E-Media, Postal Rates on the Minds of Western Publishers

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"It is easy when we are in prosperity to give advice to the afflicted." Aeschylus (Ancient Greek Dramatist and Playwright known as the founder of Greek tragedy, 525 BC-456 BC) E-Media, Postal Rates on the Minds of Western Publishers By Tony Silber http://www.foliomag.com/viewmedia.asp? prmMID=7662 Is the postal-rate hike scheduled for July really as bad as it seems? Not according to several of the participants in a Western Publications Association seminar held last week for executive-level magazine managers. In the session, which was part of the association's annual Two-Day Publishing Conference, the topic of postal rates came up as part of a wide-ranging discussion that included sales compensation, flex- time, partnerships and, of course, e-media. Although it was brief, the postal-rate discussion was telling: With rates for b-to-b especially likely to increase by as much as 15 percent to 18 percent, many of the publishers in the room saw it only as an unpleasant cost of doing business. "It's an increase of 15 percent in a cost that is usually less than 3 percent of your total cost structure," said Joe Hanson, CEO of Professional Media Group and one of the speakers. Other speakers spent some time debating whether the cost savings provided by such techniques as co- mailing and co-palletization were offset by the fees charged by the supplier to do them. Overall. this year's WPA conference, the key regional event for publishers on the West Coast, was focused mostly on e-media, at least in the general sessions. For example, 1105 Media CEO Neal Vitale and BPA Worldwide CEO Glenn Hansen gave powerful presentations at the annual VIP panel. Vitale offered an eight-point framework for a successful e-media strategy. · Make sure the sale is integrated. "It's better to have one person talking about our products than having separate sales teams that potentially compete," Vitale said. He did make an exception for live events, noting that the sell is fundamentally different. · Have an in-house e-media guru. "You need a chief catalyst within the organization," he said. This also helps to cross-pollenate ideas within the organization from division to division." · Experimentation is a good thing. "Things like mashups and other online applications-you have to be talking about these things," Vitale said. "You may not succeed with some of them, but you should be part of it-and you also have marketers that want to try new things." · Be wary of the quality of back-end support. "A lot of this looks easy," Vitale said. "It's not. It's not easy to be up to speed on content-management systems and technology capabilities and needs, while also running a publishing company. It's also an interesting question whether you can build a CMS and other capabilities in house and also provide value to the marketplace. The jury is out." · Band-Aids don't work. You'll be doing makegoods galore, Vitale said. · Online is NOT a value-add. "It is a fundamentally important part of the marketing program," Vitale said. · Markets and industries develop at different paces. "You really need to keep pace with the markets you serve and act accordingly," Vitale said. · The business has not changed. "This is still the same old business," he said. E-media is a new medium, but it's the same song." For his part, Hansen stressed two things: Integration and developing analytic skill with all the new database information being collected through online channels. "No one is taking the time to think about how we are going to integrate the back ends of these things and develop intelligence about who's seeing what," he said. Beyond that, he said, traditional media metrics are eroding, underscoring how the whole media landscape is changing. "You're not a print product competing with another print product in the same SRDS category," Hansen said. "You're competing against all sorts of media you never thought about." In terms of tracking media, even the seemingly highly measurable world of online is not infallible. "You're seeing conjecture posing as fact," Hansen said, quoting a media director he'd heard recently. What's more, he said, the younger generation does not look with the same perspective as you do regarding your "near-and-dear" brand. "Your key to success is getting the old guard up to the level of the new guard, and the new guard down to the old." Many of the WPA attendees seemed to be somewhat early on in their e-media strategies, something conference chairman Peter Çraig acknowledged. "My sense was that they are as concerned as anybody else about e-media, but I guess they're not early adopters for the most part. And at the same time, some of the panelists [who focused on e-media] were representative of the industry, but they're not representative of the whole industry," Craig said. "The point is, you have to get into the game. The biggest mistake is not playing." That said, Craig added, publishers need to be wary about their revenue mix as they move online. "If you take 20 percent of your readers add move them online, do you take 20 percent of your revenue with you? I don't think so. If you get on the digital train, it may not be going where you think it's going. You'll end up in Poughkeepsie." The WPA conference traditionally ends with the Maggie Awards for design and editorial excellence. And one of the staples of that ceremony is the opening speech by Craig, usually a highly political commentary that is one of the unique moments in the magazine industry. This year, he toned it down, exhorting the audience to get involved in e-media, but also asking whether the rise of e-media and citizen journalism is symptomatic of the decline of traditional journalism. "It seems like journalism has lost its real purpose and sacrificed its sacred trust," Craig said. " Fair and balanced journalism in this country is suffering from loss of its real purpose in exchange for entertainment value and slanted reporting. It is no wonder that public confidence in traditional news sources has eroded and the public has a perception of bias and partisanship in the press." Original Source Link

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Where The Book Business Is Humming

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"The oldest books are only just out to those who have not read them." Samuel Butler (English novelist, essayist and critic, 1835-1902) Where The Book Business Is Humming Bertelsmann is making a bundle off Old Media in former Soviet bloc countries http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/ 07_20/b4034065.htm?chan=gl You wouldn't typically expect to find a high-profile executive of a major media company in drab Kharkiv. The gritty city of 1.5 million is the kind of place where local leaders haven't yet gotten around to tearing down statues of Lenin, and outside Ukraine it's best known (if it's known at all) for the Red Army tanks it used to make. But on a sunny April afternoon, Ewald Walgenbach, a member of the executive board of Germany's Bertelsmann, smiles as he watches a battered steam shovel ladle bricks onto a dump truck at a dilapidated factory that's being converted into a distribution center for the company's Family Leisure book club. Above the din, Oleg Shpilman, CEO of the Ukrainian unit, shouts that the new facility will be able to ship 20 million books a year. "What will happen next year when you have 21 million?" Walgenbach replies with a laugh. Optimism about the printed word is pretty rare these days. In fast-modernizing Ukraine, though, Bertelsmann is enjoying dot-com-like expansion for its book club, a category that's a slow- or no-growth proposition in the U.S. and Western Europe. Family Leisure moved 12 million books last year-everything from cookbooks to local potboilers to Stephen King thrillers-while sales grew 55%, to $50 million. Today, Bertelsmann is Ukraine's biggest bookseller, with 12% of the market. And the operation enjoys profit margins that are triple the 4% global average for similar Bertelsmann units, which include the Book-of- the-Month Club and Literary Guild in the U.S. Ukraine is the most spectacular example of Bertelsmann's success with book clubs in the former Soviet bloc. And it's proving that with the right mix of marketing and merchandise, there's money to be made even with low-cost goods. The region has well- educated populations hungry for a good read but relatively few bookstores where they can indulge their passion. As a result, Bertelsmann has also become the biggest book publisher in the Czech Republic and has scored big successes in Poland, Russia, and elsewhere. The book clubs are part of a broader trend of booming print media in the developing world. In India, newspapers are thriving, with Mumbai alone boasting a half-dozen major dailies. Swiss magazine giant Ringier saw 18% sales growth last year from its lifestyle publications in Vietnam. In Argentina, the number of books published has more than doubled since 2002. And emerging markets are also proving lucrative for another Bertelsmann unit, Gruner + Jahr, which is the second-largest magazine publisher in China via a joint venture. TEXTING THE ORDERS Bertelsmann's allegiance to Old Media in newer markets is paying off in other ways. In the U.S., its book clubs tend to serve older customers. By contrast, nearly half the Family Leisure Club's 2 million members (in a nation of 47 million) are under 30. The secret: The Bertelsmann club recruits hot young Ukrainian authors and serves as their exclusive distributor, a smart strategy in a country with only about 300 bookstores. "They're very effective, much more than other publishers," says Ljubko Deresch, an intense 23-year-old who has published five novels- the latest with Bertelsmann-dealing with youthful disenchantment and pop culture. Keeping prices low is crucial. The average Ukrainian makes less than $8,000 per year, and in Kharkiv, Bertelsmann's main competition is an open-air book market. Dozens of merchants in corrugated metal stalls sell everything from textbooks to science fiction. Family Leisure titles typically go for under $5, competitive with the outdoor market. Then to keep costs down, the club delivers shipments to post offices, where customers claim their books. No doubt Bertelsmann would like to bottle its Ukraine formula for export to other countries. Although few offer such a favorable mix of book-hungry citizens, cooperative postal authorities, and energetic local management, some innovations from Ukraine can travel. Customers there, for instance, are world leaders in ordering via mobile-phone text messages, a promising e-commerce strategy in poorer countries where few can afford Internet access. Says Shpilman: "Our goal is not to be a book club, but an integrated bookseller." Original Source Link

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What to Do When Rupert Calls?

What to Do When Rupert Calls?
ANDREW ROSS SORKIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/business/yourmoney/06deal.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&ref=yourmoney&adxnnlx=1178403919-NiDbnjLQqY6pQzLHofJHrQ

I DON’T regularly watch the Fox News Channel, but when I do, I hardly think it is “fair and balanced.” I confess to reading The New York Post, but more as a delicious treat than a trusted news source. When I lived in London, I picked up The Times of London on my way to work every morning, but felt that the once-august publication had moved a bit down-market.

As we all know, Rupert Murdoch is the owner and steward of each of those media enterprises. And the Bancrofts, the family that is the controlling shareholder of Dow Jones, last week found themselves in a difficult position — forced to consider selling the family’s beloved journalistic jewels to Mr. Murdoch, and not just because his offer of $60 a share is so extraordinarily large.

With some hesitation, given Dow Jones’s storied place in American journalism, let me explore a contrarian view: Mr. Murdoch may be the perfect publisher of The Wall Street Journal.

First, a couple of stipulations: Dow Jones, like the entire newspaper industry, is struggling. It is suffering a slow decline by a thousand cutbacks, notably abroad, where the company has retreated from building its European and Asian editions of The Journal. The company’s staff, like the physical dimensions of the daily newspaper, has been reduced.

Many Journal reporters and editors have bridled at the prospect of a takeover. Jesse Drucker, a Journal reporter and representative of the paper’s union, sounded the alarm in an e-mail message to his colleagues courting them to protest the deal. In his message, he suggested that the Bancrofts’ opposition so far to a deal “indicates that they are committed to maintaining the quality of The Wall Street Journal and all of Dow Jones’ publications and products.”

But an uncomfortable truth remains. The current state of financial affairs — caused by the continuing withering of print advertising revenues, shifting reader demographics and the seismic upheaval of the Internet — has made it extremely hard to continue “maintaining the quality” of The Journal (despite its clutch of Pulitzers) because sources of fresh investment funds are drying up. Dow Jones’s cash reserves have been further strained by the hefty dividends the Bancrofts have pushed for over the years. (Big dividends are in vogue in some newspaper quarters; The New York Times Company, for example, recently raised its dividend.)

So along comes Mr. Murdoch, who says he plans to invest more money in Dow Jones than anyone else imaginable. During an interview in his office on Thursday afternoon, he had this to say of the $5 billion price tag he had just attached to Dow Jones: “We don’t see that as the total investment at all.” In other words, even more money is on the way.

Mr. Murdoch spoke enthusiastically about opening new bureaus and expanding others. He wants to reverse The Journal’s diminished international strategy by investing heavily in the paper in Europe and Asia. He says he is spoiling for a fight with The Financial Times, in much the same way that he took the left-for-dead Times of London and made it a real competitor to The Telegraph. He talked about spending money on marketing and on greatly expanding The Journal’s brand online, leveraging the many media businesses he owns around the world.

The Bancrofts — like the Grahams, who own The Washington Post, and the Sulzbergers, who own this newspaper — are part of an important, even noble, tradition: family ownership of media enterprises dedicated to probing, sophisticated coverage of the world around them. Mr. Murdoch, for the most part, is part of a different journalistic tradition: sensationalism. So the Bancrofts, on journalistic grounds, have good reason to be wary of Mr. Murdoch.

Mr. Murdoch is also part of another tradition: farsighted, creative and risky business gambits. He has made piles of money by thinking ahead of many of his competitors. The Bancrofts have presided over a company that once held a dominant position in business journalism, and they let that lead, and the financial gains that came with it, slip through their hands.

As they confront their continuing financial challenges, the Bancrofts can sit around and pray that a deep-pocketed white knight emerges — Warren E. Buffett, Bill Gates or The Washington Post are said by insiders to be favored choices — but it’s hard to think that even if such potential suitors did buy it they would seriously invest in the business the way Mr. Murdoch claims he would. It could result in just another holding pattern.

The Bancroft family certainly faces a difficult choice, in no small part because Mr. Murdoch, despite promising to insulate The Journal by giving the paper a separate board, may still turn The Journal into the kind of media circus we otherwise know as Fox News and The New York Post. Still, it’s curious that the Dow Jones board has not pushed the Bancrofts harder to at least engage in discussions — because it’s so clear that if the board had considered Mr. Murdoch’s offer in a vacuum, it would have accepted it faster than you can say “Introducing the New Fox Journal Channel.”

Having said that, the Dow Jones board — which is being advised by Arthur Fleischer Jr. of Fried Frank Harris Shriver & Jacobson, Richard I. Beattie of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, and Goldman Sachs — has no duty to consider the bid unless the family were to acquiesce first. (An aside: Has anyone on Wall Street found it odd that Goldman Sachs, which has been a longtime banker to Mr. Murdoch’s company, the News Corporation — John Thornton, a former Goldman president, is a News Corporation director — is now representing Dow Jones, with which it has never had a relationship before? How hard do you really think Goldman is going to push the News Corporation, considering that if a deal is ever struck, Goldman will want to make Mr. Murdoch’s company a client again?)

Dow Jones’s chief executive, Richard F. Zannino, appears to be a clear advocate of a sale to Mr. Murdoch, describing the benefits of a deal to the board this week, according to people at the meeting. A week before Mr. Murdoch made his bid, the two men had breakfast in Mr. Murdoch’s office. Mr. Zannino has been flirting with Mr. Murdoch for years — often over meetings put together by bankers like Mr. Murdoch’s longtime adviser James B. Lee Jr. of JPMorgan Chase. The News Corporation is also being advised by Nancy Peretsman of Allen & Company and Blair W. Effron of Centerview Partners.

Mr. Zannino stands to make a handsome personal profit if Dow Jones is sold, of course, but when the chief executive thinks that it is better to sell the company than to keep it, shareholders should consider that a clear sign that some sort of financial impasse has been reached.

The Bancrofts have clearly reached such an impasse — some of it of their own making and some of it attributable to revolutionary business shifts beyond their control. If the family cares about preserving the Dow Jones legacy and seeing the company continue to flourish, it’s time to be financially creative. Rupert Murdoch is knocking on their door.

Time Warner's Parsons: I Won't Sell Magazine Biz

CNBC's Maria Bartiromo interviews TWX's Dick Parsons
by Jon Ogg
Filed under: Television, Time Warner (TWX), Interviews, News Corp'B' (NWS), Dow Jones and Co (DJ)
http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2007/05/03/cnbcs-maria-bartiromo-interviews-twxs-dick-parsons/

CNBC's Maria Bartiromo has interviewed Time Warner Inc's (NYSE: TWX) Dick Parsons about a myriad of issues, and more of this will be showed later.

She asked Parsons about selling the magazine business: He noted that it has acquired magazines and that it has been pruning that back to what it thinks works inside the company. Parsons said he likes magazines and publishing and will stay in the field, which he has maintained before.

Bartiromo also asked him about the integration of print to online via AOL, People.com, Time.Com and the like: Parsons said letting AOL integrate all the properties didn't work from the start. AOL is a broad portal and the company wants to make its content available across many platforms and many formats. It wants to distribute as much content as it can. As far as keeping AOL, Parsons said it is increasing performance and once Wall Street understands that this is a sustainable model enabling it to grow faster than the industry as a whole, there will be more support of this strategy.

Bartiromo also asked "How do you drive revenues into new products at AOL?" Parsons noted that AOL needs users rather than subscribers. It wants to bring back people who left AOL (or those who were never there), and monetize the visits to keep revenues growing. AOL is in a growth mode again, he said. Bartiromo noted that the cash flows are something to be jealous of and asked about private equity. Parsons said they (private equity) are looking at committing capital to everything. The current construction of AOL is the horse to ride, and that's the plan.

Bartiromo's interview was pre-recorded and Parsons' message about his opinion on the News Corp (NYSE: NWS) offer to buy Dow Jones (NYSE: DJ) will be a topic. Stay tuned......

Publishers Hear Digital Fingerprinting Pitch

Publishers Hear Digital Fingerprinting Pitch
by Karlene Lukovitz
http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.san&s=59820&Nid=30069&p=204904

WATCHING GOOGLE AND VIACOM DUKE it out in court is interesting, but in the real world, publishers and other site owners are more interested in finding a practical way to monitor who's using their content and either get some reimbursement or get it off the Web.


As the business world read about Google/YouTube filing for a dismissal of Viacom's $1 billion copyright infringement suit earlier this week, a group of publishing executives gathered at a Magazine Publishers of America "Meet the Innovators" session to hear a pitch for one potential answer.

Attributor Corp., a privately held Redwood City, CA company started by Silicon Valley executives, is testing technology that scans and captures digital "fingerprints"--or identifying characteristics--of text, images and audiovisual content and then continuously scans its index of the Web to pick up matches.

The company claims that the system can spot content reuse within just about any Web area/format, including RSS feeds, self-published sites, social networks, advertising networks, search engines and aggregators, based on a few text sentences, bits of an image, or seconds of an audio/video clip.

Attributor doesn't claim to know exactly what is and is not "fair use" under the evolving legal precedents surrounding the Digital Millennium Copyright Act; rather, the system employs a site owner's own specified criteria to generate automatic responses to identified instances of reuse, explained CEO Jim Brock, a former Yahoo copyright counsel who co-founded Attributor in 2005 with Silicon Valley entrepreneur Jim Pitkow.

Depending on the scenario (the percentage of content used, whether it's being used for commercial purposes, etc.), a content reuser might, for instance, receive a request to remove content, or a proposal to allow continuing reuse of the content in return for giving the originator a portion of advertising revenue or licensing fees. A single console provides the site owner with ongoing monitoring of each issue's status until there is some kind of resolution.

Site owners can also employ a searchable public registry that allows anyone wishing to republish content to identify the owner and seek a licensing agreement.

In short, Attributor may present a more streamlined and wide-ranging solution than existing content monitoring systems like Indigo Stream Technologies' Copyscape, which relies on Google's search engine to seek out unauthorized uses.

Attributor is now in beta with several "large, international publishers," and is taking requests to generate free trial reports for interested publishers while the development phase continues, Brock said. Between 40 and 45 million Web pages per day are being added to the system through RSS feeds and periodic content scanning/conversions, he added.

In December, the company announced that it had received $10 million in funding to date from investors including Sigma Partners, Draper Richards LP, First Round Capital, Amicus and Selby Venture Partners.

Where does Brock think digital fair use definitions are headed? "At this point, nobody can say that a certain percentage of an article equates or does not equate to fair use," he says. "It's still subjective under the law. But once we have the systems in place for transparency, we believe those standards will evolve."

Meanwhile, he says, "if from a business standpoint, it's not fair use by your standards, you can address that, negotiate, respond as you see fit." For example, if no attribution is provided, a significant portion of a given piece of content is being used, and it's being used for commercial purposes, "then you've got three indicators that might set off a 'ding, ding, ding,'" Brock notes.

Mag Bag: At Discover, Children Art the Future

Mag Bag: At Discover, Children Art the Future
by Erik Sass
http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.san&s=59808&Nid=30071&p=204904

At Discover, Children Art the Future
Discover is putting the cover design for its October issue on the future of science in the ink-stained hands of some lucky elementary or middle school student. The mag is holding a national design contest open to students from the third through eighth grades. While it sounds dicey, given their Photoshop skills, today's students might just put some graphic designers out of a job.


According to the magazine, "the winning entry, to be selected by Discover's editorial team, will be the design that best captures the wonderment and possibilities of science." The submission deadline is Wednesday, June 20, 2007. The winning artist and six finalists will be profiled in the magazine and online. Contest details are available on the Discover Web site.

The contest is designed in part to spread awareness of the magazine among a new generation of potential readers, following a wide-ranging revamp of the magazine by publisher Bob Guccione Jr. He acquired Discover in October 2005 from the Walt Disney Co., then spent much of the past 18 months revitalizing its readership and ad base, discarding the "junk" circulation it inherited to make it more appealing to Madison Avenue.

"Taking this unprecedented step--given the importance of a magazine's cover--underscores our commitment to raising this discussion," said Guccione. "There's no better snapshot of the future of science in America than what a child sees and perceives science to mean today."

Guccione Jr. is also in talks with his father, Bob Guccione Sr., to acquire Omni, the seminal science and science fiction magazine that spawned a new category of consumer magazines, including Discover. Time Inc. launched Discover in 1980, partly in response to the success of Omni, and Guccione Jr. recently told MediaDailyNews he would like to revive it as a "high-gloss science fiction quarterly" early next year. Omni ceased publication as a monthly print magazine in 1996, and a Web version of the magazine was disbanded in 1998. Time Inc. sold Discover to Disney in 1991.

Hearst Launches 3 Mobile Ventures


Three of Hearst Magazines' titles delivering home and lifestyle advice to women--Good Housekeeping, House Beautiful and Redbook--are launching mobile-content services targeting women 35+ in partnership with Crisp Wireless. The sites, specially designed for mobile format, include interactive features like calculators, quizzes, downloadable wallpapers, search and user-generated content.

Stacy Morrison, editor in chief of Redbook, explained: "Cell phones are how a woman stays connected to friends and family, keeps herself organized, and now, with our new mobile sites, she'll be able to use her phone to actually make her life easier."

Content areas at Redbook and Good Housekeeping include recipe libraries with related grocery lists and nutrition facts, diet and exercise tips, and an array of lifestyle advice. Redbook also features "Mommy Strategies," where user suggestions team with interactive features. Good Housekeeping's content includes a searchable list of every product with the mag's seal of approval and an exercise calculator. House Beautiful offers a "Design Dictionary" and paint calculator.

This news follows the recent announcement that CosmoGirl and Popular Mechanics, both published by Hearst Magazines, will be creating digital content, including video, in partnership with Fox Television Studios. The first video content for CosmoGirl is a drama about three female best friends during their junior year of high school.

Source Magazine Files for Bankruptcy

The bad business practices of former management have left a cloud hanging over the Source--at one time widely regarded as "the hip-hop Bible"--according to the magazine's current publisher, Jeremy Miller, who was forced to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in a Manhattan court Friday of last week.

The court papers allege that the misuse of magazine funds by founder David Mays and president Raymond "Benzino" Scott caused the magazine's advertisers to jump ship. The two men were fired in 2006 amid revelations of corruption and falling newsstand sales. In addition to dipping into the magazine's funds, they allegedly issued bad checks, put people unrelated to the magazine on the payroll and failed to deliver issues to 140,000 subscribers. Industry insiders also buzzed about rumored fraud in the millions of dollars, including unreported travel and jewelry purchases.

The Source has been in court a lot lately. In October 2006, a former editor in chief won $15.5 million in damages from the magazine in her lawsuit for wrongful termination. The case also suggested widespread sexual harassment at the company. Kimberly Osorio was fired in March 2005 after filing a gender discrimination complaint against the founders. Although the federal jury decided in Osorio's favor on the wrongful termination charge, they dismissed a related sexual harassment charge. Michelle Joyce, a former marketing executive, had joined Osorio in alleging sexual harassment.

AARP Set To Host First Hispanic Event In Puerto Rico

AARP is about to host the first national Hispanic-themed event in its history, the Feria de la Segunda Juventud or "Festival of the Second Youth," May 5-6 at the Puerto Rico Convention Center in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The festival--sponsored by UnitedHealth Group, Banco Popular, Walgreens, Kimberly Clark, Pfizer, Univision and Rums of Puerto Rico--is expected to attract over 9,000 attendees, with an array of celebrity speakers and performers including Gloria Estefan and Jose Feliciano. AARP President Erik Olsen remarked: "This two-day festival celebrates much more than the boomer and 50+ community--it's about family, intergenerational relationships and helping our members live a full, healthy life." AARP has over 1.2 million Hispanic members, according to Olsen.

PBS Picks Up "Wired Science"

PBS announced it will pick up "Wired Science," a production of KCET/Los Angeles that's co-branded with Wired, with the first episode set to air nationally on October 3, 2007. The one-hour episodes will air once a week for 10 weeks, covering new developments in science and technology with the magazine's trademark attitude and forward-thinking aesthetic. The series will also have a substantial Web presence hosted on the PBS site, including streaming video, articles and audience interaction features.

Home Refocuses With May Issue

Home is refocusing its editorial content on remodeling and home makeovers beginning with its May issue, publisher Hachette Filipacchi announced this week. The revamp includes the introduction of new front-of-book sections like "Your Home" and "Mini Makeover." Donna Sapolin, Home's editor in chief, says: "The remodeling market has almost doubled in size over the past decade, and our readers are at the forefront of this upward trend." Also in the redesign are more prominent referrals to the Web site; new font; new logo; a "What We'd Do" section from the editors; and a "Make It Green" feature.

Ladies' Home Journal Issues Commemorative Stamps

To celebrate its 125th anniversary in 2008, Ladies' Home Journal is offering a collection of 12 first-class postage stamps with famous vintage covers from 1903-1951. The covers were designed by some of the era's best-known illustrators, often with seasonal themes. Archival issues of the magazine, one of the nation's oldest, are a repository of cultural history illustrating the lives of American women in the 19th and early 20th century.

Cynthia Leive Re-Elected President of ASME

Cynthia Leive, the editor in chief of Glamour, has been re-elected president of the American Society of Magazine Editors. Roberta Myers, editor in chief of Elle, has been elected vice-president, while Adam Moss, editor in chief of New York, has been elected secretary, and David Willey, editor in chief of Runner's World, has been elected treasurer. Marlene Kahan is the executive director of ASME.

Editor resigns over apparent ad pressure

PC World editor resigns over apparent ad pressure

By Tom Krazit
http://news.com.com/PC+World+editor+resigns+over+apparent+ad+pressure/2100-1030_3-6181075.html

Story last modified Thu May 03 06:39:03 PDT 2007


Award-winning Editor-in-Chief Harry McCracken of PC World resigned Tuesday over disagreements with the magazine's publisher regarding stories critical of advertisers, according to sources.
McCracken, reached Wednesday evening, confirmed that he resigned after 12 years at the magazine and 16 years at publisher International Data Group, over disagreements with management. He declined to comment on the nature of those disagreements.

But three sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told CNET News.com that McCracken informed staffers in an afternoon meeting Wednesday that he decided to resign because Colin Crawford, senior vice president, online, at IDG Communications, was pressuring him to avoid stories that were critical of major advertisers.

Wired News reported Wednesday evening that McCracken quit after Crawford killed a draft story titled "Ten Things We Hate About Apple."

An IDG representative confirmed McCracken resigned, but said he was unable to comment on personnel matters. In an e-mail to News.com, Crawford denied that advertiser pressure played any part in McCracken's resignation.

PC World is best known for its product reviews and how-to expertise. The magazine has won numerous awards over the years for its coverage of the PC industry and technology in general, including six prizes--such as Best Computer/Consumer Magazine--just awarded last week at the Maggie awards, run by the Western Publications Association.

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"I spent 12 years at PC World; it's been incredibly good to me," McCracken said. He said he will still have some sort of writing relationship with the organization.

A source at PC World who wished to remain anonymous praised McCracken's decision.

"It saddens us all that Harry, a PC World institution, decided to leave," the source said. "But dammit, we're proud of him of doing it."


PC World is published by IDG, a venerable trade publishing organization that has been covering the technology industry since 1964. The monthly magazine reaches 4.3 million "purchase influencers," and PCWorld.com has 6.8 million unique visitors per month, according to a Wednesday press release touting the Maggies winners.

IDG also publishes well-known trade magazines and Web sites about the computer industry such as ComputerWorld, Network World, and InfoWorld, which recently shuttered its print publication and focused solely on its Web site. IDG was founded by Patrick McGovern and is privately held.

Crawford has been with IDG since 1994, according to his blog, when he became CEO of Macworld. He ran Macworld until 2003, when he became vice president of business development within IDG's corporate management structure, before assuming his current role.

NAA, ABC Report Newspaper Circ Slide

NAA, ABC Report Newspaper Circ Slide
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
By Chandra Johnson-Greene


According to the Newspaper Association of America’s Fas-Fax analysis of circ data for the six-month period ending March 31, the average daily circ for the 745 newspapers reporting for comparable periods was 44.9 million, a decrease of 2.1 percent over the same period a year ago.

On Sunday, the average circ for the 601 newspapers reporting was 48.1 million, a decrease of 3.1 percent over the same period a year ago.

The New York Times lost daily circ and is down 1.9 percent to 1.1 million, while its Sunday edition fell 3.3 percent to 1.6 million. Both USA Today and The Wall Street Journal, on the other hand, both reported small increases, with +0.2 percent (2.2 million) for the former and +0.6 percent (2 million) for the latter.

“The latest ABC circulation figures are in range with what we expected,” stated NAA president/CEO John F. Sturm.

Sturm says the losses are due to publishers moving away from “short-term circulation sales programs toward longer-term marketing initiatives that deliver the most value and make economic sense.”

Sturn’s statement is confirmed by the NAA’s 2007 “Circulation Facts, Figures & Logic” study of newspaper and circ marketing practices, which was released in conjunction with the Fas-Fax analysis.

The study found that newspapers are retaining subscribers in greater numbers, with subscriber churn down to 36.5 percent in 2006, compared with 42.1 percent in 2004 and 54.5 in 2000.

The only newspapers that seem to be immune to the current circ trends are the New York tabloids.

Weekday circ for the New York Post rose 7.6 percent for the six months ending March 31 while the Daily News saw a 1.4 percent gain, according to ABC.

The Post’s Sunday paper rose 6.2 percent to 439,202 while the News still leads Sunday circ despite a 2.8 percent decline.

New York magazine wins 5 awards

New York magazine wins 5 awards



New York magazine won five National Magazine Awards on Tuesday night, clinching more than any other title. National Geographic won the prize for overall excellence in the largest circulation category.

Esquire magazine was nominated for seven prizes but wound up winning just one, for reporting, for an article by C.J. Chivers about a three-day siege of a school by Chechen terrorists in the Russian town of Beslan.

The awards were announced Tuesday night by the American Society of Magazine Editors, an industry association.

The other winners for general excellence included Rolling Stone in the 1 million to 2 million circulation category; Wired in the category of circulation between 500,000 and 1 million; New York for 250,000 to 500,000; and Foreign Policy for 100,000 to 250,000. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists won in the smallest category, under 100,000 circulation.

Winners of other prizes included Glamour magazine for personal service; O, The Oprah Magazine for leisure interests; GQ for feature writing; The Georgia Review for essays; and The Nation for reviews and criticism. Vanity Fair won awards for public interest as well as columns and commentary.

In addition to general excellence and profile writing, New York magazine also won for best magazine section, design, and best interactive feature. McSweeney's won for fiction.

Time Warner Profit Falls Less Than Estimates on Cable

Time Warner Profit Falls Less Than Estimates on Cable (Update5)
By Cecile Daurat

May 2 (Bloomberg) -- Time Warner Inc., the world's largest media company, raised its 2007 forecast after surging cable- television earnings helped first-quarter profit beat analysts' estimates.

Net income declined 18 percent to $1.2 billion, or 31 cents a share, from $1.46 billion, or 32 cents, a year earlier, New- York based Time Warner said today in a statement. Sales rose 9.2 percent to $11.2 billion.

Profit was dragged down by a 27 percent decline at the film division, which failed to produce a hit to beat last year's ``Harry Potter'' DVD release. Cable profit rose 54 percent after the purchase of Adelphia Communications Corp. AOL earnings gained 27 percent as advertising revenue increased, a sign that Chief Executive Officer Richard Parsons may be succeeding in his effort to revive the Internet unit.

``The key takeaway is the company seems to be on the right track,'' said Tuna Amobi, an equity analyst at Standard & Poor's. ``The highlights of the quarter were the cable unit and AOL.''

Excluding one-time items, profit of 22 cents beat the 21- cent average of 17 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

Time Warner raised its 2007 forecast for earnings before one-time items to $1.05 a share, from $1 on Jan. 31. Analysts expected 99 cents on average, based on 23 estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Earnings on that basis were 81 cents in 2006.

Shares of Time Warner, which also owns CNN and Fortune magazine, rose 62 cents, or 3 percent, to $21.21 at 1:16 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. They had fallen 5.5 percent this year before today. Time Warner Cable Inc. rose 75 cents to $36.97.

Phone, Web Service

Earnings were buoyed by a $670 million gain on the sale of AOL's Web access division in Germany and $146 million from investments related to cable assets in Kansas City, Missouri. Excluding one-time items, profit a year ago was 26 cents a share.

Time Warner Cable, the second-largest U.S. cable company, began trading publicly in January as part of the parent company's purchase of cable franchises from bankrupt Adelphia.

The Stamford, Connecticut-based cable division, 84 percent owned by Time Warner, benefited from demand for packages of phone, digital cable and Internet services.

Revenue rose 61 percent to $3.85 billion, making it the fastest-growing Time Warner unit for the 14th straight quarter.

``We like the fact that with our own currency we can continue to participate in the inevitable consolidation in the cable space,'' Parsons said on a conference call.

AOL Gains

Cablevision Systems Corp. today agreed to be taken private by the Dolan family for $10.6 billion in cash, capping their two-year effort to buy the company.

``Our position for many years has been that if the Dolans were ever to decide to part with that business, we would be on their list of people to talk to,'' Parsons said.

AOL profit rose to $542 million as ad revenue gained 40 percent. The growth in ad sales beat the 28 percent estimate by Spencer Wang, an analyst at Bear Stearns Cos. in New York.

Parsons, 59, hired TV veteran Randy Falco in November to run AOL and accelerate ad sales growth. He reiterated today that AOL's ad revenue will rise faster than the U.S. market this year.

``Our confidence in AOL's strategy is higher than ever,'' Parsons said. ``It's going very well so far.''

Sales dropped 25 percent after AOL started offering its e- mail and software for free to broadband users last year to attract Web surfers and advertisers. The Web access division lost 1.2 million subscribers in the quarter.

Harry Potter

Profit at the film division fell to $332 million. Revenue declined 1.3 percent to $2.7 billion.

Earnings will fall in the first half and rise ``sharply'' in the second half, Parsons said. Warner Bros. will release ``Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix'' in theaters in July.

First-quarter DVD sales of ``The Departed'' and ``Happy Feet,'' at $132 million and $198 million, respectively, failed to match the $209 million and $290 million turned in last year by the ``Wedding Crashers'' and ``Harry Potter,'' according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. analyst Anthony Noto.

The unexpected theatrical success of ``300,'' an epic about Spartan warriors battling a larger Persian army, wasn't enough to lift earnings. The film took in $207 million in North American box office receipts, according to Box Office Mojo.

Publishing Cuts

At the cable-networks unit, including HBO, CNN and TNT, operating profit rose 6 percent to $937 million.

Publishing profit fell 28 percent to $84 million.

The unit cut 290 jobs in January, or 2.8 percent its workforce, to reduce expenses. The publisher of People and In Style eliminated 600 positions in 2006 as advertising sales declined. The unit also closed Life magazine, less than three years after restarting the title as a weekly.

Fortune's ad sales fell 5.4 percent in the first quarter, according to data from Publishers Information Bureau. Sports Illustrated, People and In Style gained 6.7 percent, 8.2 percent and 1.5 percent respectively in the period.

(For a replay of Time Warner's conference call visit http://ir.timewarner.com/ .)

P&G Will Boost Marketing Spending for Fiscal '08

P&G Will Boost Marketing Spending for Fiscal '08
Emphasis Will Be on 'Nonmeasured Media' but TV Still a Priority Investment
By Jack Neff

Published: May 01, 2007

BATAVIA, Ohio (AdAge.com) -- Procter & Gamble Co. will spend heavily on marketing for its year starting July 1 -- possibly at the expense of margin goals -- as it makes boosting top-line growth a priority, executives said today.

Despite an emphasis in 'nonmeasured media' as an area P&G will increase spending, TV still remains 'a hell of an efficient investment.'


The comments came as P&G issued quarterly results that, while meeting or exceeding its stated goals, failed to impress the market. P&G shares were down 2.2% to $62.95 today. Morgan Stanley analyst Bill Pecoriello said in a research note that P&G's trade-up of consumers to higher-priced items and its margins both were lower than he had expected.

Maintaining sales growth
Speaking on a conference call for analysts, Chief Financial Officer Clayton Daley said, "For fiscal-year 2008, the priority for the company is to sustain strong sales growth. As such, we plan to invest in our leading brand equities. We plan to launch a strong initiative program."

Later, Mr. Daley made it clear P&G will be willing to sacrifice margin improvements if required for the sake of top-line growth. He said if P&G can meet its double-digit earnings-per-share growth goal "with more sales growth and less margin expansion, that's OK. ... I don't want to imply that we are going to do anything to try to hold back sales growth."

While P&G may be looking to spend more aggressively in fiscal 2008, it appears to be pulling back on measured media right now in what Chairman-CEO A.G. Lafley termed a shift toward the internet and "nonmeasured media."

Shifting mix
"If you step back and look at our [marketing] mix across most of the major brands, it's clearly shifting, and it's shifting from measured media to in-store, to the internet and to trial activity," Mr. Lafley said. The latter he didn't define precisely, though he gave Gillette sampling programs, which include distribution of free razors by mail, as one example. On Gillette Fusion razors, he said, "you are going to see ... more sampling, because we still have relatively low trial rates."

Though it's impossible to measure how much P&G is spending in-store, as much of it is accounted for as deductions against net sales, data from TNS Media Intelligence do appear to indicate a pullback in measured media spending in its fiscal first quarter. P&G spent $459.9 million in January and February according to TNS, excluding newspaper inserts, a run rate that, if sustained over a full year, would trim P&G's measured spending 17.5% in 2007.

But the proportion P&G spent on TV in January and February -- 70.4% -- is in line with proportions the company has had for years and last year's 69.9%. P&G's spending on internet display ads inched up to 2.1% of its outlay in the first two months of 2007 vs. 1.6% last year.

Efficiency in TV
"We are still investing a lot in television, because, especially in developing markets, it's a hell of an efficient investment," Mr. Lafley said.

Overall, he said P&G ad spending as a percent of sales was "about 10%" in the fiscal third quarter, about where it was last year.

The talk comes after two consecutive years in which P&G has trimmed reported advertising spending as a share of sales, which peaked at 10.7% in 2004 and slid to 9.9% of sales last fiscal year.

It's not clear where that number will end up in fiscal 2007, as P&G officials have declined to provide specifics and won't report the number until after the fiscal year closes. But Global Marketing Officer Jim Stengel and Mr. Lafley have said in investor presentations late last year that they were more concerned with advertising effectiveness and brand equity than with ad-spending-to-sales ratios. P&G's trims in ad-spending ratios also have come as rising raw-material costs have pressured margins in recent years.

P&G reported sales up 8% to $18.7 billion, up 6% organically, or excluding acquisitions, divestitures and currency effects. Earnings per share rose 17% to 74 cents. Both numbers were helped by a weakening dollar, which added two percentage points to sales, and by a relatively weak year-ago performance, when P&G's top line and profits were pressured by consolidation of distributors for newly acquired Gillette and apparently temporary weakness in Russia and China.

Beauty biz not so pretty
While the fabric and home-care business led growth, with sales up 12% (10% organically) the beauty business trailed the company as a whole and rival L'Oreal with organic sales growth of 5%.

P&G also reported relatively weak results in three more areas. Gillette's blades and razor business had only 4% organic-sales growth, despite comparison to a year-ago period hurt by sales lost as distributors were consolidated in China and despite much stronger growth reported last week by rival Energizer Holdings' Schick. Organic sales for the Braun and Duracell businesses, acquired along with Gillette in October 2005, were flat. And sales for the pet food, snack and coffee business declined 1%, hurt by the Iams and Eukanuba pet-food recall, whose impact P&G declined to specify.

Toothpaste spending pays off
One area where P&G ad spending has been unrestrained -- U.S. toothpaste -- appears to be seeing some strong results, and Mr. Lafley claimed P&G has taken broad market leadership in the U.S. toothpaste market.

He noted that in 1998, the first full year after Colgate Total was launched in the U.S., Colgate had a 27% toothpaste while P&G had a 25%-plus share. Last quarter, he said P&G had a 38% in all outlets, including Wal-Mart, club and dollar stores not measured by syndicated services, compared to 32% for Colgate, he said.

"There is plenty of room," he said, "for our principal competitor to grow and for us to grow in the oral-care business."

B-to-B Media Being Transformed Into An Event Marketing Biz

B-to-B Media Being Transformed Into An Event Marketing Biz
by Joe Mandese, Tuesday, May 1, 2007 8:00 AM ET
http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.san&s=59585&Nid=29924&p=204904

BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS AD PAGES ARE CONTINUING to decline in the U.S. business press, but revenues are rising due to the expansion of new business streams including digital media sales, and so-called "face-to-face" media (ie. events, conferences and trade shows). Ad pages dropped 2.8% in February vs. February 2006, according to estimates released Monday by American Business Media. The decline was driven by sharp drops in ad page demand in the automotive, aviation, business/advertising/marketing, and computer, though restaurants and travel were up sharply for the month., according to the estimates compiled by the Business Information Network.
Interestingly, the surge in ad pages in the travel/business conventions & meetings category (+12.9%) correlates with skyrocketing B-to-B event revenues also being reported by the ABM.

"Business-to-business media is still on an upswing overall due to other performers, particularly face-to-face, growing at 10% to $11.3 billion and exceeding magazine revenues," the trade association said.

ABM President-CEO Gordon Hughes said the data signals an "era of transformation" for the B-to-B media industry, noting that traditional print revenues are "being out-billed by events.

"This again does not mean that print is going away; it just means now more than ever we must look to our entire brandscape and focus on those platforms that are changing the balance in the overall $31 billion pie," he stated.

Joe Mandese is Editor of MediaPost.

From Bad To Worse: Newspapers' Circ Declines

From Bad To Worse: Newspapers' Circ Declines
by Erik Sass, Tuesday, May 1, 2007 8:00 AM ET
http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.san&s=59553&Nid=29924&p=204904

AMERICA'S FLAGSHIP NEWSPAPERS ARE STILL afloat, but their crews may want to don swimsuits soon. The Audit Bureau of Circulations posted numbers Monday showing that in the six months ending March 2007, total daily circulation fell 2.1% to 44,961,066. Sunday circ fell 3.1% to 48,102,437, compared to the same period last year.


The ABC FAS-FAX numbers follow a litany of bad industry news over the last few weeks, including weak first-quarter earnings from leading newspaper companies, and a decline in the housing market, with ominous implications for newspaper classifieds.

This marks the 17th straight year of decline for both weekday and Sunday circs; this is an industry in distress. Indeed, the latest ABC FAS-FAX numbers look almost identical to previous figures, released biannually in what has become a grim drumbeat of contraction. In the September 2006 report, daily circ fell 2.8% as Sunday circ dropped 3.4%; in March 2006 they fell 2.5% and 3.1%, respectively; September 2005, 2.6% and 3.1%; and March 2005, 1.9% and 2.5%.

As in previous years, big metro dailies took some of the biggest hits, with The New York Times down 1.9%, the Los Angeles Times down 4.2% to 815,723, The Washington Post down 3.5% to 699,130, Chicago Tribune down 2.1% to 566,827, Houston Chronicle down 2% to 504,114, Dallas Morning News down 14.3% to 411,919, the San Francisco Chronicle down 2.9%, Long Island's Newsday down 6.9% to 398,231, and The Boston Globe down 3.7% to 382,503.

These figures actually contain (relatively) good news for some of the big titles, as their percentage rate of decline appears to be slowing. In the September 2006 ABC report, the New York Times' daily circ was down 3.5%, Los Angeles Times 8%, San Francisco Chronicle 5.3% and The Boston Globe 6.7%. On the other hand, losses accelerated slightly at the Chicago Tribune and The Washington Post, increasing by about half a percentage point.

In this gloomy environment, publications that hold their own are success stories: USA Today's circ is up 0.5% and The Wall Street Journal grew 0.6%. The biggest standouts were New York City's two daily tabloids, as the New York Daily News grew 1.4% to 718,174, and the New York Post jumped a remarkable 7.6% to 724,748.

In recent weeks, the nation's biggest newspaper companies have posted weak first-quarter results, citing revenue declines due to Internet competition. In the first quarter of 2007, the New York Times Company saw print ad revenue decline 3.4%, compared to the same period last year, as total profit fell 9.9% to $54.5 million. At the Tribune Company, overall operating revenues slipped 4% to $1.2 billion and operating profit was down 16% to $181 million. Gannett saw total revenues decline slightly from $1.88 billion in 2006 to $1.87 billion in 2007, as net income fell from $235.3 million in first quarter 2006 to $210.6 million in 2007, a roughly 10.5% drop.

It's cute, green -- and may change world

It's cute, green -- and may change world
By Carolyn Y. Johnson, Globe Staff | April 27, 2007

CAMBRIDGE -- With its cute bunny ears, its whimsical pull-string charger, and its big plastic handle, the lime-green XO laptop doesn't look like a technology that will change education and computing worldwide.

But at a demonstration in the Cambridge offices of non profit One Laptop Per Child yesterday, founder Nicholas Negroponte said that was exactly what would happen as the project moves from dream to reality this September.

"We talk about the mission, versus the market," Negroponte said.

The so-called $100 laptop -- which today costs $175 -- is a low-power, lightweight computer that can withstand a torrential rainstorm, work in bright sunlight, and be powered by kids who are willing to wind cranks or yank cords to keep it running.

Negroponte said he hopes ultimately to put his computer in the hands of 1 billion children between ages 6 and 16 in developing countries, with production ramping up to 400,000 units per month by the end of this year, for a total of 3 million in the first production wave . His partners, companies like chip maker Advanced Micro Devices , software maker Red Hat , and display manufacturer Chi Mei Group , echoed his high-minded wish to change the world through technology.

But tooling around on the laptop is also fun.

The green-and-white laptop has a small, high-resolution screen that swivels to turn into a tablet. A sliding button turns the backlight out, allowing users to save energy or take the laptop outside and use it in bright sunlight.

On either side are 2-inch-long plastic rabbit ears that flip up to increase its wireless range. They look rather fragile but have been drop-tested successfully from up to 5 feet, its makers said.

The laptop features a keyboard so tiny it seems suited only for children's hands, with game controls on either side of the screen that turn it into a big Gameboy.

Negroponte said that the computer can run Windows, but it s current operating system is a simple, open-source menu with big friendly icons stripped across the bottom of the screen. And while its creators envision the laptop used as an educational tool for collaboration, children will also be able to play a Tetris-like game called BlockParty or compose a sonata using a virtual orchestra consisting of everything from a baby's coo to a guinea pig's squeak.

Hundreds of the laptops are already being tested by children in seven launch countries including Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Nigeria, Libya, Pakistan, and Thailand. But starting in September, the makers plan to ramp up production, releasing 400,000 laptops per month.

The entire contraption folds up into a miniature plastic white briefcase that its makers said would withstand a heavy rainstorm. During testing, they dunked the laptop in a bucket of water for 10 minutes, with no effect on its function.

For power, the laptop can plug into an electrical outlet, or users can yank on its pull charger, crank a handle, or sit in bright sunlight with a flexible solar panel.

The string pull charge, on display yesterday, means about six minutes of pulling for an hour to use the device in its low-power e-book mode, with no backlight.

In contrast to today's computers, which are mainly about connecting to the Internet and bringing stuff down, this computer is made to send stuff up, allowing the user-generated revolution to hit the developing world.

"How big is the horizon for the kids in some of these villages?" said Josh Bernoff, analyst at Forrester Research. "Now they will have a way to communicate with the rest of the world."

Carolyn Y. Johnson can be reached at cjohnson@globe.com.

Rapid Report's Slow Burn

Rapid Report's Slow Burn
by Lucia Moses
http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/news/recent_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003577820



When the Audit Bureau of Circulations launched Rapid Report last July, publishers were said to enthusiastically support the online service, recognizing advertisers wanted to get circulation numbers more frequently than the twice-annual publisher’s statements. In fact, 15 percent of ABC magazine members surveyed said they expected to sign up for the free, voluntary service.

Almost a year later, a mere 70 titles have signed on—less than 9 percent of all magazine members and far below the 250 or so of the biggest publications that the service was aimed at. And one of the charter participants and biggest supporters, American Media Inc., has stopped reporting numbers for Star, one of its biggest titles.

While all the major publishing houses have at least some representation, media buyers said that without participation by all the magazines in a given category and by newsstand-heavy titles, the service has little utility.

Still, there’s no talk of shelving the service anytime soon, which provides topline circ estimates within weeks of the on-sale date. But ABC board members representing publishers and advertisers said they’re disappointed in the rate of sign-up for the service.

“Rapid Report clearly has the support of [AMI] in terms of large, multi-title companies,” said Jack Hanrahan, U.S. print director, OMD, and a member of the ABC’s magazine buyers’ advisory committee. “It doesn’t have the support of Time Inc., Hachette Filipacchi, Hearst [Magazines], Condé Nast.”

While AMI has had all 13 titles reporting from the start, David Leckey, AMI’s executive vp of consumer marketing and an ABC board member, said the publisher stopped reporting numbers for Star March 12 due to lack of participation by its competitors, although he added it would resume reporting if one of them came on board. “We are commended for taking a leadership role, but I’ve constantly seen it turned against us because competitors have access to Rapid Report,” he said. “The media have used it to a degree against us. We support the ABC’s initiative, but we will not place ourselves at a competitive disadvantage.”

In terms of other publishing companies, OMD’s Hanrahan Time Inc.’s Sports Illustrated is the only weekly participating, and it’s mostly subscription-based. “In Style is a good choice to put on there, even Real Simple, but if you’re focused on what’s the most relevant weekly for buyers to know more about, it would be People,” Hanrahan said. “SI has not even 2.5 percent of its copies in single-copy sales. And [Us Weekly publisher] Wenner Media doesn’t participate at all.”

A Time Inc. rep said the company supported the service and was considering adding other titles. Wenner, meanwhile, wouldn’t comment, and Condé Nast did not return calls. Hachette supports the service, having put on three of its biggest titles—Car and Driver, Road & Track and Woman’s Day—and plans to fold in other titles in the future, a company spokeswoman said. Hearst, with two magazines reporting, is evaluating the accuracy of the data, said John Hartig, head of consumer marketing. “We are open to adding more titles as advertising interest grows, but we’d like to better understand how agencies are using the data before jumping into it full force,” said Hartig.

Publishers have been concerned about rivals seeing their numbers and how buyers will use the data. But buyers said the information provided by Rapid Report is too new and lacking in context to be used to penalize publishers.

“We don’t have enough research to know why newsstand numbers are going down,” said Robin Steinberg, senior vp, director of print investment, MediaVest USA, and an ABC board liaison. “This report was created simply to help manage and view the numbers at a more rapid rate. The biggest challenge voiced by publishers is the fear of buyers making immediate plan changes based on these fluctuations. However, the reality, is we don’t make changes based on a single piece of information.”

As for publisher objections that the process is cumbersome and numbers are a moving target, Leckey said that as the person who posts AMI’s data, he can attest that it’s not, adding that there’s no deadline to file and numbers can be updated continually. “It’s Turbo Tax,” he said. “It’s very, very easy.”

Observers said the low level of Rapid Report participation is a stumbling block to fulfilling the desire many publishers have to move to an audience-based measurement system, and that the ABC may eventually have to pull the plug. “I don’t think we need to get 100 percent [of ABC members] on Rapid Report, but I’d like to see us get to 20 percent of our membership,” Leckey said. “If participation’s not there, [the ABC] may have to rethink their allocation of resources.”

Another ABC director, Judy Vogel, research director at PHD USA, put the onus partly on her peers to increase participation. “I believe the buyers are not screaming enough about it,” she said. “Short of something that is somewhat punitive, what repercussions are there if they don’t participate? We’ve got to send a stronger message to publishers.”

The prince of magazine publishing

Zinczenko is the prince of magazine publishing
Commentary: Men's Health editor says that branding means everything
By Jon Friedman, MarketWatch



NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- David Zinczenko, the editor of Men's Health magazine, is the prince of the New York publishing scene.
He's also the editorial director of Best Life, a Men's Health spinoff; the best-selling author of the "Abs Diet" books; and a frequent guest on NBC's more "Today." Zinczenko hit the big, big time last Friday by appearing on "Oprah," the most influential talk show on television. No wonder everyone in New York seems to recognize the 37-year-old journalist.

When I arrived at the chic Soho House Thursday night to meet Zinczenko for drinks, a brunette hostess nodded and said, "Yes, we know him." A tall blonde standing next to her gushed: "And we love him."

So should Rodale, which publishes Men's Health. The monthly just had the biggest first quarter in its 20-year history, racking up an ad-page gain of 23% over the same period in 2006. Its May 2007 issue has a hefty 192 pages and features Eric Dane of "Grey's Anatomy" on the cover, with an advertising-page increase of 31% over last year.

Zinczenko attributes the magazine's progress to its devotion to readers. "You have to communicate with the reader on every single page," he said. "You have got to show them what you stand for."

Men's Health dedicates itself to helping its readers lead more fulfilling lives. Of course, its contents take many forms, from the panting "More Sex! Hotter Sex!" headline on the May cover to Ben Stein's "Read This, Retire Rich" piece on page 136.


Editors will pick up their Ellie prizes at the annual National Magazine Awards Tuesday night in New York. While Men's Health didn't garner as many nominations as other titles, it got a measure of satisfaction when it was named best performer in circulation for 2006 by the Capell's Circulation Report, an influential digest in media circles.

In publishing today, success can hinge on how well a company can create brand awareness. Zinczenko has become a media magnet, whether it's for building a strong franchise at Rodale, or for formerly dating "Grindhouse" co-star Rose McGowan (who appears on the cover of the current Rolling Stone), or for memorably telling Jon Stewart at a magazine-industry function that "thin is the new rich."

To Zinczenko's occasional chagrin, this native of Allentown, Pa., is also mentioned conspicuously on the Gawker Web site, which delights in zinging him over his social life. If Zinczenko reminded me of a movie character, I'd have to peg him as Eric "Otter" Stratton, the oh-so-suave guy in "Animal House," who tweaks his enemies and always has the last laugh.

The industry, noting that Zinczenko can create excitement, asked him to chair its annual American Magazine Conference in October. "We want people to leave this conference saying it was mind-blowing," the editor said with his characteristic enthusiasm.

"Dave's brand is successful, and he is a brand in and of himself," according to Howard Polskin, senior vice president of the Magazine Publishers of America trade association. "He's a good flag-carrier for the magazine industry."


Branding
Zinczenko said that his magazine "has a very strong sense of mission. We are relentless about spreading our gospel," which focuses on helping men live better.
With some magazines, it's hard to pin down what they're all about. But Men's Health is clear: "Everything we do is strategic," he added.

But Zinczenko has his limits. He scoffed at gossip that he would be hosting a dating show on television. "I absolutely won't," he told me. "If I won't do 'The Bachelor,' I won't host a dating show."

Why not? "It's not the right branding opportunity for the magazine," he replied.
Zinczenko learned the hard way about the pitfalls of exposure. A few years ago, Stewart, the witty and acerbic host of "The Daily Show," led a panel discussion about the relative vitality of magazines with prominent editors, including Zinczenko.

I was there and I took notes. But the only comment I remember was Zinczenko saying "thin is the new rich" -- a quip that fell flat and drew a long stare from Stewart. It wasn't all bad, though. It ended up on the media blogs and Zinczenko achieved a measure of fame from the incident. (I still wonder if he planned it that way all along.)

"It turned into a roast," Zinczenko recalled. "For better or worse, I decided to prove a point. I wasn't going to play dead."
When I asked him how he sees his role at Men's Health, he said: "I'm a servant to the brand."

Former tennis star Andre Agassi once famously and foolishly remarked that "image is everything." Zinczenko would say he got it wrong. Branding is everything.
MEDIA WEB QUESTION OF THE DAY: What's your favorite magazine and why?

Garden & Gun Magazine Has an Awkward Debut

Garden & Gun Magazine Has an Awkward Debut
By LIA MILLER
Garden & Gun Magazine Has an Awkward Debut

Garden & Gun, a glossy new lifestyle magazine from Charleston, S.C., says it is for those who love “an adventure-bound, art-loving, skeet-shooting lifestyle.” In reality, the magazine is less about guns than it is about gardens, “Southern tradition” and land conservation. The gun part of the title, said Rebecca Darwin, the magazine’s publisher, is a metaphor for “the sporting life.”

It is also an inside reference to a popular ’70s Charleston disco called the Garden and Gun Club.

The name might not have raised an eyebrow had not the premiere issue arrived on newsstands just days before the shootings at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., on April 16. Ms. Darwin said only one critical e-mail message was received, among many positive ones, but others in the magazine industry noted the unfortunate timing.

Ms. Darwin, a former publisher of The New Yorker and Mirabella, said that there were no guns in the first issue. The “sporting life” piece is an article by George Black on trout fishing in Georgia.

Garden & Gun, which is published by the Evening Post Publishing Company, has an initial distribution of 150,000 and plans to publish five issues this year and 10 in 2008.

Samir Husni, the head of the University of Mississippi’s journalism department, said that he winced when he saw the name. “In this day and age, any title that you have to explain, you know it’s not the right title.”

But Ms. Darwin, who had 20 years of publishing experience in New York before returning to her South Carolina roots, said she was confident of the magazine’s appeal. “There are 40 million people that enjoy hunting and fishing; when you get outside of New York City, there is a whole other world out there.” LIA MILLER

Advertisers Look Forward to One-Stop Shopping on Google

Advertisers Look Forward to One-Stop Shopping on Google
by Lee Sherman


SAN FRANCISCO -- Google cast a long shadow over this year's adtech interactive media conference, where the search and advertising giant's recent agreement to purchase DoubleClick for $3.1 billion was clearly on the minds of advertisers and publishers in attendance at the Moscone Center.

Microsoft and AT&T oppose the planned acquisition, saying it violates antitrust law and gives Google a dominant position in online advertising. Privacy groups are nervous about what it means for Google to have access to data on so much customer activity.

But for advertising professionals, the deal, which represents further consolidation in an already solidifying market, has more-positive implications -- starting with the promise of one-stop ad shopping.

"Ninety-nine percent of the ad dollars are going to the top 10 websites," says David Naylor, online media director at Richter 7, an advertising agency. "From a media buyer's standpoint, it makes it much easier to have one point of contact."

Bryan Vickery, a marketing executive at Credit One Bank, agrees, noting that as Google adds display advertisements to the mix, its ability to drive traffic only increases. "As an advertiser, a one-stop shop is extremely appealing," Vickery says. "The question I have for any advertising medium is, 'Can you deliver customers to my doorstep?' At the end of the day they can."

One concern raised by advertisers Wednesday in an adtech panel discussion on networks and exchanges was the rise in user-generated content, such as that found on Google's YouTube. As online advertising starts to take on more of the characteristics of traditional media, advertisers want filtering technologies that can shield their brands from proximity to inappropriate content.

For publishers, the situation is more problematic. Display ads are the bread and butter of large content sites, and they will soon be in the hands of a company known for its programmatic approach to delivering information. Google collected an estimated 30 percent of all online ad revenues in 2006, mostly on the strength of its text-only ads. The DoubleClick acquisition will give it the dominant position in graphical ads, which account for another 34 percent of the overall ad market.

Henry Vogel, chief revenue officer at Quigo Technologies, a Google competitor, says publishers fear that the lack of transparency in Google's AdSense may be extended to display advertising: "The biggest single downside (of the DoubleClick purchase) is that it concentrates more information and control in one company."

Quigo's AdSonar product lets advertisers bid on specific media properties and determine precisely where their ads will end up, in addition to purchasing run-of-network ads. Vogel says Quigo's approach allows publishers to own the customer relationship, something that isn't possible with Google's network.

"Is Google friend or foe?" Vogel asks. "If Google is competing with you for your audience and your advertisers, they now have even more ammunition to do so."

Tina Brown: Hail, the Queen of Gloss

Tina Brown: Hail, the Queen of Gloss
The chronicler of celebrity culture turns her waspish wit on the life of its High Princess
By Paul Vallely
http://news.independent.co.uk/people/profiles/article2494169.ece


When Tina Brown took over that venerable literary institution The New Yorker and attempted to drag it into the late 20th century, a number of its most renowned writers resigned. At the magazine's 70th anniversary party in 1995, its British editor asked an actor to read out the resignation letter of one of the grandest members of staff, which bemoaned the magazine's fascination with the OJ Simpson murder case.

"For you to kiss the ass of celebrity culture at this moment that way," the departing scribe loftily opined, "is like selling your soul to get close to the Hapsburgs in 1913." Brown then had her reply read out by an actress, choosing Debra Winger to play herself in what the New York Post described as "a suitably immaculate English accent".

She wrote: "I am distraught at your defection, but since you never actually write anything, I should say I am notionally distraught."

Here, in a single anecdote, is all you need to know about Tina Brown - funny and elegant, powerful, brittle and ruthless - and the author of what promises to be the most high-profile of the slew of books about Princess Diana to be published in the run-up to the 10th anniversary of her death.

To save you the bother of buying it, here are what are reported to be its key claims: Diana was more in love with the Prince of Wales's title than she was with him; they had sex on the royal train twice before their marriage; Charles was faithful to her until her eating disorders and neurotic behaviour drove him back into the arms of Camilla; Camilla's real love was not Charles but her philandering husband, Andrew, and she only had an affair with Charles in retaliation for Andrew's infidelity; Diana had no intention of marrying Dodi Fayed but had a dalliance with him merely to annoy Charles and the Royal Family. The dead heroine was, in conclusion, a "spiteful, manipulative, media-savvy neurotic".

Not that Brown's husband, Sir Harold Evans, still perhaps Britain's most distinguished living newspaper man, will thank me for saying that. We should all wait to read the whole book to see it all in proper context, he has said. No doubt lots of people will.

Lots of people have taken to everything Ms Brown has done ever since she was a promising young playwright - winning The Sunday Times Drama Award in 1973 - and then a promising young journalist interviewing, and also dating, famous men such as Auberon Waugh, Dudley Moore and Martin Amis. She also dated Harold Evans, then the illustrious editor of The Sunday Times and, the scandalised newsroom noted, 26 years her senior, as well as married to someone else.

All that promise was actualised not as a writer but as an editor. In 1979, at the age of just 25, Brown was offered the editorship of the moribund 270-year-old society magazine The Tatler. In four years she revitalised it to the extent that its circulation trebled. She was then hired as an editorial adviser to Vanity Fair in New York for six weeks, but became editor-in-chief withinmonths. It, too, was an enormous success, based on the formula of what Brown called "high-class trash" - a mix of high-gloss fashion, vacuous celebrity and serious foreign reporting.

It was what her early life had shaped her for. Her father had been a film producer in post-war Britain making movies with stars such as Margaret Rutherford and Richard Attenborough. Her vivacious mother was Laurence Olivier's press agent and, in later years, gossip columnist for an English-language magazine for expatriates in Spain. "Family parties," said one report, "attracted the likes of Sean Connery and Joan Collins, and little Tina became used to perching on famous knees." It gave her the self-confidence to get expelled from three boarding schools - once for describing the headmistress's bosom as "an unidentified flying object". At Oxford, where she was clever but not very clever, she organised her own parties. "You knew you had made it if you were invited", said her Oxford contemporary, Tony Blair, who was not. Parties have been part of her modus operandi ever since. "You don't make friends, you make contacts," she said on her arrival in New York.

Later, at The New Yorker, some long-standing contributors sniffed that she was a vulgarian. She turned the much-lauded but little-read literary institution into "mere journalism" or "a version of People magazine". The snobbery was undiminished when Brown exercised the over-affluent editor's technique - despised by writers - of commissioning more articles than she had room for and binning the ones she liked least. But she made The New Yorker more readable by leading writers of high seriousness to feed at the trough of celebrity culture. It made it more like every other magazine in America, yet she did it with the antennae of what one US contemporary described as "her generation's most adroit zeitgeist surfer". Circulation rose by 30 per cent.

She has not always had the Midas touch. She quit The New Yorker after six years after being invited by Harvey and Bob Weinstein of Miramax Films to run a new multi-media company encompassing a new magazine, a book company and a television show. The magazine Talk, a glossy celebrity-led monthly, flopped, losing millions in the post 9/11 advertising recession. Her column in The Washington Post was criticised by the paper's own ombudsman. And her weekly talk show on CNBC was cancelled after poor ratings.

It was at that point that Brown, by now a US citizen, turned her attention to Diana, negotiating a $2m (£1m) advance from Random House, the publishing company of which her husband was until fairly recently president.

The book begins with an account of the last "girls' lunch" she had with the Princess at the Four Seasons restaurant in Manhattan in the summer of 1997, not long before Diana died being pursued by paparazzi. Brown has used her extensive contacts book to interview 250 people, including Tony Blair, about the dead woman. It will be published inJune - just a fortnight before the memorial concert to their mother planned by Prince William and Prince Harry.

It tries, Brown has said, to examine the Princess as a cultural archetype of a modern-day Britain that is, as Diana was, "emotional and media-obsessed". High seriousness feeding at the trough of celebrity culture. Very post-modern. Very lucrative. The Tina Brown formula at work once more.

The book is "an affectionate and multi-faceted portrayal of Diana," she says. It is not a hatchet job. "I think it's sympathetic to everyone actually." We shall see. Oh, how we shall see.

Blogging is Serious Media Business

Blogging is Serious Media Business
By Kristina Joukhadar
http://www.circman.com/viewmedia.asp?prmMID=3038

MPA member blogs now stand at 400. Not to be outdone, 75 percent of the nation’s largest newspapers currently blog on business related topics.

The Magazine Publishers of America has released an online listing of the approximately 400 blogs established by its publishing members. Although there are 32 publishers—among them Fortune, Forbes, Scientific American, Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, Good Housekeeping, Advertising Age and FOLIO:—who only list one blog for their magazines, many have multiple blogs.

The “winner” in terms of pure number of blogs for one “publisher” would have to be CNET Networks, with 33 individual blogs. This is a bit deceptive, though, because the blogs cover different areas of the network and are not tied to print magazines. In second place, at 17 blogs each, are Business 2.0 and Computer World. InfoWorld is next up, with 15 distinct blogs.

Perhaps some of the most unusual blogs are listed under the Glamour magazine brand. Topics like Beauty Insider, Did You Hear, and Slaves to Fashion are blogs one might expect to see—even Don’t Spotting isn’t too much of a stretch. But two of Glamour’s blogs—in particular, See Allysa Date and Life with Cancer—both written by staffers, represent an incredible extension of the brand in a very personal way.

75 Percent of Newspapers Blog

According to a study released yesterday by the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism at Arizona State University, 75 percent of the national’s largest newspapers now include business-related blogs.

Although 38 of the largest 50 papers have a blog and 24 of them have two or more, less than 10 percent of papers overall have blogs. The average number of blog postings per week is three; and the median number of reader comments to business blogs over a two-week period was nine. Half the respondents said they receive from one to five reader comments per posting; one third receive no responses at all.

"Newspapers clearly need to be experimenting with blogs as another way of reaching readers beyond the printed page," said Stephen Doig, the study’s researcher, “But it’s less clear at this point that blogs give an immediate payoff in increased readership for most news sites.”