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| << February07, 2008 - Take Ed's Class on Entertainment Journalism! |
February11, 2008 - Come to Ed's Happy Hour Tomorrow! >> |
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******* BTW, Ed doesn't endorse the random non-Ed advertisement you see at the top of the newsletter. It's just what happens when you use a free e-newsletter service. ******* ******* Want to interview celebrities and write juicy stories for a tabloid? Ed presents a four-night seminar with entertainment writer/editor Deborah Baer (she's worked for In Touch, US Weekly, Star, Seventeen, Ladies' Home Journal and more) that will give you the tools to break into the biz. Baer will teach students how to turn their brilliant ideas into entertainment features, write celebrity profiles, improve their interviewing skills — and make $$$ just by watching TV, reading books, listening to music, surfing the Internet and going to the movies. Class meets (in NYC) Wednesdays (February 27, March 5, 12 and 19) from
7-9pm. Cost is $200.
******* After about an hour, there seemed to be no more questions for him, so Newsweek editor Jon Meacham turned to his audience—about 100 graduate students at Columbia journalism school—and said he had a question for them: Did anyone in the room read Newsweek or Time? There was a small, awkward rumbling before finally, a man shouted, "No!" Mr. Meacham scanned the audience for his quarry and then asked the journalism student, clad in a black turtleneck, whether he read The Economist. Yes, he did. "It's the most talked about and least read magazine," said Mr. Meacham. "Have you looked at Newsweek?" MORE ONLINE
2. BusinessWeek
It's barely February as I write this, but already 2008 is making brows sweat in Magazineland. Paper prices are skyrocketing, advertising is sluggish, and recessionary fears loom. Wal-Mart (WMT) booted hundreds of magazines out of its stores, which won't help newsstand sales. Nor will magazine wholesalers' ongoing campaign to reduce the volume of copies they distribute, so that they can increase the percentage of copies they actually sell. "Everything that's going up is not supposed to be going up, and everything that's going down is not supposed to be going down," cracks a mordant senior executive. Plus, oh yeah, that Internet thing. Virtually all publishers are racing to invent or buy digital strategies after previously neglecting that part of the business. This year's stresses are likely to hit the independent, midsize companies of the sector first. These guys are not huge enough to spread challenges across a business notching north of a billion in revenues, nor can they hide within a parent company's multiple companies, as Hearst Magazines or Time Warner's (TWX) Time Inc. can. But they rely on titles big enough to be exposed to macro advertising trends, to which small, niche companies are relatively immune. Rodale and American Media, which post annual revenues around $625 million and $475 million, respectively, are very different companies in very different situations. But they're both still likely to feel the changes in this year's barometric pressures earlier than their bigger brethren. MORE ONLINE
3. Min Online
Jackie Leo, whose six-year stint as Reader's Digest editor-in-chief ended in November when Reader's Digest chairman/ceo Mary Berner replaced her with Peggy Northrop (ex-More editor-in-chief; see min, November 12 and 19, 2007), joined online publisher/syndication network iAmplify.com as senior advisor/business development consultant on February 4. That iAmplify.com is a conduit for paid content (includes audio and video) for authors/celebrities fits Leo's background at RD (which condensed outside articles until Leo's change to original content) and at her 1999-2001 stint as Meredith Interactive Services editor-in-chief. Leo also launched Child (1986) and is a past Family Circle editor-in-chief (1987-1994), Good Morning America editorial director (1994-1997), and Consumer Reports editorial director. Leo, iAmplify.com president David Naggar (ex-Random House Audio), and senior advisor Michael Wolf (ex-MTV Networks president/coo and author of the Random House-published The Entertainment Economy: How Mega-Media Forces Are Transforming Our Lives) are new hires of brothers/cofounders (2004) Murray and Jack Hidary. We are told they they first reached out to Leo to negotiate a partnership with RD (when she was there), and, as fate would have it, ended up hiring her. Ditto with Naggar, as the Hidarys worked with him at Random House. MORE ONLINE
4. Folio
Publishers are facing a cost crunch and a potential revenue shortfall in 2008, particularly as the economy seems to inch toward recession. American Business Media recently polled some of its members about how they see the economy affecting their business. One was Hanley Wood, one of the hottest b-to-b publishers of the last decade, which is facing a down housing market. “The economy will not be a boost to anyone this year,” CEO Frank Anton told ABM. “Unfortunately, the economy will definitely be sluggish at best and at worst, we will face a recession.” FOLIO: asked publishing executives around the industry what steps they’re taking, if any, to prepare for a potential recession—where they will invest and where they will scale back, and what products they will turn to for continued growth and what products may bear the brunt of a downturn. Most say they are expecting softness in print while online continues to grow. Following the recession in 2001, publishers claim they learned the hard way about cutting their budgets too much, and that a downturn is the time to reinvest and gain market share while competitors fall back. Whether that will happen remains to be seen. MORE ONLINE
5. New York Post
THE FBI is poking around the celebrity magazine world on the West Coast, investigating allegations of kickbacks and pay-for-play schemes, according to a source who was contacted by investigators. The source was told that the probe, which appears to be at a preliminary stage, involved "paparazzi and In Touch" magazine. The source was contacted by an agent named Dennis Webster in the FBI's Los Angeles office. Webster had not returned calls to Media Ink by presstime. MORE ONLINE
************ that there will be tons of jobs and internships on Monday!
********* 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 Guy on the Hunt and Ed’s Determined Freelancer at ed2010guy.blogspot.com and www.ed2010.com/boards/section/ed-campus How to unsubscribe from this newsletter: How to subscribe: |
| << February07, 2008 - Take Ed's Class on Entertainment Journalism! |
February11, 2008 - Come to Ed's Happy Hour Tomorrow! >> |
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