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Thread: Print publishing death watch

  1. #91
    Yes please the martial arts ladies need a steamy magazine to read too!

  2. #92
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    ttt 4 2013

    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
    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.”
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
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  3. #93
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    ttt 4 2014

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

    Empire Falls

    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
    Gene Ching
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  4. #94
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    ttt 4 2015

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

    Rob Alderson: 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.”
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
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  5. #95
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    ttt 4 2016!

    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
    End date for print edition still undetermined as brand plans to focus on digital content.
    By Greg Dool :: January 19, 2016



    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."
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
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  6. #96
    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..."

  7. #97
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    This would be wonderful

    I really hope this comes to pass. America needs newsstands again. More specifically, Kung Fu Tai Chi needs more newsstands again.

    Amazon Is Said to Be Planning an Expansion Into Retail Bookstores
    By NICK WINGFIELDFEB. 2, 2016


    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.
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
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  8. #98
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    Slightly OT

    Quote Originally Posted by GeneChing View Post
    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
    by Scott Cendrowski @scendrowski FEBRUARY 18, 2016, 4:38 AM EST



    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?
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
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  9. #99
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    Islands, Destination Weddings & Honeymoons, and Caribbean Travel & Life

    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
    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.



    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).
    Gene Ching
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  10. #100
    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.

  11. #101
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    A new reader demographic?

    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

    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.


    Self-study: The chimpanzees showed some serious interests on these magazines in a zoo in China


    '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.


    Sshh! Time to study: The chimpanzees showed a huge interest in photography magazine as it appears in the picture


    Unexpected: Chimpanzee caretakers put the magazines in the room and was surprised to see the animals reading them


    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.
    Gene Ching
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  12. #102
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    Naked is normal

    More on Playboy on this thread here. Taking nudes out of Playboy would be like us taking out weapons....err....I mean 'practice tools'

    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



    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
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    Greg Dool is Folio:'s senior editor.
    Gene Ching
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  13. #103
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    This article affects me personally

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

    Who Deserves to Be Called a Publisher?
    By Scott McDonald



    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.
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
    Support our forum by getting your gear at MartialArtSmart

  14. #104
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    Like a Rolling Stone

    Rolling Stone, Once a Counterculture Bible, Will Be Put Up for Sale


    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.


    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
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
    Support our forum by getting your gear at MartialArtSmart

  15. #105
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    continued from previous post


    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.


    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.
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
    Support our forum by getting your gear at MartialArtSmart

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