victorian version of New Journalism and also one of the many to lose his life on the Titanic.

Image via Wikipedia

And here is the source of my headline concept:
"The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun." Ecclesiastes, 1:9

In future all magazines will be digital ... and print

2010-07-23T11:36:00.000+01:00

Some interesting thoughts from new PPA Chairman Barry McIlheney.

In this interview with Meg Carter from InPublishing he shares his views on print and digital, as well as outlining plans for a revitalised Periodical Publishers Association.

Mr Magazine (aka Professor Samir Husni of the Magazine Innovation Center might like to consider McIlheney's definition of a magazine:

"It's not just about saying magazines are great, but promoting high quality editorial content with a magazine heritage delivered across any platform. It sounds a mouthful, but I'm talking about the unique mix of words and pictures and the relationship with the consumer that 'magazine' means, and that’s a mix that doesn't just have to be delivered via paper and ink."
The magazine industry has gone beyond the old debate about whether you are a magazine or a digital enthusiast, he adds, and as an organisation, the PPA must similarly raise its game.

PPA members will increasingly rely less on print - already the case for many B2B publishers, he readily concedes. But he doesn't see that will necessarily be the future for everyone. "One size does not fit all," he says. "Gradually over time other platforms grow, but there will always be fantastic products provided in print."

Types of launches may change. The old FMCG-style multi million pound TV and print launch extravaganza for a print-only product is probably not now the way forward. But we will see more launches, and we will see print-led offerings across multiple platforms. Because the starting point, irrespective of platform, remains the same: a really clever idea that will turn people on by appealing to their passions. And while there will be a growing need for technical people within publishing, there will still be a strong need for people with journalistic skills, creative ideas, flair, spark and - of course - consumer understanding." McIlheney adds that he will be watching closely uptake of the iPad which, he thinks, presents "a fantastic opportunity" for PPA members.

All quotes taken from: http://www.inpublishing.co.uk/kb/articles/barry_mcilheney_interview.aspx

For the record, this is Professor Husni's take on the subject: http://mrmagazine.wordpress.com/2010/06/25/what-is-a-magazine-really-the-debate-goes-on/

Daily Me idea resurfaces as a magazine

2010-07-21T18:34:00.000+01:00

As PC World explains:

Major publishers have slowly been rolling out their visions of how an analog magazine should look and work in a digital world full of iPads. Flipboard, on the other hand, is a new type of digital publication for the iPad that wants to meld your news and social worlds into a sort of personalized magazine.

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/201582/flipboard_personal_social_magazine_debuts_for_ipad.html

Virgin to launch Maverick magazine on iPad

2010-07-16T15:18:00.000+01:00

Richard Branson's Virgin empire is never slow to jump on a bandwagon and now it is hopping aboard the iPad with a new magazine in app form. (I feel a neologism coming on – appazine?)

Maverick is due to launch later this year. Overseen by Holly Branson (relative) it "will aim to encapsulate the spirit of the Virgin brand by focusing on entrepreneurial endeavors and highlighting new creative, business, travel and technology ideas, targeting an upscale international audience" according to the first report in AdAge. The mix of content will put it into contention with "Fast Company and WIRED", says Mashable.

But there is a bit of magazine grit in the froth – Anthony Noguera, former editor of Arena and FHM, will be involved on the editorial side through his business Accelerated Intelligence and Seven Squared will supply the tech input for the app, which may be rolled out for other platforms such as Android and whatever else powers the tidal wave of tablets bearing down on us.

As you might expect with Branson, there's a sharp business angle. Whereas publishers with print products are loth to undercut them with their app versions, Virgin has nothing to lose and should be able to produce Maverick for a lower cost than its rivals.

There is also speculation that Virgin will use this opportunity to expand into magazine publishing more generally, with some commentators saying that Branson wants to compete with Bauer and IPC. Hmm, anyone for Virgin Cola?

Image via Wikipedia

Magazines are not "easy" newspapers

2010-06-25T12:11:00.000+01:00

Two journalists made redundant by the Manchester Evening News have launched a "magazine" website.

I wish them all the best but looking at the site I can't help but feel that this is another example of newspaper journalists thinking that magazines are simpler to produce than newspapers and anyone can do it.

Judge for yourself: http://www.thenatter.co.uk/

Key magazines of postwar 20th Century

2010-05-25T11:57:00.001+01:00

I have been thinking about "key" magazines produced after 1945, to compare and contrast with the accepted canon of influential titles launched in the first half of the century; a canon that consists, by popular acclaim, of Reader's Digest, Time, Life and, er, that's it.

Clearly, popular acclaim has a large dose of Four Estate-ism in it, although RD is the token populist.

But if we accept that the postwar period, and particularly the 1960s onwards, saw massive growth in specialist magazines (pace Abrahamson, Johnson, et al) there must be some titles that were/are more influential than others. This influence does not have to be just one thing. For example, Just Seventeen represented both the apogee of publishing for teenage girls and, as it turned out, the final flowering of that genre – it reached new heights and then crashed as social changes undermined it (or "took it off at the knees" as advertising manager/publisher Zed Zawada once promised J17 would do to its rivals).

I want to try and sketch out key mags in the three main industry classes – consumer, b2b and customer/contract. So far my list, with brief rationale, looks like this:

CONSUMER
Car: introduced great design and photography into the motoring sector, along with a literary bent to the writing
Just 17/Smash Hits: see above; massively successful teen/pop titles that were left high and dry by changing social trends
Q: successfully surfed the transition from vinyl to CD and perfected the mega-review section; moved the music sector to an older demographic
Loaded: began what become the lad mag sector

b2b
Campaign: made trade publishing glamorous and sexy
Management Today: similar to Campaign but also brought together an industry body (Institute of Management) and dynamic publisher

CUSTOMER/CONTRACT
High Life: the in-flight magazine that some regard as the first contract mag
M&S Magazine: the first retailer magazine

More suggestions and brief rationales welcome in the comments.

More great magazine writing

2010-05-17T17:41:00.000+01:00

Wow – just look at the intro of this piece by Matt Taibbi from Rolling Stone and then tell me you didn't want to read more. Finance and politics boring? Not written like this it's not ...

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/;kw=[3351,11459]

Thanks to Mark Peters of Wordtastic for sending me there, and thanks to @bergus for sending me there (you see how this stuff works?).

Great magazine writing

2010-05-12T19:18:00.000+01:00

This Sports Illustrated feature about rugby player Gareth "Alfie" Thomas coming out as gay seemed to be trying too hard at first – an example of stereotypically American sports "Writing" with a capital W.

Image via Wikipedia

But there was enough to it that I persevered and before I reached the end it had not only gripped me but also forced an SST*.

There is a brilliant level of research and controlled, but overwhelming, use of detail.

Gary Smith, butt, I salutes you.

(* It's the opposite of LOL – Silently Shed Tear. Embarrassing on a train ...)

Magazines: You say Paywall, I say Subscription

2010-05-12T17:23:00.000+01:00

Another extract from James Fallows in The Atlantic, this time on paywalls (scary, new) considered in the context of subscriptions (reassuring, familiar):

“If you go back through history, content has always been monetized across a broad spectrum,” Nikesh Arora said. “You could buy a journal for a $1,000 subscription price and an audience of 1,000. Or you could pick up a newspaper that is given out free on the Metro. People have adjusted their cost curves to their own form of monetization. The Harvard Business Review is not fretting about a loss of advertising [most of its revenue comes from subscribers]. The free Metro paper is not fretting about low subscription income. They have different business models, and the same principle will apply on the Internet.” Before, “publishing” meant printing information on sheets of paper; eventually, it will mean distributing information on a Web site or mobile device. That shift, according to Arora and others, will not force news companies into a limited range of business choices. If anything, it should allow for even more variety.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/05/how-to-save-the-news/8095/6/

Magazines: Read + Engage With + Use = Income

2010-05-11T17:24:00.002+01:00

There's a very good piece by James Fallows in the current issue of The Atlantic about Google and the ways in which it is exploring how to save news organisations.

Although the article focuses is on the USA, the principles in play are just as relevant to the UK, where the co-ordinated cry of magazine publishers is "show us the money". But thinking about how to make online or digital publishing pay – in and of itself – is very unlikely to reach a worthwhile conclusion, and here's a quote from Fallows that shows why:

One Google employee who asked not to be named mentioned another report on journalism’s future and pointed out a section called “Focus on the User.” “They just mean, ‘Get money out of the user,’” he said. “Nowhere do they talk about how to create something people actually want to read and engage with and use.”

Read, engage with and use – these are the keystones of successful magazine publishing. If you published that as a formula for success in print it would be ridiculed as a statement of the bleedin' obvious.

So why panic about doing it outside of print?

Full text (over several pages): http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/04/how-to-save-the-news/8095/1/

Magazine Flash – Apple iPad vs Android tablets

2010-05-05T14:34:00.001+01:00

I can't vouch for any of this but if it's true then the apps war for magazines will really hot up. Could be back to a Betamax vs VHS situation.

http://zedomax.com/blog/2010/05/04/android-multi-touch-tablet-prototype-hands-on-review-web-2-0-expo/

Magazines, Publishers, iPad, Flash – update

2010-04-30T19:40:00.001+01:00

Does this article by James McQuivey (an analyst at Forrester Research) from PaidContent – which specifically refers to the plans of magazine publishers – throw light, heat or both on the subject?

In relation to Paul Lomax's tweet in my last post, I especially like this bit:

Apple is handing them a way to justify charging for content. And they like this very, very much. In fact, one publisher came dangerously close to scrapping Flash development altogether (before his internal tech experts talked him out of it) because he realized that in the end, Apple is handing them something the Web never has: a controlled, curated content environment where people pay for content, albeit in the form of software calls apps.

Android vs Apple for digital magazine futures

2010-04-30T17:33:00.003+01:00

Anyone tickled by Paul Lomax reporting from the iPad/digital future of magazines session at yesterday's PPA Conference:

PaulLomax: #PPA Consensus from panel (zinio, meredith/nextissuemedia,wired) is that iPad will not be market leader; Others supporting flash will win... - yesterday

might like to have a look at this article by Mark Sigal, in which he draws comparisons between iPhone/Android and Mac/PC.

There's also a slew of stuff emerging about Flash vs HTML5: http://slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/1037230/Microsoft-Tips-the-Scale-In-Favor-of-HTML-5

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/04/30/head_of_microsofts_internet_explorer_says_html5_is_the_future.html

PPA Conference has bad effect on IPC?

2010-04-30T13:25:00.002+01:00

Looks as though all that chat at the PPA Conference yesterday about "erosion" and the difficulty of generating revenue has made IPC pensive: http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=45381&c=1

Sample: “As a result we need to review whether it is desirable for IPC to continue to publish the full range of brands that we currently own. This review may lead us to conclude that we sell some of our smaller titles to publishers where they would have a stronger strategic fit and will therefore benefit from a greater focus.”

A SECOND THOUGHT: Or are they making space for a partnership with some BBC Worldwide titles?

The BBC is seeking a partner for the magazines division of BBC Worldwide, its commercial arm.

Given that iPad may not win the tablet war ...

2010-04-29T17:47:00.001+01:00

PaulLomax: #PPA Consensus from panel (zinio, meredith/nextissuemedia,wired) is that iPad will not be market leader; Others supporting flash will win...

This video from Swedish magazine publisher (and major licensor of titles to the Baltic states) Bonnier is not new but worth catching up with:

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

From the PPA Conference 2010: 5

2010-04-29T14:30:00.000+01:00

Here's a bit of a theme:

KarlSchneider: #ppa Michael Dell at Janes: the big thing B2B publishers need to get their heads around is mobile platforms - 6 minutes ago

KarlSchneider: #ppa for Bauer's Kilbourne the big thing for the next 12 months is iPhone apps - 5 minutes ago

sashers: What will be the big thing that has mainstreamed by #ppa 2011? Dell: mobile platforms. Kilbourne: iPhone apps. Prasher: tech 4 demand side - 5 minutes ago

From the PPA Conference 2010: 4

2010-04-29T14:08:00.001+01:00

This is an interesting stream from the session Bauer are involved in:

KarlSchneider: #ppa Andrew Kilbourne: Bauer won't be investing in websites with advertising as the only revenue stream - 18 minutes ago

amayfield: #ppa Andrea Kilbourne, Bauer - would not invest in a title with an advertising only model. - 17 minutes ago

KarlSchneider: #ppa Kilbourne at Bauer: creative solutions & sponsorship, not CPM ads, are the future for ad - 9 minutes ago

sashers: Kilbourne: what are you good at? creative solutions, brand alliance, high maintenance stuff but premium activity. #ppa - 9 minutes ago

amayfield: #ppa Andrea Kilbourne, Bauer - about a year ago had to get over an obsession with scale and focus on what they could be great at. - 7 minutes ago

Update:MediaWeek's more considered take on the above: http://www.mediaweek.co.uk/news/rss/1000170/PPA-Conference-2010-Bauer-shifts-away-ad-funded-models-online-brands/

From the PPA Conference 2010: 3

2010-04-29T12:26:00.000+01:00

There is strong agreement among Consumer editorial types that Facebook and Twitter are at least as important in driving traffic to magazine sites as Google search.

en sashers: Panel agreeing that facebook and twitter are primary source of driving traffic, not google. #ppa - 6 minutes ago
en PPAlive: #ppa @conormcnicholas "great social networking is the new SEO" - 6 minutes ago
en PaulLomax: #PPA @conormcnicholas "Don't obsess over Google... 20% of referral traffic on TopGear.com now comes from Facebook." - 7 minutes ago
en sashers: 20% of all traffic that comes to topgear.com comes through facebook @conormcnicholas at #ppa - 7 minutes ago

From the PPA Conference 2010: 2

2010-04-29T11:45:00.002+01:00

Follow proceedings on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ use hashtag #ppa

The official feed is: http://twitter.com/PPAlive but it's not as lively.

From the PPA (Magazines) Conference 2010

2010-04-29T11:40:00.001+01:00

ADVISORY: It's based on magazine stats from the USA

University researchers call for "Habermassian convention" in magazine websites

2010-03-08T13:24:00.001Z

If you've got past the headline above, welcome.

In fact, this post is really an elaborate way of linking to the Columbia Journalism Review's survey of magazines and their websites in the USA.

The findings are really worth looking at, at least in summary form, the standouts for me concerning:

Staffing:

The researchers found decision making on the website to be the single most important factor in how its website functions.
Most websites were staffed by people who primarily worked on the print editions, and less than a quarter of staff were hired with web experience (29 per cent).
Independent web editors were the only decision makers in the most profitable websites, and the higher a magazine’s circulation and monthly web traffic, the more likely it was to have an independent web editor making budget and content decisions.

Technology:

The researchers found most magazines are not keeping pace with mobile display and interactivity technology.
Less than one in five are designed for smartphones and very few are formatted for e-book readers (4 per cent).
Again, web sites are more likely to have multiple display options when independent web editors are in charge of budget or content decisions.

Mission:

Most editors said their website and their print magazine shared a common mission.
16 per cent of respondents said their Web site’s mission involved community-building with readers.
Interestingly, only 5 per cent mentioned new or unique content as integral to the site’s mission, with 96 per cent reporting the primary use of content from the print magazine online.

The conclusions are a bit lame, however, focusing on the need for codes of conduct, the adoption of aforementioned Habermassian conventions and why previous attempts to "standardise" blogs and social media have failed.

Umm ... has someone missed the rather large point here?

Read more for yourself:
http://onlinejournalismblog.com/2010/03/06/summary-of-magazines-and-their-websites-columbia-journalism-review-study-by-victor-navasky-and-evan-lerner/comment-page-1/

Jurgen Habermas

Some magazine links to end the day

2010-03-05T18:36:00.000Z

About developments in paper, ink and printing:
http://www.foliomag.com/2010/new-print-gimmick

About the new Elle Collections:
http://magculture.com/blog/?p=5613

About Little White Lies and Huck conjoining covers:
http://magculture.com/blog/?p=4760

About Mr Magazine getting excited about a new "Print Is Not Dead" campaign:
http://mrmagazine.wordpress.com/2010/03/02/start-spreading-the-news-print-is-not-dead/

About BoSacks demolishing said campaign:
http://bosacks.homestead.com/pmg1.html

Enjoy!

General interest magazines: The difficulty of publishing for a condition rather than a need

2010-03-05T09:17:00.002Z

The main problem faced by anyone trying to create content for a “general interest” magazine is this: my general interests are likely to be very different to yours.

Because the magazine is not being read for the kind of specific purpose a specialised or niche title fulfils it is very difficult to judge the depth and breadth of both existing knowledge and interest in any given subject. If the content is being created by journalists who are outside the targeted age range, the task becomes even more difficult.

This was brought home when I was reading through one of this year's course magazines, a challenger to the Saga/Yours duopoly that dominates the over-50 end of the market. It's a good idea, not least because of the way national demographics are going and it has come up with a great guiding strapline for the cover: It's your time. Use it. That sets a clear enough overall agenda and there has been lots of great material that does exactly what the message implies.

But there are certain things that continue to strike a false note, and one of them is content related to music. This is an area where both "general interest" and "age" come into play.

Because it is general interest, the journalist cannot assume the reader will necessarily have any interest at all in music, or in the kind of music under consideration. There may be many readers who will simply skip over these pages. There may be others who have a passing interest and would like to develop that. There will certainly be some who not only have a deep interest in music but, when it comes to popular music, were there when it first happened.

Thus posing a question like "What did we get?" when comparing the American folk scene of the 60s and 70s with that of the UK becomes both highly loaded and dangerous to credibility. Anyone who was there and had an interest could, without thinking too hard about it, reel off a pretty long list of names [1]. But how many readers would be interested in those names anyway?

John Martyn playing at Bristol University student's union, 1978. Memory not available to those much under 50. Photograph by Tim Duncan; image via Wikipedia

The main point here is that potential readers of this magazine are unlikely to pick it up because of its music articles (although some may be tempted by an in-depth look at the folk scene of the 60s, for example), or its food articles (although unusual recipes might pull them in), or its travel pages (although well thought-through trip advice could attract some).

So if they're not going to buy it for specialised content, what's left? I don't have an answer to this but it must surely involve the following elements:

• the overall mix of content

• the overall tone of writing
• a combination of broad brush and in-depth features
• clear signposts to further sources of information

This whole issue comes back to the difficultly of publishing for a condition rather than a need. Being over 50 years old is a condition: in itself it is neither here nor there. However, people who are over 50 will have certain needs in common (to generalise wildly – healthcare, pensions and financial planning, relationships with children, grandchildren and partners, etc) and it is not unreasonable to suppose that there may also be a fair degree of shared interests, or the potential to develop latent interests given that it's their time and they can use it.

1. Just for fun: Donovan. Al Stewart, John Martyn, Shirley & Dolly Collins, Nic Jones, Wizz Jones, Nick Drake, Martin Carthy, Roy Harper, Annie Briggs, Bert Jansch and other members of Pentangle, Davey Graham ...

iPad - Pay & Display

2010-02-15T14:29:00.003Z

Clearly that last post was not the final word on the iPad and its associated possibilities.

My old mucker Robert Andrews has come up with an interesting piece about the new device's magazine-display (and even more importantly, perhaps, its pay-and-display capabilities) for Paid Content and/or the Guardian.

By the way, "paradigm of paying" is an excellent phrase!

iPad: fourth thought

2010-01-29T11:07:00.000Z

In what may, or may not, be the last of these post-launch reflections on the Apple iPad, here is some information gathered by Steve Smith of Mobile Insider.

Smith interviewed a number of industry figures and came to the conclusion that :

More than anything, this is a media consumption device. I am actually fairly shocked at how little this device is informed by person-to-person communication and interactivity. It is really a lean-back device. With a keypad that is going to be a challenge under any scenario and no camera for video-blogging, the iPad doesn't even have some of the basic blogging and posting tools Apple encourages on its Mac platform.

But Dan Flanegan of BrandinHand says this is exactly the in-between device that finalizes his shift of media consumption from analog to digital. "The iPad completes my content consumption transformation," he says. "To this point my iPhone and MacBook Pro have pulled me away from traditional broadcast entertainment and news. The iPad completes this, giving me a place for books, magazines, newspapers right alongside a better experience for TV and movies."

Flanegan is a true believer that this is the beginning of the end of paper. "I can see how my kids will consume media in their lifetime. Goodbye newsprint, annoying business reply card inserts and six-inch thick Stephen King novels. Hello, content anywhere! What took you so long?"

Read the whole article on the Media Post site.

iPad: second and third thoughts

2010-01-28T17:09:00.002Z

Over at Harvard University's Neiman Journalism Lab, Joshua Benton seems to have had similar thoughts to those in my last post about the new Apple iPad.

And he specifically considers magazines:

— Surprisingly little on magazines. A lot of the talk in tablet land focused on magazines — several mag companies have been working on their own tablet concepts, and the design flexibility of the magazine page seems like a natural match for a bigger-than-a-phone screen and form factor. The magazine subscription model even seems like a natural match for something like the Season Pass you can buy for TV shows in iTunes. But magazines weren’t mentioned at all. Several magazines have moved in the one-iPhone-app-per-issue direction, and those apps will be much more impressive on the big screen, but magazines are in the same boat as newspapers: waiting for the iPad ecommerce revolution to arrive.

Read the whole piece on Nieman's site.

As if to corroborate this line of thinking, Wired's Brian X. Chen and Dylan F. Tweney said:

Apple’s goal is to offer a new platform for content creators to reinvent books, magazines and online content — in addition to offering a new avenue for content producers to make money.

iPad – one for the future?

2010-01-28T09:41:00.000Z

I am as qualified as most others to comment on the Apple iPad – I haven't seen one in the plastic, held one or used one. But I have looked at the pictures and read the comments, so here goes.

After an initial gush of "must have one", more composed reflection has led me to the conclusion that Apple has got a little ahead of itself here. It is easy to envisage a use for the iPad – properly multimedia magazines, newspapers, books and whatever other forms are still to be invented. But that content hasn't quite arrived yet. There are big companies that seem to be working on it and I am sure there are small start-ups doing the same. In a year or two we may be surrounded by iPad-friendly material.

On the other hand, the iPad itself may act as a spur to magazine and newspaper companies desperate for new revenue streams; make a good app (like Distill or the Guardian) and people seem willing to buy; tap into the seamless mobile/iTunes systems of charging and people won't even think about the cost (unless the eventual bill is too big).

Two final thoughts:
1) For those who think that the iPad isn't great at any particular thing, if there is one lesson that digital media has taught us it is surely that good enough is good enough (I won't bore you by tracking this concept back to Marshall McLuhan's theory of hot and cold media);
2) Why has the word "pad" inspired such a widespread puerile (and virginile) reaction? What do these people do when confronted with a note "pad" or a jotter "pad" or a touch "pad"?

News International joins the iTunes For Magazines gang

2009-12-14T18:02:00.000Z

I know that BSkyB has brought its customer magazine in-house and renamed it, and I am conversant with the history of News International's doomed attempt at magazine publishing, but is is a Good Thing that Murdoch has decided to join Time, Conde Nast, Hearst and Meredith in the latest iTunes for magazines gang. Maybe the name "Hearst" threw him.

Wanted: magazine workers

2009-12-14T17:38:00.001Z

Is a magazine online the same thing as a magazine in print?

This is the subject of an online survey by Rachel Singh, who is looking for people working in the magazine industry to participate. She describes the project thus:

This study is a research project being undertaken by me, Rachel Singh, a digital anthropologist-in-training at the University College of London (UCL). I hold a BA in cultural anthropology from the University of British Columbia and, among other things, I’m a former magazine web editor.

This study forms the practical project component of my graduate studies at UCL’s Department of Anthropology. The aim of the study is to discover the ways magazines can (and are) reinventing themselves. The idea is to compile research to serve as material for a potential dissertation on the shifting landscape of magazines in the 21st century and how it’s shaping a new global medium.

Along the way the study will ask questions like “Do you think print is dying?” These are not meant to reinforce doom and gloom missives of the death of print, but aimed at identifying the current trends/patterns of how magazines are navigating the ‘digital age’.

Initial areas of inquiry include:
• What does the future of magazines look like?
• What do traditional offline roles look like online? Ex. From features editor to online curator
• How are magazines using social media/networking?
• Print/Web team divides
• Old Media vs. New Media

HOW TO REACH ME
I’m around moderating comments and participating in the conversation so if you want to reach me directly, here’s how:
E: rachel [dot] singh [dot] 09@ucl [dot] ac [dot] uk
T: @SLofM

http://shiftinglandscapeofmagazines.wordpress.com/participate/

I have my own question: why does it take someone studying anthropology to do this?

How to monetise digital publishing: print it

2009-12-10T10:47:00.002Z

One week Haymarket closes the print versions of magazines in favour of online only, the next it converts online only to print.

As the company itself reports, a "best of" bookazine compilation of PistonHeads.com is now available, just in time for Christmas. There's lovely.

NB: Interestingly Zemanta has only picked up on the Christmas word so here's a lovely seasonal picture:

Image via Wikipedia

How Sports Illustrated may work in tablet form

2009-12-09T12:00:00.000Z

The tablet magazine version of Sports Illustrated in action:

"iTunes for magazines" gets a little more focus

2009-12-09T09:59:00.001Z

More details about the US consortium of magazine publishers and their planned "itunes" for magazines, courtesy of the Guardian/Paid Content.

UPDATE ( few minutes later after actually following the Zemanta links!)
In the comments under the Gawker post, lukeoneil47 makes the very good point that in the USA magazines bought on subscription are almost free already. That discussion in full (all material taken from Gawker.com: http://gawker.com/5421522/the-new-itunes-for-magazines-or-an-irrelevant-venture-is-here

12/08/09

@sweetpickles: How much is this going to be? Magazines are already basically free. $10 or so for a year.

DahlELama
12/08/09

@lukeoneil47: Exactly; I don't pay enough for magazines to start looking for a cheaper way to get them, and an e-reader doesn't look nearly as intriguing on coffee table. (Or maybe it does, but I'm not letting my guests get their grubby hands on it.)

triplethreat
12/08/09

@DahlELama: Yeah but you might not have much of a choice in the future. Magazines are going to be newsstand or electronic. I don't think you will be able to get cheap print subscriptions any more.

DahlELama
12/08/09

@triplethreat: Interesting; that's definitely a perspective I haven't heard yet. What's the advantage to getting rid of the subscription model as long as the issues are still being created in print?

triplethreat
12/08/09

@DahlELama: Print subs are basically a loss and getting more so--they are super cheap in order to keep the rate base up, but are increasing in cost as printing prices, postal rates, and gas prices rise. Better to print just a few copies to sell at newsstand for those who really want the "object experience" (I made that term up) and put the rest of your energy into developing web audience and revenue models.

I think music will go same way. I mean, why make a CD? People would rather download. But a fancy vinyl box set? They will buy.

Reach for the Sky

2009-12-08T10:46:00.000Z

BSkyB is going to rename its customer magazine, but does anyone remember the real Sky magazine? The one edited by one-time editorial genius Ian Birch? Whatever happened, etc, etc ... (Oh, maybe he's still in the States.)

iPhone, Apple tablet, eReaders: which is the future for magazines?

2009-12-04T11:08:00.000Z

I have reproduced here an interesting piece by Steve Smith, published by Mobile Insider. This long extract omits the aged-parent-pushing-GPS-toys intro and gets to the heart of competing technological solutions to what may be non-existent problems.

Key question: "Am I really getting added value from these things, or are the newspaper and magazine publishers fantasizing that I will embrace a gadget whose main purpose is to make their business models survive? "

It is gadget lust all over again. There seems to be that sentiment abroad again that consumers will embrace a new range of tech gadgets aimed at particular aspects of life. Obviously, GPS is a hit because it does integrate so nicely with existing auto technology. But pie-in-the-sky projections around new set top boxes and Internet-connected TVs are crowding the trades this season, for instance.
And now we get a wave of enthusiasm over eReaders. Amazon, in their usual coy fashion, is alluding to record sales of the Kindle -- even though they still won't tell us how many actually are being sold. Two Forrester analysts predicted an explosion of reader gadgets in 2010, with Barnes & Noble carving out some market share from Amazon and Sony. Another analyst claims that by 2012 color tablet readers will be in the market and the technology will get down to $50-$60 price points by 2020. We understand that several print companies like Time Inc. and Hearst are developing both software and hardware strategies that will vault over the current hobbled e-ink technologies with something that better serves newspaper and magazine presentation. And yesterday Sports Illustrated editors were giving many of us in the press demos of a digital version of SI designed for touch-enabled tablet devices that aren't even in the market yet.
All of this eReader self-love is going on in the midst of the worst recession in half a century. Who is going to buy this stuff, and when? My guess is that we will get a 2010 with a ton of R&D, press releases out the wazoo, and even more attempts by the key players to convince us how popular the gadgets are without actually enumerating how many they are selling. Watching Jeff Bezos on stage playing with ebook sales percentages to reflect Kindle popularity is now more comical than a fine Cirque de Soleil contortion routine.
My main skepticism over the eReader is that it is trying to be an in-between device -- a tough sell when user habits seem to have coalesced around cell phones and laptops. The eReaders I have seen, and the larger ones print publishers are gushing over, lack the portability and voice connectivity of a smart phone and lack the broad functionality of a laptop. Arguably, the netbook was able to slip into the picture in the last year because it does indeed have the functionality of a laptop in a smaller size. But in most cases an eReader now is poised to add to the clutter, even as it sells itself with efficiency.
I am less concerned about the abstract rationale of these gadgets than the practical matter of how they fit into established habits and the practicality of everyday life. Yes a Kindle can carry thousands of books and newspapers and magazines, but the reality is that most of us usually only carry one of those things at a time. And then once we get to the pricier, larger screen tablets Apple and others may launch next year, the question is even bigger. Am I really getting added value from these things, or are the newspaper and magazine publishers fantasizing that I will embrace a gadget whose main purpose is to make their business models survive?
The people in the industry I have grilled with this problem seem to think that convergence will solve it. Almost everyone agrees that people are not likely to cart around three devices, so an in-between device will have to successfully cannibalize the functionality of a laptop or a phone or both. Despite the revival of touch screens on smart phones, the dismal failure of the Tablet PC demonstrated just how important a hard keyboard is to anyone trying to do a range of tasks on a computer.
As for embedding voice communications into a tablet-sized device - that may be fine for the midtown Manhattan publishing execs who live out of their leather portfolios and day books. But there is no way in hell that even a sliver of America at large is going to allow voice functionality to move from something that fits in their pocket to something that has to fit in a pocketbook.
Which is not to say there won't be a place for some of these devices. I already see Kindles out in the wild, and most of the people I ask tell me they absolutely love the device and take it everywhere. But they also agree they are carrying three devices now, and I am not sure that situation can stand with most of us.
And as these devices get larger and more colorful -- more to accommodate publishers than us -- the challenge of adding another device climbs. And many more people I know are getting more accustomed to absorbing media via their smart phones than any of us expected. EBooks seem to be doing surprisingly well on the iPhone, and the recent mobile-ready app version of GQ magazine was pretty compelling. As eReaders try to find their in-between niche, the laptop market is intruding from above with more portable and functional Netbooks while the smart phones are pressing from below with better content experiences.
I don't know where this heads, but I do know that eReaders face some fundamental challenges that should make hardware makers and publishing cheerleaders ask themselves some hard questions first. Are they developing these platforms for consumers or for themselves?
But who is to say yet what gadgets ultimately catch on. Tech love is in the air.

You can read it complete with mom-based top and tail here.

Old man in smoking jacket looks to save jazz mag by outsourcing

2009-11-24T22:57:00.004Z

Is nothing sacred? American Media, the publisher of National Enquirer and 15 other titles including Men's Fitness (not Men's Health, please note, but the original knock off that Dennis Publishing licensed for the UK) is about to take over running all of Playboy magazine except the editorial.

It is not clear whether this means the "really good" articles (like this, and this ...) that everyone (used to) buy the magazine for, or just the pictorial elements.

Next question: What Would Hustler Do? [WARNING: DISAPPOINTING LINK]

US magazines could play digital shop – if they can find the till

2009-11-24T21:31:00.006Z

The New York Observer has reported an idea from the USA that goes some way towards some of what I might have been suggesting in the previous post.

If I understand the plan correctly, a bunch of American magazine publishers are talking about banding together to create a virtual "shop" where their magazines can be bought in multiple formats:

The company will prepare magazines that can work across multiple digital platforms, whether the iPhone, the BlackBerry or countless other digital devices. The company will not develop an e-book, but create something that people familiar with the plans compare to iTunes—a store where you can buy new and distinct iterations of The New Yorker or Time. Print magazines will also be for sale.

(I love the throwaway nature of that last sentence.)

On the other hand, I'm not sure that the publishers have quite got hold of the right end of the stick:

“It’s pretty complicated stuff,” said a source. “The really, really hard part is that you’ve got so many different kinds of devices running on different operating systems. And how do you handle that? The consortium provides one point of contact for the consumer. When you come to the main store, you can get the content any way you want.”

(Again, love that "source".)

Some of this seems to be reinventing the wheel (aka the iTunes store/Amazon marketplace/smartphone apps stores) and some seems to be ignoring the psychology of purchasing. It could be another Brill-iant idea.

Or the talking could just stop once they've seen what happened to Menzies digital download centres.

THIS JUST IN
John Federico of TechStartups.com reported this last week: The Maggwire Model: iTunes for Magazines

Amazon, John Lewis and the magazine business model

2009-11-24T17:01:00.003Z

Consider the following, taken from a feature about online shopping by David Teather in yesterday's Guardian:

The likes of Amazon and Asos are facing increasing competition from the high-street brands, many of which are beginning to take online retailing more seriously. When John Lewis launched its website in 2001, the aim was to eventually generate the sales of a medium-sized store – about £100m. Last year they reached £327m, outstripping its most successful department store and accounting for about 13% of the John Lewis division of the group. Online sales continue to grow at about 30% a year.

Robin Terrell, managing director of John Lewis Direct, says the site has become increasingly important as around half of all shopping visits start with the website, as customers research prices and range. "The website now represents the brand. People are researching more and more online before visiting the shop and we have really been working to join up the customer experience."

When I read it a little bell went off and I thought, "What if you could forge a hypothesis for magazines based on that?"

So here it is.

Print magazines represent the bricks-and-mortar retailer, the keeper of the brand name. The online sites of those magazines represent the retail website, where people visit to do their research. If they like what they find they may then visit the material artefact (the print magazine).

Hmm, doesn't look quite so good out of my head and into type but there's something there. It's not a Murdochian (senior or junior) re-education programme, quite.

If it is true that people will visit a retail website before they make the further, and far more complicated and time-consuming, effort to visit the physical shop, then why should it not be possible, given the appropriate incentives and enticements, to do the same with a magazine in online and print forms?

The biggest question is why – if it is true – people do this? Why not just buy online if you can? Does John Lewis keep some things back for the shop only? Maybe they like visiting the shop? Maybe it becomes part of a larger "emotional" experience?

If we can find some answers to that (and I bet someone has them) perhaps we can forge some new hypotheses. We should certainly remember that print-on-paper has some advantages and pleasures to offer that online will never replicate, and play those up (yes, haptics again, but also lovely big pictures rich in detail, intricate graphics, ultimate put-down-ability).

Or perhaps I'm just suggesting the freemium business model, with online as the free product and print as the premium product.

But it's important to think about that relationship, and worth trying to find models elsewhere that can be adapted to the particular circumstances of magazines.

Newspaper news + magazine aesthetic = i

2009-11-18T21:26:00.003Z

Andrew Losowsky was kind enough to leave a short but thoughtful comment on my last post.

He has done a beautiful analysis of Portugese newspaper i on his own site and it is well worth a look to see what can be achieved on a daily.

If only the South Wales Evening Post (Swansea) or South Wales Echo (Cardiff) looked as interesting as this:

[Photo from Magtastic Blogsplosion]

The ultimate capitulation of newspapers to the unquestionably superior magazine form

2009-11-18T16:13:00.004Z

Trust Dave Eggers to do something different.

The Heartbreaking Genius has transformed his cultural magazine McSweeney's into a broadsheet format for a special San Francisco edition.

You can read all about it in the Nieman Labs blog

Dave Eggers: Image via Wikipedia

Monetising digital content 2: Phone app for Distill

2009-11-18T15:52:00.002Z

Look at this will ya!

Creative Review likes it too.

UPDATE: But can you imagine what the rights clearance documentation looks like?

Monetising digital content

2009-11-16T13:26:00.003Z

While I'm on this theme (digital content, what it implies and ways of making money therefrom), John Naughton has added to the debate about What Rupert Will Do. His PaidContent article summarises a lot of the debate so far and adds some typically insightful comments.

I especially like his characterisation of "content" as "information goods" and his rudimentary but robust analysis of pricing for print.

Food for digital thought

2009-11-13T12:40:00.002Z

Adam Bowie has published a long blog post reporting on proceedings at the Radio Academy (9.11.09) and although it's about radio in the digital age, obviously, if you can remove your silo-ed blinkers and think of it as being about media in the digital age and if you can link it to the formula in my last post and then if you can project it into magazine form, you will find it extraordinarily interesting. Guaranteed.

How to make money with an online magazine

2009-11-12T16:23:00.007Z

The following block quote is taken from a comment on the piece Cory Doctorow wrote for Technology Guardian, about Rupert Murdoch's plans to block online access to his newspapers (sorry, the newspapers he has some vague connection with that are run according to the whims of their editors and over which he has no influence). chrsoz, the comment's author, addresses a number of points that Murdoch seems to have overlooked, then adds:

And none of this starts to touch on the fact that most traditional media co web sites are dull one-dimensional experiences (article + advertising - any decent community engagement (inc useless closed comment systems, ahem) = yawn), that really just mimic the newspaper in an online environment, without bringing any significant additional value to the party. So unless Rupe (and others) sorts this rather fundamental issue out then he's doomed anyway (if managing the digital business transition doesn't kill them first; maybe ereaders will save the day). Better get good at creating compelling and valuable consumer internet experiences, and not just being all about publishing articles online (otherwise they'll just get displaced by a new generation of way more innovative media companies who can fuse content + community + services + utility + monetisation).

I have written about magazines and newspapers simply reproducing their print content online (see Writing for Journalists, over to the right) rather than creating digitally native material, but chrsoz summarises the principle behind successful online publishing beautifully in his last sentence:

content + community + services + utility + monetisation

Next time I give my "launching a magazine" lecture, I shall make sure to use this simple-looking formula. Of course achieving it is not simple at all ... and therefore it could make the basis for another book. Thanks indeed chrsoz.

chrsoz's Guardian user profile

Baron von Tollbooth: Murdoch, Google and money

2009-11-12T16:00:00.004Z

Cory Doctorow's article in today's Technology Guardian is a lovely piece of writing, even though it's about a newspaper proprietor whose company gave up trying to publish magazines after realising they just couldn't hack it.

It's all speculation and opinion, of course, just adding to the virtual Niagara of comment about Rupert Murdoch's various pronouncements on paywalls, denying search and the legality (or not) of "fair use".

But there is one paragraph that has a definite ring of truth about it:

Rupert isn't a technophobic loon who will send his media empire to the bottom of the ocean while waging war on search engines. Instead, he's an out-of-touch moustache-twirler who's set his sights on remaking the web as a toll booth (with him in the collector's seat), and his plan hinges on a touchingly naive approach to geopolitics.

The idea of being a toll collector must be appealing to a businessman who staked his empire on being able to collect tolls (Sky).

UPDATE FROM THE COMMENTS ON DOCTOROW'S ARTICLE: DEFINITE MAGAZINE APPLICATION

And none of this starts to touch on the fact that most traditional media co web sites are dull one-dimensional experiences (article + advertising - any decent community engagement (inc useless closed comment systems, ahem) = yawn), that really just mimic the newspaper in an online environment, without bringing any significant additional value to the party. So unless Rupe (and others) sorts this rather fundamental issue out then he's doomed anyway (if managing the digital business transition doesn't kill them first; maybe ereaders will save the day). Better get good at creating compelling and valuable consumer internet experiences, and not just being all about publishing articles online (otherwise they'll just get displaced by a new generation of way more innovative media companies who can fuse content + community + services + utility + monetisation).

2009-10-22T16:19:00.003+01:00

To the Magazine Academy last night, where our two course magazines (Substance and Made) were shortlisted and one given a special commendation. Both should have won, of course, and the class representatives (hi Esther, Jess, Hannah, Sarah) have every right to be as proud of their work as I am.

The magazine that won (CheapSkate: congratulations Goldsmiths) encapsulated a cute idea and was nicely realised, but it didn't convince me as a real-life project – there's probably only room for once Vice-like successful freebie. Neither did the magazine entitled Wild that attracted special guest Felix Dennis so much that he offered to print a special one-off to be given away with Bizarre. It seemed to be the coverline about the World Farting Championship that attracted him.

Anyhow, Sarah had the nous to pitch Substance to Felix Dennis during the evening, only to be told there would be no advertising, and therefore no wages. I don't know what the pitch was but there's a case for saying Substance is The Week for a younger, hipper readership – and we all know how much Felix loves The Week in all its many international editions. Furthermore, if Substance attracted a decent and defined readership, the advertisers would follow.

On the long train journey home I fell to thinking about why we make these magazines, and it's certainly not to win prizes. Watching an idea develop from a tentative pitch to the class to a confident, polished final edition, complete with extensive website, via an unbelieveable amount of hard work and ruthless (constructive) criticism is the reward. Feeling the buzz as it all comes together and watching the sheer amount of learning is actually fun (for me, and I hope for all concerned); serious fun.

Surely that's why we work in or with magazines. Yes, there has to be money to pay the bills in real life, yes it's lovely to have all that hard work recognised with an award, but above all that it should be fun. If it's not ... do something else.

Related

“How would you know what’s going to happen in the magazine business?” said Mr. Wallace. “You would look at its vital statistics. You would look at its sources of income from consumers, and from advertisers. And you would look at where you’re finding your circulation. We have no problem with circulation for print magazines.

“We have what we believe is a short-term problem with advertising revenue,” he continued. “That problem seems to be improving. How long will there be print magazines? I don’t know. But for as long as there will be, Condé Nast is well positioned.”

From an insightful story about Conde Nast in the New York Observer.

Magazines score marginally better than newspapers

2009-10-20T14:37:00.003+01:00

The good news for print magazines in Targetcast tcm's latest survey can be summed up in this short extract:

60% of consumers say newspapers need to change the most to stay relevant, compared to 30% for magazines and nearly 20% for radio.

Then there's this mixed news:

A solid 57% say they prefer the experience of reading a printed magazine over reading a magazine on the Internet. An even stronger 71% would not be willing to pay for an online magazine subscription to replace their printed magazine subscription. Also, only 15% of respondents overall agree that they'd rather read magazines online. Additionally, printed magazines score well in terms of ad attentiveness and purchase influence.

Which goes to prove magblog's insistence that haptics is a very important consideration for print magazines.

Find a proper summary, with tables and everything at mediapost.com

iPhone app for magazine publishers

2009-10-20T08:27:00.004+01:00

Here's a useful post for magazine publishers thinking about developing an app for the iPhone: McSweeney's, the magazine and book organisation founded by Dave "Extraordinary Genius" Eggers has launched one with some interesting and potentially profitable features.

(Of course the author considers it in the light of possible newspaper usage, but what's new ... magazines show the way again.)

http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/10/what-lit-mag-mcsweeneys-could-teach-news-orgs-about-the-iphone/

Is journalism a meta-brand?

2009-10-16T16:20:00.012+01:00

Nick Brett, the man in charge of BBC magazines, came to talk to Cardiff School of Journalism students this morning. He gave a great, thoughtful, thought-provoking presentation about the bright future that magazines can still have, provided we are all prepared to adapt.

In the Q&A that followed someone asked whether would-be journalists should now attach themselves to a brand rather than a platform (ie newspaper, magazine, television, radio). I had never heard this question asked before and the very fact that it was asked indicates a change in the mindset of the people who will be our future journalists. (Yes, I realise that extrapolating this from a single question is quite extreme, but read on.)

Students who apply to our postgraduate courses in journalism have to specify a strand (newspaper, magazine, broadcast) and to date most of them have no problem with this because they seem to come with a very conventional, and perhaps not very well informed, view of what journalism is and how it works. The newspaper applicants want to be published in print, the magazine applicants want to get long stories about their interests printed and so on. In short, applicants come with quite a conservative outlook.

But perhaps that single question indicates a change, the t of a tipping point. The fact is that if you are a newspaper journalist you will be expected to write stories for print, for a multitude of online services, you may have to create a podcast and, on the Daily Telegraph, you should be prepared to contribute to the video output. The brand you are working for demands this versatility.

This also leads on to questions about journalists and personal brands – Martin Lewis of moneysavingexpert.com is a good case in point (as well as being a Cardiff postgraduate alumnus). Robert Peston (sample quote: “the traditional distinctions between television journalists, radio journalists and print journalists are quite close to being obsolete”) might also fall into this category, but it works at a much less elevated level too. The young journalists on our courses are all expected to run their own blogs and encouraged to explore all manner of Web 2.0 technologies. When it comes to getting a job, such activity can have a very positive effect on their personal brand, and its absence can also have a negative effect.

So perhaps the meta-brand in this instance is "journalist": all the things we have regarded as extras are now part of the landscape, a simple given. However much we yearn for a past of typewriters and hot metal we're all part of a bigger brand now.

B2B: No necessary intrinsic value

2009-10-07T18:19:00.002+01:00

B2B publisher considers the value of information online. His conclusion? It all depends on how valuable the reader thinks it is. This conclusion may fall into the NSS category but it's interesting that someone inside the industry is saying it. (As reported in Press Gazette)

My conclusion? Everyone is going to have to work harder at digging out stories that the readers find valuable and getting ... what's that word? ... ah yes, scoops.

Hey – maybe this online thing could be good for journalism!

The Economist as a Collective

2009-08-27T12:54:00.004+01:00

It could be like The Borg, it could be like an anarcho-syndicate but it's not.

The Economist has an astonishing track record of success and in an interview on mediabistro.com the magazine's Matthew Bishop (New York Bureau Chief) gives some insight into how it works. For example, on the no-byline policy:

Because we don't have our name on the article, we all stand and fall by all of the content.
This changes completely the internal dynamics. When you think about the extent to which debate is what we do, the other part of that is that we all stand together as a collective as to all the material that appears. Which means we are much more consistently high quality. Having this group of people here, and having this long record of debating, means we see things going on differently then our competitors. It's not just one individual, it's a group narrative. If you put bylines on it, it will make much harder to maintain that.

Read the whole thing at http://www.mediabistro.com/prnewser/interviews/interview_matthew_bishop_new_york_bureau_chief_the_economist_124705.asp

Posh magazines get the once over from posh consultants

2009-08-19T16:18:00.005+01:00

The Condé Nast building seen from Empire State building. Image via Wikipedia

The New York Observer has a bit of a laugh over McKinsey's scrutiny of Conde Nast. Given CN's stereotyping, the humour is only to be expected, but let's face it, if all magazines were as beautifully made as Vogue, GQ, Wired, etc, the newsstands would be much more pleasant to look at.

However, with ads pages down drastically, the flower and limo budgets may need to be trimmed.

"When the Publishers Information Bureau gets its hands on the total numbers, this is what the percentages will look like:

Allure: down 51 percent
Arch Digest: down 44 percent
Bon Appetit: down 40 percent
Bride’s (Sept/Oct): down 19 percent
Traveler: down 44 percent
Cookie: down 19 percent
Details: down 34 percent
Glamour: down 41 percent
Golf Digest: up 0.2 percent
Gourmet: down 51 percent
GQ: down 31 percent
Lucky: down 36 percent
Self: down 50 percent
Teen Vogue: down 31 percent
Vanity Fair: down 36 percent
Vogue: down 36 percent
W: down 53 percent
Wired: down 41 percent"

Readers Digest USA: private equity lets the deal go down

2009-08-19T12:29:00.003+01:00

Did you follow the takeover of Readers Digest by a US private equity firm a couple of years back? Here are a couple of experts opining on the wisdom of that investment (with the benefit of hindsight). According to Jim Cramer (second video) not only is the magazine business kaput, no media stock is worth investing in at the moment.

Newspapers – the new magazines

2009-08-11T16:56:00.004+01:00

Simon Jenkins has been on a run of good form with his recent Guardian columns (ie I agree with him) and today's is an interesting addition.

His thesis is, basically, that newspapers

should be staging everything from commercial fairs to sporting events and arts and book festivals. There is money in all of them. Newspapers should not be investing in fancy printing presses but in the "long-tail" economics of live enterprise, with the printed word as a mere core activity.

That is, they should look to brand extension for new revenue streams. He takes as his model the music industry but surely, surely, this kind of brand extension is exactly what magazines have been doing for the last, what, 10, 15, 20 years?

Felix Dennis managed to parlay Maxim into just about everything, including the gambling industry (as reported in USA Today), before the bottom started falling out of ladmags; many magazine brands have their own shows and exhibitions (consumer titles as well as B2B) and most of those generate healthy profits. Online sites offer numerous opportunities for commercial tie-ins.

If Jenkins's idea is taken up, what lies ahead? The Daily Me with added festivals? Or a daily news magazine that supports the brand in the physical print world while the real business shifts to the National Exhibition Centre and assorted giant marquees around the country?

AOL prepares magazine niches for life after Time Warner

2009-08-11T13:00:00.003+01:00

[AOL's] plan would be to build and buy scores of new brands in every monetizable niche possible. If you see a magazine at the newsstand covering a topic, AOL will have their own online brand for that topic, in blog or other format. They’ve already got the publishing platform with MediaGlow. New brands can be inserted or built at little marginal operating cost. And the talent is out there for the taking right now.

Bidding war on horizon for real life magazine stories

2009-08-07T11:44:00.003+01:00

Rupert Murdoch's plan to charge for content in his newspapers has taken a more solid form. The Sunday Times will be News International's stalking horse and Rupert has refined his "people will pay" dictum:

He claimed consumers were willing to pay for celebrity scoops and exclusive stories including revelations about MPs' expenses (from the Guardian's story)

This indicates (to me, anyway) that the NI chequebook will be out for the big celeb and scandal stories and also helps to explain Nicola Jeal's move from her position as head of the (possibly doomed) Observer's magazine division to the Times, as weekend editor. (See previous post)

The women's weekly market already pays big money for the best stories, so my guess is that Rupert has OK!, Hello and the other big players in his sights. Celebrity stories are fairly easy to spot, although getting the right ones for your specific readership is still an art, but didn't NI pass up the MP expenses disc?

If I am right, what does this mean for the Sunday Times brand? Andrew Neil has already said:

Murdoch's websites will have to change dramatically if the initiative is to succeed. "If you are going to charge you have to build a site that is different and has a distinct character. General news has become a commodity in a sense. You have to recreate the paper online." (Guardian story, as above)

Will there be sub-sites with different target readerships?
Will the overall effect be seen as devaluing the once mighty investigative organ?
Murdoch has never been afraid of reinvention, and perhaps it is this unsentimental streak that will actually allow him to succeed in imposing payments.

#magazines

iPhone vs Android in China: mobile magazine heaven?

2009-08-06T10:59:00.003+01:00

According to Anita Davis on the Brand Republic site, Google and Apple are shaping up for a fight to capture market share in China, with the iPhone in one corner and Android in the other.

The iPhone has already encouraged some innovative magazine apps (see previous posts) and if developers adopt Android in China's potentially massive, and rapidly developing, market for online media products, the results could be very interesting indeed.

The way that China's publishing approval system copes with any new developments will also be instructive to observe. As things stand at present, globally-branded magazines that want to launch in China either license the title to a local publisher or form a joint venture, but there has to be a local, already licensed, title involved or incorporated. How will this translate to the digital world?

RELATED:
http://www.brandrepublic.asia/Media/searcharticle/China-Unicom-signs-three-year-deal-with-iPhone/2008/36452
http://www.brandrepublic.asia/Media/searcharticle/Chinese-telcos-prepare-for-3G-ad-campaigns/2008/34210
http://www.brandrepublic.asia/Media/searcharticle/Google-and-the-Smartphone/2008/33148
http://mystockvoice.wordpress.com/2009/07/31/apple-china-unicom-receive-regulatory-approval-for-iphone-launch/

More Observer magazine news

2009-08-06T09:28:00.002+01:00

My thanks to Alex Burrows for bringing my attention to the news that Nicola Jeal, who has headed up the Observer's magnificent magazine section (Food, Woman, Sport, Music and the eponymous Magazine magazine), is leaving Kings Place and joining the Times as weekend editor.

Adopting a Kremlinologistic analysis, this development combines with the mooted changes to the Observer (see previous post) to suggest that its life as a newspaper is drawing to a close. Or at the very least, it will only be a shadow of its former, multi-sectioned, multi-magazined self.

Nicola Jeal has won BSME awards twice and edited Elle, among many other magazine jobs.

Let's hope that her new role allows her to bring the Times Saturday magazine back to its former glory.

Goodbye Observer newspaper, hello Observer magazine?

2009-08-05T14:20:00.002+01:00

A report in the Sunday Times suggests that the Scott Trust, ultimate owners of the Guardian and Observer newspapers among other assets, has been shown a dummy of the Observer in magazine form. Publication day for the proposed news magazine would be Thursday.

The immediate conclusion to jump to is that the new title might be a UK version of Time or Newsweek, but it is worth remembering that the Spectator has been doing well recently while the New Statesman seems unable to manoeuvre its way out of an unstoppable tailspin. This might leave room for a current affairs magazine of the left, which would fit with the Guardian/Observer political axis.

Alternatively, The Week provides a model that could make good use of the Guardian group's news resources – if they could hire people with the necessary rewrite skills.

Music magazines and social media

2009-07-30T17:47:00.002+01:00

Dancing about architecture or hyperventilating about crap? Slate magazine takes a hard look at music magazines in the States: http://www.slate.com/id/2223381/pagenum/all/

Magazines and the mobile experience

2009-07-23T09:39:00.004+01:00

Serendipity (or is it?) sends two separate but related items our way.

In news from Australia, magazine publisher Meredith Corp has just bought a major stake in a mobile marketing company: Keeping Mobile: Meredith Corp. Buys Stake In Hyperfactory

And good old Jakob Nielsen has just released a report on how poor the typical web/smartphone interaction is: The 'Misery' Of The Mobile Web

With increasing focus on the iPhone, Nokia N97, Palm Pre and Google's Android – and the Chrome browser, developed for mobile use – this is beginning to look like an area ripe for development.

Cheap magazines via Twitter & Amazon

2009-07-16T17:06:00.006+01:00

I've got a twittersearch on the word "magazines" on one of my Netvibes pages and it's constantly updating with a varied stream of tweets; people comment freely on titles, individual features or general stuff about how they use magazines (both education and relaxation are popular).

This just popped up about Amazon (USA) offering discounted mags

http://www.nicolesnickels.net/2009/07/cheap-magazines-at-amazon.html

So ... distribution = WH Smith, supermarkets and now the mighty 'Zon.

Image via Wikipedia

UPDATE: Here's another fab link from the same feed. Power to publish to the people, to misquote Wolfie Smith: http://ow.ly/hdER

New women's freebie from Soutar

2009-07-15T15:32:00.003+01:00

Mike Soutar's magazine operation is about to come up with a upmarket female companion for Shortlist, called Stylist. If it follows its brother there should be a good online presence to match the print version.

Media Week have details and opinion.

It looks as though Grazia (see previous post) will have some competition after all, AND it will fit with Chris Anderson's theory of Free.

2/100 for MediaGuardian

2009-07-14T10:58:00.003+01:00

This year’s MediaGuardian 100 has two – count ‘em – representatives from the world of magazines. Perhaps oddly, I do not want to complain about the numbers, even though two does seem a touch ungenerous in a list that is intended to be a snapshot of those who have most “cultural, economic and political influence in the UK”; no, not the number but the people chosen.

And let me state for the record that it is not a personal dislike. I have met, briefly, and heard and read about Nicolas Coleridge (md of Condé Nast UK, vp of Condé Nast International; in at 58, up from last year’s 67) and he always comes across as a charming, astute, hard working man who disguises a fist of steel in the softest, loveliest cashmere glove imaginable. His company produces the most wonderful magazines and the recent launches of Love and Wired UK were bold and deserving of success (disclosure: I love Wired UK so much I am a subscriber).

Jane Bruton (editor of Grazia, multiple award winner; in at 41 up from last year’s 56) I do not know personally but I know people who know her and have a former student who works for her. Like Coleridge she comes across as clever, hard working and demanding but appreciative. She took a fledging concept that had worked in other territories – the upmarket women’s weekly – and made it work in the UK. She has taken the magazine out on the road, making it happen literally in front of people’s eyes, and has given it a good online presence.

So, for the record, both of these people deserve their ledges in the pantheon of magazine publishing.

But … do they really have most “cultural, economic and political influence in the UK” when it comes to magazines?

If we are looking at like for like, I would argue that the person with most power and influence in the UK magazine market (not to mention Europe) at present is Herr Heinz Bauer, alongside his daughter Saskia. When Emap crashed and put itself for sale, Bauer was the only person who could write a cheque to complete the purchase on the spot. He already headed up a global magazine empire (with its roots in Germany, of course) and his UK company now leads the market, ahead of IPC (which, incidentally, has gone a bit quiet and flat, no?).

Where Condé Nast is so heavily reliant on advertising for its swish upmarket titles that, like it or not, have a definite metropolitan bias, the sheer range of titles makes it much more likely that Joe and Josephine Average of Everywhere are picking up and paying for one of Bauer’s magazines.

In short, Coleridge may preside over a small state of wonderfully crafted titles but Bauer is the emperor of the mass market, delivering guaranteed quality at an affordable price. A mirror image analogy would be the Spartans vs the Persian Empire, and we all know what happened at the end of 300.

Grazia, as noted above, carved a new niche in a well established sector but like Condé Nast’s titles, it is upscale and elitist, in intention if not in material fact (ie everyone could afford to buy it if they wanted). Within the weekly market it sits at 8 (circ: 227, 156) in a field of 27, behind titles that include Best (295,970), People's Friend (326,790), Now (433,509) and Heat (470,475). Dominating this sector is Take A Break (943,229) and I would argue strongly that Take A Break has infinitely more cultural, economic and political influence than Grazia. Not just because so many more women read it, but because it has taken a definite stance on involving its female readers in the political process, to the extent of mooting the formation of a political party. Coincidentally, it's published by another part of the Bauer empire – H Bauer Publishing.

In many ways the selections in the MediaGuardian 100 will reflect the metropolitan, upmarket situatedness of the judges (several of whom actually have a good magazine background). Nicholas Coleridge is a very “aspirational” and ubiquitous figure and Grazia seems likely to be the women’s magazine that most of the judges would come across most frequently.

Perhaps it is taking the whole top 100 thing too seriously, but the two magazine selections seem not just like token choices from an otherwise overlooked area of the media, but like the token choices that people who do not know much about magazines would make.

Print mag as a brand extension

2009-07-03T13:03:00.002+01:00

And hot on the heels of discussing special issues (see previous post), Bauer is reviving Smash Hits as a one-off Michael Jackson tribute special according to MediaGuardian.

That's an interesting development, given that Smash Hits still exists on/as other platforms – the print magazine as a brand extension to radio, television and online.

Why some journalists deserve low pay

2009-07-03T10:34:00.005+01:00

Image by macloo via Flickr

The full text of Robert Picard's lecture explaining why journalists deserve low pay is available in pdf form from http:www.robertpicard.net/files/Why_journalists_deserve_low_pay.pdf

I read it when it first came out but given the chance to contemplate more fully, there are several points that can be pulled out and looked at in the light of magazine journalism and publishing.

Moral philosophers taught us that things and activities can have intrinsic or
instrumental value. Intrinsic value involves things that are good in and of themselves,
such as beauty, truth, serenity, and harmony. Instrumental value comes from things that
facilitate action and achievement, including awareness, belonging, and understanding.

From the standpoint of moral philosophy, journalistic activities produce
instrumental but not intrinsic value. Information and knowledge conveyed by journalism
has instrumental value that is external to itself, is relative to truth, and is related to its
USE not to its creation. Journalism as important not in itself, but because it of its
instrumental aspects in enlightening the public, supporting social interaction, and
facilitating democracy.

I would argue that a beautifully produced magazine (let's focus on print here, though the argument could apply to online) has an intrinsic value, inasmuch as it may be considered "beautiful" in and of itself; the contents – specially commissioned photographs, for example – may also be considered intrinsically beautiful; and a well put together magazine certainly radiates a harmonious whole. Research by academics and by the industry has shown that readers can have an emotional relationship with a magazine and this is surely an intrinsic value.

Closer analysis of one sentence in the block above – "Journalism as important not in itself, but because it of its instrumental aspects in enlightening the public, supporting social interaction, and facilitating democracy" – reveals that Picard is yet another commentator who has adopted the Fourth Estate definition of journalism and used it as if
a) "journalism" only ever takes one form, with one purpose
and
b) that definition applies to all forms of journalism.

Picard then seems to argue against his former position by stating:

To comprehend journalistic value creation we need to focus on the benefits it provides.
Journalism creates functional, emotional and self‐expressive benefits for consumers
Functional benefits include providing information that helps individuals and
society understand their place in the world, conveying ideas that help or create ease in
life, and supplying diversion and entertainment. Emotional benefits from journalism
include it engendering senses of belonging and community, providing reassurance and a
sense of security, conveying leadership, and creating escape. Self‐Expressive benefits
are provided when individuals identify with the voice, perspectives, or opinions of a
journalism enterprise or it helps provide them opportunities to express their own ideas
and to portray themselves directly.

Some of the benefits he identifies can surely be construed as "intrinsic" or tending towards intrinsic. This distinction is important because it may help to identify areas in which "journalism" can add value, and in which magazine journalism traditionally excels:

"Thus the real measure of journalistic value is value created by serving readers"

Exactly.

So how does journalism actually produce economic value?

Journalism is practice designed to produce breath of coverage of issues and
events, to provide quality control of information, and to promote social well‐being by illuminating issues and informing the public. In journalistic practice, economic outcomes
have low priority for journalists and may or may not be a high priority for proprietors or
managers of journalistic enterprises depending upon their motivations.

I think Picard is conflating and confusing "journalism" and "publishing" in this passage and elsewhere in the lecture.

To create economic value journalists and news organizations historically relied
on the exclusivity of their access to information and sources, and their ability to provide
immediacy in conveying information. The value of those elements has been stripped
away by contemporary communication developments. Because of the emergence of 24‐
hour news and information channels, parliamentary and government channels, talk
shows, and the Internet, individuals are able to observe events in real time, to receive
information directly from knowledgeable authorities, and to interact with sources of
information and news in a variety of ways not previously possible.

If you accept the Fourth Estate definition of journalism, the above may be true – but it is not true for all forms of journalism or for all journalists and especially not for magazine journalists. This is not because of the traditional "immediacy" issue – specialised consumer and B2B magazines have always been able to break news ahead of newspapers or even broadcast media because of their specialisation and their access to sources that other journalisms and journalists would not normally bother with.

Nonetheless, immediacy is increasingly becoming an issue for magazines, whose specialised readerships often want, or expect, up-to-the-second news. This is why magazines are exploring digital communication – websites, mobile devices, Twitter and Facebook all play a role in delivering immediate information to readers.

The value of journalists’ abilities to convey information is also being challenged
by technologies that allow individuals to distribute information on their own. Software is
incorporating essential linguistic skills (spelling, grammar, and translation), audio and
video production skills, and photography and graphics skills. The Internet and various
social networking applications are providing means for individuals to create and convey
information on their own. All of these factors are making traditional journalistic practice
less valuable in economic terms.

Picard has hedged his bets here by relying on the word "traditional". For one thing, it can be construed in so many ways that it is meaningless – how traditional do we want to get? Hot metal? Steam presses? Hand setting? Quill pens? All of these things have been "traditional".

It is clear that journalists do not want to be in the contemporary labour market,
much less the highly competitive information market. They prefer to justify the value
they create in the moral philosophy terms of instrumental value. Most believe that what
they do is so intrinsically good and that they should be compensated to do it even if it
doesn’t produce revenue.

This view is embodied in professionalism of journalism, especially in efforts to
improve practice and separate business and editorial activities that developed
throughout the 20th century and were designed to protect the creation of moral value.
However, journalists also used professionalism to create relatively comfortable
employment and economic conditions for themselves, to avoid any responsibility for
performance of their enterprises, and to shield themselves from changes in the market.

Actually, I think he has a number of very good points here, but only because he clearly states that he is talking about "news" journalism of the Fourth Estate variety ("the creation of moral value") and the type of journalist who believes advertorial or any other commercially-focused scheme to be the work of the devil ("to avoid any responsibility for performance of their enterprises, and to shield themselves from changes in the market").

In short, journalists will have to develop entrepreneurial awareness and skills. This is something that magazine journalists have, generally speaking, been better at than journalists working on other "traditional" platforms. There tend to be shorter chains between editorial and advertising, and the firewalls tend to be lower and more penetrable (which is not always a good thing, of course). Advertorial is a widely accepted concept, and spin-offs in the form of special issues, bookazines or associated titles published at greater intervals are all commonplace.

Journalism must innovate and create new means of gathering, processing, and
distributing information so it provides content and services that readers, listeners, and
viewers cannot receive elsewhere. And these must provide sufficient value so audiences
and users are willing to pay a reasonable price.

If value is to be created, journalists cannot continue to report merely in the
traditional ways or merely re‐report the news that has appeared elsewhere. They must
add something novel that creates value. They will have to start providing information
and knowledge that is not readily available elsewhere, in forms that are not available
elsewhere, or in forms that are more useable by and relevant to their audiences.

Here I have to admit that Picard is unarguably right – and this where the excitement starts. Journalists, particularly young journalists, those undergoing journalism education (or training, if you must) and those teaching them should be, must be, encouraged to experiment, to try, to fail, to fail better.

Finding the right means to create and protect value will require collaboration
throughout news enterprises. It is not something that journalists can leave to
management. Everyone, journalists and managers alike, will need to develop
collaboration skills and create social relations that make it possible. Journalists will also
need to acquire entrepreneurial and innovation skills that makes it possible for them to
lead change rather than merely respond to it.

I couldn't have put it better myself.

Men's Health explores new iPhone system

2009-06-22T18:35:00.006+01:00

Men's Health in the USA appears to be the first magazine to look at ways of exploiting the iPhone's new operating system, according to a report in Advertising Age (and elsewhere before that – see below).

The interesting thing is not that the magazine has an app entirely appropriate for its target readership, but that the app itself can lead to further investment in paid-for content.

This kind of reader/device synergy is something that all titles should have a think about.

Vogue and Size Zero

2009-06-13T19:09:00.004+01:00

Here's a little something for the very many students who write about the size zero debate and the enormous power wielded by women's magazines (they think).

It's not the magazine's fault if the fashion houses send them tiny samples - and now Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman has, not for the first time, said something about it. (I am not sure about the use of "lashed out" in Sky's standfirst though.)

Alexandra Shuman in the Daily Mail, 2007

In 1997, Omega watches withdrew their ads from Vogue because they felt the magazine used too many skinny models. Here's a reminder of that.

Twitter + Googlemaps + Magazine

2009-06-12T17:15:00.003+01:00

Here's a lovely thing.

My magtweet research account picks up tweets from all sorts of magazines including NJ Family. Just now they sent a link to recommended hiking routes for this weekend. Even though I'm in Wales, I felt compelled to look and I'm glad I did because it directed me to a great looking site.

A) Where's the one for Wales?

B) Think of the other possibilities.

Incidentally, magtweet also found me this article about magazines on Facebook – Cosmo still rules even though the account hasn't been updated recently. Eh?

MagBlog

Boys and Business – this year's magazine trends

Magazine Brand Definitions, cont'd

Magazines as Brands (again)

The Great War and the Illustrated Press

The toybox as a toolbox

Whole lotta Economist

First you get your MA, then you get the job

More on how to make money from a magazine

How to make money from adverts and digital subscribers

Content and intention in magazines

Woman’s Weekly: 100 not out

How to have fun ... on the Magazine option

She magazine bites the dust

Oh my god we shot Esquire in the foot

Magazine front covers: adapt or die

Related articles

Magazine format could save newspapers

Related articles

iPad magazines need a mix of content

The Listener in digital form

Journalist grumbles – Guess the year

Mapping the Magazine 3

How to make a magazine in 115 seconds

Magazines as brands: 1 tip

Magazines as apps: 10 tips

Related articles

iPad demands a new paradigm from magazines

Related articles

Great magazines, by MagForum

Vice – the future of magazines?

Related articles

Success for Cardiff at Magazine Academy

A new "metaphor" for magazines: 2

Print appears to be alive and well

Related articles

A new "metaphor" for magazines

Related articles

No new newspaper news under the sun

Related articles by Zemanta

No new magazine ideas under the sun

In future all magazines will be digital ... and print

Related articles by Zemanta

Daily Me idea resurfaces as a magazine

Related articles by Zemanta

Virgin to launch Maverick magazine on iPad

Related articles by Zemanta

Magazines are not "easy" newspapers

Related articles by Zemanta

Key magazines of postwar 20th Century

More great magazine writing

Related articles by Zemanta

Great magazine writing

Related articles by Zemanta

Magazines: You say Paywall, I say Subscription

Related articles by Zemanta

Magazines: Read + Engage With + Use = Income

Related articles by Zemanta

Magazine Flash – Apple iPad vs Android tablets

Magazines, Publishers, iPad, Flash – update

Related articles by Zemanta

Android vs Apple for digital magazine futures

Related articles by Zemanta

PPA Conference has bad effect on IPC?

Given that iPad may not win the tablet war ...

From the PPA Conference 2010: 5

From the PPA Conference 2010: 4

From the PPA Conference 2010: 3

From the PPA Conference 2010: 2

From the PPA (Magazines) Conference 2010

University researchers call for "Habermassian convention" in magazine websites

Some magazine links to end the day

General interest magazines: The difficulty of publishing for a condition rather than a need

iPad - Pay & Display

iPad: fourth thought

iPad: second and third thoughts

iPad – one for the future?

News International joins the iTunes For Magazines gang

Wanted: magazine workers

How to monetise digital publishing: print it

Why some journalists deserve low pay