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******* Who or what is really killing print? Craig Newmark? Blogs? YouTube, maybe? The internet in general? Or any of the other usual suspects? Nah, print is killing print. More specifically, a handful of half-wit overlords at many -- if not most -- big print-media companies are killing print. I was thinking about this last week when the news broke that supermarket magnate (and Bill Clinton buddy) Ron Burkle had agreed to buy Primedia's enthusiast-media division, with its mostly cheesy 76 specialty magazines (such as Soap Opera Digest and Muscle Mustangs & Fast Fords), for $1.2 billion. I was a bit choked up (read: I felt ready to vomit) at the prospect of that epoch-ending transaction. You see, Primedia and I have a little history. As a former Primedia employee (back when the company still owned New York Magazine, and I was an editor there), I was around for the company's initial public offering, which I was graciously allowed to buy into at $10 a share. MORE ONLINE
2. Media Week
Whatever happened to transparency? Almost a year after the Audit Bureau of Circulations launched its Rapid Report service—publishing circ estimates online on an ongoing basis—only a handful of publications have signed up. Now, McPheters & Co. has pulled the plug on Readership.com after financial backing from publishers dried up. Announced a year and a half ago, the planned service would have provided ongoing measurement of issue-specific audiences. The stagnant support for these efforts illustrates the unease facing publishers, who realize they need to reveal more audience and circulation data to be competitive with other media, but at the same time worry that advertisers and rivals will use the information against them. MORE ONLINE
3. Media Week
For all the obsession with cooking shows, culinary schools and winery tours, the question still looms for most home cooks at the end of the day: What should I make for dinner? Many are finding the answer online. Of the 10 biggest food and cooking Web sites that were around a year ago, eight have since shown double-digit audience growth. Now, Time Inc. is looking to get a slice of the online pie with MyRecipes.com, a new food portal from its Southern Progress Corp. unit. The site, whose launch is set to be announced this week, serves up 25,000 recipes, pulling mainly from Southern Progress’ Cooking Light, as well other Time Inc. titles, including Southern Living, Sunset, Coastal Living, Health and Real Simple. The site also offers daily menus and how-to videos and lets users create and share recipe and menu files with fellow cooks. “It will let people find quick and easy solutions for everyday meals, entertaining, healthy how-to,” said Michael Gutkowski, senior vp and general manager of SPC Digital, a new division. The site grew out of Time Inc.’s strategy to grow its magazine brands in part by developing data-rich vertical sites, home/food being one of them. Gutkowski said Southern Progress plans to launch a home portal later this year. MORE ONLINE
4. Jossip
Hearst chief Cathie Black has seen the numbers. “What numbers?,” your innocent soul asks. The ad page numbers for the first half of the year, including those of Seventeen. It’s not that Cathie isn’t aware of how her magazines are faring at any single timestamp. But when it’s put out there for all to see, as it is in today’s Women’s Wear Daily – that under Ann Shoket’s editorial direction, Seventeen’s ad pages fell 9.5 percent, while Teen Vogue climbed 1.5 percent – it’s hard not to get a little pissed at your hand-picked Atoosa replacement. Especially when a magazine like Real Simple (looked upon with disdain by any book that has any attachment to fashion) leverages its television partnerships for a nearly 20 percent page gain, while Seventeen’s relationship with America’s Next Top Model has proven as useful as Tyra’s repetitive script. MORE ONLINE
5. Advertising Age
Most of the attention to Cond? Nast's Portfolio so far has wondered about its effect on the old-guard business magazines: Forbes, Fortune and BusinessWeek. In reality, Portfolio or no Portfolio, the market trends we can already observe suggest pressure for a biz-mag shakeout is building -- pressure that the scrappier players will feel far more acutely than the old behemoths. Consider, for example, the challenges for Business 2.0, a smart magazine with a great editor in Josh Quittner. Its ad pages sank 7.7% in 2005 and slid 5.1% in 2006, according to the Publishers Information Bureau. This year ad sales are off to a terrible start, with pages off 31.6% through the May issue, per the Media Industry Newsletter. It may be profitable -- although people close to the title have expressed skepticism on that point -- but at its parent, Time Inc., even profitability isn't worth what it once was. Now the company wants all its resources invested in the highest-growth areas. And it's not just the new Portfolio that established business titles must contend with, by the way, but also legions of young digital outlets drilling into all kinds of business subjects. One of them, DealBreaker, recently savaged Portfolio in a review and proved its own worth by breaking news on aspects of Rupert Murdoch's bid for Dow Jones. Business books are actually facing increased editorial competition from all sides (don't forget the ad dollars Fox News plans to vacuum up with its planned business channel), while advertisers are gunning hard for complex multimedia deals that encourage concentration of dollars with fewer outlets. Does that mean we're due for a category shakeout? MORE ONLINE
6. WWD
The first half of this year looked positive overall for most fashion magazines, as some rebounded off of soft year-ago periods while others kept their momentum after strong performances. Of the women's titles, Allure, Glamour and Harper's Bazaar posted double-digit gains, even after Allure posted a 7 percent increase last year over 2005 and Glamour posted a 5 percent gain, according to Media Industry Newsletter. Allure vice president and publisher Nancy Berger Cardone said that, though beauty business is growing at a 5 percent clip, diversification of its business to nonendemic categories — automotive, food and retail — has helped the magazine boost pages. "When I started at Allure six years ago, 80 percent of our business was beauty. Now, beauty represents 57 percent of our business." Jane also rebounded somewhat from its 41 percent decline in pages last year, as pages increased 20 percent, to 283, for the period (comparatively, Jane carried 400 ad pages in the first six months of 2005). Women's lifestyle titles reported strong growth. Real Simple, for example, posted a 19.8 percent gain in pages, to 897, thanks to new multiplatform investments such as its television show and updated Web site, and an extra issue in January. "That counts for 40 incremental pages this year," said publisher Steve Sachs. Of the leading fashion titles, Vogue posted a 5.5 percent gain in pages, to 1,323, while W posted an 8.8 percent increase, to 894. Cosmopolitan reported a 9.6 percent gain, to 932 pages, while Elle reported a 9.1 percent gain, to 1,104. Marie Claire posted a 7.9 percent gain, to 645, and Lucky saw pages grow 5.7 percent, to 820. MORE ONLINE
7. WWD
Harper's Bazaar deputy editor in chief Sarah Bailey is leaving the magazine and returning to London, where she was last the editor of British Elle. She has worked at Bazaar since 2004, and recently left on maternity leave. "I'm going back to London as I want my son to spend his early years surrounded by family," she said through a spokeswoman, adding that she will continue to contribute to the magazine, starting with the September cover story. She plans to write for other outlets, as well. "I love to write and have spent too little time with the muse for the last three years. Once I've shipped my family — and baby's extensive wardrobe — back to London, there's a bunch of juicy writing projects I'm really looking forward to." Margi Conklin will continue to serve as acting executive editor, though a spokeswoman was unable to say whether editor in chief Glenda Bailey would make another hire at the top.
8. WWD
GQ pulled a fast one on its readers in its May issue. The story of a 13-year-old numbers wunderkind who manages a small town baseball team is a hoax, made up entirely from the imagination of GQ articles editor Jason Gay. The article, "The Boys of Summer," profiles Jonathan Nettles Floyd, a child born on April 1, 1994, who is the general manager of the Ash Fork Miners, a team in the Desert Cactus Independent League. Floyd has developed a unique statistic to evaluate a player's ability — the ISH, or infield stolen hits, and the OSH, or outfield stolen hits. Supposedly, Floyd has a nine-year-old assistant, and is being heavily courted by the New York Yankees. But the boy, the team, the Desert Cactus Independent League and the entire story are all fake. There actually is a town called Ash Fork, population 400, just north of Phoenix, but it does not have a minor league baseball team. Instead, the players and ballpark facilities shown in the story are home to the Yuma, Ariz., Golden Baseball League, run by commissioner Kevin Outcalt. And Outcalt did more than lend his baseball field for the story. He also lent his 13-year-old son, Chris Outcalt — who is photographed as young Floyd in the piece. "Everything's 100 percent made up," admitted Gay. Those who read the story carefully will find some signals of GQ's trickery. Floyd's birthday is April Fool's Day; players include Irving Clifford, second basemen George Frey and James Plimpton, and manager Billy "Stack" Stackhouse. Irving Clifford is a reference to writer Clifford Irving, best known for writing an unauthorized fake autobiography of Howard Hughes; George Frey and James Plimpton are transposed names of fake memoirist James Frey and George Plimpton, author of "The Curious Case of Sidd Finch," a novel about a fictitious baseball pitcher with a 200 mph fastball. Stackhouse, meanwhile, references both "Candid Camera" and MTV's prank program "Punk'd" in an "interview" with Gay. Finally, Gay's bio at the end of the story says he is a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, which he is not. MORE ONLINE
9. WWD
Gawker Media's 14th blog, Jezebel, launches today with a focus on women, women's media and fashion. Anna Holmes, who has worked at Star and In Style, will be managing editor, alongside former Wall Street Journal reporter Moe Tkacik as editor, and Jennifer Gerson, formerly assistant to Elle editor in chief Roberta Myers, as associate editor. In typical Gawker fashion, the new site will both aggregate content from other media and generate some new stories. "We wanted to do something that isn't so insider-y with regards to the media, something that, theoretically, my cousin in Ohio would read," said Holmes. It remains to be seen how exactly that will be achieved — a glance at the test material for the site yields much overlap with Gawker and Defamer's celebrity and media content, with a heavy pickup of fashion-industry tidbits. But Holmes also emphasized a "frustration with media directed at women, the superficiality of it all. We just kind of wanted to create something that was an antidote to all the b------t that we felt women were being fed from all corners of the globe, in terms of media." Gawker Media managing editor Lockhart Steele downplayed any particular marketing strategy. "There's no special trick other than going with our gut," he said, adding, "We think of things that would be entertaining to us. If the site grows a large audience, there will be advertisers….Gawker sites tend to succeed or fail on whether they're a good site." He pointed out the company has shut down three of its sites. Still, there's one strategic move that's a bit more in line with traditional media: "We're shifting to a place on all the Gawker sites to a world where we should be breaking news and getting exclusives all the time." MORE ONLINE
************ Jobs ...that Food & Wine in NYC is looking for a full-time photo assistant to perform a variety of administrative duties that include: Logging-in/returning film. Keeping film files up to date and organized. Preparing monthly expense reports for creative director, director of photography and art director. Assisting in shoot production (travel arrangements, maps & directions, shoot books, etc.). Calling in/returning portfolios. Preparing invoices for processing (getting signatures, photo copying and filing). Tracking shoot estimate vs actual cost. Process all print orders. Ordering supplies for photo and art department. Sending issues to contributors. Support creative director and Photo Department when needed. The ideal candidate must: Be a college graduate. Have excellent written and oral communication skills. Be extremely meticulous and well organized. Be congenial, considerate and able to work under pressure. Demonstrate initiative, work well independently, be a trouble-shooter. Be able to handle multiple tasks simultaneously and exhibit follow-through on all projects. Have a strong interest in photography and magazine publishing. Be proficient in Word and Excel. QUALIFIED CANDIDATES SHOULD APPLY ONLINE GO TO: americanexpress.com. Scroll to bottom of page and select the link Jobs@American Express. Click search jobs (Req #: 85378BR) and follow the on-line prompts. Only those candidates who PROVIDE SALARY REQUIREMENTS and meet minimum qualifications will be contacted. No paper resumes will be accepted. (OK to mention Ed) ...that GirlHeadQuarters.org, a new blog for 'tween and teen girls on youth culture, girl power, politics, celebrities, fashion, and virtually everything else that pertains to young women, is looking for bloggers and guest bloggers. Bloggers would be asked to post 200-600 word posts three or more times a week, but they have the freedom to write about virtually whatever they want. Guest bloggers can periodically submit entries on whatever they want. The positions are, unfortunately, unpaid for now, but when we get advertisers and more funders, it will be paid. These blogging positions are great for those who want somewhere to place pitches that couldn't find a home with the teen glossies, have an excuse to interview and network with people they admire for blog posts, obtain exposure for their writing, and acquire clips. Visit GirlHeadQuarters.org or e-mail Liz Funk at liz@girlheadquarters.org for more information. (OK to mention Ed) Internships ...nothin' today. Send some our way! (Yes, we know that rhymes)
********* Whisper jobs or internships to share? Send 'em to whispers@ed2010.com. Ed'll keep it anonymous for you. Blogalicious! Catch up with Ed's Girl on the Hunt and Ed’s Determined Freelancer at ed2010.blogspot.com and edsfreelancer.blogspot.com. Ed has message boards, yo. How to unsubscribe from this newsletter: How to subscribe: BTW, Ed doesn't endorse the advertisement you see below. It's just what happens when you use a free e-newsletter service. |
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