Print publishing death watch

[GeneChing]

Over the holidays, everyone always asks me how the magazine is doing. Well, as I've said many times before, the industry is on a downward spiral and we're fortunate to remain on the newsstands. Now, AsianWeek (http://www.asianweek.com/) is ending it's print run and going completely digital. There may come a day when I have to write a letter like this, but I surely hope not:


December 30, 2008
To Our Readers:

AsianWeek has played a long and significant role in helping develop Asian Pacific America, from publishing the first 1980 U.S. Census data on Asian and Pacific Islanders Americans, to co-publishing the most comprehensive textbook analyzing 2000 Census data with UCLA.

AsianWeek has also changed itself to keep up with the rapidly evolving Asian American community. This includes the re-launching of AsianWeek.com as the largest Asian American news site, using the newest delivery tools for electronic media. We also have worked to bring together the increasingly diverse segments of the Asian Pacific American community, organizing events like the Asian Heritage Street Celebration and community-wide campaigns like the San Francisco Hep B Free initiative. Our news focus has shifted in turn, to reflect the growing focus of Asian Pacific Americans on their own career, professional and business development. We are also producing more special newspaper sections around issues as diverse as heritage, health issues and car reviews.

The economy and the news business have experienced their own changes. There are fewer major newspapers, fewer newspaper readers and fewer newspaper advertisers than ever before. A faltering economy has accelerated the decline. Meanwhile, Asian Pacific Americans have led the way in the digital revolution migrating away from print media and into receiving their news and information electronically.

To reflect these changing times, AsianWeek will cease regular newspaper publication immediately. We will continue to publish on-line and in special newspaper editions. Electronic versions of AsianWeek articles will be available free via email. We will also be more active than ever in the community, helping Asian Pacific America to grow, evolve and reach its full potential. We appreciate the support the community has given us over the last three decades and look forward to giving back to the community for many decades to come.

James Fang,
President

Ted Fang,
Editor and Publisher

We brushed on this topic in another thread (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=52357) with Rolling Stone's format change and the end of the print version of Christian Science Monitor.

What can you do? Well, you can help us by subscribing (http://www.martialartsmart.com/19341.html). ;) That helps us keep our numbers up. Of course, buying us at the newsstand helps too.

Thanks for your support!

[sanjuro_ronin]

Have you thought about making it avaialble to download, like in PDF format?

[GeneChing]

We've been contacted by a few companies that do that, as well as considered doing it ourselves. The market is still unstable on the viability of subscription-based PDF zines, so we're watching to see if that's even viable in the long run. Most online publications are more towards the model we have now (or what AsianWeek is doing) - free access for the most part. That's tricky to monetize, but fortunately, we have built-in advertising (http://www.martialartsmart.net/index.html).

[GeneChing]

Newspapers are having a much more difficult time than magazines. Most people are getting their news off the net. What's more, want ads, which have been traditionally a major source of income for newspapers, have all gone to the net. The most difficult part of this is that it's really hard for newspapers to monetize their websites. There are major discussions about the impact this will have on journalism as a whole as more newspapers dissolve.

Plan to Close Chinese-Language Paper Deepens a Shadow Over the Ethnic Press (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/23/nyregion/23ethnic.html?_r=1)
By KIRK SEMPLE
Published: January 22, 2009

There is nothing overt at the modest headquarters of The Ming Pao Daily News to suggest that the 12-year-old newspaper is under siege. In the paper’s small warren of offices in an industrial building in Long Island City, Queens, the advertising and reporting staffs are still working the phones and putting out their scrappy broadsheet as if nothing were amiss.

The Ming Pao Daily News, one of four Chinese-language dailies in New York, is set to close.

But looming over the entire enterprise is a plan by the paper’s corporate parent, Media Chinese International Limited, based in Hong Kong, to shut it down. Though the plan has yet to be formally announced, and several of the paper’s employees said they still remained in the dark about their future, the paper’s general manager confirmed in an interview with The New York Times last week that the daily would indeed disappear from newsstands, possibly as soon as the end of the month.

News of Ming Pao’s demise has shaken New York’s ethnic press industry, which until recently remained extremely robust but, like many other industries, has been buffeted by the nation’s economic slowdown in the past few months.

In recent weeks, two other prominent ethnic newspapers have also closed. Hoy New York, a Spanish-language daily started in 1998, published its last print issue on Dec. 30, though it retains a presence on the Internet. AsianWeek, a widely respected English-language Asian-American weekly based in San Francisco, published its last print issue on Jan. 2, though it, too, remains online.

Ning Wang, editor in chief of The Sing Tao Daily, one of Ming Pao’s three rival Chinese-language dailies in New York, said Ming Pao’s departure would diminish the city’s Chinese-American community, which as recently as the mid-1980s supported 10 daily newspapers.

“For the community it’s a very depressing thing,” Mr. Wang said.

But in an interview, Ming Pao’s general manager, Thong Lai Teng, said that the news was not all bad and cast the paper’s closing as something of a new beginning.

While the company planned to cease publication of the daily, which costs 50 cents a copy on the newsstand, it would continue publishing a free, six-day-a-week newspaper, called MP (NY) Free Daily, introduced more than a year ago.

The Ming Pao staff has already been supplying most of the free daily’s content, Mr. Teng said. And though there would be some layoffs, he added, most of the workers would remain, ensuring that The Ming Pao Daily News would survive in substance and spirit, if not in name.

He said the shift and belt-tightening were necessary for the company to stay alive.

“We are here to stay!” he exclaimed, with a bit more gusto than the paper’s struggles would seem to allow.

Circulation of the free daily has been increasing in proportion to the decrease in the paid daily’s circulation, propelled by an enthusiastic response from advertisers, Mr. Teng claimed.

Some 35,000 copies of the free daily are distributed daily, he said. Meanwhile, he added, the circulation of the paid daily has declined significantly from about 45,000 early last year, though he did not divulge the current circulation numbers.

News of Ming Pao’s plans have filtered out in a curious way. Two rival newspapers published thinly sourced articles in late December reporting Ming Pao’s closure. Then in an article on Dec. 31, Ming Pao published a vague article about the change.

But when first approached about the plans last week, the paper’s staff members and managers refused to confirm the closing, deferring instead to the corporate parent company for comment. When it was pointed out to Mr. Teng that the corporation’s plans had already been reported by one of his own correspondents, he appeared confused, then insisted that the article had been printed prematurely. “The editor wasn’t in the office that day,” he said.

Analysts of the ethnic news media say that Ming Pao’s plans, and the recent closings of Hoy and AsianWeek, are most likely a harbinger of much more contraction in this sector of the media industry.

Until the middle of last year, analysts say, the ethnic press was largely insulated from the vicissitudes of the newspaper industry, including severe downturns in advertising revenue and circulation, which have brought many mainstream newspapers to their knees.

Devoutly focused on local, largely immigrant communities, ethnic newspapers provide readers with news particular to those populations and reports from the immigrants’ homelands that are hard to find elsewhere. They also address the specific needs of immigrants trying to adjust to a new country and new lifestyle.

“People don’t necessarily see themselves reflected in the mainstream media, so different cultural populations were turning to the ethnic media more and more,” said Cristina L. Azocar, director of the Center for Integration and Improvement of Journalism at San Francisco State University.

In addition, advertisers are often the neighbors and acquaintances of the newspapers’ staff, creating an intimate relationship between the newspapers and the communities they serve, analysts said. Many ethnic papers have not gone online in any comprehensive way, but until the broader economic downturn, that did not much matter since much of the readership, particularly in working-class and poorer communities, may not have been connected to the Internet anyway.

But beginning last year, growth in the ethnic press began to level off and the footing of many papers has not been secure enough to withstand the recession.

Ethnic newspapers are now having to scramble to stay alive, cutting staff, printing less frequently and shifting to the Internet.

“Some are finding very innovative ways to keep afloat and others are committed to operating in the red,” said Sandy Close, director of New America Media, a nationwide association of more than 2,000 ethnic media organizations.

According to several current and former Ming Pao staff members, the paper has always struggled to find a niche for itself in the rough-and-tumble market of Chinese-language dailies.

Ming Pao was founded in 1997 as an offshoot of a well-respected daily in Hong Kong that also publishes iterations in San Francisco, Toronto and Vancouver. It has tried to cast itself as the most intellectual of the four Chinese-language dailies in New York, mirroring the reputation of the Hong Kong paper. But it has not been able to cut deeply enough into their market share, industry experts say.

An employee smoking a cigarette outside Ming Pao’s offices in Long Island City last week said he was unsettled by the possibility of layoffs, but he was also philosophical about the matter. The economic malaise, he pointed out, was ubiquitous. “It’s happening to everybody,” he shrugged. “Not just us.”

[Chief_Suicide]

My wife bought me a two year subscription for Christmas. I haven't received the first one yet, but I figure it will be the issue I already own.... the Shaolin Special for 09. I did get the t-shirt though! :D

Can't wait to get them at the door instead of waiting (and sometimes forgetting) to pick them up at the store.

[Mas Judt]

Alas, we'll probably see the end of them as we know them in the next ten years. There is no denying the power of the digital media.

[GeneChing]

If your wife got you a sub for Xmas, you got a great wife. :D

Your probably subscription won't start with the Shaolin special (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/magazine/article.php?article=797) issue. Those were actually shipped out in late November. It should start with the new Mar/Apr 2009 which was shipped out a week or so ago, and will be hitting the newsstands Feb 3rd.

[GeneChing]

This is huge. We're distributed by Curtis, and we can feel it.

Anderson News ceases operations, in negotiation with publishers, retailers (http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2009/feb/10/distribution-halted/)
By Carly Harrington (Contact)
Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Just over a week after imposing an unpopular fee for magazine delivery, Anderson News has decided to cease operations as it continues to negotiate with publishers and retailers.

The decision is an attempt to rein in escalating expenses just as publishers have stopped shipping magazines to the Knoxville distributor, which began charging a 7 cent fee on Feb. 1 for each magazine distributed.

CEO Charles Anderson said the surcharge was necessary to offset losses and stay in business, but publishers have refused to pay.

Most employees were told Saturday not to report to work until further notice.

It was unclear how many were affected by the decision, but in a note posted on the doors of its headquarters, Anderson News said it hoped to resume normal business activity soon. Meanwhile, the company is maintaining "a skeleton work force."

"As these discussions proceed, we are incurring unsustainable costs. If these costs continue to go unchecked, we jeopardize any chance we may have to resolve this crisis. We will continue our efforts, but must for the short term stop these escalating costs," Anderson wrote as part of the note.

Anderson News has had about 400 employees at its Knoxville-area facilities, including a distribution center on Westcott Boulevard off Middlebrook Pike, though the company reportedly laid off some workers last year. In 2007, Anderson had about 9,800 employees companywide, according to Hoover's Online directory of businesses.

"We continue to work toward an amicable solution. I have been told by our two largest publishers that any interruption of service should last only a few days. I am not quite sure if they really understand the situation. This is a mess for all of us," Anderson said in a statement released Saturday.

Last Wednesday, the company denied reports that it was exiting the business. Another distributor, Source Interlink, which also had implemented a price increase, alleged that publishers were refusing to ship copies to it and Anderson News to "lock out competition."

Anderson News and Source Interlink represent about 50 percent of the magazine distribution market, which also includes rivals Hudson News and News Group.

Anderson News has said the fee is meant to be a temporary measure as it seeks "a viable business model" that would ensure a competitive marketplace. Anderson News' magazine sales in 2008 were about $760 million, and it reported a net loss of more than $20 million.

The impact on consumers and how and when they will be able to get the latest issues of their favorite magazines is yet to be seen.

Food City CEO Steve Smith said the regional grocer sells millions of dollars worth of magazines, which are supplied entirely by Anderson News.

"We're sympathetic with their goal to get a more effective business model; however, we're not being serviced. That can only go on for a certain amount of time. We support Anderson and hope they get these issues resolved, but ultimately, we have to make sure our customers get the products they want," Smith said Monday.

Based in Abingdon, Va., Food City operates 100 retail food outlets throughout the tri-state regions of Southeast Kentucky, Southwest Virginia and East Tennessee. It has been a longtime customer of Anderson News, which Smith called a local company that does "a good job."

Kroger spokesman Glynn Jenkins also expressed hope that Anderson News would find a resolution, saying the disruption in service "could temporarily limit the selection and quantity of books and magazines available in Kroger stores."

"Some of our distributors informed us that they are having issues fulfilling their obligations to retailers. We hope they resolve their situation soon and, in the interim, are looking for alternative suppliers," Jenkins said.

Last month, Anderson was quoted in The New York Post as saying in a conference call with publishers that, "The last thing we want to do is exit this business, but why should we continue in a business where we are not making any money?"

Anderson News was established in 1917. It is one of the largest distributors and merchandisers of magazines in the United States. The firm provides weekly service to retail locations in 37 states.

"We survived two world wars, a great depression and countless economic panics," Anderson said in his memo to employees. "In the past two months, we have done everything possible to get our magazine companies back on solid economic foundation."


Source Interlink sues rivals over alleged plot (http://www.reuters.com/article/PBLSHG/idUSN0952887320090210)
Mon Feb 9, 2009 8:59pm EST

LOS ANGELES, Feb 9 (Reuters) - Magazine wholesaler and publisher Source Interlink Co Inc (SORC.O) on Monday asked a New York federal court to stop rivals from trying to drive it out of business, according to court papers.

Source Interlink, controlled by billionaire Ron Burkle, said it needs emergency court intervention to stop the defendants, including publishers Time Inc and Hachette Filipacchi, distributors, and rival wholesalers from monopolizing the U.S. wholesale magazine distribution market.

Source accused the defendants of cutting off its access to People, Sports Illustrated, Entertainment Weekly, Time and other magazines, and spreading "disparaging rumors" about its financial condition to its retailer clients, the filing said.

Source said the scheme arises from its efforts to charge a 7 cent per copy distribution fee to recoup costs of retrieving unsold inventory from retailers, tabulating and destroying it.

Source tried to impose the fee in January but had to rescind it when publishers and distributors resisted, the filing said.

A short time later, the magazines "cut Source off from its supply of magazines" and told its customers that it was in "deep financial trouble", the filing said.

The "conspirators" wanted to force Source to sell its distribution infrastructure at a steep discount to rivals Hudson and News Group, which were colluding to take over Source's west coast, mid-Atlantic and midwestern territories, the filing said.

Source accused its rivals of charging retailers higher prices for the same products as the competitive market shrinks, the filing showed.

The defendants named in the case were American Media Inc, Bauer Publishing Co, Curtis Circulation Co, Distribution Services Inc, Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., Hudson News Co, Kable Distribution Services Inc, the News Group LP, Time Warner Inc's (TWX.N) Time Inc and Time/Warner Retail Sales & Marketing Inc.

Representatives for Bauer and Kable had no immediate comment. The remaining defendants could not be reached for comment after hours. (Reporting by Gina Keating; editing by Richard Chang)

[GeneChing]

The main reason I started this thread is because people always ask me "how's the magazine doing?" and I have to explain how grim things are looking in our industry. Well, now, you can see how the hammer is falling.

Of course, this effects us. We're a small niche magazine, so when you see the entire industry imploding like this, it's a struggle. I always urge you to pick us up at the newsstands, but I also urge you to subscribe (http://www.martialartsmart.net/19341.html). We appreciate your support and will continue our efforts to bring you print coverage of the world of Chinese martial arts to the best of our ability.


Source Interlink Files Antitrust Suit Vs Publishers, Rivals (http://www.smartmoney.com/news/ON/?story=ON-20090209-000564-1916)
Dow Jones
By Chad Bray Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- Source Interlink Cos. (SORC) sued a group of publishers, distributors and rival wholesalers on Monday, saying its magazine wholesaler has been cut off from its supply of People, Sports Illustrated and other popular titles after trying unsuccessfully to implement a per-copy distribution fee last month.

The antitrust lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, alleges the magazine publishers and distributors, along with two wholesalers, are trying to destroy Source's business and monopolize the U.S. wholesale magazine distribution market.

"Defendants' indisputable goal is to destroy Source's business so that defendants - through Hudson and News Group, the two remaining wholesalers - will monopolize the wholesale market and use that monopoly power to shift to retailers and consumers - and away from publishers - the entire financial burden resulting from worsening market conditions and publisher-induced inefficiencies in the distribution system," the complaint said.

The lawsuit names as defendants magazine publishers American Media Inc., Bauer Publishing Co., Hachette Filipacchi Media, and units of Time Warner Inc. (TWX).

It also names as defendants: magazine distributors Curtis Circulation Co., Kable Distribution Services Inc., and Distribution Services Inc.; and wholesalers Hudson News Co. and The News Group LP.

The lawsuit claims the collusive actions of the publishers, distributors and other wholesalers has caused wholesaler Anderson News Co. to go out of business.

On Jan. 14, Anderson announced it would implement a 7-cent per-copy distribution fee and Source's distribution unit followed suit on Jan. 19, announcing its own fee effective Feb. 1, according to the complaint.

The publishers and distributors resisted the surcharge and Source's distribution unit rescinded it, according to the lawsuit. Source Interlink also publishes magazines, including Motor Trend and Soap Opera Digest.

Source claims the publishers and distributors, despite assurances to the contrary, moved in "virtual lockstep" to cut off its supply of magazines, including People and Sports Illustrated.

The lawsuit also alleges the defendants launched a campaign to spread false rumors to Source's customers and others that "Source was in deep financial trouble and had ceased operations or was exiting the magazine wholesale business."

"The goal of that coordinated campaign was to do just that - to put Source out of business," the complaint said.

Dawn Bridges, a spokeswoman for Time Inc., declined comment late Monday, saying the company was reviewing the lawsuit. A spokeswoman for Bauer Publishing also declined comment late Monday.

Spokespersons at the other companies didn't immediately respond to requests for comment late Monday.

On a different front, but equally telling...

Hachette Filipacchi Drops Out of Magazine Publishers of America (http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=134496)
Former CEO Kliger Once Called Out Others That Didn't Support Print Trade Group
by Nat Ives
Published: February 09, 2009

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., publisher of magazines including Elle and Car and Driver, has dropped out of the Magazine Publishers of America, the magazine industry's association for promoting the medium, lobbying in Washington and supporting magazine publishers.

Hachette casts its withdrawal as a response to the recession. "These are extraordinary economic times," a spokeswoman said, "and this is one of a number of hard decisions that we are making until conditions change."

But the departure is still jarring. Hachette isn't the biggest publisher in the country, but Elle is a big power among magazines. The company, moreover, has had a close relationship with the association.

Jack Kliger, Hachette's president-CEO from 1999 through 2008, served prominently as chairman of the association from 2005 through 2007. In Mr. Kliger's last speech as MPA chairman, he even took a swipe at publishers that don't pay MPA dues for getting a "free ride." Mr. Kliger was succeeded at Hachette by Alain Lemarchand last September.

The MPA said this is no time to quit. "We're disappointed that Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S. has dropped its membership in Magazine Publishers of America, especially in this challenging environment," an MPA spokesman said in a statement. "More than ever, this is a time when magazine publishers need to work in unison to promote their interests and protect their assets. We hope that when the economy improves, Hachette will rejoin the MPA, which has served the industry so effectively by spotlighting the effectiveness of magazine advertising, pushing for postal reform legislation and collaborating on many other initiatives that are vital to the health of magazines."

Many other publishers said today that they continued as members and supporters of the association. The dues, however, are clearly a growing issue.

Henry Donahue, CEO-publisher of Discover Magazine, said his magazine is still a member of the MPA. "We are," he confirmed via e-mail, "though it's an ongoing source of discussion given the expense."

[Shaolinlueb]

time to buy a subscription next paycheck. along with some new faiyue's.

[doug maverick]

yeah man gotta make sure the only REAL kung fu magazine. doesnt disapear.

[Egg fu young]

Unfortunately I haven't received my last two issues :mad: I can see why it's a death watch. (and yes I already contacted Gene) but Gene is not a mailman.....stupid mailman.

[GeneChing]

Did you contact sales@martialartsmart.net? That's who really handles subscription fulfillment - it's our TN office. If you emailed me, surely I referred you. If it didn't get handled, let me know via email and I'll see what can be done. Gene@KungFuMagazine.com.

Thanks for the support SLL & doug. That is appreciated.

[David Jamieson]

Man, it's a good thing you are a total niche market!

distribution would be your greatest bane I would think.

advertising should be fairly simple enough and subscribers and newstand buyers can be increased with more provocative covers. lol.

less old men in pajamas with fierce faces and more hot chicks beating the crap out of toadies would be a jump I'll bet.

:)

[doug maverick]

Man, it's a good thing you are a total niche market!

distribution would be your greatest bane I would think.

advertising should be fairly simple enough and subscribers and newstand buyers can be increased with more provocative covers. lol.

less old men in pajamas with fierce faces and more hot chicks beating the crap out of toadies would be a jump I'll bet.

:)

actually acording to gene. people by more copies of old men in pajamas then hot chicks. when it comes to kung fu magazine.

[GeneChing]

And doug is right - women do poorly on our cover. Old Chinese guys do great. That's the thing about niche mags - our readership is specific.

Ads are about the same, but given that we are driven by our own retail (http://www.martialartsmart.net/index.html), we don't carry a lot of competitors ads. How the economy is affecting our retail is a different matter entirely.

Nevertheless, I'm hoping for that niche mag bump... I'm hoping...


The niche magazines riding out the gloom (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/press/the-niche-magazines-riding-out-the-gloom-1622760.html)
By Charlotte Philby
Monday, 16 February 2009

Something is happening in the West End of London. It’s a brisk morning in Covent Garden, and while business is slow at the boutiques and cafés, an impressive number of shoppers are finding their way towards the doors of the specialist bookstore Magma.

Inside, browsers gather before a great wall of magazines, about 80 titles – obscure fashion glossies beside self-published literary reviews. At the till, a rakish Scandinavian man hands the Muslim fashion journal MSLM to the cashier, while his partner peruses the children’s lifestyle manual Milk.

For many reasons, this doesn’t make sense – not least because we’re in the throes of a recession, the banks are teetering on the brink of collapse and, along with so many industries, the magazine market is in crisis. Isn’t it?

According to the bi-annual report from the Audit Bureau of Circulations, released last Thursday, magazine sales in the UK are indeed down. But, while many publications are struggling to survive in this economic chill, certain areas are bucking the trend – not least, a wave of emerging titles.

Sales of self-published, niche-interest magazines are thriving, according |to the assistant buyer |for Magma, Kate John. “These magazines exist apart from the mainstream,” she says. “When something is produced |as a work of passion, customers feel passionately about the product. As |a result, there is a constant audience.”

The independently funded “tattoo/crossover” journal Sang Bleu is an example. “A labour of love,” according to its creator, it is now in its third edition and boasts a fiercely loyal fan-base. It would have to: the latest copy – a 600-page double issue – costs £33 a pop, a pretty hefty sum by any standards. And yet it’s selling.

The title’s translation from French – “blue blood” – is not only a reference to one of the magazine’s main themes, tattoos. Sang Bleu’s founder and art director, 30-year-old Maxime Buechi, reveals a further relevance: “This magazine is essentially about the invasion of temporary, ‘underground’ cultures, some fetishist. Sang Bleu is making the statement that these are not vile things, as perceived by parts of established society. These are important subjects, and they deserve to be seen as noble.”

Whatever his message, Buechi is clearly not alone in his opinion. His magazine has sold 10,000 copies per issue so far, and four have been published. What’s the secret? “Sang Bleu touches people living between cultures, those who aren’t addressed by other media. People who buy the magazine need things like this. It’s not a commodity, it’s a voice.”

The idea of representation is significant, but it is the tone as much as the voice that is important. Philip Diprose set up the fixed-gear cycling magazine The Ride with his brother Andrew and friend Dean Taylor in order to complement, not compete with, existing cycling publications.

“Of what was available, nothing spoke to us,” says Diprose, 34. “We appreciate what they offer, but we are interested in the experience of cycling. Other magazines do reviews and products, but we wanted to address the soulful aspect.” The aesthetic was important, too, so Diprose enlisted a design team who were also cycling enthusiasts to create an ethereal cover illustration.

Nurturing a relationship with the cycling community was a primary objective. “Everyone who contributes to The Ride has a keen interest in cycling. Technology enables us to reach enthusiasts across the world.” |

A significant community there is, too. Only one issue of The Ride has been published so far, and 2,000 copies – at £7 each – sold out in six weeks. There were internet sales in Honolulu, Malaysia, Africa and beyond.

UK-based FUN magazine is also making a stir worldwide. Distributed in targeted bars, cinemas and shops across Europe and the US, this is essentially a satirical cult rag, with a clean, thoughtful design. The independently funded project has a fast-growing niche following. It is a free publication in several senses: it doesn’t cost readers a penny, and carries no advertising so can say whatever it wants. The integrity that comes with this is fundamental |to its appeal.

“We are answerable to no one except our consciences,” says co-founder, Ben Freeman, 30, who is responsible for editorial, while his partner, Deano Jo, 22, oversees publishing. FUN gathers content from established journalists who, under pseudonyms, address issues that have no other platform. So far, interviewees have included the BNP’s first elected member of the London Assembly, Richard Barnbrook, and the UK head |of the Chinese Falun |Gong movement.

Now in its third (quarterly issue), FUN has a DIY approach to getting things done. “Deano and I share the attitude that if you want to do something, you can’t sit around and wait for it to come to you,” Freeman says. “Rather than worrying about demographics, target audiences and business plans, we just got on with it.” The appeal of FUN lies in its uncompromising approach to issues sidelined or ignored in mainstream media, according to its fans, and this relies on its independence.

So could it be that we are witnessing the dawn of a new media age, where ideals and passion trump financial targets and cynical boardroom tactics, a brave new world that finds the little men beating the fat cats at their own game? Perhaps not. Maybe this is just another cycle of naive idealists, doomed eventually to succumb to the lure of advertising.

But one thing is for sure; for the moment, these guys are not feeling the pinch. And that, at least, is something to celebrate.

I don't think raising our price to £33 ($47) would help...:(

[Shaolinlueb]

gene if you put my sexy picture on the cover in the sports bra with doug pile driving me through some bricks, i gaurentee you will sell 1 million issues.

[doug maverick]

gene if you put my sexy picture on the cover in the sports bra with doug pile driving me through some bricks, i gaurentee you will sell 1 million issues.

im down, you can pay us in nacho ninjettes!!!!!

[Shaolinlueb]

sweet. but we probably have to write an article to go along with it.

[GreenCloudCLF]

Controversy always sells mags so here are my 2 ideas:
1 - An artcle titled "Why non-Chinese Arts Suck Really Bad"
or
2 - Printing all the flamewars that occur on this forum.

[Shaolinlueb]

Controversy always sells mags so here are my 2 ideas:
1 - An artcle titled "Why non-Chinese Arts Suck Really Bad"
or
2 - Printing all the flamewars that occur on this forum.

hahaha. people would become super stars overnight man.

[brianlkennedy]

Hi Gene,
Wow, I had not been following the distributors case. Looks very bad for Anderson. See this Publishers Weekly piece from a few days ago:

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6641553.html?nid=2286&source=link&rid=468490239

Yikes, what are "we" doing to do?

take care,
Brian

[GeneChing]

The AnCo closing has rocked the magazine publishing world. Some say it's the harbinger of the coming print apocalypse.

Here's an update of the situation.


The News Group Moves Forward After Anderson News Acquisition (http://www.audiencedevelopment.com/2009/news+group+moves+forward+after+anderson+news+acqui sition)
TNG president described process as "a major undertaking."
By Chandra Johnson-Greene
Wednesday, March 25, 2009

At the 2009 MPA Retail Conference on Monday, News Group president David Parry outlined the company’s acquisition of assets belonging to Anderson News, which was forced to shut down its magazine distribution operation in February. Anderson’s exit from the market created a distribution nightmare that the supply chain is still digging out of. Parry described just how chaotic the scene had become.

Anderson, which co-owned the Prologix distribution service with The News Group, shut down its operation on February 7. Two weeks later, News Group made the decision to buy Anderson’s assets.

Parry said that the company wanted to find a way to get business back up and running in a responsible fashion. “We could have easily taken our time and opened new centers, or we could acquire assets from Anderson,” he said. “It wasn’t until Feb. 20 that we decided to take possession of most of their assets and begin the process of interviewing employees.”

Parry told attendees that the conditions were dire when they walked into Anderson’s warehouses. “It was about finding product inbound on trucks and in warehouses in return processing rooms,” he said. “There was product outbound too. And about 20 percent of that product was encumbered, and we could not find a distributor to do anything with it. So we had to process all of the product out, and return it using specific standards in order to get the distribution system to where it was able to report. It was a major undertaking.”

In order to accommodate the acquisition of distribution centers from Anderson, Parry says that The News Group interviewed and hired 3,800 people (it is unclear if any of these employees are from Anderson News), purchased 1,300 trucks and acquired 15 distribution centers and 50 depots to serve its retail customers and suppliers.

With the new infrastructure created, The News Group now has 27 distribution centers, 8,600 employees, 2,500 trucks and 120 depots between its five separate ownership groups, which together, Parry said, operate in markets representing about 90 percent of the population of the continental U.S. and Alaska.

“That claim is a little high since they don’t have locations in the population dense Northeast,” John Harrington, publisher of the New Single Copy newsletter, wrote in an email to AD. Harrington estimates that The News Group currently has approximately 40-45 percent of the magazine market share, but it would be a while before the company's market share could be accurately measured.

Parry told attendees that The News Group would now focus on investing in category management, the professional development of its employees and getting the product to flow. “We need to get product flowing,” he says. “We’re 100 percent up and ready to go, but we need to the right product shipped out to the right places as soon as possible. Our retail customers have suffered heavily since Feb. 7. Consumers have come in expecting to find their favorite magazines, and retailers have been unable to deliver, so we need your help.”

This is one among many reasons why we've launched our facebook (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=76820066421) and myspace (http://www.myspace.com/kungfumagazine) sites.

[brianlkennedy]

Gene,
I hope Kung Fu Taiji print magazine has a long and healthy life. I personally do not like reading things off the internet, if nothing else I find it hard on my eyes and I view things on the internet as kind of....well not as good as print media.

But laying all that aside, has Kung Fu Taiji magazine laid out a specific plan for the future. I presume there is some financial cut off point where the owners decide we can no longer support a print magazine and we are going to cut it.

If I understand the business correctly it happens in these phases:
1. cut out news stand distribution but keep print magazine for mail subscribers
2. cut out all print version of magazine switch to (and here is where I get unsure)..
a. subscription electronic magazine (these are very uncommon right?---except for porn few people pay for web magazines--true?)
b. free online magazine.

If it ends up being "b." then does Kung Fu Taiji basically turn into a blog. Will content be posted at random or daily times or will there still be the idea of "issues" for example the October issue, the November issue?

I realize some of this maybe too delicate to talk about in public, but I was just wondering.

take care,
Brian the Older Print media fan

[xcakid]

Well I just renewed my subscription, that should help. :D

I love my kwoon so much, I may just give my sifu and gift buy an ad for the school. Depends on how my bonus works out this June. :confused:

[GeneChing]

...and it kills me that the world is going through this transition during my watch here at Kung Fu Tai Chi. To be honest, this is completely uncharted territory. Every morning, I read my ever dwindling newspaper (the newspapers are bleeding money faster than the magazines so they're drying up first). Then I read my e-news feeds as I look over the forum here. I'm on some publishing newsfeeds which I read avidly. Unfortunately, the big guns in publishing have no answers either. If I had an answer, I'd be advising Time or Rolling Stone or some publication that would pay well for such an answer.

Meanwhile, here, we trod on...

[GeneChing]

RIP Maxim UK. :(


Beer, babes and good-bye for UK Maxim (http://www.medialifemagazine.com/artman2/publish/Magazines_22/Beer_babes_and_good-bye_for_UK_Maxim.asp)
Sir Felix is closing the print edition of the title
By Louisa Ada Seltzer
Apr 2, 2009

The concept was nifty, playing upon the scruffy tastes of Britain's young men, and Felix Dennis did so well at it that many think he invented the entire laddie category of men's magazines when he launched Maxim in 1995.

In truth, it was already booming. Dennis just gave it more oomph with features on beer, babes and bathroom humor.

Now it's over.

The original Maxim is folding, it was announced today in London, its legacy living on as a web site. The last print issue goes out later this month. In its place on UK newsstands will appear the American edition, launched in 1997, which Dennis sold off several years ago.

At its peak in 2000, the UK Maxim reported a circulation of more than 300,000 but by late last year that had shrunk to under 50,000.

It was a slow but sure decline for the title, as well as for so many similar titles, trailing down each year as more and more young men moved online.

“The community that buys those magazines is moving to the internet,” Lorna Tilbian, media analyst at Numis Securities, a London investment bank, told Media Life almost two years ago. And by then circulation for men's title was already tumbling, falling 14.4 percent in the second half of 2006. Hardest hit were the lad titles.

But other forces were at work as well.

There was a flush of new titles, many weeklies, that overcrowded the market, making a shakeout inevitable. Almost all have seen their circulations tumble.

The few magazines to report gains were more upscale, traditional men's titles like Men’s Health and GQ, which remained above the fray.

But also hurting lad titles like Maxim was the rise more recently of free men's titles with far larger circulations, such as Sport and ShortList.

As freebies, handed out at train stations and the like, they didn't need to run racy covers to drive sales, making them more appealing to advertisers as well as readers.

The lads craze in the U.S. market has similarly ended. Maxim is still published but ad pages are well down. Sister title Stuff and arch-rival FHM folded two years ago.

[doug maverick]

getting harder and harder with print mags, considering everything is moving online. so everybody keep buying kung fu magazine. its the only REAL kung fu mag there is now. i just saw the inside kung fu magazine and the whole mag is about mma. not kung fu. they are using a cheaper printing paper now, which says alot, about there circulation.

[SIFU RON]

Wecome to the depression, the whole world is going throuh this, every bussiness there is, is doing their best to survive, it's not a " fun ride", however, one must face this with a positive attitude.

When this depression ends, those that pull through it will be much stronger, my parents went through the first one and it was much worst, yet similar, the world will learn from this.

The newspapers are hurting very much, your right, with the Internet, TV, ect. it makes it " tuff", but on the bright side, local news is covered more in local newsapaers, and, locals love to read the opinions of their neighbors, community and stuff they write themselves such as letters to the editor or as in the case of Kung Fu Tai Chi - the letter section, and, all the local events in all areas.

Speaking of KF Tai Chi Magazine , it is excellent , very well done. The May/June issue is a fine example of your work Gene. The article about Patrick Barry, The Beijing Opera, and The Traditional 5 Animal Frolics is a classic. I have been buying Martail Arts magazine since they came out, I keep them all, and over the past decades your work is paying off. Black Belt is doing well also, however ISKF is getting thinner and less attractive.

If you are a Martail Artist you owe it to yourself to subscribe to KF Tai Chi Magazine. If you buy supplies, you owe it to yourself to deal with Tiger Claw. These are honest, good reliable people.

Keep up the good work Gene and fellows, dig in and support Gene and Tiger Claw, those that pull together make themselves stronger, and that is what it will take.

My best to you

Ron Shewamekr

[GeneChing]

I started this thread for several reasons. One was to make the changes in the newsstand industry very transparent. I had been a freelance writer for magazines for nearly a decade before I took on this position and I didn't have the slightest idea how magazine distribution worked. Now I'm painfully aware of it. Having the industry collapse during my watch here at this institution we call Kung Fu Tai Chi is not only a professional challenge. It's very personal. I love print. And I love martial arts. So I'm digging in as deeply as I can, hoping to weather this storm.

Now, more then ever, we need your support. Of course, you can always support us through subscriptions (http://www.martialartsmart.com/19341.html). It's also crucial that you support us on the newsstands. This can be done not only by purchasing our magazine on the newsstands yourself, but encouraging others to do so. Thank you for your continued support.


Much Still To Be Done with the Newsstand Supply Chain (http://www.audiencedevelopment.com/2009/much+still+be+done+newsstand+supply+chain)
Anderson was the quake, now for the aftershocks.
By Linda Ruth
04/13/2009 -03:33 PM

The drama is far from over. If the Anderson News bankruptcy was a massive earthquake in our business—and that is certainly what it felt like—then the aftershocks are barely beginning to be felt. We’ll be feeling them for quite some time.

Despite all the heroic efforts of the national distributors and the remaining wholesalers to make a smooth, clean, and invisible transition of distribution from Anderson News, the sheer logistics of picking up all the retail outlets and providing them with the correct number of copies for thousands of magazines overwhelmed the system. And that’s just with the Anderson News bankruptcy. This doens't take into account the massive number of copies in distribution that were moved from Source Interlink and then back again.

In the course of all of this there were empty warehouses and magazines left on the docks; there were publications sitting in trucks awaiting direction before being re-labeled and re-directed. There were stores caught in the middle, without returns pickup from Anderson, without (yet) delivery from anyone else.

What this means for magazine publishers is budget adjustments. We have all known that, and been prepared for it for some time. The question is, how big an adjustment, and for how long? We’re still hearing about new agreements between major retail chains and remaining wholesale agencies. There were a couple that came through just last week. The people on the front lines—the national distributor field people for the most part—are up to their ears in distribution work. They expect to continue to be so for weeks.

The point is, distributions are still affected, today and tomorrow as well as yesterday. Every copy has not yet fallen smoothly into place. No surprise, but important to remember.

And what about the sales information for the copies that were out there when this hit? Anderson News Company has provided MagNet, the consolidator of wholesaler information, with an information feed up through their last day in business. MagNet is confident that their store-mapping system will be able to accurately apply the returns and track the sales. Let’s hope their confidence is justified—from MagNet’s lips to God’s ears!

Magazine publishers, in the meantime, need to take these steps:
• Reduce your allotments where necessary—while a massive amount of your business has been transitioned, it's not over yet. That work is still going on.

• Be prepared for returns hits, which will inevitably be larger than usual. Some of your product didn’t make it to the stores. Some got sent to the wrong stores, or in the wrong quantities. Some got out there, but late. Account for these inevitabilities in your re-projections.

• Be prepared, as well, to question unusually high returns. It will be a miracle if some of those returns aren’t misapplied or counted twice.

We will get through this in time. But for the sake of our planning, we need to remember: We’re not through it yet.

Linda Ruth is Principal of Publisher Single Copy Sales Services (SingleCopySales.com).

[brianlkennedy]

Good Morning Gene,
This is a very interesting thread for me in that it has talked about how the magazine industry works (or does not work, as the case maybe). Just yesterday I stepped foot for the first time in 17 years or so in an American bookstore. Although I have been back in California for about 6 months, I had not had the chance to get into a regular bookstore.

I went into the B. Dalton in Horton Plaza (downtown San Diego). The magazine rack (which ran across a whole wall) was full-----but not a single martial arts magazine to be seen. They had the full line of what I will call the "Weider Muscle Mags" but nothing on martial arts. It is a bit different at the Vons supermarket where I buy food. It has the usual martial arts "regulars" (i.e. Black Belt, IKF, Grappling).

Well...we shall see. The B. Dalton looked real sad in terms of martial arts books too. They had probably about 10 different titles. Almost all of them were Tuttle Publishing, mixed martial arts stuff. The bigger, all color MMA/BJJ books they are putting out.

take care,
Brian

[mawali]

BK,
It all depends on location and the store size!
Barnes and Noble and Borders in my area (IL) have Tai Chi magazine, Black Belt, Inside Kungfu, TKD and at times, some UK Karate issues.. Even JAMA is available at times, not the medical version!

[GeneChing]

Source Interlink Files for Bankruptcy (http://www.foliomag.com/2009/source-interlink-files-bankruptcy-goes-private)
Nearly $1 billion in debt, distributor agrees to go private.
By Dylan Stableford
04/28/2009

Magazine distributor and publisher Source Interlink is filing for bankruptcy—and going private.

The company—controlled by billionaire Ron Burkle's Yucaipa Cos.—announced today that it has reached an agreement with its lenders to “eliminate approximately $1 billion dollars of existing debt” and privatize the company.

At yesterday's market close, Source stock was trading at 16 cents per share. (In August 2007, when Source acquired the Primedia Enthusiast Group, its stock was upwards of $4 per share. A year earlier, it was above $10 per share.)

Under terms of the agreement, the company’s lenders will cancel nearly $1 billion of the Source’s debt, as well as funnel $100 million in additional liquidity. Source, in turn, has agreed to pay “all of its vendors in full and on time.”

As part of the restructuring, the company filed a lender-approved plan of reorganization under Chapter 11 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court.

“We couldn’t be more pleased,” Source Interlink CEO Greg Mays said in a statement. “This restructuring will materially reduce our interest expense and debt levels, substantially improve free cash flow and allow us to capitalize on several operational opportunities to further improve and grow our business.”

Mays said he anticipates Source will emerge from bankruptcy within 35 days.

Earlier this year, Source was at the center of a massive magazine distribution lawsuit, claiming rival wholesalers as well as publishers—like Time Inc., Hachette and American Media Inc.—were attempting to force the company out of business.

The company eventually settled with most of the defendants (Bauer is the lone defendant remaining in the lawsuit).

This is only two weeks after they settled with our distributor, Curtis Circulation...

Source Settles with Hachette, Curtis, Kable (http://www.foliomag.com/2009/source-interlink-settles-hachette-curtis-and-kable)
Bauer is last defendant remaining in wholesaler's antitrust lawsuit.
By Jason Fell
04/14/2009

Source Interlink has announced agreements with Hachette, Curtis Circulation and Kable Distribution, effectively ending its lawsuit against the companies.

In February, Source filed a lawsuit alleging that several defendants—including magazine publishers, wholesalers and distributors—“conspired” to force the company to sell its distribution business at a steep discount to rivals Hudson News and News Group. Source was awarded a temporary restraining order prohibiting the defendants from denying shipments to its magazine distribution business.

Source has come to similar agreements with Time Inc., Time Warner Retail, News Group, Hudson News, American Media Inc. and its distribution unit Distribution Services Inc.

“I am happy to make this announcement because it means that, when considered in light of other recent agreements, we have resolved our differences with virtually all our magazine suppliers,” Source CEO Greg Mays said in a statement.

Bauer remains the only defendant not to strike a deal with Source.

Last month, fellow wholesaler Anderson News, which went out of business in February, filed its own antitrust lawsuit against many of the same publishers and distributors.

“It is fully our intention to create a bond with our publishers and national distributors that is as strong as the relationship we have with our retail partners,” Mays said.

[KC Elbows]

I strongly believe that one of the issues, in relation to kung fu books, is that many in the past were summaries of forms that did no seem to convey any knowledge of that the steps in the form were about. The consumer is quickly gonna figure out that an author who conveys only surface details without any evidence they know usage may not be an expert, and won't buy.

The kung fu magazines often have the same problem.

So, I blame the guys writing the books, except the guys writing the good books/articles.:D

Plus, in the past, the tournaments were a good marker for what people were buying and selling, forms. Now that the market has changed, people are less likely to take lessons, take part in tournaments, etc, without more stringent proof of expertise from the experts. I think a lot of schools can see this now, and many practitioners are seriously improving their knowledge of the usage of their style. Hopefully, the tournaments that really support more than just forms demonstrations will become the norm in the future, because the ones that don't seem to be dying a well deserved death. This, imo, will result in a more expert base to provide articles and books than we may have seen in the past.

Not saying there weren't experts, but ten years ago, someone could have a great reputation, and never have demonstrated anything but a forms performance. The real kung fu is not solitary, imo.

[SIFU RON]

Not all books in the past re: M/A have been about forms only, neither have the magazines. Todays M/A magazines show folks how to use not only forms but self-defense in general and lots of it. I feel there should be more books of self-defense but DVD's seem to be dominating that market.

Tournaments are improving and getting better. There are some great ones around the country, Form competition is fierce and dominates especially in Kung Fu.

Martail Arts is gaining in popularity, self-defense is the motivaton, for example , parents and young people today are seeking instruction for their kids and themselves what with all The child molestation, rape, etc going on, people are seeking help with protecting their kids (Child Saftey ).

[KC Elbows]

Not all books in the past re: M/A have been about forms only, neither have the magazines. Todays M/A magazines show folks how to use not only forms but self-defense in general and lots of it. I feel there should be more books of self-defense but DVD's seem to be dominating that market.



I am aware of this, but in the last fifteen years, the vast majority of kung fu books are either forms only, or 3/4 form and probably less than 1/4 practical usage. Gutting the subject of its practical usage opens the way for people who only know the form to publish, and creates books that are only useful as a curiosity, or for people who know the set held within and wish to remember it's exact sequence, which is probably not the majority of those buying it.

Mind you, there were and are gems, but there was a glut of meaningful information in most books and articles. Not in Gene's magazines, but some places.:D

[GeneChing]

We're still hanging in there - help us out by subscribing (http://www.martialartsmart.net/19341.html).

Mag Bag: 279 Mags Fold In First Half of '09 (http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=109141)
by Erik Sass, Thursday, July 2, 2009, 5:50 PM

While there were a considerable number of new launches, with 187 new titles debuting in the first half of the year, 2009 has seen a larger number fold -- 279 to be precise, according to MediaFinder.com, an online database owned by Oxbridge Communications that tracks U.S. and Canadian periodicals.

The net loss of 92 magazines can't come as much of a surprise to anyone who has watched the casualty list grow longer in the first six months of 2009. The magazine industry -- like virtually all media -- has been pummeled by one of the steepest economic downturns in decades. The recession has hit key advertising categories hard, with automotive, fashion, health and beauty, electronics, and insurance and finance showing big drops in ad pages compared to last year.

MediaFinder.com sorted closed magazines to determine which categories took the biggest hits. "Regional Interest" had one of the worst attrition rates, with 27 titles closing; these include Denver Living, Florida Inside Out, Ocean Drive en Espanol and Forbes Mountain Time, a short-lived Forbes spinoff targeting executives at Western ski resorts. The "Lifestyle" category saw 14 titles close, and "Business" saw 10, including Conde Nast's ambitious, ill-starred Portfolio. Certain categories of smaller trade publications were also especially hard-hit, with 18 titles covering the construction business demolished, reflecting the state of the American real estate market.

But the damage has been widespread, with magazines closing in virtually every category. Among the bigger losses, 2009 has also seen the closing of Country Home, Wondertime, Teen, Domino, Figure, Craft, Hallmark Magazine, Travel & Leisure Golf, Best Life, Tennisweek, Genre, Blender, Portfolio, Television Week, Trump, PR Week, Radio and Records, Nickelodeon and Vibe.

This represents a big jump from last year. While designating "major" titles is admittedly somewhat subjective, the 20 titles listed in the previous paragraph are double the number of major titles that closed in all of 2008 (including Blueprint, Golf for Women, Quick & Simple, Home, CosmoGirl, Men's Vogue, O at Home, Play, Cottage Living, and PC Magazine). At this rate, and with an economic recovery still some months off, 2009 is certain to see the closing of more big titles.

[GeneChing]

I'll look for you in that shirt at Dallas. Hopefully, we can get a little KFM Forum get together going there this year (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=54356).

[GeneChing]

In the next issue (Nov Dec 2009), subscribers (http://www.martialartsmart.com/19341.html) get a free DVD of our event (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=53126). Enjoy and thanks for your support.

There isn't a Sep Oct 2009 review thread here (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=4) yet. Maybe you can start one.

[Skip J.]

In the next issue (Nov Dec 2009), subscribers (http://www.martialartsmart.com/19341.html) get a free DVD of our event (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=53126). Enjoy and thanks for your support.

There isn't a Sep Oct 2009 review thread here (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=4) yet. Maybe you can start one.

You're welcome Gene! coming up....

[GeneChing]

RD is such an institution. :(

Reader's Digest to file for Chapter 11 protection (http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hYsx6iBNkDXpNnY476yYCYJabqBAD9A4OUB80)
By ANDREW VANACORE (AP) – 1 day ago

NEW YORK — The publisher of Reader's Digest, the country's most popular general interest magazine, said Monday it will file for Chapter 11 protection with a plan to swap a portion of its debt for ownership of the company.

Reader's Digest Association Inc., owned by the New York private equity firm Ripplewood Holdings since 2007, said Monday it has reached an agreement in principle with a majority of secured lenders to erase a portion of the $1.6 billion they hold in senior secured notes. The lenders will get ownership in return.

The planned filing, which does not include operations outside the United States, comes amid declining circulation, an industrywide advertising slump and large debts.

Reader's Digest, the monthly magazine founded in 1922 as a collection of condensed articles from other publications, has been searching for a niche as the Internet upends the magazine industry's traditional business models.

This year's ad declines saw the closing of several high-profile titles including Conde Nast's Portfolio, Domino and Blender.

In June, Reader's Digest announced it would cut the circulation guarantee it makes to advertisers to 5.5 million, from 8 million and lower its frequency to 10 issues a year from 12.

In the second half of last year, the U.S. edition of Reader's Digest had circulation of 8.2 million, 2 percent above the guarantee to advertisers but 12 percent below circulation a year earlier. Its decision to adjust to rate base suggests expectations that circulation will drop further.

The company said Monday it will skip a $27 million interest payment on its 9 percent notes due in 2017 while it looks to build support among lenders for its restructuring plans.

In a statement, Reader's Digest CEO Mary Berner said the agreement follows "months of intensive strategic review of our balance-sheet issues."

The agreement includes $150 million in "Debtor-in-Possession" loans to finance the company during bankruptcy protection. Overall, the company plans to shrink its debt from $2.2 billion to $550 million following Chapter 11. It said the "vast majority" of suppliers will be paid in full under the bankruptcy plan.

The company said it will seek further agreements from lenders and other stakeholders before making a formal bankruptcy filing within a month.

Aside from Berner, all of the company's board members who have served since Ripplewood's $1.6 billion acquisition of the company in 2007 have resigned. Two members who recently joined will continue to serve.

[SIFU RON]

This is sad news, however this is the result of the recession we are experiencing .Those that " weather this storm" will be much wiser and stronger.

[Skip J.]

RD is such an institution. :(

and also....

"The company said it will seek further agreements from lenders and other stakeholders before making a formal bankruptcy filing within a month.

Aside from Berner, all of the company's board members who have served since Ripplewood's $1.6 billion acquisition of the company in 2007 have resigned. Two members who recently joined will continue to serve."

Ah yes, well...... you guys may be the only print mag left pretty soon Gene...

[zhugeliang]

Have faith Gene. Even I was moved to subscribed last week to your mag. Though I have to say I absolutely hated Reader's Rubbish, I mean, er, Reader's Digest, whatever it is or was.

[GeneChing]

You guys are encouraging me to post more of these industry reports with your subscriptions (http://www.martialartsmart.com/19341.html). And given the way the industry is, that's pretty easy. There's not much good news on the newsstands nowadays. :(

Magazines' Newsstand Sales Suffered in the First Half (http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=138611)
Most Blame Recession, Wholesaler Dispute
by Nat Ives
Published: August 24, 2009

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Recession and a dispute with magazine wholesalers combined to hammer many titles' newsstand sales in the first half of this year -- much as publishers worried they would. That's based on new numbers from many publishers in the lead-up to a big semi-annual report from the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

Reader's Digest newsstand sales sank 20% from the first half of 2008.
Reader's Digest newsstand sales sank 20% from the first half of 2008.
Happily for the industry, many magazines rely much more on subscriptions, which seemed to hold up better. Reader's Digest saw newsstand sales sink 20% from the first half of 2008, for example, but those single-copy sales represent a sliver of its circulation. Subscriptions, comprising 92% of the pie, fell a much more manageable 3%, so Reader's Digest still exceeded its circulation guarantee to advertisers.

But newsstand copies are a great way to get potential readers to sample a new magazine. Cover prices are much higher than subscription prices. And buyers who then subscribe using the blow-in cards inside are more likely to pay and renew than subscribers from other sources. What's more, advertisers sometimes view newsstand sales as a measure of vitality. So nobody enjoyed the big declines last year -- and nobody wanted to see more.

Unfortunately, many magazines saw just that.

Newsstand sales fell 15% at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, where declines reached 23% at Everyday Food, 20% at flagship Martha Stewart Living, 7% at Body & Soul and 6% at Martha Stewart Weddings. "The entire magazine category reported weakness in retail, single-copy sales in the first half, clearly the result of continued softness in consumer spending," the company said. "Of the competitive set of titles that we compare ourselves to, the average unit sale decline was 19%."

At American Media, newsstand sales fell 13%, with declines of 25% at Muscle & Fitness, 22% at Natural Health, 18% at Flex, 17% at Muscle & Fitness Hers, 14% at Star, 13% at Shape and 9% at Men's Fitness. Natural Health and Men's Fitness fell short of their guaranteed paid circulation. The two brightest spots: Fit Pregnancy slipped just 3% and Mom & Baby just 2%.

Effects of recession
Did the recession hurt? "For sure -- with both disposable incomes strained as well as reduced trips to the supermarket," said David Leckey, exec VP-consumer marketing.

New York Magazine saw newsstand sales fall 13%, a drop it attributed to the economy and the wholesaler dispute. "Because newsstand sales represent less than 5% of our overall circulation, a 13% dip in sales represents a difference of about 3,000 copies per week," a spokeswoman said, "a relative drop in the bucket for the company's overall revenue and sales."

New York is also hiking its newsstand price to $4.99 from $3.99 in September, a sign of confidence in continued demand for the product, the spokeswoman said. Wenner Media's Us Weekly lost just 3% on newsstands, while Men's Journal fell 5% and Rolling Stone dropped 11%.

New York magazine will hike its newsstand price to $4.99 in September.
New York magazine will hike its newsstand price to $4.99 in September.
Rodale reported mixed results to the audit bureau: Newsstand sales sank 10% at Men's Health, 8% at Bicycling and 3% at Running Times, but they grew 18% at Organic Gardening, 9% at Women's Health and 1% at Runner's World. Prevention's newsstand sales slid 19%, but partly because of a cover price hike.

Most of Meredith's magazines experienced big newsstand declines, but the company downplayed their importance. The wholesaler disruption contributed to declines at Parents, down 28%, and Traditional Home, down 10%, according to Andy Sareyan, exec VP-chief brand officer at the national media group as well as president of Better Homes and Gardens. Declines of 46% at Ladies' Home Journal, 35% at Better Homes and Gardens, 30% at Fitness and 24% at Family Circle stemmed not just from wholesaler problems, he said, but also the end of a test program that had increased sales in 2008.

Some gains
"Were it not for those two factors, we were about flat with the prior period on the newsstand, and many of our titles saw gains," Mr. Sareyan said. "The type of material that our books cover -- home, family, personal well-being and so forth -- have been categories where there is, if anything, more interest." Newsstand sales at the company's More magazine held steady from the year before.

Some titles reported newsstand gains. Saveur's single-copy sales rose 4% from the first six months of 2008, according to publisher Merri Lee Kingsly. She chalked up the growth to editorial consistency despite the temptation to veer into cover stories on budget living. "We didn't abandon our audience that has been picking us up for years and follow the economy," she said.

The Audit Bureau of Circulations, the industry's dominant circulation monitor, will publish its comprehensive roundup about the first half on Aug. 31.

[GeneChing]

We're way out of this league, but the numbers are interesting. I've done a little formatting on them for the table cut~&~paste.

24 of Top 25 Magazines Show Newsstand-Sales Decreases in First Half
Subscriptions and Total Circulation Figures Hold Steady (http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=138718)
by Nat Ives
Published: August 31, 2009

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Newsstand sales took their sharpest dive of the recession yet in the first half of the year, the semiannual report from the Audit Bureau of Circulations revealed today. Single-copy sales, hurt not just by the economy but also a temporary disruption at magazine wholesalers, fell 12.4% from a year earlier, following year-over-year declines of 11.1% in the second half of 2008 and 6.3% in the first half of 2008.

Twenty-four of the top 25 newsstand sellers posted declines in the first half of 2009, according to the audit bureau, including top seller Cosmopolitan, down 7.8% from the first half of 2008. The lone gainer in the top 25 was Real Simple, which posted a 1.2% increase.

Total paid and verified circulation, however, slipped just 1.2% as subscriptions held their ground, gaining 0.6%, and publishers reduced their use of verified copies, which are distributed free in public places such as doctors' offices, by 3.9%.

Among big magazines (those that report paid and verified circulations over 100,000 copies), 10 of the top 25 posted top-line gains, including the biggest, AARP the Magazine, where overall paid circulation rose 2.8% to 24.6 million.

The biggest top-line gainers included Global Traveler, up 48.3% to 106,654 copies; Off-Road Adventures, up 31.1% to 108,654; Women's Health, up 29.7% to 1.5 million; Hobby Farms, up 29.7% to 126,270; and Taste of Home Healthy Cooking, up 29.4% to 759,472.

The newsstand damage had been anticipated for a first half whose chief bright spot was somber and temporary: special tributes and extra editions devoted to Michael Jackson.

Top 25 U.S. consumer magazines by total paid and verified circulation

PUBLICATION~6 MONTHS ENDING 6/30/09~6 MONTHS ENDING 6/30/08~% CHANGE

AARP the Magazine~24,554,819~23,893,285~2.77%
AARP Bulletin~24,305,715~24,248,164~0.24%
Reader's Digest~8,158,652~8,445,916~-3.40%
Better Homes and Gardens~7,634,197~7,651,178~-0.22%
National Geographic~4,708,307~5,061,047~-6.97%
Good Housekeeping~4,630,397~4,668,818~-0.82%
Woman's Day~3,933,990~3,876,483~1.48%
Family Circle~3,932,510~3,896,088~0.93%
Ladies' Home Journal~3,842,791~3,844,222~-0.04%
AAA Westways~3,831,215~3,820,529~0.28%
People~3,615,858~3,803,217~-4.93%
Game Informer Magazine~3,601,201~3,498,935~2.92%
Time~3,372,240~3,389,166~-0.50%
Prevention~3,312,624~3,331,080~-0.55%
Taste of Home~3,302,601~3,198,029~3.27%
Sports Illustrated~3,252,298~3,260,964~-0.27%
TV Guide~2,934,969~3,274,187~-10.36%
Cosmopolitan~2,907,436~2,937,861~-1.04%
Southern Living~2,840,241~2,802,444~1.35%
AAA Via~2,783,833~2,824,461~-1.44%
Newsweek~2,646,613~2,737,450~-3.32%
Maxim~2,537,130~2,535,884~0.05%
AAA Going Places~2,521,974~2,547,092~-0.99%
AAA Living~2,458,902~2,445,146~0.56%
Playboy~2,453,266~2,700,653~-9.16%

[GeneChing]

...make that another four.


Conde Nast pulls plug on Gourmet magazine (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/10/06/BUPS1A1FQ8.DTL)
Andrew Vanacore, Associated Press
Tuesday, October 6, 2009

(10-06) 04:00 PDT NEW YORK -- Conde Nast Publications is closing Gourmet, the nation's oldest food magazine, and three other money-losing titles as the high-end publisher tries to weather a devastating advertising slump.

In addition to Gourmet, which had a circulation of 980,000 last year, the publisher is closing Modern Bride, Elegant Bride and Cookie, a parenting magazine. Earlier in the year, it killed publication of Portfolio, a business magazine, and Domino, a lifestyle title.

"We're all stunned, sad," Gourmet's editor, Ruth Reichl, wrote in a post on Twitter.

Consultants from McKinsey & Co. have been helping the publisher, known for elegant publications and high costs, identify ways to cut its expenses. Despite Gourmet's large audience, the magazine has suffered one of the worst ad declines of any popular title. Its ad pages were down 50 percent in the second quarter from the year before, according to the Publishers Information Bureau.

Conde Nast, run by billionaire S.I. Newhouse Jr., publishes such magazines as Vogue, the New Yorker and Wired and is a unit of privately held Advance Publications Inc. The company's remaining 19 magazines also include one on food, Bon Appetit, which has a larger circulation than Gourmet, at 1.4 million. Bon Appetit's decline in ad pages in the second quarter was only slightly less steep, at 40 percent.

Conde Nast spokeswoman Maurie Perl said the roughly 180 employees of Gourmet, Cookie, Modern Bride and Elegant Bride will leave the company with severance packages this week.

Gourmet, revered by many culinary aficionados, was launched in 1941 by Earle R. MacAusland as "the magazine of good living." It was known for more than just recipes: It dived into extended discourse about travel, wine and food, such as the 2004 piece in which David Foster Wallace argued against the practice of boiling lobsters to death.

Now, Conde Nast said, Gourmet's brand will live on in books and TV programming. It also plans to continue publishing Gourmet recipes on Epicurious.com.

Magazine consultant Martin Walker said closing Gourmet makes financial sense because Bon Appetit should be able to pick up many of the magazine's subscribers and advertisers. Many advertisers were trending toward food titles with a more affordable sensibility anyway, he said.

As Modern Bride and Elegant Bride close, a third Conde Nast magazine, Brides, will increase its frequency to monthly instead of every two months.

[David Jamieson]

Print is an awesome form of media.

obviously! it's been around this long!

In our lifetimes, it will always be serviceable.

People will always want to hold a book, a magazine or some other form of reading material.

Newspapers? Not so much. Running huge presses and huge distribution hubs to service a daily newspaper is a bit much in the day and age of digital. TV started to kill that quite a while ago and the internet and more tv and radio is killing that off, but people still like to take a dump and read the paper. lol Or, have a coffee. anyway...

If smaller print centers were set up on a network that would make distribution completely local, with a lot less waste will be the next step in the industry. Or partnerships B2B style that will see advertising covering distribution fees in localized regions using sub contracted print shops.

Final point, in our lifetimes, print will be around and as you are now a niche to begin with, you only need to maintain the quality of content to compete.

You got the web part covered. :)

[SIFU RON]

good point David,

I recently traveled by plane from Sacramento to Oregon. There are many magazines for sale with a big selection to choose from at the airports going both ways. I spent some time watching and they sell well. Fewer newpapers are being offered but they sell.

I agree with David, magazines are here to stay.Some will fall but in time they might be back.

[GeneChing]

2009 (so far) +259-383 = -124
2008 +335-525 = -190

Mag Bag: 383 Magazines Closed Jan-Oct. (http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=115515)
by Erik Sass, Thursday, October 15, 2009, 3:11 PM

A total of 383 magazines have closed in the first nine months of 2009, compared with just 259 new titles launching. This continues the trend of the last couple of years, when more magazines closed than launched, according to MediaFinder.com, a property of Oxbridge Communications. Conversely, the number of closures in 2009 was smaller than 2008, when 525 titles closed and 335 titles launched.

However, the casualty list in 2009 included considerably more major titles than 2008 -- and the year isn't even over.

Big titles that met their demise this year include Gourmet, announced in October; Cookie, in October; Southern Accents, in August; Vibe, Nickelodeon in June; Portfolio, Blender, Best Life Travel & Leisure Golf, and Figure in March; Hallmark Magazine in February, Domino, Teen, Wondertime, Country Home in January.

The categories that saw the most closures included regional interest, where 31 magazines folded; business, 14; and lifestyle, 13. On the positive side, several categories saw a number of new launches, including -- ironically -- regional interest, with 15 new magazines, including Maine Magazine and The 45th, focusing on northern Michigan. The food category saw 14 new launches, including Edible Queens. Health and fitness saw 13 new launches, and the home category also got 13 new titles.

Mediafinder.com also noted that 64 publications gave print editions the ax, but maintained an online presence. Still, the ratio of magazines migrating to Web publication versus magazines shuttering completely is smaller. This suggests that online-only status isn't a viable business model for most print publishers.

[SIFU RON]

Health and fitness saw 13 new publications, a good sign. The world is " shaking the fleas" off it's back. The depression - recession is having profound results as we pounder through this mess. When " the fat lady sings" Tai Chi Kung Fu will be a winner.

[GeneChing]

I can't even fathom these kinds of numbers in publishing...

October 29, 2009, 5:22 pm
Time Inc. to Cut $100 Million; Extensive Layoffs Are Expected (http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/29/time-inc-to-cut-100-million-extensive-layoffs-are-expected/)
By Stephanie Clifford

Signaling that worse times are ahead for magazines, Time Inc. is expected to announce next week that it will cut $100 million from costs, including another big round of layoffs.

The timing is coordinated with the third-quarter earnings announcement from its parent company, Time Warner, sources said. That is scheduled for Wednesday morning.

Time Inc., the publisher of magazines like Time, Fortune, and People, has already cut costs drastically: a year ago, it announced it was dismissing 6 percent of its work force, or about 600 people.

But that was apparently not enough to make up for revenue declines. The $100 million in costs is expected to come largely from layoffs, said sources, who asked to remain anonymous as they were not authorized to discuss the matter.

Michael Nathanson, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, said that he expected third-quarter revenue at Time Inc. would fall about 19 percent, to $900 million.

“For the year, we’re at about $3.7 billion, and this company had done almost $5 billion as late as 2007,” Mr. Nathanson said.

Since 2004, Time Inc. has cut about $800 million in costs, Mr. Nathanson said.

Over all, Mr. Nathanson said, he expects Time Warner to post earnings of 54 cents a share, well up from the 30 cents a share it posted in the third quarter of 2008.

Time Inc. has been cutting costs over the last several years. Since 2007, it has shut down magazines including Business 2.0, Cottage Living, Southern Accents and Life, which it had revived as a newspaper supplement. Last week, Fortune announced that it would no longer be published every other week, and would drop its frequency to 18 issues a year, from 25. A stricter expense-account policy has been in place for some time, and some magazines have decreased the weight of the paper they use.

A number of Time Inc. employees are covered by a union contract, which mandates severance in case of layoffs. Employees of Time, Sports Illustrated, People, Money, Fortune and Fortune Small Business are covered by agreements with the Newspaper Guild of America, said Bob Townsend, local representative for the guild.

Covered employees at those magazines are eligible for severance packages in a layoff, of two weeks’ pay for every year of employment, with a cap of 52 weeks’ pay. Longtime employees get a bonus, with 20-year veterans getting an additional eight weeks’ pay, and 25-year employees an additional 10.

Mr. Townsend said that the Guild was usually notified in advance of layoffs, but it had not heard anything yet. “We have not been told there are going to be any layoffs next week,” Mr. Townsend said.

Dawn Bridges, a Time Inc. spokeswoman, declined to comment.

The layoffs and cost-cutting follow moves at competitors. Forbes is in the midst of dismissing about 40 to 60 of its editorial staff, and most Condé Nast magazines are reducing their budgets by about 25 percent, which has included handfuls of layoffs at many of its magazines.

[MightyB]

Mediafinder.com also noted that 64 publications gave print editions the ax, but maintained an online presence. Still, the ratio of magazines migrating to Web publication versus magazines shuttering completely is smaller. This suggests that online-only status isn't a viable business model for most print publishers.

The problem is that it's really hard to monetize your internet offerings. I know I'd like to find a good way with the media company I manage http:www.JTV.tv, but the money just doesn't seem to be there. The sad trend is that Advertisers pay only a fraction of what they'd pay on the hard copy and people don't seem to be interested in paying for online content that they used to have to subscribe to in order to receive.

I wish I had the answer because I think it's sad that we're losing all of our newspapers and magazines.

[Skip J.]

The problem is that it's really hard to monetize your internet offerings. I know I'd like to find a good way with the media company I manage http:www.JTV.tv, but the money just doesn't seem to be there. The sad trend is that Advertisers pay only a fraction of what they'd pay on the hard copy and people don't seem to be interested in paying for online content that they used to have to subscribe to in order to receive.

I wish I had the answer because I think it's sad that we're losing all of our newspapers and magazines.
Ahhhhh welllll...... my son assembled one of those first 4K kits in the 70's and always wanted to be a programmer. He got a degree as an architect with CAD, and spent decades building up computers for folks - and websites - and writing for programmers - and couldn't make a living at it ever. After turning 40, he's finally got a good job - but in a plant where his CAD background is good and his ability to program is very beneficial. However, the plant makes products, not software or computers......

He spent at least 20 years trying to get folks to pay him good money for programming and/or computer work , and it never happened for him.

The key issue is... everyone he worked for had this same problem, no one wants to pay much - or anything - for computer related stuff.....

At my age, I will always want something in print over reading it on a screen. If something is important enough to read that I'll pay something for it, I'll download the pdf and print it off and then read it at leisure. To me, stuff on the screen is work, and at 5 it's shut off, or sooner.

Younger folks - 40 and under - will stay up all night reading a screen - every nite - but they will be less likely to pay for stuff then we are. Rightly or wrongly, the world has come to accept computer stuff as a given, like water or air, necessary to life but free or close to it.... for better or worse, Wii and the other game producers have established the value of computer stuff at their level.....

just my 2 cents worth....

[SIFU RON]

We will not doubt get both.

http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee214/SIFURON/_NEWSFORKF-1.jpg

[SIFU RON]

http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee214/SIFURON/_NEWSFORKF_0001.jpg

Many poeple will never give up print, there will always be the need.

[Skip J.]

http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee214/SIFURON/_NEWSFORKF_0001.jpg

Many poeple will never give up print, there will always be the need.
Got my copy of "Fortune Small Business" today - we all own a small business don't we? - the Editor's Letter says:

"Like the entrepreneurs we write about, this magazine is subject to the iron laws of capitalism. In a harsh advertising climate it has become increasingly difficult for our corporate parent, Time Inc., to publish "Fortune Small Business" profitably. So after 10 years of covering global entrepreneurship in all its forms (CMA shools???) "FSB" will cease publication with the current issue."

Who woulda thought Time, Inc. would have a problem carrying a little pub along???

I guess you're lucky to have an online store Gene... you're the future.. Time, Inc.'s the past...

[GeneChing]

...you know, Skip J., one of my biggest fears now is having to write a Publisher's Corner like that Editor's note. If I could just get half of the forum to subscribe (http://www.martialartsmart.com/magazinesubscription.html), we'd be in great shape.


New round of cutbacks coming at Gannett newspapers (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/12/01/financial/f130035S52.DTL)
By ANDREW VANACORE, AP Business Writer
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
(12-01) 16:53 PST New York (AP) --

Newspaper publisher Gannett Co. imposed a new round of cutbacks Tuesday, with USA Today reducing its newsroom staff by 5 percent, as the industry continues to suffer through an extended advertising slump.

Along with 26 newsroom jobs at USA Today, 11 positions will be cut at USA Weekend magazine, a weekly insert in other newspapers. And nonunion workers at other Gannett newspapers will have to take more unpaid furloughs, after already taking forced time off this year.

USA Today, which sells many of its copies in hotels and airports, has been hit especially hard by the advertising slump and a falloff in travel, which knocked it out of the No. 1 position in U.S. newspaper circulation.

The Wall Street Journal has grabbed that spot, although that includes online subscriptions, as it is one of the few major newspapers that charges Web readers. USA Today still has the top print circulation.

Gannett shares rose 12 cents, 1.2 percent, to close Tuesday at $10.01.

Other media companies have been shedding workers as well. The New York Times, The Associated Press and Time Inc. have announced job cuts in recent weeks.

"While advertising is showing some signs of picking up, the economic outlook for 2010 remains weak and the decline in travel has contributed to a recent drop in circulation," USA Today's executive editor, John Hillkirk, told employees in a memo.

Hillkirk said the laid-off employees would get severance pay equal to the difference between their salaries and what they can get from state unemployment benefits. He said the severance would come for one week for each year worked at the company.

USA Weekend is cutting seven positions immediately and four more in March, according to a staff memo from Marcia Bullard, the magazine's president. Its remaining staff is being combined with that of USA Today.

Bob ****ey, who heads Gannett's U.S. community publishing unit, told employees at the division's 82 newspapers that nonunion workers will have to take one unpaid week off during the first quarter of next year, amounting to about a 2 percent cut in pay. He said the company is asking union representatives to support furloughs as well. Corporate employees at Gannett are also taking the furlough, he said.

Gannett, which is based in McLean, Va., and also owns 23 television stations, eliminated 10 percent of its jobs in 2008. It also cut 3 percent, or 1,400 positions, last summer.


Jack London Square's Barnes & Noble to close (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/12/02/BUGO1AT967.DTL)
Robert Selna, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 2, 2009

The Barnes & Noble bookstore, a longtime tenant at the center of Oakland's Jack London Square, is scheduled to close down early next year due to declining sales.

The national bookseller's 17-year lease at the waterfront locale is set to expire Jan. 31 and is not expected to be renewed.

Barnes & Noble representative David Deason said in a statement that the store saw sales drop during the past few years and had "reached a point where it can no longer be operated in a viable fashion."

Last week, the New York company posted a larger second-quarter loss than the same period in 2008, totaling $24 million (43 cents per share). Large and small traditional bookstores have suffered due to online competition and the poor economy.

The store's departure creates a notable vacancy at Jack London Square as the building's owner, Ellis Partners, works to fill newly developed space nearby as part of a broader effort to recast the area.

The centerpiece of that plan is the new 70,000-square-foot Jack London Market, which sits below four floors of office space. The economy has delayed the scheduled opening of the market from spring or summer of this year to mid-2010. The office space currently is empty.

"The departure (of Barnes & Noble) provides us with an opportunity to further our vision for the new Jack London Square," Ellis Partners said in a statement. "We are already in talks with a number of possible tenants whose businesses directly align with Jack London Square's identity as a bustling dining and entertainment district."

[Skip J.]

...you know, Skip J., one of my biggest fears now is having to write a Publisher's Corner like that Editor's note. If I could just get half of the forum to subscribe (http://www.martialartsmart.com/magazinesubscription.html), we'd be in great shape.
Hey Gene;

There's about 100,000 guys like me in this country - 50 or older, mostly 60 or older that take tai chi in a senior center class once per week; along with about two million women. Us old guys like to read print and have an interest in the CMA aspects of tai chi.

If you could find a way to get tai chi instructors to hand out one free magazine to new students, most men would take one home to read it, and some would subscribe.... Men under 50 get their CMA info off the web for free, which you know better than me... At least you do have the online-store....

[GeneChing]

I hear what your saying Skip J., and we have explored that. There are two major confounding elements here. #1. Most all tai chi is taught independently, so seeking out each individual school is a daunting task. It's not like there's a national governing body such as in sports like tennis, golf or gymnastics. So it's hard to target teachers so. #2. And this is an odd one, there's a certain stigma of our title 'kung fu' within the tai chi community. I know that sounds really odd since tai chi is a form of kung fu. However we ran into this prejudice when we tried marketing more heavily to the new age readership. New agers (and here I'm clumping tai chi hippies into that demographic, despite my general distaste for the term) don't seem to want to associate with the implied B-movie violence of kung fu. The same seems to hold true for the elderly community. It's very strange, but a clear obstacle in us reaching that demographic.


Editor & Publisher and Kirkus Reviews Close (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/11/business/media/11nielsen.html?_r=2&adxnnl=1&ref=media&adxnnlx=1260493295-l9H3jHlm0gARBmpQwwsbpA)
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
Published: December 10, 2009

Abandoning some of the best known names in trade publishing, the Nielsen Company said Thursday that it would shut down Editor & Publisher and Kirkus Reviews, and sell a stable of other publications, including Billboard and The Hollywood Reporter, to a newly formed media company.

Nielsen’s plans to sell had been reported for months, but the news that E&P and Kirkus would close at the end of the year was a surprise. The company declined to discuss their financial performance, but executives said they had fought declining advertising and circulation, much like the newspaper and book industries they cover.

A new company, e5 Global Media, bought Adweek, Mediaweek, Brandweek, Film Journal International, Backstage, The Hollywood Reporter and Billboard from Nielsen, with rights to the Clio Awards and Film Expo trade shows. The price was not disclosed, but published reports have put it at $70 million or more.

E5 is a joint venture of Pluribus Capital Management, a private equity fund, and Guggenheim Partners, a financial services firm. The chairman of e5 is James Finkelstein, a principal of Pluribus, who also runs News Communications, publisher of the Who’s Who directories and The Hill, a Capitol Hill newspaper. Lachlan Murdoch, a son of Rupert Murdoch who once was in talks to join the buying group, was not involved in the deal.

Nielsen is not abandoning trade publishing. It will retain several publications, including Contract Magazine and Progressive Grocer.

Also on Thursday, Jonah Bloom, the top editor of Adweek’s rival, Advertising Age, left to join a blog publisher, Breaking Media. Advertising Age named Abbey Klaassen executive editor.

For generations, Editor & Publisher, though not well known to the public, has been a leading source of newspaper industry news and job listings. It grew out of several publications, the oldest dating to 1884.

“In a world full of people pronouncing and posturing and declaring about the media, E&P just kept doing good old-fashioned reporting about what was actually happening,” said Geneva Overholser, director of the School of Journalism at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

Greg Mitchell, editor of Editor & Publisher, said the 10 staff members “got an e-mail last night that there would be a meeting today,” and expected to hear that the magazine had been sold or would go online only. Mr. Mitchell said that when they were told that it would close, “people were shocked and disappointed and a little angry about it.”

He added, “We’re halfway through our January issue, and we haven’t gotten word whether that’s going forward or not.”

Kirkus, a biweekly founded in 1933, annually published thousands of reviews of new books, a valuable source of promotional material for publishers and authors. Calls to top Kirkus editors were not returned.

[Drake]

Gene,
If you get the word out on my fundraiser for blood cancers, then I'll happily drop the $$ for a KFM subscription. I'll even buy some loot off martialartsmart. I'm not even asking for a direct donation from KFM. Just some visibility, and maybe a sticky for my thread in the main section. Here's my link.

http://pages.teamintraining.org/rm/dhmomu10/dethington

Thanks!
David

[dimethylsea]

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/epicenter/2009/12/picture-31-660x380.png (http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/12/media-death-watch-leading-trade-publication-editor-publisher-shuttered/)

[GeneChing]

Drake, I'm not into stickies. Some of the other mods here are, but for me, if you can't keep your topic ttt, then it's not worth it. Besides, I have the announcements for all the commercial biz part. It's not that hard to ttt whatever you want to promote. Just bait uki and he'll help you. ;)


Laredo could be largest US city without bookstore (http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gHM8cmbav7S24NISh2xp5BESkZKAD9CKL63G0)
By PAUL J. WEBER (AP) – 2 days ago

LAREDO, Texas — The final chapter has been written for the lone bookstore on the streets of Laredo.

With a population of nearly a quarter-million people, this city could soon be the largest in the nation without a single bookseller.

The situation is so grim that schoolchildren have pleaded for a reprieve from next month's planned shutdown of the B. Dalton bookstore. After that, the nearest store will be 150 miles away in San Antonio.

The B. Dalton store was never a community destination with comfy couches and an espresso bar, but its closing will create a literary void in a city with a high illiteracy rate. Industry analysts and book associations could not name a larger American city without a single bookseller.

"Corporate America considers Laredo kind of the backwater," said the city's most prolific author, Jerry Thompson, a professor at Texas A&M University International who has written more than 20 books.

Since the closing was announced, book lovers in Laredo have flocked to the small store located between City Trendz ("Laredo's No. 1 Underground Hip Hop Shop") and a store that offers $4 indoor go-kart rides to stock up on their favorite titles.

Schoolchildren even wrote letters to the parent company, Barnes & Noble, begging for the store to stay open.

"Without that store, my life would be so sad and boring," wrote a fifth-grader named Bryanna Salinas, who signed her name with a heart.

The Laredo store is among 49 remaining B. Daltons nationwide that Barnes & Noble will close by next year.

The company believes a bookstore is viable in Laredo and has identified a location for a large-format Barnes & Noble, but the space will not be available for at least 18 months, said David Deason, Barnes & Noble vice president of development.

In the meantime, without a single independent bookseller, Laredo may be in a league of its own among big cities.

Though an independent bookstore is the only one of its kind in Newark, N.J., a city of nearly 288,000, big chains are nearby in the suburbs or New York City. Laredo is surrounded by nothing more than rural ranching towns on its side of the border.

"We suffer, but we don't suffer to the extent that a Laredo would," said Wilma Grey, director of the Newark Public Library.

Some worry that the closing could send a message that books and reading are not priorities in Laredo, a hot, steamy city of 230,000 that is choked by smog from trucks lining up at the border, which is home to the nation's biggest entry point for trucks and trains.

Nearly half of the population of Webb County, which includes Laredo, lacks basic literacy skills, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Fewer than 1 in 5 city residents has a college degree. And about 30 percent of the city lives below the poverty level, according to the 2000 census.

Laredo residents can still purchase books online, but civic leaders fear that without a bookstore, many residents will not have the opportunity to buy books.

Many also feel that the stigma of not having a bookstore hurts Laredo's reputation.

Outsiders, even other Texans, do not always distinguish between "los dos Laredos," the relatively peaceful city in Texas, and Nuevo Laredo, across the border in Mexico, which has been wracked by drug-war violence.

But some bookstore supporters are undaunted.

Maria Soliz, Laredo Public Library director, is leading the charge to get a bookstore back. The city's library system was already planning to open two more branches over the next two years to meet demand. That's in addition to the two-story main library painted in bold, Mexican-inspired colors that serves about 400,000 visitors annually.

"It's not reflective of the city that they're closing," Soliz said. "I know this city can support a bookstore."

Deason said the Laredo store is profitable, but its profits are not significant when factoring in the expenses of running a chain that's being phased out.

Some people also question the city's priorities. As Elaine Perry walked out of the bookstore earlier this month with a heavy bag of hardcovers, she criticized a recent proposal to build an indoor snow park.

"A snowboarding park in Laredo," Perry said. "Have you ever heard of anything so stupid?"

Bookstore customers tend to be well educated and to have disposable income, said Michael Norris, an analyst with Simba Information. But that demographic is hardly what makes or breaks the business, he said.

A bookstore is "either the cultural center in its community, or it's a pile of books with a roof over it," Norris said.

The B. Dalton in Laredo certainly skews toward the latter. It has narrow aisles, no coffee for sale and not a single chair to sit and read.

City Trendz employee Seve Perez said much of the traffic at Mall del Norte comes from Mexico, both from Nuevo Laredo and deal-seeking shoppers bused in from the country's interior.

Standing behind a rack of sale T-shirts that read "Save Texas Rap," the 66-year-old said his bookish daughters will be crushed when the bookstore leaves.

Next door, Laredo resident Misti Saenz walked out of B. Dalton with a sack of nine romance novels for her teenage daughter. She was stocking up before the store closes Jan. 16.

"It's going to be a total bummer," Saenz said. "It made me wish I had shopped there more."

[Drake]

Is that a no, or a side assault at Uki?

[GeneChing]

...a price increase watch.

Some Publishers to Push Up Cover Prices in 2010 (http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/content_display/news/magazines-newspapers/e3i719dc07a203bf2ec443a662b601030a1)
Dec 14, 2009
-By Lucia Moses

mw/photos/stylus/118085-NewYorkerM.jpg
Publishers may not have cracked the code on generating paid content from the Web, but several big titles are looking to wring more money from consumers the old-fashioned way: cover prices.

Condé Nast is raising cover prices on The New Yorker, Golf Digest and Teen Vogue in 2010, having already done so at Vanity Fair, Bon Appétit, Condé Nast Traveler and Lucky this fall (click here for a chart of some titles who have already or are planning to raise their cover prices).

Hearst is lifting the cover price of Good Housekeeping, Esquire and Veranda and is considering the same for Country Living and other titles. Wenner Media quietly raised prices on Men’s Journal and Rolling Stone in the fall. And Meredith is eyeing newsstand price increases at flagship Better Homes and Gardens and Ladies’ Home Journal, Family Circle and Traditional Home, while Rodale is looking at doing the same at its health/fitness titles.

“It kind of depends on the brand,” said John McCarthy, senior vp, customer marketing at Rodale. “If we’re seeing natural demand, we have the opportunity to be more aggressive with pricing.”

In other cases, publishers are passing on de facto price increases by cutting frequency and maintaining or raising subscription prices. Thus while Time Inc. is maintaining cover prices across its titles for 2010, Fortune subscribers will pay the same for seven fewer issues as the annual frequency drops to 18 from 25. Hearst’s Esquire and House Beautiful subscription prices will go up in 2010—Hearst didn’t say by how much—while the titles will publish one and two fewer issues, respectively.

This could bode ill for some. John Harrington, editor of The New Single Copy, said his research shows that in the first half of ’09, when single-copy sales plummeted, the success rate of titles that raised cover price, and sold more units, fell by more than half. While in the past, single-copy buyers have accepted price increases, he said, “The sharp downturn in sales has changed the conventional wisdom.”

However, buyers praised plans to increase cover prices, while pointing out that for the most part, those titles don’t have a big newsstand presence. “It’s probably a worthwhile test to see how elastic newsstand prices are, and it’s always a good sales story to tell,” said Barry Lowenthal, president, The Media Kitchen. “It plays into wantedness.”

Scott Daly, executive vp, executive media director, Dentsu America, said that he would look favorably on publishers that attempt cover price increases. “Although I have seen research that supports an opposing point of view, I wholeheartedly believe that consumers who are willing to pay more for content they covet ultimately make better customers for my clients,” he said.

Generally, publishers are being more timid than usual about price hikes, given shaky consumer confidence and a 12 percent drop in single-copy sales in the first half of ’09, when a wholesaler disruption caused many outlets to be without magazines for weeks.

Stephanie Laco, senior vp, retail services at wholesaler giant Source Interlink, said she sees fewer publishers experimenting with price. “I think people are questioning whether the consumers are going to pay,” she said. Publishers selling at Walmart would need the retailer to approve price hikes, she added, a fact that “certainly has to be on the minds of publishers.”

Observers predict that newsstand sales declines will narrow in second-half ’09 but still be down, around 5 percent to 7 percent.

Even Rodale is predicting newsstand sales overall will decline slightly in the second half, some strong titles notwithstanding. “We’re hurting too,” McCarthy said. “If people are not going to stores as much, there are less eyeballs looking at your magazines.”

Drake,
I don't do stickies, but there are many ways to keep a thread ttt-ed that you can do yourself. If you want to support our forum, please do (http://www.martialartsmart.com/index.html). If not, that's fine too. The forum is free to everyone.

[GeneChing]

Consumer Magazine Ad Pages Tumble 25 Percent in 2009 (http://www.foliomag.com/2010/consumer-magazine-ad-pages-tumble-25-percent-2009)
PIB: All 12 ad categories post full year declines; Q4 improvement seen.
By Jason Fell
01/12/2010

To no one’s surprise, consumer magazines suffered a beating in 2009 in terms of advertising revenue. According to full-year results released today by the Magazine Publishers of America’s Publishers Information Bureau, ad pages for the year were down 25.6 percent while estimated revenues closed at $19.45 billion, a drop of 18.1 percent.

Of all the magazines tracked by PIB, fewer than 20 showed ad page gains in 2009. The biggest winners were People Style Watch (up 24.4 percent), OK! (up 20.7) and Saveur (up 12.8).

Of the 12 advertising categories tracked by PIB, all reported ad page losses for 2009—the biggest decliners being financial, insurance and real estate (-41.4 percent) and automotive (-40.5). Estimated revenues were down in all categories except for food and food products, which posted a slight 1.4 percent gain.

Despite the grim outcome, PIB said the fourth quarter showed some signs of improvement. Ad pages during the period slipped 21.6 percent compared to the fourth quarter in 2008 while revenues dropped only 12.4 percent.

“While marketers’ skittishness continued through the fourth quarter, magazine spending showed improvement compared to earlier in 2009,” MPA executive vice president/CEO Ellen Oppenheim said in the announcement. “Magazines experienced an uptick in food spending and relative improvement in other areas, especially in automotive.”

If you follow the link, you'll notice that PIB lists full year-end results, title-by-title and that no martial arts magazines are included on that list. That's because we're all so niche. Niche mags are doing even worse.

Subscribe (http://www.martialartsmart.com/19341.html). Subscribe in January 2010 and you'll get a free Jackie Chan THE SPY NEXT DOOR (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?p=983363) prize pack.

[Drake]

I already said, Gene. If you sticky my post for my fundraiser, I'll subscribe. I don't want a Jackie Chan thingee.

[MightyB]

If you follow the link, you'll notice that PIB lists full year-end results, title-by-title and that no martial arts magazines are included on that list. That's because we're all so niche. Niche mags are doing even worse.

Subscribe (http://www.martialartsmart.com/19341.html). Subscribe in January 2010 and you'll get a free Jackie Chan THE SPY NEXT DOOR (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?p=983363) prize pack.

You know what's odd is that from a marketing perspective- niche marketing is very lucrative. You can target your market and the cost of entry is usually a lot less. Heck- there are a lot of people out there that owe their fortunes to niche marketing through magazines. It's a sad world right now. One where it's going to get a lot more difficult to get rich.

[GeneChing]

Niche marketing is still fine. In many ways, that's what this forum is all about. Niche print magazines are a different story entirely now.

I've deleted the half of the article and the tables below. You'll have to follow the link if you're that interested.

Not Yet At the Bottom (http://www.audiencedevelopment.com/2010/not+yet+bottom)
An analysis of first-half 2009 circulation levels of audited consumer magazines reveals that the end of the circ decline is nowhere in sight.
By Baird Davis
Monday, January 4, 2010

In the first half of 2009, paid and verified circulation of audited consumer magazines (this excludes titles whose circulation is derived primarily from “association” circ sources, e.g., AARP The Magazine) fell an unprecedented 6.3 percent from 273.8 million to 256.5 million. This is believed to be the steepest circulation level decline in more than 40 years. And there are no signs that consumer magazine circulation levels have bottomed out.

To the contrary, there are strong indications that the deep circulation level hole the industry dug for itself, as it eagerly embraced the advertising-driven circ model philosophy, still has more subscription circ to discharge before it arrives at a more optimal circulation level.

However, the steep circ declines reported in the first half of 2009 appear to be a kind of industry cathartic turning point—a moment in time when publishers finally seemed to realize the seriousness of the “over-circulated” condition they have built for themselves.

In this article we’ll review some of the causal reasons for the steep circ level decline in the first half of this year, while discussing the six key circulation trends which point to the continued circ decline of audited consumer magazine circ levels.

1. Newsstand Circ Continues to Dramatically Decline
Newsstand circ fell from 45.5 million a year ago to 37.0 million in the current period—a staggering 18.7 percent decline of 8.5 million circ. As a result, newsstand circulation’s share of total verified/paid circulation fell to 14.4 percent. This compares to a 20.7 percent ratio just 8 years ago.

TREND POINT: The continuing decline of newsstand sales and the drop in the newsstand circ share of total circulation are key indicators that the industry’s circ levels are not optimal.

2. Number of Audited Consumer Titles Continue to Rapidly Decline
Newsstand circ was a big contributor to the industry’s circ level decline, but the largest contributor was the loss of 69 titles that were discontinued or ceased being audited. The number of audited publications fell by 8.4 percent—from 545 titles a year ago to 499 in the first half of 2009. These discontinued titles accounted for 16.2 million circ. Twelve of these titles reported circ of more than 500,000 in the year previous. This group included; Cosmo Girl (1,400,000), Country Home (1,272,000), Domino (1,115,000), Blender (952,000), Vibe (876,000), Home (829,000), Hallmark Magazine (749,000), Figure (724,000), O at Home (704,000), PC Magazine (646,000), Electronic Gaming (603,000) and BestLife (508,000).

The record title losses were only slightly mitigated by the addition of 23 titles to the auditing ranks. The newly audited titles added 5.1 million circ. However, these newly audited titles (Country, Reminisce, and Birds & Blooms) published by Reader’s Digest accounted for the majority (4.3 million) of the new circ. It should also be noted that these three titles are not newly launched publications, but rather are part of a cadre of unaudited titles Reader’s Digest purchased from Riemann several years ago. The other 20 newly audited titles all had relatively low circulation profiles—less than 150,000 circ.

The net “lost” circulation (newly audited titles, less departing titles) was 11.1 million, which accounts for a major portion of the industry’s 17.3 million circ fall.

*TREND POINT: The trend toward a reduced number of audited titles is likely to continue and it will help accelerate industry circ level declines.

3. More Cautious Circ Level Management Leads to Lower Circ Levels
In the first half of 2009 there were 183 publications that decreased circ five percent or more. This compares to 142 in the year previous and 101 two years ago. Partially offsetting these declines were a record low 41 publications that increased circ five percent or more versus 76 the year previous.

In the first half of 2009 thirty-six publications reported circ decreases of 50,000 or more of which 19 reduced their circ 100,000 or more and six titles that reported drops of more than 200,000—U.S. News (462,000), National Geographic (353,000), TV Guide (339,000), Country Weekly (298,000), Reader’s Digest (289,000) and Playboy (248,000).

There were only 16 titles increasing circ levels 50,000 or more in the first half of the year. This compares to 24 titles in this category a year ago. However, the paid circ increases for three of these titles—FamilyFun, Gamer Informer and Parenting—involved merely substituting analyzed non-paid circ with paid circ. Five of these titles (all relatively new titles) reported increases of more than 100,000—Women’s Health (338,000), People Stylewatch (188,000), Taste of Home (105,000), All You (104,000) and Everyday Food (102,000).
In this period the net level impact of the big gainers and big losers produced an industry circ decline of 3.1 million.

TREND POINT: The growing trend of more cautiously managing circ levels will continue to push publishers toward seeking more optimal circ levels.

4. Announcements for More Discontinued Titles and More Circ Level Reductions Are Waiting in the Wings
There are at least 11 audited titles, whose circ was reported in the first half of 2009, which will be discontinued by 2010. They include Gourmet, National Geographic Adventure, Nickelodeon, Metropolitan Home, Cookie, Fortune Small Business, Southern Accents, Giant, Modern Bride, Nick, Jr. and Fit Pregnancy Moms. Combined these titles reported 5.3 million circ in the first half.

During the second half of this year five publications announced rate base/circ level reductions of 300,000 or more that will take effect in 2010. The effected titles include—Reader’s Digest (2.6 million), Newsweek (1.1 million), Playboy (900,000), Prevention (500,000) and Good Housekeeping (300,000). These reductions account for 5.4 million circ.

In addition, a number of publications announced frequency reductions, including Fortune, Jet, Ladies Home Journal, Reader’s Digest and Playboy.

TREND POINT: These announcements are likely to be a precursor of more title closings and circ level reductions to follow in the next year or two.

[GeneChing]

Giant Robot is the leading AmerAsian mag (talk about your niche marketing). I wrote a piece for Giant Robot about a decade ago. There's a youtube vid - follow the link.


We Need You, Here's Why:

THE MAGAZINE

For more than 15 years, Giant Robot has been documenting, promoting, and growing Asian and Asian American popular culture. Although a lot has changed since 1994, and there’s more immediate access to interesting stuff from around the world than ever, most of it is still crap and Giant Robot is as relevant as ever. Not only do we share what we think is the most interesting, compelling, or just plain cool aspects of Asian pop culture, but we also shape it and affect how readers in America and other countries perceive Asian, Asian American, independent, and underdog culture. Our distinctive editorial voice and clear sense of purpose has earned a loyal readership that includes academics and punks; old-school Asian activists and new-school bloggers; art fans, moviegoers, music listeners, comic readers, and food fiends; and Asians and non-Asians alike.

And as the publication has evolved into a glossy magazine with a dedicated national following (with international distribution as well), so has the company’s business model. The unprofitable process of magazine publishing was bolstered with a series of like-minded retail outlets. After offering mail order and online sales, we went on to open locations in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York City. Our galleries and shops have not only provided a means of support for a horde of up-and-coming artists and indie businesses, but led the way for a generation of boutique/art gallery hybrids.

THE MOMENT

While diversification allowed Giant Robot to escape the fate suffered by many of our indie publishing peers in the second half of the ‘00s, 2009 was brutal. In addition to several distributors cutting out small press or folding altogether, paper has become more expensive and postage has skyrocketed exponentially. And while there has also been the support of loyal advertisers, the middle class of supporters has dropped, creating peaks and valleys in income that force us to live issue to issue. Complicating matters, store revenues and art show sales have suffered along with the economy, depriving the magazine of resources that allowed it to operate freely and thrive without the benefit or constraints of being part of a large publishing house.

Reducing pages, going from bimonthly to quarterly, or becoming an online entity are not options, and our editorial and production staff of two full-timers and two part-timers (intact since issue 18) is already as lean as can be.

And so, we are taking a series of actions with the intention of not only outlasting the economic downturn but becoming an even tighter operation with an improved publication. These steps include improving the content, explore printing and distribution options, and evolving with technology. We are also seeking help from friends.

THE MESSAGE

Although the idea of a Giant Robot Foundation is not new (a non-tax-deductible donation form has been included with subscription renewal notices for years now), this particular online campaign is. We believe that there are multiple generations artists, designers, bands, filmmakers, and travelers, as well as fans, students, and supporters of interesting culture who believe in what we do and want Giant Robot magazine to continue on its path without sacrificing quality, quantity, or independence.

We have done the math, and an infusion of $60,000 (hopefully more) will ensure another year of full, unfettered operation with no strings attached to a shifting media paradigm, advertising climate, sketchy distributors, and the economy—each of which we are not ignoring but addressing straight-on. In concert with the other measures (not to mention the realignment and recovery of our shops), we feel that Giant Robot’s future and its continuing impact of society will be secure.

If you have been affected or inspired by Giant Robot—perhaps even featured in the pages of the magazine—please help however you can. All support, both through finances and spreading the word, will be appreciated and make a difference.
I was just thinking about Eric and Martin because I heard they were at the Shinjuku (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=51787) screening earlier this week.

[GeneChing]

Someone better tell Clark Kent.

Berkeley Daily Planet to end print, be Web only (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/02/12/BAST1C095O.DTL)
Matthai Kuruvila, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, February 12, 2010

The Berkeley Daily Planet, a weekly newspaper with an often-irascible and campaigning style that matches the city it covers, announced Thursday that it would become a more frequent Web-only publication but keep its sole reporter.

Planet Editor Becky O'Malley, in her weekly column, explained the decision by citing the economy, pro-Israel "zealots," "city government's perpetual hostility to free newspaper racks," and the fact that its advocacy style isn't a natural fit for advertisers.

The tipping point came a week ago, when the Planet discovered that its payroll preparation company had embezzled money and failed to pay the paper's taxes, O'Malley said.

With "hundreds of thousands" of dollars in potential liabilities, O'Malley said she and her husband, Mike, could no longer afford to subsidize the paper, which had never made a profit in the seven years since they bought it for $15,000 from four Stanford business school graduates.

"The payroll scam made us think we had to bite the bullet," O'Malley said.

O'Malley's column, which says the paper has 40,000 readers, states the paper will publish through this month before reverting to the new Web-only format.

The paper had been downsizing for a while. In October, the O'Malleys laid off two of their three reporters. The paper had been reduced to publishing weekly, despite its name.

The paper was more than just a dutiful recorder of the machinations of government. It was a part of the political conversation, often taking a preservationist stance on issues like the proposed scaling up of the city's downtown.

But the paper's most influential and controversial role may have been as a community forum. Its letters to the editors were often published unedited for language or length.

Rob Wrenn, a neighborhood activist and former planning commissioner, said that although he is not a fan of the paper's journalism, the letters to the editor were important to the community.

"They've provided an open forum for the expression of all viewpoints in the city," Wrenn said. "The fact that they print everything is a good thing."

That wasn't so much the case when the paper, like the city's government, ventured into world events.

An August 2006 opinion piece published by an Iranian student living in India blamed Jews for anti-Semitism, from 539 B.C. to the present. The piece triggered a wave of protest from local rabbis, elected officials, and columns in the SF Weekly and The Chronicle.

Complaints from pro-Israel groups went well beyond that column, ultimately triggering a campaign against it. O'Malley said advertisers dropped by 60 percent, though she said it was impossible to discern how much of a role the recession played.

John Gertz, editor of dpwatchdog.com, a self-described Daily Planet watchdog site, has referred to the paper as a haven for "jihadists," among other things. He said it was sad the Planet was closing because he wanted only to reform it.

"Am I to blame?" he asked. "I'm only the messenger here."

[MightyB]

http://www.jpgmag.com/magazine

In a nutshell - their completely user generated content, advertiser supported, and they only print on demand for people who want a hardcopy, otherwise it's a PDF download.

[GeneChing]

The Future of Publishing - created by DK (UK) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Weq_sHxghcg)

I've always had the highest respect for DK.

[Skip J.]

The Future of Publishing - created by DK (UK) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Weq_sHxghcg)

I've always had the highest respect for DK.

That was well done Gene, thanks!

[MightyB]

I think you'll find this interesting Gene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYCvSntOI5s

[doug maverick]

you really cant tell print publishing is dying here...there are like 10 papers here. you got the post, daily news, ny times, news day, epoch, metro, voice, etc. and new papers poping up all the time. some of them are free papers that survive on advertising money.

[doug maverick]

http://new.music.yahoo.com/blogs/amplifier/49383/lady-gaga-sells-magazines-taylor-swift-does-not/

[GeneChing]

heck, i'd put gaga on our cover if she just did any martial arts (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=41233).

[wenshu]

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/45671-two-borders-execs-resign-b-n-issues-statement-on-special-terms-.html

[GeneChing]

We should add the end of IKF here (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1071970#post1071970).

Magazines suffer the impact of free media and blame the teenagers (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jan/24/magazines-free-media-launches)
Teen magazine Sugar closes but Bauer prepares to publish Gaz7etta
Magazines Magazine buying has been hit by the popularity of free media

It was a bitter start to the year for the staff of Sugar, the 17-year-old teen magazine which was axed last week after its owner said it was "no longer a viable business". Sugar's tumbling circulation, to an average of 113,320 a month from a high of 422,179 in the first half of 2000, reflected a teenage market which has shrunk 75% in a decade.

It was already shaping up to be an uncertain 12 months for the sector, with high-profile launches thin on the ground, and imminent consolidation with the long-mooted sale of BBC Magazines and a likely tie-up between Sugar parent Hachette Filipacchi and Hearst, owner of NatMags; and with the iPad turning out to be not quite the pot of gold some publishers suspected. Not yet, anyway.

"I don't think many publishers would deny that there is a reduced appetite as a whole for paid-for print magazines in the UK," says James Tye, the chief executive of Dennis Publishing. "There's growth in some areas – we've seen it at The Week [owned by Dennis] and at our motoring titles, but there have been [declines] in the teenage sector, men's magazines, the technical and gaming press."

Hachette Filipacchi blamed the Sugar closure on teenagers spending more time on their mobile phones and the web who "increasingly expect to receive content for free". It is an issue that the music industry – along with most media owners – has been struggling with for some time.

"It's an overwhelming consumer trend," says Mike Soutar, founder and chief executive of Shortlist Media, the publisher of the free men's weekly of the same name and its "freemium" sister title Stylist, launched in 2009. "You can't have something as culturally significant as digital media and not expect it to change people's habits.

"It's naive to think young people don't expect to get a huge amount of information digitally, and very difficult for print titles aimed at the marketplace to offer distinctive and valuable content. It's very sad what's happened to Just 17, Smash Hits, and Sugar – it was a golden age of teenage publishing."

With costs at the thick end of £10m, launches of new paid-for mags have dried up. Condé Nast launched its high-end fashion title Love and a UK edition of the technology magazine Wired two years ago, while IPC launched Good To Know Recipes, to rather less media fanfare, at the beginning of last year.

All eyes are now on Bauer Media and its planned new men's weekly Gaz7etta, a Grazia for men which dipped its immaculately pedicured toe in the market with a free pilot issue in October. Rumours of an imminent launch were batted back by the publisher, but expect at least another giveaway edition some time soon. Bauer Media's chief executive, Paul Keenan, called it a "challenging space to enter". He's not kidding, as the men's market – outside of free titles Shortlist and Sport – is suffering one of the most dramatic declines of recent years.

It's a far cry from the first half of the last decade, when Soutar, as the group editorial director of IPC, developed four titles in three years – Nuts, Pick Me Up, Look and TV Easy. Bauer (back then still Emap) launched another four titles between 1999 and 2006 – Heat, Closer, Zoo and Grazia.

"There was so much launch activity in the early to mid 2000s, that I think a lot of publishers are digesting what they did then," says Nicholas Coleridge, the managing director of Condé Nast UK. "I think a lot of publishers extended themselves with a lot of new titles and I would be surprised if they were looking at a major launch in the next couple of years.

"We will definitely launch more magazines but it won't be this year because Wired and Love have just appeared. We are working very hard on our digital plans, and we are launching magazines in other countries.

Condé Nast's UK edition of Wired hit its first year circulation target of 50,000 but only by giving away 10,000 copies. Coleridge expects its most recent paid-for circulation will be slightly up.

"We had a boom in the 1991-92 recession and although I wouldn't say we've seen a boom in this recession, we certainly haven't seen falls," he adds. "If one of my kids said 'should I go into the magazine industry?', I would definitely say 'yes'. The future will be print and digital."

Dennis Publishing looked to embrace the digital future with digital-only brands such as its technology title iGizmo, with around 70,000 iPad app downloads to date, and the five-year-old men's mag Monkey, read by a quarter of a million people online a week (and boasting 15,000 app downloads).

But there is uncertainty over how much of a revenue generator the iPad – or rather, tablet – phenomenon (208m are expected to be sold by 2014) will prove to be. Coleridge, who launched iPad apps for both Vogue and Wired, has predicted that up to 40% of the publisher's sales will one day come from tablets.

Soutar is not so sure. "It simply hasn't turned out to be the great saviour that even six months ago most publishers were hailing it to be," he reckons. "All the evidence has shown that beyond the novelty of the launch edition, consumers are not happy to pay anything like the same amount [on a tablet] that they might pay for a magazine."

"There are just not enough tablets out there to generate enough scale to turn the investment publishers are making into real revenues," adds Rob Lynam, head of press trading at the media agency MEC. "There has been a race to put iPad apps out there but when media agencies talk to publishers there just isn't enough critical mass of users to turn into real advertising cash."

If not for new launches, 2011 is likely to be remembered as the year of the buy-up, with the sale of the majority of BBC Worldwide's magazines – possibly to Bauer Media – thought to be entering its final stages, and Hearst preparing to buy Hachette Filipacchi from Lagardère in a deal valued at £600m. The consolidation is likely to see strong titles thrive at the expense of weaker ones, and make life even harder for independent publishers.

But hope springs eternal, and not just at Bauer Media's Gaz7etta. The total number of magazine titles published in the UK last year was up 2% on 2009, and 20% more than in 1990. Publishers are nothing if not optimistic. Advertising revenue in the consumer magazine sector was up 5% in 2010 and is forecast to rise another 2% this year.

This year's total number of copies sold of consumer monthlies is expected to fall by around 5%, with the long-term trend seeing readers move away from monthlies to weeklies, and from specialist to general magazines. But as Rita Lewis, the publisher of Sugar as well as Elle and Elle Decoration, points out: "Different markets have different levels of health. For Elle and Elle Decoration we expect the next set of ABC figures to be incredibly positive."

Sugar will live on via its website, Sugarscape.com, which has around 430,000 unique users a month, while Elle has looked to offer its readers a "360 degree experience" with complementary content on apps and online. On the same day that it announced the teen magazine's closure, Hachette Filipacchi issued figures showing Elleuk.com had gained its 200,000th Twitter follower. But that will have been no consolation to staff on Sugar.
Fortunately, we're not after the teen market so much.

[GeneChing]

Why Barnes & Noble’s Nook Subscription Sales May Spell the End of Its Stores (http://www.bnet.com/blog/publishing-style/why-barnes-noble-8217s-nook-subscription-sales-may-spell-the-end-of-its-stores/1286)
By Lydia Dishman | January 25, 2011

Barnes & Noble’s (BKS) latest sales milestone may have execs at world’s largest bookseller doing a victory lap. Just don’t look for them at any of the chain’s 700+ stores. NOOKnewsstand is responsible for the stellar sales with a mix of subscriptions and single copy digital periodical downloads amounting to 650,000. Results like this continue to prove B&N’s investment in its digital strategy is continuing to pay off handsomely.

It’s certainly very encouraging when you consider that magazine sales on Apple’s (APPL) iPad have taken a nosedive since their debut, according to data from the Audit Bureau of Circulations. For example, WWD’s Memo Pad reported Wired’s first digital edition sold 100,000 copies and was down to just 23,000 five months later. But now that Nooknewsstand is outstripping sales on the top-selling tablet, will B&N’s confidence spell the end of brick-and-mortar bookstores as we know them?

Barnes & Noble’s stores are becoming more and more like placeholders for digital gadgets and non-book items. Indeed, walk into any B&N store and it’s hard to miss the bright, white shrine to Nook visible immediately after crossing the threshold. And real estate for paper books in B&N’s stores continues to shrink in other ways as tables formerly laden with the latest good reads have been supplanted by toys, games, greeting cards, desk accessories, and the like.

Laments from more Luddite bookworms notwithstanding, e-readers are selling like hotcakes. B&N’s comparable-store sales might have posted an impressive 9.7 percent increase — the first holiday gains in five years — but the charge was largely led by Nook. On the e-commerce side, Barnes & Noble.com’s comps increased a whopping 78 percent compared to last year’s holiday selling season. All the more reason the C-suite may be considering a more a seismic shift.

In fact, it’s already in progress. B&N may be blowing smoke around what it calls “small organizational changes,” but prominent heads have rolled this week. PW reported that veteran VP of merchandising Bob Wietrak and Marcella Smith, director of small press and vendor relations, left the company along with a number of buyers including Lee Stern who was responsible for cookbooks (not many of which are available as e-books yet). Reports say up to 50 positions in the buying group were eliminated.

PW’s report says one publisher noted, “Someone has to be in charge of getting books into the stores.” Maybe not, if B&N’s ultimate goal is to move the entire business into the ether.
NOOK seems to be emerging as the tablet platform. Interesting...

[GeneChing]

I'm wondering how this will effect our newsstand distribution. Won't be good, that's for sure. :(

Subscribe now (http://www.martialartsmart.com/19341.html).


No Place Left to Run: Out of Options, Borders Files for Bankruptcy (http://blogs.forbes.com/indersidhu/2011/02/18/no-place-left-to-run-out-of-options-borders-files-for-bankruptcy/)
Feb. 18 2011 - 12:55 pm | 0 views | 0 recommendations | 0 comments
By INDER SIDHU

Been to a Borders bookstore lately? If not, you better hurry. As part of its Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing this week, the book and magazine retailer announced that it will close more than 200 superstores nationwide by mid-April.

On second thought, you probably don’t have to rush just yet. Unless you live in Wyoming, chances are there will still be a Borders store near you come May—possibly more than one. This is the byproduct of the organization’s ill-advised decision a few years ago to open hundreds of new stores, many within walking distance of one another. Instead of strengthening Borders, the strategy left the company burdened with excessive retail space and inventory. In San Francisco, for example, there are two Borders superstores in and around historic Union Square. In less time than it takes to consume a coffee purchased in one store you could walk to the other to buy a magazine.

Convenient? Perhaps. Strategically competitive? Not exactly.

Borders, like Blockbuster and other struggling retailers, seems optimized for a bygone era. But its nemesis in bricks-and-mortar book sales, Barnes & Noble, is competitively positioned. Given that both sell the same books from the same publishers in similar retail environments, you might wonder why Borders is bleeding cash while Barnes & Noble is holding its own. The answer has everything to do with Borders’ failure to react appropriately to two market transitions—first the shift to online book selling, then the embrace of electronic readers.

In each case, Borders failed to develop a new business model while trying to perfect its traditional one. Doing both helped Barnes & Noble hold its ground against Amazon.com, WalMart and others who compete effectively in book selling. Doing only one doomed Borders. Here’s why.

As long ago as 2002, when Amazon.com posted its first profit, it was clear that retail book selling was a business under siege. Since then, thousands of independent booksellers across the nation have closed, many of which were longstanding fixtures in their communities. Think Kroch’s and Brentano’s of Chicago and Coliseum Books of New York. Most booksellers simply could not compete with the price and convenience of Amazon.com or the bigger, national chains. Now all brick-and-mortar book sellers are challenged, especially as the market transitions once more.

Last June marked a significant milestone in the book business. Then, Amazon.com, the world’s largest book seller, announced that sales of books for its Kindle e-reader outnumbered those for hardcover books for the first time. It wasn’t an unexpected achievement, but a noteworthy one nonetheless. It confirmed what prognosticators have predicted for a decade: sooner or later, the majority of all titles—from textbooks to cook books, fictional classics to political biographies—will be distributed in electronic format.

For Borders, this was a crushing blow. Unlike Barnes & Noble, which made steep investments in online books sales and digital technology, Borders did not plan adequately for the future. Take online book sales. More than a decade ago, Borders wasn’t sure how to play in the online world. After toying with an e-commerce site, it outsourced online sales to Amazon. Talk about collaborating with the enemy. Not until 2008 did Borders recognize that online book-selling had to become a core competency of the company. Since then, Borders has struggled to catch-up. Today, online hardcopy sales generate less than 3 percent of revenue for the company—less than one-third of what Barnes & Noble derives from online sales.

When it comes to e-readers, Borders is even further behind. While it spun cycles mulling what to sell in its in-store canteens, Barnes & Noble made important strides developing a competitive e-reader. As of January 2011, Barnes & Noble has shipped more than 2 million Nooks, which represent one of fastest growing parts of Barnes & Nobles’ business. As for Borders, it fumbled on its e-reader strategy. It decided against creating a me-too device, choosing instead to offer the Kobo, Velocity Micro Cruz and Franklin AnyBook devices from other companies. Unfortunately for it, none of these have become big sellers. If you order a cup of coffee at a Borders canteen today, chances are you’ll see more customers with iPads or Nooks than Kobos.

In that moment, you can appreciate the wisdom of developing a new business model that will carry you in the future while simultaneously optimizing the existing business model that keeps your business aloft today. Doing both is simply good business. Doing one at the expense of the other is not.

Inder Sidhu is the Senior Vice President of Strategy & Planning for Worldwide Operations at Cisco, and the author of Doing Both: How Cisco Captures Today’s Profits and Drives Tomorrow’s Growth. Author proceeds from sales of Doing Both go to charity. Follow Inder on Twitter at @indersidhu.

[PalmStriker]

Pretty scary how fast things are changing, creating winners and losers in the market, in many ways creating a mass underclass. Not too inspiring. :(

[mooyingmantis]

Our local Borders is about 5 minutes from my house. It is where I buy all my books and magazines. I'm very sad to see this happen.

[GeneChing]

I've been in the book business for years, as has my wife, and the fall of the megabookstores like Borders and Barnes & Noble was predicted when they first emerged. There's just not enough margin in the book business for that kind of business model to succeed. There never was. That was a problem even before the rise of tablets like Kindle or iPad. All the small independents knew exactly what would happen. The megastores would come in and smother the indies with lower prices, better locations and spacious stores, but they wouldn't be able to sustain themselves on such low mark-up, nor would they be able to foster a loyal customer base with centralized buying. Then they would collapse under their own sheer weight, and bring print literacy down. It's tragic really, a classic example of how capitalism can destroy a society when unchecked. In this case, there was no real way to control it. There were some initial lawsuits but nothing significant ever came of them.

I just went by our local Borders, hoping to find the latest National Geographic because it has a Shaolin article (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1079344#post1079344). It was in chaos with the store closing sale. Across the street, there used to be a Barnes & Noble, but it closed recently. The utter audacity of Borders and Barnes & Noble opening right across the street from each other shows the pompous attitude of those franchises. There's an old African saying "When two elephants are fighting, the grass - they will suffer."

Now there's no large newsstands in Fremont, CA beyond the supermarkets, Target and Walmart.

That's right. I can't even buy our magazine in my own 'hood.

:(

[GeneChing]

I haven't been posting here for a year because it's too depressing


March 13, 2012, 5:54 pm
After 244 Years, Encyclopaedia Britannica Stops the Presses (http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/after-244-years-encyclopaedia-britannica-stops-the-presses/?emc=eta1)
By JULIE BOSMAN

After 244 years, the Encyclopaedia Britannica is going out of print.

Those coolly authoritative, gold-lettered reference books that were once sold door-to-door by a fleet of traveling salesmen and displayed as proud fixtures in American homes will be discontinued, company executives said.

In an acknowledgment of the realities of the digital age — and of competition from the Web site Wikipedia — Encyclopaedia Britannica will focus primarily on its online encyclopedias and educational curriculum for schools. The last print version is the 32-volume 2010 edition, which weighs 129 pounds and includes new entries on global warming and the Human Genome Project.

“It’s a rite of passage in this new era,” Jorge Cauz, the president of Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc., a company based in Chicago, said in an interview. “Some people will feel sad about it and nostalgic about it. But we have a better tool now. The Web site is continuously updated, it’s much more expansive and it has multimedia.”

In the 1950s, having the Encyclopaedia Britannica on the bookshelf was akin to a station wagon in the garage or a black-and-white Zenith in the den, a possession coveted for its usefulness and as a goalpost for an aspirational middle class. Buying a set was often a financial stretch, and many families had to pay for it in monthly installments.

But in recent years, print reference books have been almost completely overtaken by the Internet and its vast spread of resources, including specialized Web sites and the hugely popular — and free — online encyclopedia Wikipedia.

Since it was started 11 years ago, Wikipedia has moved a long way toward replacing the authority of experts with the wisdom of the crowds. The site is now written and edited by tens of thousands of contributors around the world, and it has been gradually accepted as a largely accurate and comprehensive source, even by many scholars and academics.

Wikipedia also regularly meets the 21st-century mandate of providing instantly updated material. And it has nearly four million articles in English, including some on pop culture topics that would not be considered worthy of a mention in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Mr. Cauz said that he believed Britannica’s competitive advantage with Wikipedia came from its prestigious sources, its carefully edited entries and the trust that was tied to the brand.

“We have very different value propositions,” Mr. Cauz said. “Britannica is going to be smaller. We cannot deal with every single cartoon character, we cannot deal with every love life of every celebrity. But we need to have an alternative where facts really matter. Britannica won’t be able to be as large, but it will always be factually correct.”

But one widely publicized study, published in 2005 by Nature, called into question Britannica’s presumed accuracy advantage over Wikipedia. The study said that out of 42 competing entries, Wikipedia made an average of four errors in each article, and Britannica three. Britannica responded with a lengthy rebuttal saying the study was error-laden and “completely without merit.”

The Britannica, the oldest continuously published encyclopedia in the English language, has become a luxury item with a $1,395 price tag. It is frequently bought by embassies, libraries and research institutions, and by well-educated, upscale consumers who felt an attachment to the set of bound volumes. Only 8,000 sets of the 2010 edition have been sold, and the remaining 4,000 have been stored in a warehouse until they are bought.

“I spent many hundreds of hours with those gold-embossed Britannica volumes on my lap, with pages you could actually turn, not click or swipe.”

— A.J. Jacobs

The 2010 edition had more than 4,000 contributors, including Arnold Palmer (who wrote the entry on the Masters tournament) and Panthea Reid, professor emeritus at Louisiana State University and author of the biography “Art and Affection: A Life of Virginia Woolf” (who wrote about Virginia Woolf).

Sales of the Britannica peaked in 1990, when 120,000 sets were sold in the United States. But now print encyclopedias account for less than 1 percent of the Britannica’s revenue. About 85 percent of revenue comes from selling curriculum products in subjects like math, science and the English language; 15 percent comes from subscriptions to the Web site, the company said.

About half a million households pay a $70 annual fee for the online subscription, which includes access to the full database of articles, videos, original documents and to the company’s mobile applications. At least one other general-interest encyclopedia in the United States, the World Book, is still printing a 22-volume yearly edition, said Jennifer Parello, a spokeswoman for World Book Inc. She declined to provide sales figures but said the encyclopedia was bought primarily by schools and libraries.

Gary Marchionini, the dean of the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said the fading of print encyclopedias was “an inexorable trend that will continue.”

“There’s more comprehensive material available on the Web,” Mr. Marchionini said. “The thing that you get from an encyclopedia is one of the best scholars in the world writing a description of that phenomenon or that object, but you’re still getting just one point of view. Anything worth discussing in life is worth getting more than one point of view.”

Many librarians say that while they have rapidly shifted money and resources to digital materials, print still has a place. Academic libraries tend to keep many sets of specialized encyclopedias on their shelves, like volumes on Judaica, folklore, music or philosophy, or encyclopedias that are written in foreign languages and unavailable online.

At the Portland Public Library in Maine, there are still many encyclopedias that the library orders on a regular basis, sometimes every year, said Sonya Durney, a reference librarian. General-interest encyclopedias are often used by students whose teachers require them to occasionally cite print sources, just to practice using print.

“They’re used by anyone who’s learning, anyone who’s new to the country, older patrons, people who aren’t comfortable online,” Ms. Durney said. “There’s a whole demographic of people who are more comfortable with print.”

But many people are discovering that the books have outlived their usefulness. Used editions of encyclopedias are widely available on Craigslist and eBay: more than 1,400 listings for Britannica products were posted on eBay this week.

Charles Fuller, a geography professor who lives in the Chicago suburbs, put his 1992 edition on sale on Craigslist last Sunday. For years, he has neglected the print encyclopedias, he said in an interview, and now prefers to use his iPhone to look up facts quickly. He and his wife are downsizing and relocating to California, he said, and the Encyclopaedia Britannica will not be coming with them, a loss he acknowledges with a hint of wistfulness.

“They’re not obsolete,” Mr. Fuller said. “When I’m doing serious research, I still use the print books. And they look really beautiful on the bookshelves.”

[Lucas]

one thing print books will always have over electric books are the room for and the ease of adding footnotes, for yourself, as well as for future readers of that book.

I buy a lot of used books and just love when i am reading philosophy and have someone from past times' input as to their angle of understanding. it can be a great boon at times.

[Lucas]

Powell's Books (http://www.powells.com/) is the best book store on Earth. City of Books.

[GeneChing]

It's too depressing. :(


Newsweek's Print Shutdown Not A Sign Of Broader Magazine Troubles (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/19/newsweek-print-magazine-industry_n_1983927.html)
AP | By RYAN NAKASHIMA Posted: 10/19/2012 12:19 am EDT

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Newsweek's decision to stop publishing a print edition after 80 years and bet its life entirely on a digital future may be more a commentary on its own problems than a definitive statement on the health of the magazine industry.

Magazine ad revenue in the U.S. is seen rising 2.6 percent this year to $18.3 billion, according to research firm eMarketer. That would be the third increase in three years, driven mainly by gains in digital ad sales, though print ads are expected to be flat.

Paid magazine subscriptions were up 1.1 percent in the first half of the year, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. And while single-copy sales at newsstands are down 9.6 percent, overall circulation - the bulk of which is in print - is steady compared to a year ago.

The water is so warm for the magazine industry that in the first nine months of the year, 181 new magazines were launched while only about a third as many, or 61, closed, according to publication database MediaFinder.com.

By several measures, the magazine business has stabilized, albeit at a lower level, since the Great Recession ended three years ago.

For some, that casts a harsher light on Newsweek's decision to abandon print - affecting the nearly 1.4 million Newsweek subscribers who get their copy each week in the mail. They say it speaks to the magazine's trouble connecting with and keeping its readers.

That brings to mind some questionable covers, like the July 2011 what-if image depicting what Princess Diana would have looked like at age 50, or last month's "Muslim Rage" cover depicting angry protesters, which was roundly mocked on social networks like Twitter.

Newsweek is using a difficult print ad environment as an "excuse" for its decision to end print runs, said Samir Husni, director of the Magazine Innovation Center at the University of Mississippi School of Journalism. He lays the blame at the feet of Tina Brown, the editor who took control of Newsweek when it merged with the news website she ran, The Daily Beast, two years ago.

"Tina Brown took Newsweek in the wrong direction," Husni said. "Newsweek did not die, Newsweek committed suicide."

To be sure, the problems were acute by the time Brown took control. Newsweek's circulation had plummeted from about 3.1 million in 2007 to 1.8 million in 2010, when The Washington Post Co. sold the magazine to stereo equipment magnate Sidney Harman for $1. Harman later placed Newsweek into a joint venture with IAC/InterActiveCorp's The Daily Beast website in an effort to trim the magazine's losses and widen its online audience.

This year, total circulation is down to about 1.5 million, less than half of what it was five years earlier, even including about 29,000 digital copies.

Meanwhile, circulation of rival Time magazine is down from about 4 million in 2006 to 3.3 million this year, a decline of just 19 percent.

General news format magazines have been challenged with the rise of news reading on the Internet, much of which is free. And Newsweek isn't the first to drop its print product. US News & World Report dropped its weekly print edition years ago and now focuses on the Web and special print editions, such as a guide to the best graduate schools. SmartMoney announced in June that it was going all-digital.

Yet others are succeeding. The Economist has nearly doubled its circulation to 1.6 million from 844,000 a year ago. The Week is up to 541,000 from 525,000.

And unlike the bold move by Newsweek, many publications are taking steps to add digital formats while maintaining the print product, which is still the mainstay of their business.

Paul Canetti, the founder and CEO of MAZ, a company that helps magazines publish digital editions, says he tells prospective clients to "dip their toes" into digital publishing and "wade in as the market demands it." He notes only about a quarter of Americans own tablet computers, which have become a popular way to read online magazines.

"Maybe what they're really facing is an audience-connection problem and not really a print-versus-digital problem at all," he said.

Going all-digital could solve many problems associated with the print magazine business. For instance, magazine publishers charge advertisers according to a so-called "rate card" that is based on a promised number of paying subscribers, called a "rate base." If subscriptions fall, publishers then must spend a lot of money mailing potential customers and offering heavy discounts just to keep advertising revenue from falling.

In contrast, online advertising usually requires advertisers to pay only for ads that are seen or clicked on by readers, a number that is easily measurable in real time and that doesn't require the discounting of subscription prices.

Moving online could solve that problem, which hit Newsweek in particular, said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism at the Pew Research Center in Washington.

"Newsweek's problems came from spending an enormous amount of money to maintain a guaranteed rate base," he said. "They ended up spending millions each year to try to reach a number of readers they needed to reach."

Newsweek is betting that there will be enough growth in the number of tablet users to make up for the fact that when its print runs end with the Dec. 31 issue, a lot of subscribers will be left without a way to get the magazine.

The magazine expects that the number of tablet users in the U.S. will exceed 70 million this year, up from 13 million just two years ago, Newsweek spokesman Andrew Kirk said.

"We have reached a tipping point in the industry at which we can most efficiently and effectively reach ... readers in an all-digital format," he said.

However, it's a choice that doesn't reflect the general health of the industry, said Mary Berner, president of The Association of Magazine Media.

She said she doesn't want a decision by one publication to be an indication that the entire magazine industry "is going down the toilet."

"That's simply not true," she said. "The experience of reading the print version of magazines is not going away."

[GeneChing]

This article gives a good overview of how other magazines are reacting to the shift in publishing trends. So what do you think? 50 shades of Kung Fu Tai Chi? :rolleyes:


For magazines, another year of transition (http://www.medialifemagazine.com/for-magazines-another-year-of-transition/)
In 2012 their focus continued to shift from print to digital
By Bill Cromwell
December 11, 2012

The defining magazine story of 2012, the closure of the print edition of Newsweek, foreshadows what may be the most volatile year for magazines yet.

More titles will shift to online-only, and even those that maintain their print editions will look increasingly to circulation and digital advertising to make up for the steep declines in print ads, which show no signs of slowdown.

News and celebrity magazines look especially vulnerable, as the web threatens to make their format obsolete.

Certainly it’s an alarm that’s been sounded before.

But the demise of Newsweek, one of the best-known brands in magazines and one of the biggest to fall victim to the digital stampede, has emphasized the looming problem like never before.

The industry is in deep flux.

“Although people will always–hopefully–want to read what we now call a magazine, magazines have to stop thinking about themselves in the traditional way and have to start thinking of themselves more as content providers, with the content being distributed on the platform most suitable for the content itself–print, web, tablet, smartphone, etc.,” says Martin S. Walker, chairman at Walker Communications, a print consultancy.

In the coming year, magazines will be focusing more and more on furthering their brands rather than simply selling a print product.

Expect more deals such as the one reached this month between Cosmopolitan and Harlequin. The two are collaborating on a series of erotic digital books, riding the popularity of “Fifty Shades of Grey,” but in a modern format. Cosmo is already pushing the books as the perfect mobile reading material.

Magazines are revamping their web sites to keep current with social media trends. Glamour, for instance, recently overhauled its site to give it more of a Pinterest feel, with bigger pictures and more emphasis on “sharing” images and articles on social networks.

Interactivity is also a hugely popular trend with the print product. Earlier this year Ladies Home Journal began relying on readers to generate much of its content, giving the magazine more of a blog feel.

For its December issue, Esquire turned every page interactive by using Netpage, an app that allows readers to use their cell phones to take a photo of the page and then interact with the content as they would on a tablet device.

“[Such developments] make magazines more relevant to a digital savvy audience/reader and provides larger audience and more upscale audience for advertisers,” Walker says.

That’s something magazines need right now, because ad revenue is not coming out of its tailspin.

Every major forecaster predicts that spending for the medium will be down next year. Pivotal Research Group predicts a 6.7 percent decline, after a 6.8 percent dip this year.

And ZenithOptimedia predicts a 3.2 percent decrease, after falling 3.4 percent this year.

In the short term digital gains will not offset the print losses in ad spending. Longer term, however, that may be a possibility if magazines begin gaining not only substantial advertiser spending but also circulation revenue from tablets and other online editions.

Tablet adoption is expected to reach 50 percent of the U.S. population by the end of next year.

“Nearly 40.0 percent of tablet owners accessed magazine content on these devices each month, a trend potentially redefining the digital market for publishers,” notes ZenithOptimedia in its year-end forecast.

The road to increased adoption of digital magazines will be bumpy, and Newsweek will not be the only casualty.

Readers predicted in a Media Life poll earlier this year that at least one celebrity title will fold in the coming year, and buyers are watching Time, the only traditional newsweekly still printing, closely for clues to its future.

Men’s titles and women’s service magazines have also been struggling at a time when so much fashion, lifestyle and entertainment information is available on the web.

But Walker thinks that a few categories will continue to thrive in print.

“Magazines devoted to long-form journalism, such as The New Yorker, and fashion and beauty and home furnishing magazines where print provides the best product illustrations” are in the best shape heading into 2013, he says.

[Raipizo]

Yes please the martial arts ladies need a steamy magazine to read too! :D

[GeneChing]

It's been a year since I've posted here. Probably out of denial. But here's an NYT article that explains in part why we're still on the newsstands. It's all of you. Keep subscribing!


Loyal Subscribers Keep Hobby Magazines Afloat (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/28/business/media/loyal-subscribers-keep-hobby-magazines-afloat.html)
By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY
Published: December 27, 2013

Lance Prucnal, a Navy reservist from Waxahachie, Tex., said he would give up his train club before giving up his train magazines.

Mr. Prucnal’s wife dumped Family Circle, Taste of Home and Better Homes & Gardens because she no longer found enough interesting recipes. His daughter said goodbye to Glamour. And he didn’t renew Newsweek and The Dallas Morning News because the family was getting their general-interest news from television.

But Mr. Prucnal refuses to part with Model Railroader, Classic Trains and Classic Toy Trains. When it comes to the toy train magazines that fuel his passion, he has drawn the line.

“I would probably give up my train club before I would give up my train magazines,” said Mr. Prucnal, an employee at a Walmart outside of Dallas and a Navy reservist, who spends about $120 a year on these publications. “There’s a lot of ‘how to’ articles and a lot of product news.”

Readers like Mr. Prucnal have helped hobby magazines become the darlings of the struggling magazine industry. For decades, the nation’s top general-interest publications, like Time and Newsweek, attracted millions of readers who considered those magazines to be household staples. But as readers increasingly turn to the Internet for news and information, niche magazines continue to retain and attract loyal followings, making them a bright spot in an otherwise dim outlook for print periodicals.

“Titles like Trains aren’t easily replaced,” said Andrew Davis, author of the book “Brandscaping” and a media consultant. “It’s a really passionate community with high-quality content that speaks specifically to them.”

Some high-end hobby magazines like Wine Spectator and Cigar Aficionado have not only experienced steady circulation growth, but have also brought in big revenue by staging special events for subscribers. Wine Spectator’s total circulation in the last decade grew 11 percent and Cigar Aficionado’s total circulation grew 1 percent, according to the Alliance for Audited Media. And Marvin Shanken, who owns both publications, said that subscribers to another magazine in his portfolio, Whisky Advocate, sold out its 17th annual WhiskyFest within hours.

The event, which will be held in Chicago in April, is expected to attract about 1,800 whisky lovers and generate nearly $300,000 in ticket sales.

Other niche magazines like Cycle World and Hot Bike have achieved such strong subscription renewal rates that they have modestly expanded their editorial staff, even as many large publications are trimming their employee ranks. While circulation numbers at Cycle World and Hot Bike have declined slightly in the last decade, both have successfully raised subscription rates, offsetting the drop in circulation, said Andrew Leisner, a senior executive at Bonnier and publisher of both.

“All of the publishers I see on the niche side are making money,” said Mr. Davis, the consultant, who has advised both larger magazines and niche ones like Premier Guitar and Bird Watcher’s Digest. “They’re smaller operations for the most part. But some of them make a really healthy profit.”

While hobby magazines may never grab the attention that a Vogue cover or Time’s Person of the Year issue attracts, their publishers talk of their devoted readerships. Kevin P. Keefe, vice president for editorial and publisher at Kalmbach Publishing, which produces many of Mr. Prucnal’s favorite train magazines, said that his readers were so loyal that some subscribers paid for issues through the 2030s and bought $199.95 DVD sets that let them read all of the issues in the magazine’s then 75-year history. In the eight months since the company introduced a paid website for Model Railroader magazine, nearly 10,000 subscribers have agreed to pay $4.95 a month for access.

Food magazines also have die-hard fans. The Rev. Michael Tang of the Transfiguration Parish in Los Angeles, says that he cannot afford to spend much on travel or clothing. But he also cannot live without his subscriptions to the food magazines Saveur and Bon Appétit. He saves the issues and cooks meals from them both for himself and potential church donors, and also dreams of visiting some of the culinary hot spots featured in those publications.

“Taking a vow of poverty and being a priest, you live vicariously a bit,” said Father Tang. “The magazines are an affordable way to experience life. I will never go to some of those places. But I can have an idea of someone who has gone there.”

That kind of devotion shows up in the advertising numbers: Both magazines outperformed the industry in the third quarter for advertising pages, according to the Publisher’s Information Bureau. While niche publications depend heavily on circulation revenue, advertisers also value their readers’ loyalty. In the third quarter of 2013, Bon Appétit’s advertising dollars jumped by about 27 percent compared to the same time period the year before, while Saveur’s advertising increased by roughly 11 percent. Advertising for the entire industry grew by only 4 percent during that time.

Some readers are so faithful that they will stick with a magazine regardless of price. At a recent motorcycle convention in the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan, Mr. Leisner toured the exhibition hall as he talked about how his editors at Cycle World had become “rock stars in the eyes of readers.” He noted that readers already spend $10,000 to $20,000 on their motorcycles and $2,000 a year on maintenance, so the price of a magazine subscription is fairly incidental. Mr. Leisner said subscribers to motorcycle magazines renewed 80 to 85 percent of the time, the highest renewal rates for any publications owned by their publisher, Bonnier.

“We have been bumping cover prices and subscription prices and have not been losing people,” he said. “If you really want to get into the sport, you really have to go all in.”

Some hobby magazines have also been successfully transitioning to digital, in part because some of their readers never became accustomed to getting their content free. Industry players said that when big magazine brands and newspapers initially flooded the Internet with free content, niche publications did not follow, primarily for financial reasons.

“Niche publishers didn’t have the resources to jump in,” said Mr. Davis, the consultant. “That’s the moment when they put themselves on a path to profitability.”

But now many of them have built subscriber-only websites and other digital offerings, finding success because their readers value the content. Mr. Shanken of Wine Spectator said that some subscribers pay $2.99 a month for its app while still paying $49.95 annually for website access. Then they spend $49.95 more for an annual print subscription, he said, and treat it as a separate product and reading experience.

“With a hobby magazine, you take it home on the weekend, you sit down in an easy chair and you read it,” he said.

As Mr. Shanken walked through a Wine Spectator event at the Marriott Marquis this fall, he strolled by 1,000 attendees who had each paid a $1,850 admission fee that did not include their hotel or airfare. He expected another 4,000 attendees to arrive later that day who would be paying $250 to $400 for tasting events.

“For people who have a passion,” said Mr. Shanken, “they have an endless appetite.”

[GeneChing]

This is a long article so I'm not going to cut&paste it all.



Empire Falls (http://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/money-and-power/tc-october-wolff-forbes#slide-1)

There was a time when practically every rich man wanted to be Malcolm Forbes. For 20 years he was our most famous plutocrat, living lavishly off the millions made by his eponymous magazine, a Reagan-era shrine to capitalism. But then his sons took over, and what followed is one of the great cautionary tales of inherited wealth.

By Michael Wolff September 17, 2014

[GeneChing]

I've been denying this thread. But this is a fine article, worthy of posting here.



Rob Alderson: Sometimes magazines die (http://magculture.com/sometimes-magazines-die/)
Posted by magCulture

3 November 2015

For this month’s Opinion post, Rob Alderson asks if its always bad news when a magazine closes.

Late last week, ESPN announced it was closing Grantland, its four-year-old sports and pop culture site. Grantland was much-loved by many for championing longform writing – with thousands of words expended on unashamedly niche topics. Its closure was a familiar story. ESPN, which had recently laid off 300 workers, didn’t feel it provided value for money any longer – or in corporate press release speak: “We have decided to direct our time and energy going forward to projects that we believe will have a broader and more significant impact across our enterprise.”

Many people on my Twitter feed were very sorry to see Grantland go – a mixture sadness at its demise, fear for the future of similar journalistic enterprises and indignation at its parent company’s shortsighted greed (as they saw it). The most thoughtful response I read came from former editor Sean Fennessey (who recently left Grantland as part of an exodus of senior staff).

In a moving but measured blog post, Fennessey compared the closure of Grantland to the closure of Vibe magazine, which shut back in 2009 when he was music editor. “Vibe was folding, immediately, because it’s a magazine, and that’s what they do,” he wrote. “They start and they end, unless you’re lucky or lousy.”

This struck me as a very sensible way to think about magazines and their inevitable life cycles. Every time a title announces that it has printed its last, the tributes tend to tip into a kind of collective grief and a bewailing of whichever forces are supposed to have led to its downfall.

Whenever this happens, I am reminded of the Friends episode where Ross goes to check on the pet monkey he had given to a zoo, only to find it has died (aficionados of the show will know the monkey had actually become a movie star, but that needn’t concern us here). Shocked to hear his beloved Marcel is no more, Ross is comforted by the zoo manager.

“I’m sorry Mr. Geller. But you know, there’s an old saying: ‘Sometimes monkeys die.’ It’s not a great saying, but it certainly is fitting today.”

Similarly, sometimes magazines die. The reasons for this can be numerous and complex, or singular and straightforward. They can be financial or cultural, caused by bad owners, bad editors or bad decisions. Some magazines close because they can’t or won’t adapt, others close because they change too much. They may run out of steam or they may jump the shark – countless other metaphors are available. Some brilliant magazines close; so do many terrible ones.

And while it’s great to pay tribute to fallen comrades and bask in memories of the good times – and it’s prudent to analyse which factors contributed to their closures – it’s strange to greet all of these closures with an automatic mix of grief and anxiety. Maybe it’s because, despite the widespread confidence that print isn’t dead, any magazine’s decline provokes an uncomfortable “but what if?” doubt, like a slick-suited climate change denier forced to acknowledge that the hydrangeas in his garden really are flowering earlier and earlier each year.

Let’s accept that magazines will close, that no magazine has a right to exist and that the loss of some will be offset by the creation of others. In fact let’s go further. Maybe some magazines that are starting to wane could be killed off by their makers. Rather than managing a decline that may or may not be their fault, these teams could then use their experience and expertise to start new ventures and honour print media’s past by shaping its future.

Perhaps also there is huge value in those magazine-makers whose titles do close talking about what happened. This industry can be obsessed with breathless talk of so-called golden ages and hagiographic success stories. Credit where it’s due, of course, but there’s huge value too in honest tales of how and why a magazine ceased to be. Maybe if these stories were told more frequently, the loss of certain titles would be less of a shock to our collective system.

Which brings us back to Sean Fennessey and his near-perfect way of summing up the magazine-making experience. “You get a chance, you make your chance, you go forward; you get heartbroken, you start again, because this feels valuable.”

[GeneChing]

You may have heard that Playboy is no longer publishing nudity in order to infiltrate the Chinese market.


Penthouse Folds Print Magazine After 50 Years (http://www.foliomag.com/2016/penthouse-folds-print-magazine-50-years/?hq_e=el&hq_m=3202734&hq_l=1&hq_v=4268e4b3fc)
End date for print edition still undetermined as brand plans to focus on digital content.
By Greg Dool :: January 19, 2016

http://cdn.foliomag.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/2e6e8d2c30235b0b72c9da2b33ea860c.jpg

The proliferation of internet pornography is forcing yet another legacy adult magazine to rethink its business model.

Penthouse will cease production of its print magazine, henceforth becoming a digital-only operation, publisher General Media Communications announced.

Future issues will be available electronically on PenthouseMagazine.com, and the magazine's operations will be transferred from New York to General Media's Los Angeles office.

"This move will keep Penthouse competitive in the future and will seamlessly combine our unmatched pictorial features and editorial content with our video and broadcast offerings," said Jonathan Buckheit, CEO of FriendFinder Networks, parent company of General Media, in a statement.

No other details on the transition were given, although an exact end date for the print publication has yet to be determined, according to FriendFinder Networks CFO, Ezra Shashoua.

The announcement to shutter the 50-year-old print magazine, long known as the raunchier rival to Playboy, comes just months after Playboy itself announced the decision to phase out nudity from its pages as part of a redesign set to debut in March.

"That battle has been fought and won,” said Playboy Enterprises CEO, Scott Flanders, at the time. "You’re now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free. And so it’s just passé at this juncture."

It comes as no surprise that Penthouse is also feeling the heat, as hardcore pornography is increasingly accessed through an internet connection and not in the pages of magazines.

On top of compounding market forces, the financial woes of FriendFinder Networks cannot be ignored.

After unsuccessfully attempting to buy Playboy Enterprises, Inc. in 2010, the company, operators of sites such as AdultFriendFinder.com and Cams.com, declared bankruptcy in 2013, its stock eventually being delisted from Nasdaq. General Media had itself filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy ten years earlier, in 2003, leading to the resignation of longtime chairman Bob Guccione.

"As FriendFinder Networks is one of the innovators of online social media, it is only appropriate that our valuable Penthouse flagship magazine now join our other web offerings, available through FFN’s established worldwide network," added Buckheit.

Now the lone, major-brand holdout, Hustler publisher Larry Flynt acknowledged to Bloomberg in 2014 that his magazine could easily be next on the chopping block.

"I don't think Hustler is going to be around much longer," he said at the time. "As long as it makes money, I'll continue to publish, but we can see the handwriting on the wall."

[Faux Newbie]

Penthouse closing is sad. Mainly because it has served as the format for any post I make here about my extensive experiences on THE STREET.

"You're not going to believe this, but..."

[GeneChing]

I really hope this comes to pass. America needs newsstands again. More specifically, Kung Fu Tai Chi (http://www.martialartsmart.com/19341.html) needs more newsstands again. :o


Amazon Is Said to Be Planning an Expansion Into Retail Bookstores (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/03/technology/amazon-is-said-to-be-planning-an-expansion-into-retail-bookstores.html?_r=0)
By NICK WINGFIELDFEB. 2, 2016

http://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/02/03/business/03amazon-web/03amazon-web-master675.jpg
Jeff Bezos, chief executive of Amazon. Credit Josh Haner/The New York Times

SEATTLE — Amazon signs may be headed to more physical storefronts.

The Internet retailer plans to open more brick-and-mortar bookstores following the unveiling last year of one such location here in its hometown, according to a person briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential plans.

But the company’s plans for physical stores are modest, this person said, especially in comparison with reports of an expansion suggested by an unusual source, the chief of a large shopping mall operator.

Sandeep Mathrani, chief executive of the mall operator General Growth Properties, was answering questions from analysts on Tuesday about foot traffic in malls when he said, of Amazon’s bookstore plans, “Their goal is to open, as I understand, 300 to 400 bookstores,” according to a recording of the call.

Mr. Mathrani did not say how he heard about Amazon’s plans. Kevin Berry, a spokesman for General Growth Properties, declined to comment further. The Wall Street Journal earlier reported on Mr. Mathrani’s comments about Amazon.

A spokesman for Amazon declined to comment.

Even if Amazon is not planning to go nationwide with its stores anytime soon, any expansion of its brick-and-mortar presence is likely to send shivers down the spines of other booksellers. Amazon’s success as an online retailer of physical and electronic books has already devastated chains like Borders and seriously wounded Barnes & Noble.

Independent booksellers, though, are seeing sales growth in many parts of the country, showing how reluctant some book fans have been to give up browsing store shelves.

“There are all kinds of studies that show the best way to find things when you don’t know what you’re looking for is an old-fashioned bookstore,” said John Mutter, editor in chief and co-founder of Shelf Awareness, which publishes an email newsletter for booksellers and librarians. “I think that’s a major part of what Amazon is trying to do with this bookstore in Seattle.”

Mr. Mutter said the success of some booksellers could not have escaped the notice of Amazon’s chief executive, Jeff Bezos.

“They seem very thorough in terms of competing,” Mr. Mutter said.

Last year, Amazon opened its first physical bookstore in the University Village shopping mall in Seattle. The store features thousands of books, a tiny sampling of those on Amazon’s website, most of them with customer ratings of four stars and above.

The books sell for the same price in the store as they do on Amazon’s site. Because book prices regularly change on the site, visitors to the store scan books using a mobile app to find out how much they cost.

Although the store is called Amazon Books, it prominently features a growing array of Amazon-made devices, including the Kindle tablet, the Fire TV set-top device and Echo, its home speaker and virtual assistant.

Because Mr. Bezos has outsize ambitions for most of the company’s initiatives, the opening of the Seattle location quickly led to speculation about a nationwide chain of Amazon stores. Jennifer Cast, an early Amazon executive and trusted lieutenant of Mr. Bezos, returned to the company to help oversee the store initiative after leaving Amazon more than a dozen years ago.

[GeneChing]

You may have heard that Playboy is no longer publishing nudity in order to infiltrate the Chinese market.


The Strange History of Playboy in China (http://fortune.com/2016/02/18/playboy-in-china/)
by Scott Cendrowski @scendrowski FEBRUARY 18, 2016, 4:38 AM EST

http://i0.wp.com/fortunedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/mac02_a.jpg?crop=0px%2C176px%2C4000px%2C2308px&resize=840%2C485&quality=80&strip

It runs a large business in the country despite never publishing there.

As favorable reviews come in for Playboy’s newest issue that forgoes nude photos for a renewed emphasis on long form journalism, the magazine remains a total unknown in the market where Playboy earns more than a third of its revenues: China.

The brand has almost universal name recognition among Chinese consumers, 97%, where it isn’t associated with carnal desires—strict censorship has banned any officially imported magazines from entering the mainland—as much as vague notes of Western sophistication by lower- and middle-class buyers.

The brand has carved out a fairly lucrative business in China over the past 25 years by licensing its bunny logo for men’s dress shirts, suits, bags, shoes, belts, bags and backpacks. In 2014, $500 million of $1.5 billion in total sales originated in China.

“China is one of the things that Playboy did right in the past 20 years, but whether that was by design or by accident is unknown,” a marketing executive told Foreign Policy in its interesting story this week about Playboy’s history in China, which probably saved the company from an earlier reckoning. Fresh off a new 10-year licensing deal with a Chinese company, the country might also end up subsidizing the new-format magazine should it fail to revive in the struggling print business.

160 threads mention Playboy on this forum now. Remember this one (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?57729-Jesus-in-Playboy)?

[GeneChing]

Note that Islands circulation is 10x of ours. Of course, their staff is much larger too. But times are still tough, very tough, for the newsstands. :(


Bonnier USA to shutter several travel magazine print editions (http://www.talkingnewmedia.com/2016/09/02/bonnier-usa-to-shutter-several-travel-magazine-print-editions/)
by D.B. Hebbard / 4 days ago /


The US division of Swedish magazine publisher Bonnier will be shuttering several travel magazine print editions, according to a report from Keith Kelly at the NY Post. The magazines effected are Islands, Destination Weddings & Honeymoons, and Caribbean Travel & Life, which was made into a supplement of Islands a while ago. All three will see their last print editions published by the end of the year, a new digital version of Islands is planned for 2017.

http://www.talkingnewmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/bonnier-islands-550.jpg

Islands had a paid circulation of 221,483 as recently as 2013, with over 31,000 of that digital. But its circulation is now barely over 100K, according to its June AAM statement, with less than 5,000 being digital.

Kelly says that editorial director Shawn Bean and corporate brand manager Matt Hickman will be retained by Bonnier, while “about a half dozen staffers are being shown the door.” (Gotta love modern magazine management.)

Kelly also got a wonderful quote from Bonnier USA CEO Eric Zinczenko: “The brands were profitable but in decline. This move will ensure the path to sustained profitability.”

Yes, publishers are always looking to shutter their profitable print magazines… in order to “ensure the path to sustained profitability.”

Bonnier was the company behind the development of the Mag+ digital publishing platform. But Bonnier USA chose to stop using the platform in order to get a couple of their titles into the Next Issue Media digital newsstand. The move was has led to some of Bonnier USA’s magazines having multiple apps inside the Apple App Store, one of which serves as an archive of the digital editions produced with the Mag+ platform, and the newer apps using Adobe.

Bonnier entered the US market in 2006 when it became part-owner of the Orlando-based publisher World Publications, then run by CEO Terry Snow. The next year Bonnier acquired Time4Media and The Parenting Group. Snow retired in 2013 and was replaced by CFO David Freygang, who himself retired last year. When new CEO Eric Zinczenko started his job one of the first things he had to admit was that the company had been swindled out of $1.5 million when Freygang’s email had been hacked and money was wired to China. Another $1.5 million was set to be wired when an employee checked with Freygang to see if the transfer was legitimate. The bank was able to stop that wire transfer in time.

Zinczenko joined Bonnier in 2007 from Time Inc.’s Time4 Media unit, as part of Bonnier’s original management team, running the NYC-based Bonnier Men’s Group. Tom Beusse, who was CEO at Time4 Media at the time of the acquisition by Bonnier, was named CEO of F+W at the beginning of this year.

(Magazine publishing is like musical chairs, except there always seem to be chairs still there for those in the corporate suites, right?)

Kelly also reported today that Time Inc.’s senior vice president of brands, Daniel Kile, is leaving the company. Kile, who is a Michigan State University grad, joined Time Inc. in 2006 after earlier gigs in PR with The New Yorker and Alfred A. Knopf.

Kile is one of many who was left in a lurch following the recent reorganization at Time Inc. The reorg was announced just prior to the second quarter earnings report, giving the company something to talk about other than why it so badly missed its forecasts. Somebody had to pay, so there have been layoffs in sales, editorial and administration, with Executive VP Evelyn Webster having her job eliminated (but not before she made layoffs).

[boxerbilly]

Then much of our forestry program will be fcuked. Not sure the ratio but the paper industry is a prime financial backer to grow trees. By the way, about 4 million tress are planted a day. The paper industry accounts for almost 2 million.

I guess the ration is a little less than half, LOL.

[GeneChing]

This goes all sorts of ways in my mind. None of them are flattering to our readers, and I want to cater to our readers, so I'll just leave this here.


Stop monkeying around, time to study! Chimpanzees enjoy reading magazines in China (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/peoplesdaily/article-4072888/Stop-monkeying-time-study-Chimpanzees-enjoys-reading-magazines-China.html?ITO=applenews)

Two chimpanzees were spotted reading magazines in a zoo at Chongqing, south-west China
The magazines are all about photography and internet knowledge, according to the zookeeper
Visitors were surprised by the act of the two animals and the pictures were widely shared in China

By TIFFANY LO FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 05:38 EST, 29 December 2016 | UPDATED: 07:30 EST, 29 December 2016

These two chimpanzees might just be the most diligent animals yet.

The pair of animals have been spotted reading magazines in a zoo at Chongqing, south-west China this week.

According to Huanqiu.com, an affiliation to People's Daily Online, the caretaker put a few copies of magazines in the room to see if the chimp will be interested. Soon after, visitors found the two chimps picked up the magazines and started reading.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/12/29/09/3BACC2F100000578-4072888-image-a-3_1483005403508.jpg
Self-study: The chimpanzees showed some serious interests on these magazines in a zoo in China

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/12/29/09/3BACC29C00000578-4072888-image-a-6_1483005438626.jpg
'If the chimps start reading books and magazines, it's time for me to get back to my study!' One visitor commented

'The magazines are all about photography and internet knowledge,' said one of the caretakers.

Pictures of the amusing scene, taken on December 27, were quickly shared on Chinese internet.

'They didn't hold the magazines upside down. They are really smart animals,' Liu, one of the web users said.

Chimpanzees are often referred as human's closest primate relatives and have high intelligence in learning and adapting new environment.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/12/29/10/3BAC935B00000578-4072888-image-a-13_1483005920005.jpg
Sshh! Time to study: The chimpanzees showed a huge interest in photography magazine as it appears in the picture

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/12/29/10/3BACC29200000578-4072888-image-a-15_1483006327260.jpg
Unexpected: Chimpanzee caretakers put the magazines in the room and was surprised to see the animals reading them

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/12/29/10/3BAC935700000578-4072888-image-a-14_1483006322868.jpg
The two chimps are living in Yongchuan Wildlife Animal World, Chongqing, south-west China

The chimpanzees are residents of a zoo inside Leheledu Holiday Resort, in Yongchuan, Chongqing.

The zoo was opened in 2000 with more than 430 animal species, including some endangered and protected species such as snow leopard and Strawberry tiger.

Later, the zoo expanded to Leheledu Holiday Resort with restaurants and accommodations.

BTW, I started a 2017 Year of the Fire Rooster thread (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69980-2017-Year-of-the-Fire-Rooster).

[GeneChing]

More on Playboy on this thread here (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?52868-Print-publishing-death-watch&p=1290947#post1290947). Taking nudes out of Playboy would be like us taking out weapons....err....I mean 'practice tools (http://www.martialartsmart.com/weapons.html)' :rolleyes:


Playboy Brings Back Nudes (http://www.foliomag.com/playboy-brings-back-nudes/)
Hugh Hefner's son Cooper says, "Not so fast," promises to return Playboy to its sexually liberating roots.

By Greg Dool :: February 13, 2017

http://cdn.foliomag.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/lvplayboy14f-4-web-290x350.jpg

It seems that not enough people read it for the articles, after all.

A year after Hugh Hefner's legendary men's magazine made waves by dropping the nude pictorials that defined its brand for six decades, Playboy revealed today its decision to call off the experiment and return to its roots with a March/April issue bannered, "Naked is normal."

“I’ll be the first to admit the way in which the magazine portrayed nudity was dated, but removing it entirely was a mistake,” read a statement released on social media by Cooper Hefner, who took over as Playboy's chief creative officer in October. “Nudity was never the problem, because nudity isn’t a problem. Today, we’re taking our identity back and rediscovering who we are."

That's quite a backpedal from the October 2015 assessment by then-CEO Scott Flanders, who spearheaded the magazine's non-nude makeover in an effort to reach younger audiences.

“You’re now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free," Flanders told The New York Times, contemplating Playboy's place in an increasingly digital world. "And so it’s just passé at this juncture."

Flanders stepped down as CEO in May after six years at the helm, and just three months after a Wall Street Journal report indicated that the elder Hefner, alongside majority shareholder Rizvi Traverse Management, was exploring a sale. That same report indicated that while the company's media assets remain lucrative — pulling in $38 million in revenue in 2015 — far more valuable is its brand licensing business, accounting for nearly 60 percent of overall revenues. Then-chief creative officer Cory Jones was let go in July.

Early returns indicated that the decision to pull nudity was a prudent one; single-copy sales jumped 28 percent in the first six months of 2016 over the same period the year before, according to data from the Alliance for Audited Media. Unfortunately for Playboy, subscribers account for the overwhelming majority of its circulation, which tumbled 23 percent in the same period, to 816,926. To put those numbers in greater context, Playboy sold 7.2 million copies of its November 1972 edition, and its circulation topped 3 million as recently as 2006.

To Cooper Hefner's credit, the 25-year-old heir says he was averse to the decision to cut nudity from the start.

"I do not agree with the decisions and the direction that the company is currently going in," said Cooper in a candid interview with Business Insider last week, before heavily implying that he was isolated from the company board due to disagreements with Flanders.

"Millennials and Gen-Y didn't view nudity as the issue," Hefner elaborated. "The issue was the way in which nudity and the girls were portrayed."

In a lengthier editor's letter posted on Playboy.com, Hefner details his father's role in America's sexual revolution before seemingly equating the magazine's celebration of nudity to other cultural norms being threatened in the modern climate, like religious tolerance, healthcare rights, and preserving the First Amendment.

The March/April issue, on newsstands now, features cover model Elizabeth Elam, as well as a profile of CNN commentator Van Jones, interviews with Scarlett Johansson and Adam Scott, and an essay by Hefner's fianceé, actress Scarlett Byrne.

Whether or not Cooper Hefner will extend his efforts to pulling the Playboy Mansion off the market remains to be seen.

Meet the Author
Greg Dool
@gregdool
Greg Dool is Folio:'s senior editor.

[GeneChing]

I claim to be a publisher and I fit this author's criterion, but I'm no Hearst, Luce, Pulitzer or Nast. No even. :rolleyes:


Who Deserves to Be Called a Publisher? (http://www.pubexec.com/post/deserves-called-publisher/)
By Scott McDonald

http://www.pubexec.com/thumb/?src=/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2017/02/browser-1867049_1280.jpg&w=750

What does it mean to be called a publisher? In an earlier era, the term called to mind the entrepreneurial titans of print journalism. William Randolph Hearst. Henry Luce. Joseph Pulitzer. Condé Nast (the person, not the company). These were legendary publishers who established vast media enterprises. These were powerful publishers who found their ways into the hearts and minds of the masses, whom politicians feared or respected.
More recently, the term seems to have lost its meaning. Companies that used to call themselves “publishers” are now more likely to call themselves “cross-platform content creators” – anodyne and generic though that may sound.
The term “publisher” also has come to describe fewer and fewer jobs in the industry. Indeed, within the last year, Time Inc. and Condé Nast, both estimable companies built on foundations of print media, have all but eliminated “publisher” as a job title, recognizing that by 2016 those functions had become little more than glorified ad sales directors.
At the same time in a different context, the term “publisher” has grown to encompass vast numbers of others who previously would not have laid claim to the title. In the argot of the digital advertising marketplace, all producers of professional-caliber content (whether words, photography, graphics, video, audio) are classified as “publishers” regardless of whether or not they have ever produced anything on a printing press. In present parlance, being a publisher connotes being a content creator who displays a degree of professionalism and who (usually) accepts advertising. So in this context, TV broadcasters are publishers, as are digital-only magazines (like the one you are reading). In this broad and encompassing definition, most bloggers would count as publishers. So perhaps would controversial YouTube stars and purveyors of fake news.
As we recently learned, Cameron Harris fabricated a fictitious but professional-looking story about the discovery of thousands of fraudulent ballots pre-marked for Hillary Clinton, promoted it until it went viral on social media by appealing to those already pre-disposed to dislike Clinton; what’s more, Harris earned $5,000 from Google for the automated ad placements that resulted. Professional-looking content + ad revenue. Does he deserve to be called a publisher?
Perhaps our definitions need to be reconsidered in a way that restores some honor to the title of publisher. Perhaps we need some kind of quality scale that rewards good behavior. Does the website have explicit standards of journalistic verification and fact checking for the content it produces? Does it screen its suppliers and its content partners to uphold those standards? Can it honestly claim that most of its traffic comes from “organic” sources – ie. humans who really want that content. Does it buy traffic from third parties in order to meet advertising obligations (a notorious source of fraudulent ad impressions).Does it employ strong bot filters? Does it submit to frequent audits from industry accreditation bodies like the MRC and the AAM? Does it use any form of copy acceptance to screen out abusive misleading ads or phony content recommendations (e.g. “Trump authorizes new mortgage lending”) designed to tempt unwary consumers to click through. Can it demonstrate real consumer value by getting people to pay for the content they consume?
This is just a partial list, but you get my drift. There are very specific, auditable criteria that could separate quality publishers from nefarious bad actors in the content creation business. How many of the top 500 or the top 100,000 in the Alexa list would pass muster with such a quality scale?
In the past few months, we have seen many articles commenting on the “flight to quality” taking place both among consumers and advertisers. In the wake of the populist-inspired Brexit vote in the U.K. and the election of Donald Trump in the U.S., the “quality media” in both countries have seen an enormous upsurge in paid consumer demand. The New York Times ended 2016 with 1.6 million digital subscribers, up 47% for the year. The Washington Post reported a 75% gain in subscribers in 2016, more than doubling their revenue from digital subscriptions. Similar upticks were reported by such publications as The Guardian, Financial Times, and The Wall Street Journal.
On the advertiser side, the “flight to quality” was prompted as some advertisers discovered, to their horror, that their programmatic ad buys had inadvertently been funding terror sites or the propagation of fake news. Already alarmed at the continued presence of fraud and junk in the digital advertising supply chain, these more recent discoveries added insult to injury. Hence, demands for probity and quality rang loud and clear at recent industry meetings.
It’s time for a re-set. It’s time to restore a bit of honor to the term “publisher” and thereby restore more trust and comity to the digital advertising marketplace. More explicit and transparent indices of quality are needed.

[GeneChing]

Rolling Stone, Once a Counterculture Bible, Will Be Put Up for Sale (https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/09/17/business/rolling-stone-magazine-sale.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur&referer=https://t.co/tCPQqD99Uu?amp=1)

https://cdn1.nyt.com/images/2017/09/18/business/18ROLLINGSTONE-1/18ROLLINGSTONE-1-articleLarge.jpg
Jann Wenner, left, and his son, Gus, in a portrait taken at Rolling Stone’s headquarters last year.
JESSE DITTMAR FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
By SYDNEY EMBER
SEPTEMBER 17, 2017

From a loft in San Francisco in 1967, a 21-year-old named Jann S. Wenner started a magazine that would become the counterculture bible for baby boomers. Rolling Stone defined cool, cultivated literary icons and produced star-making covers that were such coveted real estate they inspired a song.

But the headwinds buffeting the publishing industry, and some costly strategic missteps, have steadily taken a financial toll on Rolling Stone, and a botched story three years ago about an unproven gang rape at the University of Virginia badly bruised the magazine’s journalistic reputation.

And so, after a half-century reign that propelled him into the realm of the rock stars and celebrities who graced his covers, Mr. Wenner is putting his company’s controlling stake in Rolling Stone up for sale, relinquishing his hold on a publication he has led since its founding.

Mr. Wenner had long tried to remain an independent publisher in a business favoring size and breadth. But he acknowledged in an interview last week that the magazine he had nurtured would face a difficult, uncertain future on its own.

“I love my job, I enjoy it, I’ve enjoyed it for a long time,” said Mr. Wenner, 71. But letting go, he added, was “just the smart thing to do.”

The sale plans were devised by Mr. Wenner’s 27-year-old son, Gus, who has aggressively pared down the assets of Rolling Stone’s parent company, Wenner Media, in response to financial pressures. The Wenners recently sold the company’s other two magazines, Us Weekly and Men’s Journal. And last year, they sold a 49 percent stake in Rolling Stone to BandLab Technologies, a music technology company based in Singapore.

Both Jann and Gus Wenner, the president and chief operating officer of Wenner Media, said they intended to stay on at Rolling Stone. But they said they also recognized that the decision could ultimately be up to the new owner.

https://cdn1.nyt.com/images/2017/09/18/business/18ROLLINGSTONE-2/18ROLLINGSTONE-2-articleLarge.jpg
A special exhibition in honor of the 50th anniversary of Rolling Stone at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. The exhibition opened in May.
DUANE PROKOP / GETTY IMAGES

Still, the potential sale of Rolling Stone — on the eve of its 50th anniversary, no less — underscores how inhospitable the media landscape has become as print advertising and circulation have dried up.

“There’s a level of ambition that we can’t achieve alone,” Gus Wenner said last week in an interview at the magazine’s headquarters in Midtown Manhattan. “So we are being proactive and want to get ahead of the curve.”

“Publishing is a completely different industry than what it was,” he added. “The trends go in one direction, and we are very aware of that.”

The Wenners’ decision is also another clear sign that the days of celebrity editors are coming to a close. Earlier this month, Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair and a socialite and star in his own right, announced he planned to leave the magazine after 25 years. Robbie Myers, the longtime editor of Elle, Nancy Gibbs of Time magazine and Cindi Leive of Glamour also said last week that they were stepping down.

Anthony DeCurtis, a veteran music critic and a longtime Rolling Stone contributing editor, said he never thought Jann Wenner would sell Rolling Stone.

“That sense of the magazine editor’s hands on the magazine — that’s what’s going to get lost here,” he said. “I don’t know who’s going to be able to step in and do that anymore.”

Wenner Media has hired bankers to explore its sale, but the process is just beginning. BandLab’s stake in the company could also complicate matters. Neither Jann nor Gus Wenner would name any potential buyers, but one possible suitor is American Media Inc., the magazine publisher led by David J. ****** that has already taken Us Weekly and Men’s Journal off Wenner Media’s hands.

The Wenners said that they expected a range of opportunities, and Jann Wenner said he hoped to find a buyer that understood Rolling Stone’s mission and that had “lots of money.”
continued next post

[GeneChing]

https://cdn1.nyt.com/images/2017/09/18/business/18ROLLINGSTONE-3/18ROLLINGSTONE-3-articleLarge.jpg
Gus Wenner, 27, the president and chief operating officer of Wenner Media.
ANDREW WHITE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

“Rolling Stone has played such a role in the history of our times, socially and politically and culturally,” he said. “We want to retain that position.”

Jann Wenner tried his hand at other magazines over the decades, including the outdoor lifestyle magazine Outside and Family Life. But it was Rolling Stone that helped guide, and define, a generation.

“Who lives through the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s and ’90s and cannot be somehow wistful at this moment?” said Terry McDonell, a former top editor at Rolling Stone who also ran other Wenner magazines.

Rolling Stone filled its pages with pieces than ran in the thousands of words by standard bearers of the counterculture, including Hunter S. Thompson — whose “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” was published in the magazine in two parts — and Tom Wolfe. It started the career of the celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz, who for many years delivered electrifying cover images, including an iconic photograph in 1981 of a naked John Lennon curled in a fetal position with Yoko Ono.

Music coverage in all of its forms — news, interviews, reviews — was the core of Rolling Stone, but its influence also stretched into pop culture, entertainment and politics. A bastion of liberal ideology, the magazine became a required stop for Democratic presidential candidates — Mr. Wenner has personally interviewed several, including Bill Clinton and Barack Obama — and it has pulled no punches in its appraisal of Republicans. In 2006, Rolling Stone suggested George W. Bush was the “worst president in history.” More recently, the magazine featured Justin Trudeau, the prime minister of Canada, on its cover with the headline, “Why Can’t He Be Our President?”

The magazine also published widely acclaimed political stories, including one in 2009 on Goldman Sachs by the writer Matt Taibbi, who famously described the company as “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity.” The next year, the magazine ran a piece with the headline, “The Runaway General,” that ended the career of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal.

But that was perhaps the last Rolling Stone cover piece that gained significant journalistic acclaim. And the magazine’s reputation as a tastemaker for the music world had long since eroded, as Mr. Wenner clung to the past with covers that featured artists from his generation, even as younger artists emerged. Artists like Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan have continued to secure cover spots in recent years.

Rolling Stone suffered a devastating blow to its reputation when it retracted a debunked 2014 article about a gang rape at the University of Virginia. A ****ing report on the story by the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism cited fundamental journalistic failures. The article prompted three libel lawsuits against Rolling Stone, one of which led to a highly publicized trial last year that culminated with a federal jury awarding the plaintiff $3 million in damages.

https://cdn1.nyt.com/images/2017/09/18/business/18ROLLINGSTONE-jp2/18ROLLINGSTONE-jp2-articleLarge.jpg
Rolling Stone’s botched story in 2014 about an unproven gang rape at the University of Virginia badly bruised the magazine’s journalistic reputation.

The financial picture had also been bleak. In 2001, Jann Wenner sold a 50 percent stake in Us Weekly to the Walt Disney Company for $40 million, then borrowed $300 million five years later to buy back the stake. The deal saddled the company with debt for more than a decade, preventing it from investing as much as it might have in its magazines.

At the same time, Rolling Stone’s print advertising revenue and newsstand sales fell. And as readers increasingly embraced the web for their news and entertainment, Mr. Wenner remained skeptical, with a stubbornness that hamstrung his company.


Wenner Media was already a small magazine publisher. But the sale of Us Weekly and Men’s Journal, which together brought in roughly three-quarters of Wenner Media’s revenue, has left it further diminished.

Regardless, the sale of Rolling Stone would be Jann Wenner’s denouement, capping his unlikely rise from dope-smoking Berkeley dropout to silver-haired media mogul. An admirer of John Lennon and publishing mavens like William Randolph Hearst, Mr. Wenner — who invested $7,500 of borrowed money to start Rolling Stone along with his mentor, Ralph J. Gleason — was at turns idealist and desperado, crafting his magazine into a guide for the counterculture epoch while also gallivanting with superstars. He once boasted that he had turned down a $500 million offer for Rolling Stone, more than he could ever dream of getting for the magazine today. (BandLab invested $40 million to acquire its 49-percent stake in the magazine last year.)

Though he said he still cared deeply about Rolling Stone, Mr. Wenner has placed the magazine’s fate firmly in Gus’s hands, and he appears content to let someone else determine its path forward.

“I think it’s time for young people to run it,” he said.

Sitting in his second-floor office surrounded by a collection of rock ’n’ roll artifacts, Gus Wenner expressed hope that a new owner would provide the resources Rolling Stone needed to evolve and survive.

“It’s what we need to do as a business,” he said. “It’s what we need to do to grow the brand.”

Then, as only someone who had spent his life around rock ’n’ roll could, he gestured confidently to a tome of Bob Dylan lyrics on his desk. “If you’re not busy being born,” Mr. Wenner said, “then you’re busy dying.”

Ben Sisario contributed reporting.

When a publishing icon like Rolling Stone makes a move like this, you know there are changes coming for us too.

[GeneChing]

More on Playboy in China here (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?52868-Print-publishing-death-watch&p=1290947#post1290947).


Why Hugh Hefner’s forays into China were a rather un-sexy affair (http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/community/article/2113435/why-hugh-hefners-forays-china-were-rather-un-sexy-affair)
While the risqué Playboy brand certainly held international appeal, its success in this part of the world was somewhat lacklustre
PUBLISHED : Friday, 29 September, 2017, 7:24pm
UPDATED : Friday, 29 September, 2017, 7:24pm
Niall Fraser
niall.fraser@scmp.com

https://cdn1.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/styles/980x551/public/images/methode/2017/09/29/94e25644-a505-11e7-84b5-dfc1701cb40c_1280x720_192426.jpg
Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner arrives with girlfriends Kendra Wilkinson (left) and Bridget Marquardt for his 80th birthday party in Munich's famous club P1 in 2006. Photo: Reuters

While he may have split opinion down the decades – social pioneer who taught America to talk about sex or plain and simple sleaze merchant – risqué is not a word you would use to describe Hugh Hefner’s first foray into China.
Half-a-century ago in January 1967, the Hef hit Hong Kong when, through a local agent, a deal was done for the singularly un-sexy Tingtai Wahchong Metal Manufacturing Company Ltd of Tsuen Wan, to make aluminium beer mugs for the Playboy brand with which Hefner became synonymous.
A year later the Tsuen Wan mug makers marked half-a-million sales by presenting a representative of Hefner in Hong Kong with a commemorative beer mug – there wasn’t a bunny girl in sight.

https://cdn3.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/images/methode/2017/09/29/1f4b2ff8-a507-11e7-84b5-dfc1701cb40c_972x_192426.jpg

Olivia Cheng Man-nga, Miss Hong Kong-turned actress, on the first cover of Hong Kong Playboy magazine. Photo: Handout

It was the start of a long – and sometimes fraught – relationship Playboy International had with this part of the world, one which saw the launch of a short-lived Chinese edition of Playboy magazine in Hong Kong to the more recent – and equally short-lived – opening of a Playboy Club in casino town Macau.
Playboy Enterprises has worked hard to remove any hint of salaciousness from the brand in China. It emphasises its original underpinnings as an arbiter of leisure and lifestyle, without so much as a nipple slip.
The Chinese Communist Party had long banned pornography, so Playboy focused instead on selling consumer goods.
In a departure from the passion-killing streets of Tsuen Wan, it was Hong Kong in the late 1980s who took a punt on the sexier side of things when the first issue of the Chinese-language Playboy magazine virtually sold out its initial print run of 50,000 copies in two days.
Its clearly pleased publisher, well known broadcaster, columnist and political pundit, Albert Cheng rather coyly said the first edition sales of August 1986 showed it was “a welcome and very popular addition to the local periodical market”.

https://cdn1.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/images/methode/2017/09/29/261f37fc-a507-11e7-84b5-dfc1701cb40c_1320x770_192426.jpg
Mr Albert Cheng King-hon was credited with bringing the Chinese edition of Playboy magazine to Hong Kong. Photo: SCMP

The first cover carried a covered-up Miss Hong Kong-turned actress, Olivia Cheng, who went topless inside and interviews with larger-than-life movie actor Sammo Hung and fashion designer Calvin Klein.
Later editions had renowned 1990s Hong Kong movie actor maggie Cheung on the cover and carried interviews with entertainer-comedian and movie star Eric Tsang and fellow actor Tony Leung Ka-fai.
By 1993, Hong Kong’s Playboy infatuation had gone – despite cover models shedding more garments as sales thinned out.
It first came to the mainland not through smuggled magazines or videos – though these were certainly circulated among the well-connected – but a 1988 licensing agreement with another Hong Kong company – the Chaifa Group, chaired by the prominent businessman John Chan Chun Tung – saw Playboy’s fashion brand sold to various mainland manufacturers.
Throughout the 1990s, Playboy battled, only partially successfully, against any association of its name with the kind of Western “vulgarity” Beijing has long condemned
Playboy waited until 2010 for its next big China move, the lavish Playboy Club Macau, billed as a VIP experience overlooking the skyline of the gambling enclave.
It would be another throwback to the golden years, this time to the Playboy Club and Casino in Park Lane, London, which opened in 1966 and soaked up so much oil money from Arab whales that the casino’s profits covered the operating losses of all Playboy’s other interests and then some: up to US$80 million a year.
Hef’s London club lasted 15 years before losing its gaming license; Playboy Club Macau closed quietly after just three unremarkable years in business.

[GeneChing]

Given their demographic, I'm astonished they were still in print. You'd think it was all in a smart phone app.


Who Will Mourn Teen Vogue? (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/04/style/teen-vogue-print-magazine-readers.html)
By BONNIE WERTHEIMNOV. 4, 2017

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/11/03/style/03TEENVOGUE/03TEENVOGUE-master768.jpg
Credit Beady Eyes

When Women’s Wear Daily reported Thursday morning that Condé Nast would shutter Teen Vogue in print, the overwhelming response was: Why now, when the brand seemed more in the spotlight than ever?

But for the magazine’s first generation of readers, who decorated their bedroom walls with tear sheets and clippings, its significance was independent of its relevance.

“There was something different about having a physical magazine,” said Anna Fitzpatrick, a freelance writer who grew up outside of Ottawa. “Trading them at sleepovers, reading them at lunch breaks at school, especially because I was kind of a shy, introverted teenager.”

Her favorite magazines were YM and Elle Girl. Teen Vogue, she said, “was kind of a rich-girl publication, but it did have very strong visuals and lent itself well to collaging and inspiration boards.”

The description doesn’t fall far from the vision Anna Wintour described when she spun off Vogue in an effort to convert adolescent women into Condé Nast loyalists. In 2003, Ms. Wintour told The New York Observer that she sought to reach “a huge segment of young women who weren’t being tapped into, who were much more sophisticated and interested in fashion and aware of fashion and buying fashion, who other magazines weren’t addressing” — women like her daughter, Bee Shaffer, 16 at the time.

Teen Vogue would become an incubator for people we now call influencers. Eva Chen, the head of fashion partnerships at Instagram, was a beauty editor there. Emily Weiss, the Into the Gloss founder and Glossier C.E.O., was an intern. In 2006, the magazine became a backdrop for the popular MTV series “The Hills.”

Ms. Wintour appointed Amy Astley, who had been the beauty editor of Vogue, to oversee Teen Vogue. Its small (6¾” x 9”!) pages featured the high-budget fashion editorials that are its parent magazine’s signature, for the low starting price of $1.50 per issue (“about as much as a ChapStick,” the late media critic David Carr wrote). Its accompanying website became a meeting place for young people.

Arabelle Sicardi, also a writer, said that before she read Teen Vogue’s web forums, she saw fashion and beauty as alien subjects.

“I had never thought that fashion ever applied to me, really, so having people my age to talk to and share our interpretations of it was something that I really cherished,” she said. “She went on to become a blogger and was featured in Teen Vogue for her work. Later, the magazine hired her as an intern and regular contributor.

“Teen Vogue is my family,” Ms. Sicardi said. “I grew up in those hallways. I was probably at the magazine for longer than I was ever in a classroom.”

Elaine Welteroth, the print magazine’s second and final leader, had been a mentor to Ms. Sicardi. Ms. Welteroth took over from Ms. Astley in 2016 and was officially named editor in chief this spring, in a grim climate for magazines aimed at the older-teen set (R.I.P. CosmoGirl, YM, Teen People, Elle Girl).

The youngest-ever editor in chief at Condé Nast — she is 30 — Ms. Welterorth quickly became an Instagram celebrity and received heaping praise for the magazine’s newly “woke” tone. Teen Vogue 2.0, as she reimagined it, wasn’t just about clothes and makeup; it was about news, politics and social justice, too.

In her first year, Ms. Astley had emphasized how crucial it was for her to create a product that was “racially, ethnically diverse, fashion-wise diverse. We don’t say someone is or isn’t Teen Vogue.” The magazine entered the field at a time when millennials were just beginning to document their lives online, with LiveJournal and MySpace, and the platforms that continue to replace print publications showcase diversity even more effectively.

It wasn’t until 2015, after a decade of mostly white, mostly famous cover stars, that Teen Vogue changed course, with a cover featuring three little-known black models. The issue became the year’s best seller, underscoring the appetite for fashion magazines that reflect some version of real life.

“I’ve always been a queer, gender-nonconforming kid and person,” said Kate Lesniak, the publisher of ***** Media. “I never really cared about those magazines because I never saw myself in them at all, in any way.”

But recently, Ms. Lesniak noticed a shift in the tone and presentation of Teen Vogue.

“In the last year and a half or two years,” she said, it had become “a mainstream media outlet in print that reflected people like me back to ourselves. Teen Vogue did an incredible job of amplifying communities of color and queer people as well.”

That representation has come in the form of articles that criticize racial insensitivity, trumpet black feminism and explain how to be a transgender ally, as well as a guide to anal sex that received mixed reviews, mostly from adults. Ms. Welteroth also courted activist-actresses like Rowan Blanchard, Hari Nef and Yara Shahidi, who now serve as unofficial brand ambassadors to their combined millions of followers.

Readers and admirers lamented the end of Teen Vogue’s print run after the announcement.


Caroline Losneck @CarolineLosneck
Sad. I'm an adult and I value Teen Vogue. I just got my friend's daughter a subscription. https://twitter.com/KimberlyNFoster/status/925942534785896448 …
5:22 AM - Nov 2, 2017
2 2 Replies Retweets 8 8 likes
Twitter Ads info and privacy

bryanboy ✔@bryanboy
Remind me again why W continues to exist and Teen Vogue print will be gone? W should’ve been all digital a long time ago
11:47 AM - Nov 2, 2017 · Shanghai, People's Republic of China
6 6 Replies 9 9 Retweets 58 58 likes
Twitter Ads info and privacy

EricaJoy ✔@EricaJoy
Oh no baby, what is you doing? @CondeNast http://wwd.com/business-news/media/conde-nast-to-close-teen-vogue-cut-80-jobs-and-lower-mag-frequencies-11040148/amp/ …
9:44 PM - Nov 1, 2017


Condé Nast to Close Teen Vogue, Cut 80 Jobs and Lower Mag Frequencies
Condé Nast is closing Teen Vogue in print, lowering magazine frequencies and cutting about 80 jobs as it continues to transition to digital.
wwd.com
30 30 Replies 161 161 Retweets 384 384 likes
Twitter Ads info and privacy

Andrew Noyes ✔@anoyes
Never read @TeenVogue until 2016 election; quickly, unexpectedly became a fan. Their work must continue digitally. https://qz.com/1118515/teen-vogue-is-going-to-cease-printing …
7:03 AM - Nov 2, 2017

Teen Vogue, 2016’s breakout political publication, will cease printing
The magazine's reinvention hasn't saved it.
qz.com
1 1 Reply Retweets 9 9 likes
Twitter Ads info and privacy
Teen Vogue will continue to publish articles online, leaving Seventeen and J-14 as the only mainstream print lifestyle magazines for that age demographic.

“All the teen magazines that existed 10, 15 years ago that don’t exist now, they’re the reason I became a writer,” Ms. Fitzpatrick said.

Now women-in-training have Snapchat, Instagram and Goddess knows what else.

[GeneChing]

Playboy is a high-profile print magazine. Bunnies are the canaries in the coal mine. :(


Playboy is considering ending its print magazine, report says (http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-playboy-magazine-20180102-story.html)

http://www.trbimg.com/img-5a4b9627/turbine/la-1514903075-v8dqom03vw-snap-image/750/750x422
Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner poses with girlfriends Holly Madison, left, Bridget Marquardt, second from right, and Kendra Wilkinson in 2006. (Cesar Rangel / AFP/Getty Images)
Jim Puzzanghera

Newsstands soon could be stripped of one of the nation’s most iconic publications: Playboy magazine.

Playboy Enterprises Inc. reportedly is considering killing the print magazine, which was started more than six decades ago by Hugh Hefner, who died in September.

Famous for its racy images of naked women, the magazine launched Hefner’s Beverly Hills-based publishing and entertainment empire. But Hefner’s death has triggered a process that will shift ownership of the company from his family to the largest shareholder, private equity firm Rizvi Traverse, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

Ben Kohn, a managing partner at Rizvi who is Playboy Enterprises’ chief executive, wants to shift the company’s emphasis to brand partnerships and licensing deals.

“We want to focus on what we call the ‘World of Playboy’ which is so much larger than a small, legacy print publication,” Kohn told the Journal. “We plan to spend 2018 transitioning it from a media business to a brand-management company.”

That shift involves seriously considering ending the print magazine, which began in 1953. U.S. circulation has dropped to less than 500,000 an issue from a peak of 5.6 million in 1975 amid struggles in the broader print magazine industry.

The Journal said Playboy’s print magazine, which now publishes six issues a year, has lost as much as $7 million annually in recent years.

“Historically, we could justify the losses because of the marketing value, but you also have to be forward thinking,” Kohn said. “I’m not sure that print is necessarily the best way to communicate to our consumer.”

John Vlautin, a spokesman for Playboy Enterprises, declined to comment Tuesday. A spokesman for Rizvi Traverse did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In 2016, Playboy stopped publishing fully nude photos of women as part of a redesign of the print magazine that reflected the widespread availability of such imagery online. But last year, naked women were back in Playboy, and Cooper Hefner — the founder’s son and the company’s chief creative officer — said the ban was a mistake.

“Nudity was never the problem because nudity isn’t a problem,” Cooper Hefner wrote on Twitter at the time. “Today we’re taking our identity back and reclaiming who we are.”

Rizvi Traverse helped Hugh Hefner take Playboy private in 2011 and received control of nearly two-thirds of the company. As part of the deal, Rizvi Traverse agreed to keep publishing the magazine for as long as Hefner lived.

The private equity firm now is in talks to acquire the 35% stake Hefner left in trust to his heirs, the Journal said, quoting an unnamed person familiar with the matter.

Playboy wants to raise $25 million to $100 million early this year to help buy back the shares and fund future partnership deals, the person told the Journal.

[GeneChing]

Back on the topic of the death of print publishing.


Penthouse Magazine Publisher Files Bankruptcy a Third Time (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-12/penthouse-global-media-files-for-bankruptcy-in-california)
By Tiffany Kary
January 12, 2018, 4:18 AM PST Updated on January 12, 2018, 10:06 AM PST
Adult entertainment empire was restructured in 2003 and 2013
Current owner Kelly Holland had aimed to grow licensing

https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/iU1OihWKUqqk/v1/1000x-1.jpg
Penthouse magazines are pictured in 2006. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Penthouse Global Media Inc., an offshoot of the iconic adult entertainment brand that began with Bob Guccione’s Penthouse Magazine in 1965, is taking the business on a third trip through bankruptcy.

A Chapter 11 filing in California court Thursday kicks off another restructuring for the empire that grew out of a U.K. men’s magazine born in the counterculture of the 1960s. The brand’s current, Los Angeles-based owner is run by Kelly Holland, a woman and self-described political progressive, who bought the name in 2016, saying she wanted to remove any misogynistic content and expand licensing. In an L.A. Times interview, she described potential plans, including "breastaurants" to compete with Hooters Inc.

The filing includes publishing, licensing, broadcasting and digital affiliates. Two prior bankruptcies showed how technological disruption in the media industry has ensnared but never snuffed out the brand. This filing comes amid a wave of concern about sexual harassment in the media and entertainment industry that has bedeviled companies including Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc. and Weinstein Co.

Before Holland’s purchase, the company had been owned by FriendFinder Networks Inc., which put it through a 2013 bankruptcy as the company was squeezed by free online competition for another of its main businesses, putting people in touch for hookups. At the time, Craigslist and mobile apps were bemoaned as competition. The brand also took a tour through the courts in 2003, when General Media Inc. cited competition from retail video outlets and cable television.

The company falsified accounting records and made misleading statements to hide significant financial losses in 2016 and 2017, according to a lawsuit filed this week in California Superior Court. The plaintiff in the suit, Dream Media Corp., says the media company has defaulted on loans to ExWorks Capital Fund. The plaintiff acquired the loans, and said Penthouse Global Media owes it $10.3 million. Holland and a lawyer for the company didn’t return calls and emails for comment.

Penthouse Global Media describes its legacy as one of “intelligent journalism, exquisite nude pictorials and celebrity profiles,” citing on its website the appearance of Madonna, Aerosmith and Jake Gyllenhaal in its pages.

The case is 18-10098, Penthouse Global Media Inc., Central District of California (San Fernando Valley)

The net killed the print porn industry.

[GeneChing]

We currently have a digital edition via Zinio (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/about/guidelines.php). It's popular with our international readers, but it's not profitable, barely viable. I'm not sure how long we'll keep it, to be honest. We aren't that popular as an e-mag.


How Technology Is (and Isn’t) Changing Our Reading Habits (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/17/technology/personaltech/how-technology-is-and-isnt-changing-our-reading-habits.html)
Tech We’re Using
By THE NEW YORK TIMES JAN. 17, 2018

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/01/17/business/18TECHUSING-1/18TECHUSING-1-master768.jpg
When Alexandra Alter, a reporter who covers the books industry, doesn’t want to lose herself in what she’s reading, or lose her balance on the subway, she reaches for her Kindle. Credit Jeenah Moon for The New York Times

How do New York Times journalists use technology in their jobs and in their personal lives? Alexandra Alter, who covers the books industry for The Times, discussed the tech she’s using.

Given that you write about the books industry, how do you prefer to read books? On a Kindle or iPad or some other device, or printed books?

I came a little late to e-books, but I became a convert in 2010 when my older daughter was born. I needed a way to read books with one hand (and in a dark room), so I got a Kindle. The Kindle and ice cream sandwiches — also easily managed with one hand — are what got me through the brutal early weeks with a newborn, when you basically can’t put them down. Now I’m on my fifth Kindle.

I still love print books and find it to be a much more relaxing and immersive experience, but when I’m reading books for work — honestly, the bulk of my reading — the Kindle is incredibly convenient. I have all my books on a single device that I always have with me. I read advance copies of books that way: Publishers send me digital copies through NetGalley or Edelweiss, sites where book industry professionals and critics can get digital copies of books before they’re published.

I like that e-books are searchable, which is helpful for fact-checking, and the device stores all my notes and highlights, so I can quickly look stuff up when I’m writing. And I can read with one hand on a crowded train. One of my mild phobias is being trapped somewhere, on a plane or a stalled train or in a line, with nothing to read, and I also have the Kindle reader app on my iPhone, so I always have my entire library with me.

How is technology affecting the publishing industry?

About a decade ago, when Amazon introduced its first e-reader, publishers panicked that digital books would take over the industry, the way digital transformed the music industry. And for a while, that fear seemed totally justified. At one point, the growth trajectory for e-books was more than 1,200 percent. Bookstores suffered, and print sales lagged. E-books also made self-publishing easier, which threatened traditional publishers.

But in just the last couple of years, there has been a surprising reversal. Print is holding steady — even increasing — and e-book sales have slipped.

One possible reason is that e-book prices have gone up, so in some cases they’re more expensive than a paperback edition. Another possibility is digital fatigue. People spend so much time in front of screens that when they read they want to be offline. Another theory is that some e-book readers have switched to audiobooks, which are easy to play on your smartphone while you’re multitasking. And audiobooks have become the fastest-growing format in the industry.

Photo

Ms. Alter likes that e-books are searchable and that the the Kindle stores her notes and highlights for easy retrieval. Credit Jeenah Moon for The New York Times
Social media has also had an enormous impact on publishing, as it has on all corners of the media industry. It has definitely become a new way for readers to connect with authors and discover books, but it has probably also cut into the time that people spend reading. (A depressing article in Quartz estimated that if people spent the same amount of time reading that they did on social media, they could read 200 books a year easily.)

Many new authors are skipping traditional publishers and use tech tools to go straight to self-publishing their own e-books or print books. What will be the fate of traditional publishers in the next few years?

Self-publishing has been one of the most fascinating corners of the industry to me. There have been a handful of massively successful self-published authors who have started their own publishing companies, and they’ve started to publish other “self-published” authors. But publishers have survived so far through consolidation, and we’ll probably see more of that.

What will be the fate of physical bookstores? And what do you think about Amazon’s bookstores?

Indie bookstores have made a surprising comeback in recent years (a trend that might be connected to the resurgence of print books). A lot of independent stores have been so successful that they’ve expanded into mini-chains.

The future of Barnes & Noble looks uncertain, and the company has suffered setbacks after a few disastrous strategies. It made a huge and, in retrospect, unwise investment in digital hardware and its Nook device, and then tried to become more of a general-interest gift and toy and books store, which probably alienated some of its core customers. Lately, it has tried smaller concept stores, with cafes with food and wine and beer. There was some snickering online after its new chief executive announced that its latest strategy was to focus on selling … books. Snickering aside, I think it’s the smartest thing the company can do. In many parts of the country, Barnes & Noble is the only place people can buy books, and it’s still a beloved brand.

Amazon’s entry into the physical retail space has been fascinating. I’m not sure how successful the experiment has been. When I visited the Amazon bookstore at New York’s Columbus Circle, it definitely felt like a device store that also sold books. The store even looks like a 3-D version of the website, with book covers facing out and curated sections that reflect what’s popular with Amazon’s customers. But they’re expanding rapidly across the country, so something must be working.

I’ll be curious to see how Indigo Books, the Canadian chain, will do here next year when it expands into the United States. Maybe it will shake up the model.

Outside your job, what tech product are you currently obsessed with?

I am, my family would confirm, not great with gadgets. It would be fair to say that I’m actively bad with them. I’m wary of some of the new home assistants like Amazon’s Echo and Google Home, not necessarily because I’m paranoid about my conversations being recorded — Amazon and Google already know everything about me — but because my kids would likely be yelling at the devices all the time, and the Taylor Swift and Ariana Grande songs would play in an endless loop.

I have become a podcast junkie. I found The Daily to be habit forming. My other go-tos are Planet Money (disclosure: my husband is a reporter there), The New York Times Book Review podcast (where I sometimes appear), Longform, the New Yorker Radio Hour and some of the shows from Gimlet Media, like StartUp and Reply All. (Heavyweight, Jonathan Goldstein’s show, is hilarious and engrossing.)

What tech is popular with your family?

The one app that’s popular with the whole family is this Japanese game Neko Atsume: Kitty Collector. You buy virtual presents for these cartoon cats, which come and go as they please, and the cats leave you fish. You can’t really control the cats or win in any way. Just like with real cats, I suppose.

Follow Alexandra Alter on Twitter: @xanalter.

[GeneChing]

If you don't know Blitz, it was a fine English-language magazine from Oz. Sad to see it go.

From Wikepedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitz_Magazine#cite_note-1)

Blitz Magazine, or Blitz Australasian Martial Arts Magazine was an Australian magazine covering karate, martial arts, and combat sports. The headquarters is in Melbourne.

It is owned by Blitz Publications & Multi-Media Group which went into liquidation on the 1st of March 2018 and is no longer producing the magazine.[1]

From the Blitz Publications website (http://www.blitzpublications.com.au/advertise/blitz-martial-arts):

Blitz Martial Arts
Since its launch in 1987, Blitz Australasian Martial Arts Magazine has become the leading martial arts publication in Australia and the Southern Hemisphere. On a monthly basis, Blitz covers both the domestic and international scene, self-defence strategies, training and fitness advice, combat psychology and the ever-popular action entertainment genre. With 35,000+ copies going out around Australasia and a whopping 91,000+ readership, Blitz has enjoyed steady growth over the past five years. Visit the website (https://www.blitzmag.net/), download the app for iPad® or subscribe to the print magazine. You can even browse the latest articles from your mobile!

Threads
Print publishing death watch (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?52868-Print-publishing-death-watch)
Blitz Magazine ceases publication (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70757-Blitz-Magazine-ceases-publication)

[GeneChing]

Our recent shift from bimonthly (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/magazine/article.php?article=1412) to quarterly (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/magazine/article.php?article=1420) reflects the plummeting print economy. I will hold on as long as possible but can only do it with your support - please subscribe (http://www.martialartsmart.com/19341.html) or pick us up at the newsstands.



The Village Voice, a New York Icon, Closes (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/31/business/media/the-village-voice-closes.html)

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/09/01/business/01VOICE/merlin_129593732_55cb6347-876d-4102-b93c-9e8d76a11f8b-jumbo.jpg?quality=90&auto=webp
The storied independent publication, which made its debut in 1955, dropped its print edition in 2015 and has not had an editor since May. Credit CreditMark Lennihan/Associated Press
By Tyler Pager and Jaclyn Peiser
Aug. 31, 2018

When Peter D. Barbey bought The Village Voice in 2015, he vowed to invest in the storied alternative weekly, saying it would “survive and prosper.” But last August he shuttered the print edition, and on Friday he closed the operation altogether.

The end of the left-leaning independent publication was an anticlimax, given the many empty red plastic Village Voice boxes that have been scattered like debris across the sidewalks of Manhattan in recent years.

“This is a sad day for The Village Voice and for millions of readers,” Mr. Barbey said. “The Voice has been a key element of New York City journalism and is read around the world. As the first modern alternative newspaper, it literally defined a new genre of publishing.”

Staff members said they were not surprised that the end had come. The paper’s last editor in chief, Stephen Mooallem — the third top editor to serve under Mr. Barbey during his three-year tenure as owner — left in May and was not replaced.

Some staff members will stay on to make the paper’s print archive digitally accessible; the rest will be out of a job at a time when the local news industry finds itself in crisis.

Tom Robbins, a former longtime investigative journalist at The Voice, said, “It’s astonishing that this is happening in New York, the biggest media town in America.”

Now on the faculty at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York, Mr. Robbins added, “I think it really helped so many people sort of figure out everything they wanted to know, from where to find an apartment to what show to see to what scandal they wanted to dig into.”

The Voice was founded as a nickel weekly in 1955 by three New Yorkers, Dan Wolf, Edwin Fancher and Norman Mailer. They assembled a crew of writers who engaged readers with their wit and provoked them with their penchant for argument. Later owners included Rupert Murdoch and the pet-food magnate Leonard Stern.

The paper gave a start to the theater critic Hilton Als and the novelist Colson Whitehead, both recipients of the Pulitzer Prize. Its resident muckraker, Wayne Barrett, took aim at New York developers and politicians for nearly 40 years, and his obsessive work on Donald J. Trump has become a resource for reporters covering the president today.

It gave a home to the investigative reporters Jack Newfield and James Ridgeway, and the music critics Lester Bangs, Robert Christgau, Ellen Willis and Greg Tate. Nat Hentoff focused on jazz and First Amendment issues from 1958 to 2009, and the nightcrawling columnist Michael Musto wrote on celebrities, drag queens and club kids, with wisecracks thrown in, for more than 30 years.

Steven Wishnia, who has freelanced for The Voice on and off since 1994, said he stayed up until midnight on Thursday, putting the final touches on an article about the return of residents to their building on the Bowery after they were ordered to vacate it because of safety hazards. On Friday, Mr. Wishnia received a link to his article along with a note from his editor, Neil DeMause.

“So the good news is that you have the honor of having written the last news article ever for The Village Voice,” Mr. DeMause wrote. “The bad news is also the good news.”

Mr. Barbey is an heir to a Pennsylvania retail fortune. With a net worth estimated at more than $6 billion by Forbes, the Barbey family has a stake in brands like North Face, Wrangler and Timberland. For generations the family has also owned The Reading Eagle, a Pennsylvania daily newspaper. Mr. Barbey has been its chief executive since 2011.

He first read The Voice as a boarding school student in Massachusetts and was drawn to its coverage of the mid-1970s New York rock scene and the film criticism of Andrew Sarris. On Friday he became the media mogul who was shutting it down.

“I began my involvement with The Voice intending to ensure its future,” Mr. Barbey said in the statement. “While this is not the outcome I’d hoped for and worked towards, a fully digitized Voice archive will offer coming generations a chance to experience for themselves what is clearly one of this city’s and this country’s social and cultural treasures.”

The death of The Voice occurred in a bleak economic climate for local journalism. Print circulation has plummeted for two surviving New York tabloids, The New York Post and The Daily News. In July, Tronc, the owner of The News, laid off half the paper’s editorial staff, which had already been severely reduced.

Turning a profit in the digital realm is a code not many news organizations have cracked. DNAinfo and Gothamist, two news sites in New York, were shut down last year by their owner, Joe Ricketts, the billionaire founder of TD Ameritrade. Gothamist has since re-emerged under new ownership. On Friday, it broke the news of The Voice’s closing.

The film critic Bilge Ebiri said that Voice staff members were not anticipating Mr. Barbey’s announcement, but were “prepared for the worst” after his decision to eliminate the print publication.

Mr. DeMause, who wrote for the paper for 20 years before becoming one of its top editors two years ago, said, “I’m deeply saddened as a consumer of media and a little bit scared as a New Yorker and an American that we are losing all these journalism outlets at a time when we need them more than ever.”

Before Craigslist and other online services shoved printed classified ads into irrelevance, The Voice was thick with apartment listings that helped fund the work of its argumentative reporters and editors. For years, the weekly’s pages also included advertising for phone-sex and escort services, a practice that came to an end under Mr. Barbey.

Mr. Musto said The Voice was unique in the latitude it allowed its writers. “Each writer was given their beat and allowed to run with it and inject their personal style in every syllable,” he said.

Hired in 1984 and laid off in 2013, Mr. Musto returned when Mr. Barbey took over in 2015. He said he still felt the freedom he knew from the days when he was starting out.

“We can’t afford to lose an important media outlet,” Mr. Musto said. “It does leave a hole, but on the bright side, this sort of idiosyncratic rebellious spirit of The Voice has been subsumed, in a way, by the mainstream. It’s sort of everywhere.”

[MightyB]

Our recent shift from bimonthly (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/magazine/article.php?article=1412) to quarterly (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/magazine/article.php?article=1420) reflects the plummeting print economy. I will hold on as long as possible but can only do it with your support - please subscribe (http://www.martialartsmart.com/19341.html) or pick us up at the newsstands.

Just did the 2 year. Hopefully you'll be able to keep on keeping on for a bit longer.

[GeneChing]

Just did the 2 year. Hopefully you'll be able to keep on keeping on for a bit longer.

Thanks MightyB! We appreciate that. :cool:

[GeneChing]

Ha! We aren't the only ones forced to shift to quarterly now.

Funny how Playboy has become such a barometer for the print publishing industry here. At the same time, the Playboy club is reopening (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-09-14/the-playboy-club-is-back) and Playboy is moving back to deeper content (https://www.warc.com/newsandopinion/news/playboy_returns_to_editorial_media/41031). Too bad we can't manage a Kung Fu Tai Chi (http://www.martialartsmart.com/19341.html) club.


'Playboy' To Become A Quarterly Publication In 2019 (https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/324818/playboy-to-become-a-quarterly-publication-in-201.html)
by Sara Guaglione , September 12, 2018

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Playboy magazine, which publishes six issues a year, plans to become a quarterly publication starting next year.

Earlier this year, Playboy CEO Ben Kohn told TheWall Street Journal the company may shutter the magazine eventually. But in a new interview with The New York Times, he said "the magazine is not going to stop printing."

Kohn said he plans to make the magazine a quarterly.

The company’s licensed products — from shampoo to backpacks — bring in over $1 billion annually, according to the Times report.

Soon, the company will reopen a Playboy Club in Midtown Manhattan.

The brand has undergone a number of changes this year under the leadership of Cooper Hefner, Chief Creative Officer of Playboy Enterprises, Inc. and the youngest son of the company’s founder, Hugh Hefner, who died in 2017.

The magazine featured a transgender Playmate on one of its covers for the first time in its 64-year history and updated its slogan from “Entertainment for Men” to “Entertainment for All.”

In April, Playboy unveiled a new website. Now, all site visitors are required to register. They can become a Playboy Club member for access to exclusive content and events.

Migrating content online is part of Hefner’s plan to "shift away from putting a lot of effort into the magazine,” he said at the MediaPost Publishing Insider Summit last fall.

Playboy reached a peak of 5.6 million subscribers a year in 1975. Today, the magazine has a circulation under 500,000 and publishes six issues a year.

[GeneChing]

Pioneering punk print 'zine Maximum Rocknroll is ceasing publication after nearly 40 years (https://boingboing.net/2019/01/14/the-maximum-rocknroll-print.html?fbclid=IwAR0VxPc9w2dJrQcSkL8GJ8Rkltaw0a Un9uOtYgGj13_VdOgLxdS4jnLNrLY)

https://i0.wp.com/media.boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/screenshot-51.jpg?w=801&ssl=1

Maximum Rocknroll, the seminal punk print 'zine launched in 1982, is ceasing publication of its paper edition. This truly marks the end of an era in punk culture and underground media. According to today's announcement, MRR will continue its weekly radio show, post record reviews online, continue its archiving effort, and launch other new projects that will keep the unbreakable Maximum Rocknroll spirit alive. From MRR:

Maximum Rocknroll began as a radio show in 1977. For the founders of Maximum Rocknroll, the driving impulse behind the radio show was simple: an unabashed, uncompromising love of punk rock. In 1982, buoyed by burgeoning DIY punk and hardcore scenes all over the world, the founders of the show — Tim Yohannan & the gang — launched Maximum Rocknroll as a print fanzine. That first issue drew a line in the sand between the so-called punks who mimicked society’s worst attributes — the “apolitical, anti-historical, and anti-intellectual,” the ignorant, racist, and violent — and MRR’s principled dedication to promoting a true alternative to the doldrums of the mainstream. That dedication included anti-corporate ideals, avowedly leftist politics, and relentless enthusiasm for DIY punk and hardcore bands and scenes from every inhabited continent of the globe. Over the next several decades, what started as a do-it-yourself labor of love among a handful of friends and fellow travelers has extended to include literally thousands of volunteers and hundreds of thousands of readers. Today, forty-two years after that first radio show, there have been well over 1600 episodes of MRR radio and 400 issues of Maximum Rocknroll fanzine — not to mention some show spaces, record stores, and distros started along the way — all capturing the mood and sound of international DIY punk rock: wild, ebullient, irreverent, and oppositional.

Needless to say, the landscape of the punk underground has shifted over the years, as has the world of print media. Many of the names and faces behind Maximum Rocknroll have changed too. Yet with every such shift, MRR has continued to remind readers that punk rock isn’t any one person, one band, or even one fanzine. It is an idea, an ethos, a **** you to the status quo, a belief that a different kind of world and a different kind of sound is ours for the making.

These changes do not mean that Maximum Rocknroll is coming to an end. We are still the place to turn if you care about Swedish girl bands or Brazilian thrash or Italian anarchist publications or Filipino teenagers making anti-state pogo punk, if you are interested in media made by punks for punks, if you still believe in the power and potential of autonomously produced and underground culture. We certainly still do, and look forward to the surprises, challenges, and joys that this next chapter will bring. Long live Maximum Rocknroll.

https://i1.wp.com/media.boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/screenshot-52.jpg?w=1222&ssl=1


Every time I post one of these, I hope someone steps up to support us and subscribes (https://www.martialartsmart.com/19341.html). When a 40-year-old mainstay bellies up like this, we won't be far behind without your support.

[GeneChing]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T48oA82v2m4

[GeneChing]

ESPN The Magazine to End Print Edition After 21 Years (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/espn-magazine-ending-print-edition-september-1206319)
7:36 PM PDT 4/30/2019 by the Associated Press

https://cdn1.thr.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/landscape_928x523/2018/03/gettyimages-508675272_copy_-_h_2018.jpg
Robin Marchant/Getty Images

The magazine launched in March 1988 and was a competitor to Sports Illustrated. ESPN said in a statement that the types of stories the magazine had run will be produced for online distribution.

ESPN The Magazine is ending its print edition in September after 21 years.

The magazine launched in March 1988 and was a competitor to Sports Illustrated. ESPN said in a statement that the types of stories the magazine had run will be produced for online distribution.

"Consumer habits are evolving rapidly, and this requires ESPN to evolve as well,” the company said Tuesday. “The only change here is that we are moving away from printing it on paper and sending it in the mail, following September’s release of The Body Issue. Our data shows the vast majority of readers already consume our print journalism on digital platforms."

ESPN said it will explore future special editions in print.

We've going on 27 years, but have never been anywhere near the magnitude of ESPN. Please subscribe (http://www.martialartsmart.com/19341.html) or we'll be following them soon.

[GeneChing]

...there's always hope. Please subscribe. (https://www.martialartsmart.com/19341.html)


Bucking the Trend: Print Magazines Still Work for (Some) Publishers (https://www.foliomag.com/bucking-trend-print-magazines-still-work/)
A slew of publishers, both new and established, are investing in print magazine launches. We asked three of them why.
By Greg Dool :: May 30, 2019

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Much like the several years that have preceded it, 2019 will see the deaths of many a once-formidable print magazine. Some will find new life online, some will fade into irrelevance, and many that survive will scramble to implement new business models, hoping to save their print foundations from becoming quaint archives of a bygone era.

And yet, even in 2019, a diverse set of both new and traditional publishers continue to invest in the medium despite its inherent financial challenges, begging obvious questions about how, specifically, a new media brand stands to benefit from producing an expensive print magazine at a time when the barriers to entry in digital media are seemingly nonexistent.

“Our print products establish our reputation,” offered Richard Eichler, CEO of longtime oil and gas industry publisher Hart Energy on a panel Thursday morning at the MediaGrowth Summit, an annual conference for B2B media executives. “It’s expensive, but it works.”

We wanted answers from some new entrants to the magazine game, so we spoke with the braintrust behind three recently launched media brands—one by a non-media company, one by an independent entrepreneur, and one by an established publishing company—to learn more about why incorporating a print edition into the mix was a necessary first step.

Callaway Golf pivots to print

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An especially popular approach among hip startups like Airbnb, Bumble and Casper, recent years have seen a marked increase in non-traditional media brands launching print magazines, with varying degrees of branding, as a way of creating new points of engagement with existing (and potential) customers.

The latest of these entries is Pivot, a new magazine from the global golf equipment and apparel brand Callaway, which released its debut issue on May 10.

“We’ve always had somewhat of a journalistic approach to marketing, but this was a bit of a different animal,” Scott Goryl, director of marketing communications and content for Callaway Golf, tells Folio:.

The framework for Pivot was laid last summer when Callaway collaborated with Montauk, N.Y.-based Whalebone magazine on a sponsored, fully golf-themed issue timed to coincide with the 2018 U.S. Open, which was being held at nearby Shinnecock Hills Golf Club.

“We’d been thinking about what an unbranded property might look like, whether it be a podcast or another project, as a means of experimenting but also as an attempt to reach an audience beyond our core,” says Goryl. “A dedicated magazine issue didn’t feel like enough, so instead we started thinking about it as a new media property that Callaway could support but that would live somewhat independently.”

The end result was a magazine that Goryl describes as “lightly branded,” featuring Callaway product integrations as well about a half-dozen traditional ads sprinkled across the 107-page issue, but with its own specific branding and style guide. This approach stemmed from a realization, Goryl says, that while they are becoming more receptive to it, readers still prefer content that doesn’t feel like it’s coming directly from a brand.

“A magazine seemed like the perfect format to introduce Pivot to the world and tell stories in a way that we knew would have a really cool style and aesthetic that was distinct from a lot of other golf media properties,” he adds.

Pivot isn’t meant to be a direct revenue source, but rather a more indirect component to Callaway’s broader marketing mix, which ranges from traditional advertising to social media, podcasts and video. Issues of the magazine are available online, but Goryl says the $10 price tag exists simply to alleviate the costs of shipping. A large portion of the magazine’s circulation is delivered free of charge: included with online purchases of Callaway products and, crucially, distributed through a partnership with Topgolf, a chain of driving ranges that attracts both avid and casual golfers alike.

Goryl says the magazine is meant to be something that Callaway’s core client base of avid golfers could appreciate, but it also presents an opportunity to connect with “emerging subcultures” within the game, golfers who might not be tuned in to PGA tour results or the latest trends in golf instruction.

“We really wanted to make a connection with our audience. We wanted it to be a fun experience to flip through,” he says. “You’re spending time with something and really connecting with it on a different level than if it was coming up in a feed, which is more fleeting. We’re all in marketing here, we’re fans of the medium and we have a lot of love for it. We felt like there were some ways to use print as a brand and to tell stories that we didn’t really see out there.”

True to form, Pivot’s debut issue is filled with the types of outdoor photography and personal narratives that lend themselves not only to ink and paper, but also to the sport of golf.

“We felt like there were stories that could be told in the print format that weren’t being told, about interesting characters who you wouldn’t necessarily expect to be golfers. There’s a subset of golfers out there who want to connect with the game in a less-traditional manner, and that’s definitely what we were leaning toward as we discussed our editorial strategy and tone.”

With the first issue finished, Goryl says his team is still in “gathering feedback mode,” but that he would expect to see more print issues in the future.

“So far, the feedback has been very positive,” he says. “It’s confirming a lot of our theories about the ways people want to connect with the game. The print format is great for compelling storytelling around something that people are very passionate about like golf.”


continued next post

[GeneChing]

Underscoring trust and authority

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When Active Interest Media expanded its Marine Group of titles in 2014 with the launch of the quarterly Anglers Journal, it did so under the theory that “a premium print product at the core of a media brand is essential,” according to president and CEO Andy Clurman.

Despite some challenging times for the medium in the years that followed, that same philosophy appears to have endured through the launch of the group’s eighth boating title, Outboard magazine, which debuted last November and put out its second issue in April.

Observing a trend among boat manufacturers and enthusiasts alike toward watercraft powered by outboard motors—that is, self-contained motors affixed to the outside of a hull, as opposed to the fully enclosed engines common to larger yachts—Active Interest Media recognized this growing yet underserved market.

“With all of these boat builders going to outboard power, we very quickly realized that we could fill a whole magazine with just these types of boats,” says Daniel Harding, who serves as editor-in-chief of both Outboard and its elder sister title, Power & Motoryacht. “With our specialty being drilling down into these micro-niches, we just felt that we really had something here. We’ve just done two issues so far, but we’ve really seen an audience that’s been craving this kind of book.”

To build up an audience base, Outboard leveraged Power & Motoryacht’s existing digital channels to offer free issues to boaters interested in the new title, and held a major activation at last November’s Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show, allowing Harding and his team to see people experiencing the new book firsthand.

“We’ve gotten over 2,000 people to sign up for a free issue so far, with the hope that we can convert them to paid subscribers down the line when we increase our frequency,” Harding says.

But those 2,000 active sign-ups represent only a small fraction of the magazine’s overall circulation, which also comprises of a newsstand presence at West Marine stores around the country (at a cover price of $9.99), as well as a controlled distribution to registered, active outboard boat owners.

With a large-format, thick paper stock and clocking in at over 100 pages each, the first two issues of Outboard feel like a higher-end, expensive-to-produce magazine, but Harding says it’s an investment in the type of authority that a high-quality print magazine provides in a space that’s “full of faux authorities and really deceptive social media influencers” attempting to pass off thinly-veiled sponsorship deals as editorial content.

“Anybody with a cell phone can walk through a boat and pretend they’re giving an authoritative review, but the smart boaters can see through that,” Harding says. “I think they hold us to a higher standard and they trust us because they know we’re a team of trained journalists and professional editors and we have that print journal in the background.”

With two more issues on the way this year, Harding says there are plans in place to build out digital products to fill the downtime between issues, but that the team prefers to continue letting it grow organically before setting an official frequency schedule.

“It’s so rare in this business that you get a fresh start, so you might as well make it the kind of magazine you’d want to sit down and read. We talk about that all the time,” he adds. “We want this magazine to inspire you to take your boat out and take it for an adventure or take your family on a trip. We’re really just trying to get to the heart of why people fall in love with boating in the first place.”

Outboard is produced primarily by the existing Power & Motoryacht team and others from within the company’s Marine Group, Harding says the experience of witnessing the launch and subsequent growth of Anglers Journal firsthand has been an indispensable resource as well as an inspiration.

“It had a really strong design aesthetic, a really high-quality paper stock and experience, so we’ve really been following in [Anglers Journal editor-in-chief Bill Sisson’s] footsteps to think outside the box and make the magazine we’d want to read.”

To the Marine Group and the manufacturers and enthusiasts they serve, print remains a trusted source of information, Harding says, and readers especially want the form of escape that a print magazine still provides more effectively than other media.

“At Active Interest Media, we don’t have the option to not be profitable, and we were right out of the gate,” says Harding. “They trusted us completely from the start. They really took a gamble on us, but we certainly couldn’t do it without their support and the backing that comes from a publishing company like this, and I have an unbelievable team that rallied behind this product. I really tip my hat to the independent people that are starting magazines, because we came in with a big advantage.”

continued next post

[GeneChing]

Identifying a niche

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Among those independent publishers entering the print magazine space is Nick Giallourakis, who ended a seven-year tenure with Informa (formerly Penton) last year, teamed up with his mom, Angie, and launched Elephants & Tea, a new quarterly serving adolescents and young adults who have been diagnosed with cancer, as well as their caregivers.

Inspired by the experience of his younger brother, a two-time cancer survivor, and born out of a recognition that there was no dedicated media brand specifically serving such an audience, the first issue of Elephants & Tea came out in March to an overwhelming response from the community, Giallourakis tells Folio:.

“This age range has their own specific issues that you don’t see in adult or childhood cancers,” he says. “There’s nothing specifically for this group out there like this.”

Still in the process of building out its own database, Giallourakis first spread the word about Elephants & Tea by partnering with cancer hospitals around the country, including the Cleveland Clinic and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

“It started with just an email chain to get the word out, and then we attended a couple of conferences and talked to the people there,” says Giallourakis. “The people we’re working with—it could be anyone from the lead oncologist or a program manager or patient navigator—they’ve been our main contacts, but then they’ve passed it along to people at other hospitals, and it’s just kind of snowballed from a distribution standpoint, which has been really cool.”

Giallourakis says many of these contacts in turn submitted more writers for future issues, while others have been giving out copies of the debut issue to newly diagnosed patients and their families.

“A lot of the survivors have been telling us that they wish they had this when they were going through treatments,” Giallourakis adds. “It gives people hope—just because they have cancer, it doesn’t mean that their life is over.”

The magazine’s title is derived from a metaphor—explained in its tagline, “Cancer is the elephant in the room. Tea is the relief that conversation provides.” As such, the content mix is heavy on first-person narratives and adolescent/young adult subjects sharing their own experiences with cancer. Patients overwhelmingly indicated that they don’t want to read articles by someone who hasn’t lived through the experience themselves, Giallourakis says.

One topic the magazine explores in every issue is sexuality.

“When we started talking with people, that was a topic they wanted to know more about,” he adds. “I think it’s something people are afraid to just ask their doctor or their social worker about. For a patient or survivor that’s trying to have a normal sex life, that’s extremely important to them.”

Like adolescent and young adult patients and survivors, another underserved community, Giallourakis says, is their caregivers.

“The emotional toll that caregivers go through—don’t get me wrong, it’s definitely not the same as what the patient goes through—but it is significant,” he continues. “I think that it’s important for the caregivers to be able to get this content for their own support, but also to really understand what the patient or survivor is going through.”

To formulate a content strategy, the mother-and-son team behind Elephants & Tea conducted focus groups and one-on-one interviews with patients, survivors and caregivers, but also oncologists, social workers, program managers and nonprofits. They formulated five key areas of focus: “wellness and nutrition,” “emotional support,” “college, career and cash,” “sexuality” and “chemo brain,” any of which could change based on continued feedback (the magazine’s second issue is slated to come out in June).

Apart from distribution at cancer centers, Giallourakis hired a freelancer to handle social media promotion and organic SEO to drive people to the magazine’s website and get them to register for a free subscription. Weekly email newsletters update readers about new posts on the site, which is updated a few times a week and modeled after The Players’ Tribune, another specialist in first-person narratives.

Free to access on all channels and monetized through advertising, Giallourakis has ambitions to expand into sponsored or custom content—something his years of experience at Penton and Informa helped inform—and sees potential from nonprofits to major cosmetics companies. In the end, though, the print edition remains the brand’s bedrock.

“It’s tough to justify print from an ROI standpoint individually in this day and age, however the magazine itself is such a powerful marketing tool,” Giallourakis says. “I just feel that if we’re really going to be a media company for adolescent and young adult survivors, patients and caregivers, we need a print component. It really has validated what we have done, just in terms of authority and trust and to prove that we are for real. I think there’s something to be said for that. It helps separate us from the pack.”

Meet the Author
Greg Dool
@gregdool
Greg Dool is Folio:'s senior editor.

We're a niche. But we won't be for much longer if you don't subscribe (https://www.martialartsmart.com/19341.html).

[GeneChing]

Do they have to change their name to Entertainment Monthly now? Kinda like when Tiger Claw changed TC2000 (https://www.martialartsmart.com/75-77.html) to...no wait, that never changed. :o


JUNE 6, 2019 11:31AM PT
Entertainment Weekly Will Go Monthly (https://variety.com/2019/biz/news/entertainment-weekly-monthly-meredith-1203235015/)
By BRIAN STEINBERG
Senior TV Editor
@https://twitter.com/bristei

https://pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2019/06/jd-heymannew1-e1559845814860.jpg?w=1000&h=563&crop=1
CREDIT: COURTESY OF MEREDITH

Entertainment Weekly is going monthly – at least in print.

Publisher Meredith Corp. said it intends to boost the outlet’s social video, events and digital platforms while scaling back its magazine publication schedule to once a month. The first monthly issue, slated to debut in August, will focus on Comic-Con. The magazine will continue to produce special interest magazines to coincide with big entertainment industry moments, the company said.

JD Heyman (above, pictured), who has been deputy editor at People, will become the new editor in chief of Entertainment Weekly, while the current editorial chief, Henry Goldblatt, will step down after 17 years with the publication.

The moves show Meredith still working to weave the magazines it acquired from Time Inc. for $2.8 billion in January of last year into its operations. The Des Moines, Iowa, company has sold publications Time and Fortune to entrepreneurs and recently struck a deal with Authentic Brands for $110 million to take on the business of developing Sports Illustrated while Meredith continues to publish it for the next two years. The company has kept People, once the crown business jewel of Time Inc., and the publication to which EW was most closely affiliated.

Under the new plan, EW will produce more digital-only feature reporting and in-depth guides for tentpole events – as well as digital-only covers featuring A-list stars of a major movie franchise. The first is slated for release in the first week of July. The company also plans to produce podcasts and a new schedule of video offerings along with more exclusive screenings, panels, curated events and festival partnerships.

The last issue of Entertainment Weekly in its current print form will be the July 5 issue, which goes on sale June 25.



https://smhttp-ssl-73310.nexcesscdn.net/pub/media/catalog/product/cache/c687aa7517cf01e65c009f6943c2b1e9/m/a/martial-arts-sweatband-tc2000-9.gif.gif

[GeneChing]

I grew up with Mad. I suppose I should credit it for my subversive nature. :(



Mad Magazine will vanish from newsstands after 67 years (https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/04/media/mad-magazine-cease-publication-trnd/index.html)
By Rob McLean and Michelle Lou, CNN
Updated 8:08 AM ET, Fri July 5, 2019

(CNN)Once a cultural touchstone, Mad Magazine is halting the publication of new content and vanishing from newsstands.

The seminal humor publication will no longer be available on newsstands after its August issue, according to a person familiar with the matter.
After that, issues will be available only via comic book stores and subscriptions, the source said.
The source indicated that issues after No. 10 of its current volume will reprint earlier material with new covers. However, the magazine will continue to publish its end-of-year special, books and special collections.

The revered satirical publication was founded in 1952 as a comic book. In 1955, it switched to a magazine format.
Former Mad Editor Allie Goertz, who resigned last month, lamented that there will no longer be new content after issue No. 10.
"MAD is an institution with such a rich history," Goertz tweeted. "It informed just about every comedian and writer I (and probably you) look up to."



Allie Goertz
✔
@AllieGoertz
· Jul 3, 2019
Replying to @AllieGoertz
While there will be no new material after issue #10, @MADmagazine is not gone. I find it deeply sad to learn that there will be no new content, but knowing history repeats itself, I have no doubt that the vintage pieces will be highly (if not tragically) relevant.


Allie Goertz
✔
@AllieGoertz
Working at MAD was a childhood dream come true. MAD is an institution with such a rich history. It informed just about every comedian and writer I (and probably you) look up to. I worked with ICONS. Sergio Aragonés visits were common. Al Jaffee still does the fold-in!
365
10:30 PM - Jul 3, 2019
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"Weird Al" Yankovic, who became Mad's first guest editor in 2015, also expressed sorrow on social media.
"I am profoundly sad to hear that after 67 years, MAD Magazine is ceasing publication," the singer-songwriter said. "I can't begin to describe the impact it had on me as a young kid--it's pretty much the reason I turned out weird. Goodbye to one of the all-time greatest American institutions. #ThanksMAD."


https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D-mqG5tW4AAYUfH?format=jpg&name=900x900
View image on Twitter (https://twitter.com/alyankovic/status/1146634840239988738)

Al Yankovic
✔
@alyankovic
I am profoundly sad to hear that after 67 years, MAD Magazine is ceasing publication. I can’t begin to describe the impact it had on me as a young kid – it’s pretty much the reason I turned out weird. Goodbye to one of the all-time greatest American institutions. #ThanksMAD

73.3K
9:20 PM - Jul 3, 2019
16.2K people are talking about this
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Mad is part of the DC Comics group, owned by Warner Bros., which is owned by CNN's parent company, AT&T's WarnerMedia.
DC did not immediately respond to request for comment.
Correction: A previous version of this story misidentified the owner of DC Comics

[GeneChing]

I used to say that there was no way we could compete with mags like the SI swimsuit issue on the newsstands. Now we're all struggling. Please subscribe (https://www.martialartsmart.com/19341.html) or we might be next.



Sports Illustrated’s demise shows how it’s a mad world for iconic media companies (https://www.latimes.com/sports/story/2019-10-13/sports-illustrated-demise-mad-world-iconic-media-companies)

https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/9d3eb51/2147483647/strip/true/crop/4047x2647+0+0/resize/840x549!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fca-times.brightspotcdn.com%2Fb5%2F68%2F410c6c784a46a2 c41308e6c3ae01%2Fhttps-delivery.gettyimages.com%2Fdownloads%2F1071894968. jpg
Rams defensive tackle Aaron Donald accepts the performer of the year award during the Sports Illustrated 2018 Sportsperson of the Year Awards Show on Dec. 11, 2018.(Getty Images)
By TOM HOF****H
OCT. 13, 2019 4:28 PM

Our Sports Media Misery Index loves company as much as it loathes competitive balance:

Not-so-low threshold
-- MAD Magazine announced last summer it would stop publishing new content after 67 years. We almost went mad. But at the end of the day, what, us worry?

Worry more about the madness of recent layoffs and more tarnishing of the Sports Illustrated legacy, as its new ownership has rebranded it as “A Maven Channel” on the same SI.com that claims to be “the most trusted voice in sports.”

Quoth the Maven, SI will nevermore be the same. They’re giving their audience the business.

Iconic media companies struggle to stay relevant with new platforms of delivery. SI’s dragged out, systematic disintegration more often sends us drifting to the SI Vault (www.si.com/vault) for a reminder of what the word “classic” means.


When former SI scribe Rick Reilly recently did an homage piece for Peter King’s “Football Morning in America” — King himself ended a 29-year run at the organization in 2018 for more security at NBC — it was tied together with an “adieu haiku” that went:

It’s the end of the SI world as we know it, and I don’t feel fine

464649_SP_1013_rams_49ers6_WJS.jpg
RAMS
Rams searching for answers after falling to 49ers in third consecutive loss
Oct. 13, 2019
-- Joe Buck may not publicly complain about it, but what does it show about Fox’s priorities when it gives an NFL regular-season Thursday night game preferential treatment over the MLB playoffs? Lead play-by-play man Buck will yield to Joe Davis for the American League Championship Series Game 5 in New York between Houston and the Yankees because he’s needed for a Week 7 Kansas City-Denver NFL game. The ALCS will be bumped from Fox’s national broadcast network to FS1 so the NFL game has a suitable home (while it’s simulcast on the NFL Network).

After that, during next week’s World Series, Buck’s day off between Games 2 and 3 includes an Oct. 24 side trip to Minnesota for the NFL’s Thursday night Week 8 telecast.

If Dick Stockton is still employed, isn’t this an ideal time to send him to “Thursday Night Football” instead?

Medium well
* It finally dawned on us that, for as much Fox Sports continues producing the most entertaining current form of an NFL studio show from its L.A. studios, it has created Kathy Bates-on-James Caan cringe-worthy misery for viewers asked to figure out the network’s college football and MLB counterparts.

Note the ways ESPN’s crews on similar studio shows generate genuine camaraderie and a positive, likable energy. Fox’s reclamation projects of sports deviants — Urban Meyer, Reggie Bush, Alex Rodriguez, David Ortiz (and before that, Pete Rose) — leans more toward a mashup of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” with “Despicable Me.”

Any of them could say something with a measure of compelling insight. But there’s this tinge of disingenuous intentions held together with nontransparent duct tape. It’s not impossible to root for their comeback attempt. It’s just made more difficult by the platform’s telegenic manipulative nature.

* Among the ways to mark the greatest self-centered moments in Staples Center’s 20 years of existence — its anniversary is this week — we muster up the maestro of misery, Larry David, and the 2001 Season 2, Episode 8 of HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

Sitting courtside at a Lakers game, David stretches his legs out. Then Shaquille O’Neal comes off the bench, heads to the scorer’s table, trips, falls and is hospitalized. As Goliath goes down, David is left as the scourge of L.A.

Now pair that with a life-kind-of-imitates-art moment during a 2017 Lakers-Clippers game. The Clippers’ Jamal Crawford hits a jumper over Brandon Ingram, turns to run down court near the Clippers bench and slams into the rear end of a fan who has his back turned looking for his seat.

You try to make that stuff up.

High tolerance
* Eddie Olczyk, NBC’s hybrid NHL and horse racing analyst, has seen enough misery, although his Stage 3 colon cancer appears to be beat. The onetime Kings star has a new goal: to let readers know about his journey in a new book “Beating The Odds In Hockey and In Life” (Triumph Books, 320 pages, $28). Included is a chapter: “Thank God I Got Sick,” which includes this: “During the entire time I was battling cancer, I never once asked, ‘Why me?’ If anything, I was happy it was me rather than any of the people I truly care about. I would not want anyone I know to go through this.”

* TBS’ push for Jeff “Frenchy” Francoeur as its hot new MLB postseason analyst has been sidetracked by promos for “The Misery Index” game show during the National League playoffs. Remember a few years ago when the same network relentlessly pushed a new Frank Caliendo show into audience defiance? All things considered, neither Francoeur nor “TMI” should be expected to last as long on the TBS airwaves as the recent Dodgers reality show.

[GeneChing]

https://s.hdnux.com/photos/01/07/63/02/18821282/5/1680x1108.jpg

Lowrider’s last cruise in print (https://www.sfchronicle.com/culture/article/Lowrider-magazine-founded-in-San-Jose-takes-its-14946068.php?fbclid=IwAR0YEMNCKdUR9vdKmk4VRrZzetWL itoWcgcFs0dFhwwi_hFgYp4lyp5y85o)
Founded by San Jose State students, the magazine has covered car culture and the Chicano community for 42 years.
By Montse Reyes | Jan. 5, 2020 | San Francisco Chronicle
Photo by Beto Mendoza

Los Angeles has Whittier Boulevard. Immortalized in songs and films, the road is legendary for Chicanos, especially those who obliged the weekend tradition of piling into glistening, candy-painted Chevys and Cadillacs to cruise.

It might not be featured in Snoop Dogg music videos, but Bay Area residents know the other heartbeat of the lowrider community: Mission Street.

“Every Friday and Saturday night, it was like a parade,” recalls Roberto Hernandez, founder of the San Francisco Lowrider Council, of nights spent on the neighborhood’s biggest thoroughfare in the 1970s and ’80s. “We had cars coming from Sacramento, Tracy, Stockton and San Jose. It was bumper to bumper from 16th Street all the way up to Cortland Avenue.”

As the godfather of ground-hugging cars in San Francisco, Hernandez has been protecting the rights of those who cruise since the early ’80s. And now, he’s among those mourning the loss of Lowrider magazine, which recently announced it will be shuttering its monthly print edition.

The publication has been a pillar in car and Chicano culture since a trio of San Jose State University students — Sonny Madrid, Larry Gonzalez and David Nunez — debuted the publication in 1977. (Nunez passed away in 2011, and Madrid in 2015.) The three came up with a few thousand dollars to fund the first issue, which they put together huddled over tables at a restaurant near the university. Their first issue, essentially a zine with black and white photos of cars and write-ups documenting the scenes in San Jose, Fresno and Gilroy, sold for $1.

On Dec. 6, 2019, the magazine’s parent company, TEN Publishing, announced it would cease to print Lowrider (alongside 18 more of its 22 titles) by the end of 2019, citing a rise in digital readership. The magazine will continue to publish content online.

“I almost died,” Hernandez says of his reaction to the news that the physical magazine would be shuttering after 42 years. “I couldn’t believe it.

https://s.hdnux.com/photos/77/36/01/18832250/5/1200x0.jpg
Covers of Lowrider magazing. | Lowrider

“The magazine played an important role because it gave a validated identity for the youngster who was 14, who was a cholo and was coming out to check out the lowriders,” adds Hernandez. “Or tu mamá or tu papá, or tu tía or tu abuelita.”

“It’s a whole lifestyle, a whole community,” says Beto Mendoza, who freelanced for Lowrider for years before joining full-time in 2011. He is one of two current full-time staffers, both of whom will continue covering the souped-up cars through the magazine’s website and social media accounts. “Everyone that’s a real lowrider, we all know each other, we’re all friends. There’s a real good connection between all of us.”

Mendoza fell in love with lowriders at age 6, when he saw a car jumping on hydraulics in the 1987 Cheech Marin comedy “Born in East L.A.” Soon after, Mendoza got his hands on a copy of Lowrider magazine. He was hooked.

The tradition of riding low and slow has deep roots for Latinos in the United States, stretching back to the 1940s, when Mexican American youth in oversize zoot suits — known as pachucos — would throw in bags of cement or sand to lower their Chevrolets. The lowriders were roving political statements, a declaration of both pride in Mexican heritage in the face of discrimination, and defiance of the fast-and-slick hot rods popular among young, white Americans.

Technology evolved, with sandbags soon giving way to hydraulic pumps that could raise or lower the customized cars with the flip of a switch at the owner’s behest, creating the modern lowrider style most have come to recognize today.

“Lowriding is an art form,” says Hernandez. “You will never see a lowrider that’s the same as another. The upholstery is different. The color, the paint job is different. Every lowrider puts his touch on his lowrider. It comes from your heart, your soul, your spirit, your mind.”

https://s.hdnux.com/photos/77/36/01/18821307/5/1200x0.jpg
A 1986 Buick Regal in Corcoran (Kings County). | Beto Mendoza

Law enforcement hasn’t always agreed. A 1958 law in California outlawed cars that had any part lower than the bottom of the wheel’s rim. From then on, lowriders became associated with gangs and violence, arguably spurred by racist stereotypes of the young, often working-class brown and black men who drove the cars.

“The police didn’t understand it,” Hernandez says, recalling the resistance lowriders faced in the ’70s and ’80s. “They saw it as threatening.”

Drivers out to cruise knew to expect harassment. Police would issue tickets for reckless driving or shut down Mission Street altogether to stop lowriders. Hernandez says he was cited 113 times, and recalls some of his peers being arrested for cruising.

If they headed across the bridge to the East Bay, it was the same: “If we went to a town like Walnut Creek, we ended up getting chased out by the (locals) or by police,” says David Gonzales, a Richmond-born lowrider and cartoonist who ran the comic strip The Adventures of Hollywood in the magazine from 1978 to 1983.

The police involvement always seemed to have an element of racial profiling, according to Hernandez.

“While we were doing that on Mission Street, across the city, in the Sunset, on the Great Highway, the hot rodders — which were all the white boys — were racing for pink slips,” he says, meaning the winner takes the loser’s car. “And the police and the city never messed with them.”

https://s.hdnux.com/photos/77/36/01/18832274/5/1200x0.jpg
Covers of Lowrider magazine, including the inaugural 1977 issue of Lowrider magazine (center). | Lowrider

Lowrider magazine provided an antidote. Spurred by the energy around the Chicano civil rights movement, Madrid, Gonzalez and Nunez set out to feature lowrider culture with appreciation and affection, while also covering social and political issues important to the Chicano community.

Alongside customized cars, Lowrider’s pages featured sections like La Raza Report, short stories, poetry and comics made by Chicanos. At one point, they even started a now-defunct music label, Thump Records, and had a scholarship program for young Chicanos.

“It did a lot of reporting on social issues that were affecting Latinos,” Hernandez says. “But more importantly, it also became a conversation piece. You could talk with your family, your friends, your homies so it became a way to not only communicate but to inform, educate and begin a conversation.”

The early success of the magazine spoke to the need for such an outlet, as it grew from a homespun DIY-style project to a publication with considerable reach.

“I’ll never forget when Sonny (Madrid) called me and said ‘I got the first issue,’” Hernandez recalls. Hernandez leaned on the connections he had built in San Francisco and throughout the Bay Area through his organizing with the United Farm Workers to help get the magazine stocked in record stores, panaderias and other local businesses.

continued next post

[GeneChing]

Cartoonist David Gonzales remembers the founders selling early copies of Lowrider out of a 1954 Chevy Bel Air wherever readers might be.

https://s.hdnux.com/photos/77/36/01/18821280/5/1200x0.jpg
A 1959 Chevrolet Impala photographed in Las Vegas. | Beto Mendoza

“Larry (Gonzalez) would call me and say ‘Hey, we’re going to be in Oakland,’ or ‘This weekend we’re going to Richmond, is there anything going on?’” Gonzales recalls. “Sure enough, they’d show up and people would be out there with their magazines.”

The cartoonist went on to create Homies, a popular series of collectible figurines based on the characters in the comic strip. Like the founders of Lowrider, he aimed to reflect life for Chicanos as he saw it.

“A lot of our social life was cruising,” he says. “Starting Friday, you’re like, ‘Bam, where we heading tonight and the next day?’ with the crew. So it was just the fun of building the car, the fellowship, the camaraderie.”

That fellowship had no age limit. In covering the community as an editor for Lowrider, Beto Mendoza says he’s seen the level of detail, money and focus poured into customizing classic cars become a site of connection across generations of families.

https://s.hdnux.com/photos/01/07/63/02/18821297/5/920x920.jpg
Lowrider magazine.

“At the shows, if you look around, everybody’s got their car up with their wife and kids. It’s a family thing going around these cars. It’s an excuse to build memories.”

As Lowrider magazine grew, its readership expanded to include a multicultural audience, and the content slowly shifted away from explicit political messaging. In 1979, it ran its first issue with a pinup model donning the cover. That aesthetic choice and sales strategy continued until 2015, when editors decided to do away with the models, in part to reflect changing attitudes toward women in the lowrider community.

In the decades in between, the magazine also expanded its reach and business model, moving its headquarters to Los Angeles and capturing (and nurturing) lowrider communities as far away as Japan, Brazil, Australia, Mexico and Canada. At its peak, the magazine had a circulation of 210,000.

The last issue hit newsstands in late December. But while the print publication has come to an end, the Bay Area community it helped document and advocate for certainly isn’t going anywhere.

With the San Francisco Lowrider Council, Hernandez has worked to better advocate for the preservation of lowrider culture and dispel harmful stereotypes in the face of restrictions from the city and law enforcement. And he thinks the tide has shifted. Hernandez and his fellow lowriders are a staple at community events throughout the city. They organize cruises down Mission Street, and — as was perhaps unimaginable in the ’70s — local politicians sometimes join them. In May 2019, Mayor London Breed rode shotgun alongside Hernandez in his crisp white Chevrolet Impala during the San Francisco Lowrider Council’s Cinco de Mayo car show.

Hernandez credits part of that shift to the sense of pride Lowrider gave Chicanos.

“I was proud that I was part of it,” he says. “Not only ‘Here’s a car that I flipped out into an art piece,’ but ‘Here’s a showcase of what our art is.’”

In recent years, Hernandez has even been using the magazine’s ‘roll models’ section in sensitivity trainings he conducts with the San Francisco Police Department. The recurring feature highlights lowriders of all stripes — lawyers, engineers, fathers and daughters — to combat decades-old stereotypes about lowriding being tied to violence or gang activity.

“I’ve been able to go deep with these stories they’ve written about individuals who are lowriders,” he says. “That’s the sad part to me. There are so many more stories that need to be told.”

Montse Reyes is a Bay Area freelance writer. Email: culture@sfchronicle.com

It we don't have your continued support, we will go out of print too. Please subscribe. (http://www.martialartsmart.com/19341.html) And get your friends and fellow students to subscribe (http://www.martialartsmart.com/19341.html). The writing is on the wall for every print magazine, especially niche mags like us. I cannot stress this enough.

[GeneChing]

It's not dying, but the sale is indicative of trends in print publishing.



Simon & Schuster Is Up for Sale (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/04/business/media/simon-schuster-for-sale-viacom-cbs.html?fbclid=IwAR2OYhVz_sxEk9E_muerkq2tEf96qRoU kF83ltPX8Ot_4w_tknJDEcC9vCo)
The publisher of Stephen King, Judy Blume and Hillary Clinton doesn’t fit with the plans of its parent, ViacomCBS, which has placed a big bet on digital video.

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2020/03/22/business/04SIMONANDSCHUSTER-01sub/merlin_138542196_905872a1-241f-4e9b-80ac-a0cf8968fe99-superJumbo.jpg?quality=90&auto=webp
Carolyn Reidy, the Simon & Schuster president and chief executive, with Stephen King, among the house’s star authors, in 2018.Credit...Evan Agostini/Invision

By Edmund Lee and Alexandra Alter
March 4, 2020, 3:07 p.m. ET

Simon & Schuster, the publishing powerhouse behind best-selling authors like Stephen King, Ursula K. Le Guin and Judy Blume, is up for sale.

Its owner, ViacomCBS, announced Wednesday that, after a “strategic review,” the book publisher was no longer essential to its business and that it would seek a buyer.

“We will look to complete a transaction that maximizes its value once the market stabilizes,” Robert M. Bakish, the chief executive, wrote in a memo to employees, most of whom learned of the sale only on Wednesday.

ViacomCBS, the newly combined business controlled by Shari Redstone, is betting its future on streaming and sports content. Owning a major book publisher does not fit into those plans.

Founded as a publisher of crossword puzzle books in 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster, Simon & Schuster expanded into a major house with 50 imprints, including Charles Scribner’s Sons, the publisher of 20th-century heavyweights like Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe. The company now has 1,350 employees and publishes roughly 2,000 books a year. Notable Simon & Schuster authors include Annie Proulx, Bob Woodward, Walter Isaacson and Hillary Clinton.

In a note to employees on Wednesday, the Simon & Schuster president and chief executive, Carolyn Reidy, sought to reassure the staff that the company was not in jeopardy. “Whatever the outcome, this process does not change what we know to be true of Simon & Schuster: we are a great publishing house and one of the world’s best known publishing brands, with an incredible legacy and bright future,” she wrote.

The company is going up for sale at an uncertain moment for publishers, who have struggled with lethargic sales and anxiety over the future of Barnes & Noble, the once-dominant chain that was bought last year by the hedge fund Elliott Advisors.

“It hasn’t been a strong growth industry in a long time, and what little growth there has been recently seems to be arrested,” said Thad McIlroy, a publishing industry analyst.

Simon & Schuster also has several perennial best-sellers on its list, including Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22,” Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone With the Wind” and Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People.”

Still, with the rise of Amazon and e-books, the business has suffered. In 1989, one of its best years, the publisher generated $1.3 billion in sales. Last year, sales were $814 million. The company’s profits have also declined, hitting $143 million in 2019, a 6.5 percent drop from the previous year. Legacy media businesses can sell anywhere from five times to 10 times annual profits.

ViacomCBS is looking for $750 million in cost cuts after the December merger of Viacom and CBS. Viacom, the longtime owner of Paramount Pictures and cable networks like MTV and Comedy Central, absorbed the CBS broadcast network and Simon & Schuster as part of the deal.

The newly supersized company has taken a hit in the markets after a weak earnings performance for the three months that ended in December, and the combined business is now worth less than either business before the merger.

The potential sale of Simon & Schuster is part of a great unwinding taking place across the media industry as conglomerates cleave off or close down ancillary businesses. The spate of acquisitions in recent years — AT&T bought Time Warner and the Walt Disney Company absorbed the majority of 21st Century Fox — has largely been a defensive measure against Big Tech and a bet on digital video as the future of entertainment.

Books won’t play a significant role in the coming skirmish, in Mr. Bakish’s view. Simon & Schuster is “not a core asset of the company, it is not video-based, it doesn’t have significant connectivity to our broader business,” he said at an investor conference Wednesday morning.

He went on to praise Simon & Schuster, even as he hung a For Sale sign on its door. “There’s no question that it’s a marquee asset,” Mr. Bakish said. “I’ve had multiple, unsolicited inbound calls.”



Edmund Lee covers the media industry as it grapples with changes from Silicon Valley. Before joining The Times he was the managing editor at Vox Media’s Recode. @edmundlee

Alexandra Alter writes about publishing and the literary world. Before joining The Times in 2014, she covered books and culture for The Wall Street Journal. Prior to that, she reported on religion, and the occasional hurricane, for The Miami Herald. @xanalter

[GeneChing]

Our Spring 2020 issue was already on newsstands when this happened but all the stores closed so it will have a major impact upon our sales.


Barnes and Noble will stop selling new magazines (https://goodereader.com/blog/digital-magazine-news/barnes-and-noble-will-stop-selling-new-magazines)
April 26, 2020 By Michael Kozlowski 43 Comments

https://goodereader.com/blog/uploads/images/mags-racks-1536x1152.jpg.webp

Barnes and Noble has shuttered over 500 of their 600 bookstores in the United States and the bookseller has announced they are no longer going to be ordering new magazines and will cease carrying them altogether.

“It will probably be a bigger deal for smaller publishers who count on the money they get upfront from B&N,” said one industry veteran, who noted that big newsstand titles, like Hearst’s Cosmopolitan and Meredith’s People, are far more reliant on other retailers.

The lack of new magazines at Barnes and Noble will likely drive people to Target or Walmart to purchase them. Overall, magazine sales through Walmart and Target have jumped over 3% this year, while supermarket sales are up 12%. Walmart accounts for 17% of all magazine sales in the United States in 2019.

Update: Alex Ortolani, Director, Corporate Communications at Barnes and Noble told Good e-Reader
“We have temporarily paused magazine orders due to store closures related to COVID-19. When we reopen stores we will once again sell magazines.”

Although the statement is appreciated, people who want to buy new magazines at the 100 remaining stores that are open, will not be able to. New magazines will likely not be appearing anytime soon, nor will the B&N reopen their closed stores in the immediate future.


Michael Kozlowski
Michael Kozlowski is the Editor in Chief of Good e-Reader. He has been writing about audiobooks and e-readers for the past ten years. His articles have been picked up by major and local news sources and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times.

THREADS:
Spring 2020 (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71664-Spring-2020)
Print publishing death watch (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?52868-Print-publishing-death-watch)

[GeneChing]

Will there still be the online content?

Yes, for now. As long as MartialArtSmart (https://www.martialartsmart.com/) can stay in business, KungFuMagazine.com (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/) and this forum will stay online. I'll still be active here part time. It's all still being sorted however. Putting the print mag to rest (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71782-Kung-Fu-Tai-Chi-is-ceasing-publication) has a lot of factors. But both KFM and this forum are tremendous archives (over a thousand articles on KFM and I can't even begin to tabulate what's stored on this forum) so I'm going to do my best to fight for it. However, I gotta pay my own bills too.

There is a chance that the SUMMER 2020 (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71773-Summmer-2020) issue might still be produced. We were almost done with it when the Shelter-in-Place order was given. I'm looking into doing some sort of fundraiser like a GoFundMe to complete it.

Publishing has been a struggle and this fate is inevitable for every niche mag. Remember, I've been charting the decline of print mags in our Print-publishing-death-watch (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?52868-Print-publishing-death-watch) since 2009.

Thank you all for your continued support.

[GeneChing]

READ Kung Fu Tai Chi 1992-2020 (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/ezine/article.php?article=1545) by Gene Ching

http://www.kungfumagazine.com/admin/site_images/KungfuMagazine/upload/3183_KFM-Facebook-Cover_2S.jpg

THREADS
Kung-Fu-Tai-Chi-is-ceasing-publication (www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71782-Kung-Fu-Tai-Chi-is-ceasing-publication)
Print-publishing-death-watch (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?52868-Print-publishing-death-watch)
Summmer-2020 (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71773-Summmer-2020)

[GeneChing]

Here's a twist. Den of Geek just went to print with a quarterly and you can get the issues free.

I've been freelancing with Den of Geek a lot lately. It's been fun.


Subscribe Today!
Get the best of Den of Geek delivered to your inbox daily or sign-up to receive our quarterly magazine! (https://www.denofgeek.com/newsletter/)

https://www.denofgeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Den-of-Geek-Magazine-1.jpg?resize=1024,576

SUBSCRIBE TO DEN OF GEEK MAGAZINE FOR FREE!
The Den of Geek quarterly magazine will be packed with exclusive features, interviews, previews, and deep dives into geek culture. We’ll focus on the hottest movies and TV shows, explore the latest in games, books, and comics while also bringing you retrospectives on your favorite classics. Our new magazine will celebrate the buzziest releases on the entertainment calendar with beautiful layouts, exclusive imagery, and in-depth long reads in 68-page full color pages. It will be published four times a year and the first issue will be launched in February. We’re pretty sure you’re going to love it…

How do you get your hands on a copy? For readers based in the United States, it’s as simple as filling in the below form telling us the address you’d like the magazine shipped to. That’s all there is to it! We’ll send you a copy every quarter in 2021. Exact shipping dates are to be determined. For our international readers, we’ll have more information on how you can snag a copy in the coming weeks.

Subscribe below!

Newsletter
Our newsletter delivers the hottest pop culture news to you every weekday. Stay ahead of the curve on Movies, TV, Games, Comics and way more! Plus, you’ll always be prepared for weekend binge-watching with our weekly streaming guides every Friday.

We’re entertainment experts, and with our newsletter you’ll be one too! Subscribe below!

[GeneChing]

Feb 9, 2022 8:50am PT
Entertainment Weekly, InStyle Cease Print Publications (https://variety.com/2022/digital/news/entertainment-weekly-print-digital-instyle-1235175928/)

By Jordan Moreau
https://variety.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/entertainment-weekly-logo.jpg?w=681&h=383&crop=1
Courtesy of Entertainment Weekly
Dotdash Meredith is ending the monthly print publications for Entertainment Weekly, InStyle, EatingWell, Health, Parents and People en Español, Dotdash Meredith CEO Neil Vogel said in a Wednesday memo to staff, obtained by Variety.

The publications will go digital-only effective today, and the transition is expected to terminate roughly 200 positions on the print side, Vogel said. The April editions of the print magazines will be the brands’ last, and the 200 eliminated jobs represent less than 5% of Dotdash Meredith’s total staff, according to Wall Street Journal, which broke the news.

“This is an important step in the evolution of Dotdash Meredith, and I want to be clear with everyone about what we are doing and what is ahead,” Vogel’s memo says. “We have said from the beginning, buying Meredith was about buying brands, not magazines or websites. It is not news to anyone that there has been a pronounced shift in readership and advertising from print to digital, and as a result, for a few important brands, print is no longer serving the brand’s core purpose. As such, we are going to move to a digital-only future for these brands, which will help us to unlock their full potential.”

Dotdash, the digital publishing division of Barry Diller’s holding company IAC, acquired Meredith for $2.7 billion last year. Vogel, then CEO of Dotdash, took the reigns of the combined Dotdash Meredith company. Dotdash, formerly known as About.com, was acquired by IAC from The New York Times in 2012 for $300 million in cash. The media company houses 14 brands across health, finance, lifestyle, food and beauty, including Verywell, Investopedia, The Balance, The Spruce, Simply Recipes, Serious Eats, Byrdie, Liquor.com, Treehugger and Brides. After acquiring Meredith, it also brought in People and Better Homes & Gardens.

Read Vogel’s full memo below:

Team,

Effective today, we will no longer be printing monthly magazines for EatingWell, Entertainment Weekly, Health, InStyle, Parents, and People en Español. This is an important step in the evolution of Dotdash Meredith, and I want to be clear with everyone about what we are doing and what is ahead.

We have said from the beginning, buying Meredith was about buying brands, not magazines or websites. It is not news to anyone that there has been a pronounced shift in readership and advertising from print to digital, and as a result, for a few important brands, print is no longer serving the brand’s core purpose. As such, we are going to move to a digital-only future for these brands, which will help us to unlock their full potential. These brands are among our most successful, important, and fastest growing digital properties – the online audience for Parents, InStyle, and EatingWell are each up over 40% year-over-year – and all of these brands have a bright future.

The decision to evolve these brands to digital-only means that some jobs – roughly 200 roles primarily supporting our print operations – will be eliminated. Transitions like this are very difficult, impacting colleagues and friends, some of whom have been with the company for decades. I can’t thank these employees enough for getting these brands to the strong place they are at today. Brand leaders have already notified those impacted, and we are taking great care to help ensure a smooth transition for these employees.

Today’s step is not a cost savings exercise and it is not about capturing synergies or any other acquisition jargon, it is about embracing the inevitable digital future for the affected brands. We are very serious about investing for growth – in 2022 alone we will be investing over $80 million in content across our brands. We currently have over 100 open positions in editorial, engineering, product, design, and ecommerce, some of which we hope to fill with people impacted today.

Naysayers will interpret this as another nail in print’s coffin. They couldn’t be more wrong – print remains core to Dotdash Meredith. From PEOPLE to BHG to Southern Living to WOOD, and all our other beloved print publications, we continue to provide incredible value to readers in print, and we will proudly print over 350 million magazines in 2022. Beginning today, we will be investing in our print-forward brands and products: everything from enhancing paper quality and trim sizes, to ensuring world-class editorial and beautiful photography. We are infusing fresh energy across these print-forward brands in all formats to make sure they can meet both the moment and the needs of their readers in new and innovative ways.

These are difficult decisions but we believe they are the correct decisions. We remain as enthusiastic as ever for the future of our brands and our company.

NV

Wow. I didn't think EW would fold so soon. Another nail in the coffin for print mags.

While I was publisher of KFTC (https://martialartsmart.com/collections/default-category-shop-by-categories-magazines-kungfu-tai-chi-magazine), I was privy to industry reports and assiduously followed the newsstand trends in some flailing hope that I could stave off the inevitable. We should’ve gone down in 2009 when the great purge happened and hundreds of print newsstand mags folded (https://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?52868-Print-publishing-death-watch&p=945865#post945865) (and this here thread began) so I’ll take some credit for keeping us alive for another decade past our expiration date.

Celeb mags like EW were consistently doing well. Why? They transcended newsstands to the checkout racks. Those were the strongest genre of periodicals. It’s very telling to see EW go down.

I imagine the pandemic played a part. KFTC went down because the newsstands shuttered. Publishing periodicals are deadline driven and the supply chain disruption moved all publishers that were printing abroad (books mostly - mags need domestic printers to make deadline) to shift here and overload the system. All YMAA’s 2021 titles - books & DVDs - were delayed due to this. Mag deadlines couldn’t take it - those delay distribution - it’d like dominos when that happens and a publisher can lose a ton of money very quickly.

Sad to see EW go down too but somewhat relieved I’m not alone as a former print mag publisher.

[MightyB]

Question for you Gene:

I'm curious, do you believe there's any opportunity for a print-on-demand niche magazine similar in content to Kung Fu magazine? One that bypasses the bulk print distribution model that magazines traditionally used and instead is printed on-demand and distributed directly to subscribers.

(basically like Den of Geek is now doing)

[GeneChing]

Good question!

The Den of Geek model is quite different. They started by publishing mags that were distributed for free at San Diego Comic Con and New York Comic Con. If you've ever been to one of those, you know how massive the haul of tchotchkes is, so to stand out, they did a very professional publication.

When the pandemic hit, DoG pivoted to a distribution model at comic stores (https://www.denofgeek.com/stores/) where you can get the issues for free. We had a similar model through Kung Fu schools (https://www.kungfumagazine.com/KFTC/index.php), but you still had to buy the issue.

Initially, DoG offered the print mag for free during the pandemic shift, but now it's a paid subscription (https://www.denofgeek.com/magazine/).

DoG has the magnitude that they do sponsored special issues that sidecar with their regular issues. I worked on two of these for Netflix: Vikings-Valhalla (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?72241-Vikings-Valhalla) & Jupiter-s-Legacy (https://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?72026-Jupiter-s-Legacy). Those special issues were basically paid ads, and there's no one in the martial arts industry that even has a fraction of the bank to afford something like that.

DoG just did a special issue for SXSW so they are expanding their scope.

There's simply no comparison between the scale of a pop culture publisher like DoG and a niche publisher like KFM.

[GeneChing]

People’s print magazine faces possible closure amid newsroom chaos: sources (https://nypost.com/2022/05/16/peoples-print-magazine-faces-closure-sources/)
By Alexandra Steigrad
May 16, 2022 5:27pm Updated

https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/barry-diller-17.jpg?quality=75&strip=all&w=1488
Staffers are bracing for changes at People Magazine's print edition.
Alamy Stock Photo

People may scrap its weekly print edition as its new owner looks to slash costs — even as writers privately gripe that the magazine’s new editor looks to be an awkward fit for the celebrity-gossip icon, The Post has learned

Staffers at People — a 48-year-old fixture in grocery checkout lines, beauty salons and doctor’s offices known for its “Sexiest Man Alive” cover — are bracing for the magazine to go online-only after Dotdash Meredith, a unit of billionaire Barry Diller’s IAC, shuttered a slew of print publications, sources close to the situation said.

Those include Entertainment Weekly and the fashion glossy InStyle, which once oozed profit and was thick with advertising pages. People, meanwhile, faces getting the ax despite claiming the largest audience of any US magazine for nearly a decade until 2018, when it surrendered the title to AARP.

“I think it’s a goner,” one well-placed source said of People’s weekly edition. The source added that execs are instead mulling monthly or quarterly editions, as well as special-themed issues which carry a much higher cover price.


“The new editor doesn’t know what she’s doing. Staff in the editorial meetings are texting each other and rolling their eyes when she talks.”
Post source

https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/liz-vaccariello-people-033.jpg?quality=75&strip=all&w=1366
Employees griped that new editor Liz Vaccariello doesn’t have the entertainment chops to run People.
Monica Schipper

The Post has also learned that DotDash Meredith execs quietly cut People’s circulation from 3.4 million to 2.5 million, as well as the number of pages per magazine by about eight. One insider explained that the subs that were cut are free or low cost subscriptions that do not justify the price of mailing the issues out.

Dotdash Meredith spokesperson said: “Outside of People magazine’s rate base change of 3.4 to 2.5 million — which was shared with advertisers in April of this year — and a temporary change to total pages due to the international paper shortage, the claims and numbers provided by an unnamed source for this story are completely false.

“People magazine will continue to publish weekly, as it has for nearly 50 years, and benefit from the significant investments we continue to make in People’s brand and products,” the spokesperson added.

https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/liz-12.jpg?quality=75&strip=all&w=1535
Sources say People’s newsstand sales have been uneven since Vaccariello took over in February.
Getty Images for Gryph & IvyRose

While talks of changes in frequency are in flux and a decision has not been made, insiders fret that People’s editorial offices are in disarray under the magazine’s new editor in chief Liz Vaccariello, who replaced Dan Wakeford amid a February reorganization. Vaccariello, who held top jobs at Real Simple, Parents, Reader’s Digest and Every Day with Rachael Ray, is filling the magazine with “soft stories,” a source said.

“The new editor doesn’t know what she’s doing. Staff in the editorial meetings are texting each other and rolling their eyes when she talks,” the source added.

“Liz is a very talented editor but she’s not an entertainment editor,” said another insider, who explained that Vaccariello doesn’t have entertainment “contacts” or a sense of what sells celebrity news magazines.

“She didn’t know who Channing Tatum was!” said the source.

Insiders cited a recent incident in which People staffers pushed to get Jada Pinkett-Smith for a recent cover of the magazine after her husband Will Smith slapped comedian Chris Rock onstage at the Academy Awards over Rock’s joke about her alopecia.

The incident rocked the entertainment industry and grabbed headlines worldwide, but Vaccariello shot it down and instead opted to stick with the current cover star, Bindi Irwin, the daughter of the late “Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin.

That issue is currently on newsstands, and while it is too early to see how it will sell, The Post has learned that People’s newsstand numbers have taken a nosedive since Wakeford was let go in February.

Sources told The Post that under Wakeford, People had been selling more than 200,000 copies at the newsstand a week. Since then, newsstand sales have been uneven, with a May 2 Prince Harry cover dipping to about 160,000 copies sold, and a March 14 Lizzo cover cratering to between 125,000- 150,000 copies sold, which is said to be one of the worst selling issues in People’s half-century history.

But a source with knowledge countered that Vaccariello has also some of this year’s best-selling issues, pointing to April 11’s Will Smith Cover and the April 18 Bruce Willis cover, both of which sold over 220,000 copies each.
continued next post

[GeneChing]

https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/people-covers-14.jpg?quality=75&strip=all&w=1570
Sources said People’s recent Lizzo cover was one of its worst-selling in its history.

People is said to still be “profitable” by sources with knowledge, but IAC executives have nevertheless been making aggressive moves to slash costs. Insiders said they are now focused on a litany of problems that have nothing to do with People’s editor change-up. Those include cratering advertising revenue and lower circulation, rising postage rates and a paper shortage.

“The IAC people are not nice. Barry Diller is not nice,” said a source, who noted that new ownership “doesn’t understand” print magazines, all they want to do is “make money.”

The company also closed PeopleTV, the glossy’s struggling broadcast TV show, as exclusively reported by The Post.

The source added that there has been a jarring clash between the corporate cultures of Des Moines, Iowa-based Meredith and Diller’s IAC, which is headquartered in New York’s trendy Meatpacking District.

“The Meredith people show up to meetings in Crocs. Their offices have wicker furniture,” the source said. “You cannot turn up to Barry Diller’s Frank Gehry-designed spaceship in Crocs. IAC is like ‘The Matrix.’ There’s no furniture and you’re greeted by people wearing Prada.”

https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/people-covers-15-1.jpeg?quality=75&strip=all&w=1536
People’s Prince Harry cover dipped below 200,000 sales at the newsstand, sources told The Post.

During the pandemic, People’s advertising revenue halved, according to a source with knowledge. The source said advertising has slumped to about $125 million a year in print with digital advertising bringing in another $125 million.

Nonetheless, according to People’s media kit, the brand has 118 million consumers across print, digital and social media.

Employees began buzzing about the potential demise of People when a handful of publishing and marketing execs left the company after DotDash took the helm. They included People group publisher Carery Witmer and People magazine publisher Cece Ryan, both of whom focused on selling print and digital advertising.

Their departures signaled to many that Dotdash may be following a similar playbook for People as it has with other Meredith publications. Earlier this year, the company killed the print editions of Entertainment Weekly, InStyle, EatingWell, Health, Parents and People en Español.

https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/barry-dillar-93.jpg?quality=75&strip=all&w=1535
DotDash Meredith shuttered six print magazines post merger with Meredith, including Eating Well.
Getty Images for EatingWell & IF

At the time, Dotdash Meredith CEO Neil Vogel told staff that the move would help turn the publications into digital-only brands. He also said the move would result in about 200 job cuts.

“We have said from the beginning, buying Meredith was about buying brands, not magazines or websites,” Vogel said in his note. “It is not news to anyone that there has been a pronounced shift in readership and advertising from print to digital, and as a result, for a few important brands, print is no longer serving the brand’s core purpose.”

During the pandemic, the pullback in print readership and advertising has been more pronounced than ever. Oprah’s O Magazine stopped printing in 2020 and women’s magazine Marie Claire ended its print run after 27 years in 2021.

In the last three years, Hearst has reduced the frequencies of magazines like Elle and Cosmopolitan while Condé Nast has lowered the frequencies of glossies Vogue and Vanity Fair amid declines in readership and ad revenue.

https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/barry-diller-19.jpg?quality=75&strip=all&w=1535
Diller with his wife, fashion designer, Diane Von Furstenberg at the Met Gala. Sources said Diller is a shrewd businessman, who is focused on turning Meredith’s brands profitable– even if that means closing print magazines.
WireImage
Vogel said in February that his company would invest in its 19 remaining print magazines — which include People, Better Homes & Gardens and Southern Living — by enhancing paper quality and trimming sizes.

But strategies change quickly in media and critics have whispered that the acquisition of Meredith by IAC, a company known for its digital brands, likely spelled doom for its glossies down the line.

“Barry Diller bought Meredith to sell it,” said one well-placed source. “He always makes them [the brands] more lean and profitable, then he resells it.”

At least Kung Fu Tai Chi (https://martialartsmart.com/collections/default-category-shop-by-categories-magazines-kungfu-tai-chi-magazine) is in good company...:(

[GeneChing]

Sports Illustrated staff could be laid off as the iconic magazine’s publisher faces money troubles (https://apnews.com/article/sports-illustrated-layoffs-fd731d842f378305b4ddbb115538ed58)

https://dims.apnews.com/dims4/default/3313f12/2147483647/strip/true/crop/4075x2713+0+243/resize/820x546!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fassets.apnews.com%2F37%2Fa7%2F5 8fbb2881088f1f60e7ff46937b4%2Fba29961dbba244ac8734 17bdd9a0e4a6
FILE - A George Mason University fan holds up the cover of Sports Illustrated magazine at a send off for the team, Wednesday, March 29, 2006, in Fairfax, Va. The publisher of Sports Illustrated has notified employees it is planning to lay off a significant portion — possibly all — of the outlet’s staff after its license to use the iconic brand’s name in print and digital was revoked. In an email to employees Friday morning, Jan. 19, 2024, the Arena Group, which operates Sports Illustrated and related properties, said that Authentic Brands Group has revoked its marketing license. (AP Photo/Lawrence Jackson, File)

BY JOE REEDY AND DAVID BAUDER
Updated 2:21 PM PST, January 19, 2024

The jobs of people who produce Sports Illustrated were in limbo Friday after the company that paid to maintain the iconic brand’s print and digital products told staff that its license was revoked.

In an email to employees Friday morning, the Arena Group, which operates Sports Illustrated and related properties, said that because of the revocation, “we will be laying off staff that work on the SI brand.”

Authentic Brands Group owns the Sports Illustrated brand and had been licensing it to Arena. Authentic later said in a statement it intends to keep Sports Illustrated going. The company is negotiating with Arena and other publishing entities to determine who will do that, according to a person with knowledge of the talks who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak publicly about them.

Until those negotiations are resolved, it’s unclear which journalists would actually do the work of making Sports Illustrated. It was not clear how many jobs were affected.

Sports Illustrated’s employee union said in a statement that the layoffs initially announced by Arena would be a significant number and possibly all, of the NewsGuild workers represented.

“We have fought together as a union to maintain the standard of this storied publication that we love, and to make sure our workers are treated fairly for the value they bring to this company. It is a fight we will continue,” Mitch Goldich, NFL editor and unit chair, said in a statement.

The guild’s statement also called for Authentic to “ensure the continued publication of SI and allow it to serve our audience in the way it has for nearly 70 years.”

Authentic said it would do so, and that “we are confident that going forward the brand will continue to evolve and grow in a way that serves sports news readers, sports fans and consumers. We are committed to ensuring that the traditional ad-supported Sports Illustrated media pillar has best in class stewardship to preserve the complete integrity of the brand’s legacy.”

In a statement on Friday, the Arena Group said it was negotiating with Authentic about the license, “with plans to sustain our commitment to delivering quality content throughout the ongoing discussions.”

Arena admitted that it had failed to make a quarterly payment of $3.75 million and Authentic had put it on notice that it intended to end the licensing agreement. As a result, Arena announced Thursday it would make a “significant reduction” in its workforce of more than 100 people.

The Arena Group acquired publishing rights from Authentic in 2019 for at least 10 years. The group’s stewardship of Sports Illustrated has had many hurdles since then. In December, it fired chief executive officer Ross Levinsohn when the magazine’s alleged use of AI-generated stories drew public backlash.

Sports Illustrated has had a rough six years. It was acquired by Meredith Publishing in 2018 as part of the purchase of Time Inc., which started the magazine in 1954.

Less than a year later, Meredith sold the magazine’s intellectual property to Authentic for $110 million. Authentic owns the intellectual property of many brands and stars, including Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Muhammad Ali and Reebok.

Once a weekly publication, Sports Illustrated was reduced to biweekly publishing in 2018 and became a monthly in 2020.

___
Reedy reported from Los Angeles and Bauder, an Associated Press Media Writer, reported from New York.

___
AP sports: https://apnews.com/sports

JOE REEDY
Sports writer based in Los Angeles.

DAVID BAUDER
National media and entertainment writer


I used to gripe about how hard it was to go up against the SI swimsuit issue every year.

I wonder who will be the last print mag standing...

[MightyB]

Looks like Black Belt has also ceased printing. They still seem to have a solid online presence.

https://www.blackbeltmag.com/a-new-era-of-black-belt-magazine-merging-past-present-and-future


"The Future of Black Belt
As in battle, every martial artist must adapt to changing environments. Black Belt embraces this challenge as we move to deliver our community the best content across the digital platforms.

With the new team in place, we are taking the time to listen to you, our community, about your hopes for Black Belt. One constant theme was the desire for Black Belt to return to innovating and prioritizing excellence and mastery. In order to do this, we will be adding offerings and trimming services that no longer serve that goal."

[GeneChing]

I was tracking the ownership change because some of our old KFTC freelance contributors were caught in that wake (let go from their regular submission roster). I didn't realize that they went out of print too. Strange as it may sound, I mourn this too. We weren't truly competitors because their coverage was more expansive and they were older, but the loss of any martial print mag is sad.