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BoSacks Readers Speak Out: Re: The Real Story About Print Sales at Retail

Re: The Real Story About Print Sales at Retail

Most media users in today’s marketplace will have a preference for one medium over another, but they spread their time over many media. It’s like the old saying about love, but it’s about media: if I can’t have the medium I want, I’ll use the medium I’m near. Preference is almost meaningless; it’s the actual behavior that matters, and the actions and transactions that result from that behavior. Print volume is a function of page size, number of pages, run length, and frequency, and not about preference. People can always prefer or like something, and just use it less often or use less of it, or use more of it.

(Submitted by an Industry consultant)

Re: The Real Story About Print Sales at Retail

It’s sad to see adults cast wishful thinking without data to back up the assertions as argument, let alone “facts.” Is print disappearing tomorrow? Nope. Is it hurting? Yup. Are these two cheerleaders afraid to mention advertising trends? Apparently. The most telling sentence is “So do you still think that digital is ‘cleaning our clock?’” Clearly there are some publishing executives that think digital can’t be a form of publishing. Rather than an us-versus-them mentality, how about a reality-based strategy that tries to include both print and digital? How can anyone present at a “Publishing Business Conference & Expo” with professional vision more self-blinded than any Oedipus?

Re: The Real Story About Print Sales at Retail

This is just sad and indicative of why many in the traditional publishing industry will fail and allow upstart , agile and entrepreneurial companies to give the consumers what they want. Are these folks paying any attention to the trends all around them or are they sitting around waiting for the golden age of print to return as the economy recovers

(Submitted by a senior editor)

Re: The Real Story About Print Sales at Retail

As much as I applaud the desire of the authors preach the salvation of the printed landscape, “The Real Story About Print Sales at Retail” misses the real trends of our industry. The real trends of newsstand are inescapable and of longer duration than anyone wishes to publicly state. The trends in print advertising also are inescapable and of longer duration than anyone wishes to publicly state. If we continue to rely on the misinformation of data like PIB we will be doomed to never seeing the axe falling until it is too late. For me I live in both worlds and happily. Now and we have reached mid-point in my goal of 75% digital revenue and 25% print and other related sources. My titles are indeed specialized but not so unique that other publishers can’t follow. Some will and some won’t.

(Submitted by a multi-title publisher)

Re: The Real Story About Print Sales at Retail

Bo, thanks for the “Real Story”. I needed a wake-up call that some professionals still and yet just don’t get it.

We don’t need cheerleaders, we need truthful reality checks about our business. I saw your last talk at FMA in NYC and you closed with my new favorite quote, I think it was from Upton Sinclair. I have repeated it to my staff, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it”. A great quote for these pressing times. Only our agility and forward thinking will save our industry from the quick and nimble. Just because we owned the industry for a hundred years doesn’t mean it is still ours. We have to re-earn what we had under some very new conditions. I continue to be excited by the prospects and the great challenge.

(Submitted by a senior and seasoned circulator)
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The 3d Annual TH(ink) E-Reading Summit: Brands, Content and Discovery is fast approaching – March 21st. I would like to invite you to the Summit (held in conjunction with the Publishing Business Conference and Expo). Come hear about the latest developments in e-reading technology, best practices, and digital business models that work. We have our best ever lineup of speakers ths year that include: John Loughlin, EVP & GM, Hearst Magazines; Tom Burke, Chief eCommerce Officer, Scholastic; David Steinhardt, President & CEO, IDEAlliance; Mindy Stockfield, VP Marketing and Digital Media, Hyperion Books; Glenn Hansen, President & CEO, BPA Worldwide; Marc Jeffrey Mikulich, VP Brand Management &
International Rights, Wiley; Staffan Ekholm, CEO, MAG+; Brad Inman, CEO, Vook; Peter Faralgo, VP Marketing, Flurry; Caroline Marks, CEO, Bookish; Peter Hildick-Smith, President, Codex-Groupt; Andy Arluk, Partner, mediaIDEAS; and of course Bob “BoSacks” Sacks, Partner, mediaIDEAS Get your tickets today!

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Chris Keyes to Samir Husni: If You Are in the Magazine Business and You Are Not Excited About All the Changes Taking Place Today, YOU NEED TO EXIT THE BUSINESS. The Mr. Magazine(TM) Interview With the VP and Editor of Outside Magazine Christopher Keyes By Samir Husni If you are in the magazine business today and you are not excited about all the changes taking place, you should get out of the business. This is the simple and direct advice Chris Keyes, Outside’s magazine VP and editor, offers folks working in the magazine industry today. “I’m really excited about the opportunities of the future,” Keyes told me in this latest Mr. Magazine(TM) Interviews series of interviews with magazine industry leaders.

The future of the magazine industry, to Mr. Keyes, is a combination of print and digital. However, the printed magazine will always exist in the world he lives. But the challenge is coping with all the changes of the future with a small staff. Magazine editors used to have “the luxury of just working on a print edition,” Keyes said. Now they are “expected to be everywhere at once.” Yet, for Outside magazine, regardless of the platform, the first thing in Outsides life is “Audience; audience First.”

Click on the video below to watch my interview (via Skype) with Chris Keyes, VP and editor of Outside magazine, followed by the sound-bites and the very lightly edited transcript of the interview.

The Sound-bites On the changes taken place in the magazine industry: I’m very excited about it, to be honest with you. There were certainly a lot of reasons to be tentative and afraid of these changes in the last couple of years.

On the differences between his experience of ink on paper versus digital: You’re just sitting there with a magazine and enjoying some great pieces and great writing; I find it hard to sit for a long period of time, the way I would with a magazine, in its digital format as an app.

On the idea that people don’t really want bells and whistles when it comes to their apps:

I think that’s largely true. But I don’t think that they necessarily want the exact same thing in terms of just a PDF format of the magazine..

On the new essay and long-form anthology app Outside recently launched: That kind of storytelling has always been really compelling to our readership and that’s why we decided to launch this first one with that idea in mind.

On all the changes new media brings to the forefront and his worries about the future of journalism: I’m really excited about the opportunities of the future and the fact that if you’re in this business right now and not excited about all the changes, then you should get out of the business.

On how his life has changed today from several years ago : I think 10 years ago, 15 years ago, a magazine editor had the luxury of just working on a print edition of the magazine and that was all you did.

On whether or not he envisions a day without the print edition of Outside: Not in the world that I want to live in, no. I really believe that there is a place for the magazine far into the future.

On what’s first in the life of Outside: Audience, audience first.

On his plans for the future: I want to see Outside grow and grow into all these platforms that are now available to us, to see the magazine continue to thrive, but also to see us thrive on these other platforms.

On what keeps him up at night: I think my biggest challenge, the thing that concerns me is the fact that we have a small staff and all brands in the media business now are expected to be everywhere at once.

And now for the lightly edited transcript of Mr. Magazine (TM) Interviews Chris Keyes, VP and editor, Outside Magazine.

Samir Husni: Outside has been a cornerstone in the National Magazine Awards, it is nominated time after time. It’s a great read, a great experience. Now you’re creating those great reads in an iPad edition. How do you feel about this transition between digital/ink on paper; do you think you’re going to be able to recreate the same experience, a different experience; where are you headed?

Chris Keyes: I’m very excited about it, to be honest with you. There were certainly a lot of reasons to be tentative and afraid of these changes in the last couple of years. But one of the things that I’m most proud of, and I think all of us at Outside are most proud of is that we truly are a multi-platform brand and the fact that we’ve been able to do that as such a small, independent company is kind of a testament to the power of what the magazine is about. And I think the greatest evidence of the value of the long-form journalism we’ve always produced is how you’re seeing that translate online now. I think, obviously, when the internet came around there was the thinking that magazines couldn’t compete with that short, sound-bite type of journalism and that long-form was going to go away. As we’re seeing now, the biggest traffic spikes that we get on our website are from our best, most curated long-form pieces. So we’re really excited about that because it has value in the print e
dition, it has value online, and now it has value in the app edition where I think that is a great reading experience as well. Personally, I still prefer…I love our app, but I still prefer having a magazine in my hand. But I know that there are consumers out there that don’t and we want to reach them and now we can.

Samir Husni: How is your experience with the ink on paper different than the experience with the iPad, or the tablets, or the web?

Chris Keyes: Well, personally, I find that when I’m in a digital space, whether it’s online or whether it’s on our iPad app or somebody else’s iPad app; when I’m in a digital space I’m used to that freedom of being able to go anywhere, I’m jumping all over the place, from one website to another; whereas the magazine reading experience is much more self-contained and kind of refreshing in a way because you’re not inundated with a million options and a million opportunities to go somewhere else. You’re just sitting there with a magazine and enjoying some great pieces and great writing; so I find it hard to sit for a long period of time… the way I would with a magazine, in its digital format as an app, because I’m not used to that sort of being locked into one format. Samir Husni: I don’t know if you saw some research that came out last week that a lot of people who read on digital platforms, want to see a replica, they’re not really interested in all these bells and whistles; and fo
r some time we used to say we need to create something different, we need to do it and people are telling me, or telling the panel that we want the same thing.

Chris Keyes: I think that’s largely true. But I don’t think that they necessarily want the exact same thing in terms of just a pdf format of the magazine; I think you want to enhance it for the device that they’re reading it on, no question about that. But I largely agree and I think that’s probably a relief to a lot of magazines, because as we know, with the staffs that we have, to be able to also produce a ton of video content, sound, audio, and all these enhancements, that’s a huge burden on a magazine staff and we want to add a few layers of that to our iPad app to enhance it, but I think initially when you saw some of the first iPad apps come out for magazines they were sort of overloaded with every single story you could play. You could watch video, you could turn the picture around 360 degrees, and readers, I think, largely do want that magazine experience with a few bells and whistles. Samir Husni: Recently, you launched a new app with a lot of essays. What was the reason be
hind creating this app for Outside?

Chris Keyes: Well, what’s actually great about it is that it’s not an entirely new app, it’s a magazine sort of within the app; so once people download the Outside Plus app that gives them access to the Outside magazine and our buyer’s guides, they can also access anything we publish through that app. This is our first test into doing an anthology with some of our best writing of the past 35 years, and the genesis of it was a survey that we did with our readership last summer where we came up with 12 ideas for sample anthologies and we tested them with our readership, and by far, there were a few that were really popular, but by far the most popular was this idea of “Our Kind of Crazy” which are stories of our most extreme athletes and people who are taking their sports to levels that we haven’t seen before. And that kind of storytelling has always been really compelling to our readership and that’s why we decided to launch this first one with that idea in mind. Samir Husni: Is Chri
s worried about the future of journalism?

Chris Keyes: No, I’m not at all; I’m really excited about it. I think the last couple of years for everybody and not strictly in the magazine business, but in just about any business, it was a really rough time, it was a lean time, but yet I go back to the fact that we’re a small, independent company, and there are not supposed to be small, independent companies in the magazine world anymore, but we’re thriving, we legitimately have all these platforms. We’ve got Outside television coming online, we just inked a deal with Comcast and we’ll be delivered there; so we really have an opportunity to reach a whole new set of readers and consumers and so I’m really excited about the opportunities of the future and the fact that if you’re in this business right now and not excited about all the changes, then you should get out of the business. Samir Husni: So, my question to you then is, how is the 24 hours in the life of Chris has changed today from what it used to be like five-years-ago?

Chris Keyes: That’s changed quite a bit. Besides the fact that I’m up at five with a one-year-old, that’s one of the big changes. I think 10 years ago, 15 years ago, a magazine editor had the luxury of just working on a print edition of the magazine and that was all you did. I find it exciting to have my hands in all the different areas and so my day now, as opposed to just thinking about what is going to be in the print edition, is really thinking about the content of the website on a daily basis, and there’s a lot of stories in the past we would pass on because they involved some kind of breaking news and as a monthly you can’t reach people with breaking news, not in any way that was going to be still relevant in a month and a half from now. Now we can attack those stories online and we have done so successfully and that’s really exciting to me, and I think to all of our staff, knowing that there are kind of two mediums where we can reach an audience. And then the fact that I’m al
so involved in the development of the app and various brand extensions, there is certainly a lot more on my plate than there was five years ago, but it’s all exciting to me and like anybody in this business we thrive on some kind of a challenge; the more that there are these challenges and opportunities there, the more exciting the job gets.

Samir Husni: Do you envision a day when we don’t have the print edition of Outside?

Chris Keyes: Not in the world that I want to live in, no. I really believe that there is a place for the magazine far into the future. It’s just a different experience as I was describing before, and that’s not to say that all of these other devices and avenues to reach readers aren’t going to grow and maybe become even larger than print someday. But I do believe that there will always be a place for the print edition.

Samir Husni: Tell me about Outside TV. You say you’re launching a new television network?

Chris Keyes: The Outside television actually launched about a year and a half ago, it was a re-brand of a television network called “The Resort Sports Network” and again I think they approached Outside knowing that they wanted to re-brand and re-launch their network and so they came to Outside first and said that this would be a perfect marriage. Outside has this powerful brand. When you say Outside television you can kind of instantly envision what the network would look like. They came to us with this idea of partnering; that launched about a year and a half ago. Once that launch, the second phase of the partnership was to go out and get a distribution deal with one of the big, cable networks and they targeted Comcast first and that was inked last fall and distribution on that will be happening over the course of this year in various markets. And we’re really excited about that because it allows us to sell the magazine, to sell online, and to sell television all at the same time.

Samir Husni: If you want to summarize everything about Outside; is it a print company, audience company, customer company, digital company. What’s first in the life of Outside?

Chris Keyes: Audience, audience first. Even two-years-ago, you’d have to say it was a print company, but now that’s just not true anymore with the growth of our website, the growth of our app, with the growth of television, and the continuing strength of the magazine in general. All of those platforms are designed to reach an audience and I think again that’s what separates us. I think the magazines that died in the recession, a lot of them were built for an ad community, not an audience. And Outside has always been about its audience. We interpret the word Outside very broadly, but its also very definable and people can envision exactly what you’re talking about when you say Outside and what Outside is about. So that gives us a distinction in the marketplace that I think readers and a general audience want.

Samir Husni: What are Chris’s plans for the future?

Chris Keyes: I’d like to stay here as long as I can, this is my dream job and I arrived here a little earlier than I thought I would. I want to see Outside grow and grow into all these platforms that are now available to us, to see the magazine continue to thrive, but also to see us thrive on these other platforms. That’s what I want to stick around here for. I told Larry Burke when he hired me, I have never worked in New York; I don’t really have an interest to be in New York. I want to be here. I’m a true believer. So you won’t have to worry about me jumping ship. Samir Husni: My traditional closing question in all these interviews, and now since I know that you have a one-year-old, besides the baby; what keeps Chris up at night?

Chris Keyes: Very few things, I sleep pretty well. But I think my biggest challenge, the thing that concerns me is the fact that we have a small staff and all brands in the media business now are expected to be everywhere at once, so we have to do well in print, but we have to also do well online, we also have to have a very active and vibrant presence in social media: Twitter and Facebook, and now there’s the app, the development of the app, and television and having some of my editors beyond the Outside television shows. And so how do we amplify the skills and abilities of the small staff to be able to be in all those places at once without one of those platforms suffering. I think that would be the biggest struggle right now and what would keep me up at night, but I think so far we’re doing well at it. Samir Husni: Thank you.

Mr. Magazine (Samir Husni) Interviews Christopher Keyes, VP/Editor Outside Magazine
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The 3d Annual TH(ink) E-Reading Summit: Brands, Content and Discovery is fast approaching – March 21st. I would like to invite you to the Summit (held in conjunction with the Publishing Business Conference and Expo). Come hear about the latest developments in e-reading technology, best practices, and digital business models that work. We have our best ever lineup of speakers ths year that include: John Loughlin, EVP & GM, Hearst Magazines; Tom Burke, Chief eCommerce Officer, Scholastic; David Steinhardt, President & CEO, IDEAlliance; Mindy Stockfield, VP Marketing and Digital Media, Hyperion Books; Glenn Hansen, President & CEO, BPA Worldwide; Marc Jeffrey Mikulich, VP Brand Management &
International Rights, Wiley; Staffan Ekholm, CEO, MAG+; Brad Inman, CEO, Vook; Peter Faralgo, VP Marketing, Flurry; Caroline Marks, CEO, Bookish; Peter Hildick-Smith, President, Codex-Groupt; Andy Arluk, Partner, mediaIDEAS; and of course Bob “BoSacks” Sacks, Partner, mediaIDEAS Get your tickets today!

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Profitable News

By Jeff Jarvis

One of the most controversial things I have said (you’re welcome for that straight line) is that I insist my entrepreneurial journalism students at CUNY build only for-profit businesses. When I said that at a recent symposium for teachers of entrepreneurial journalism, I thought some of the gasping participants would tar-and-feather me.

I’m not against not-for-profit, charitably supported journalism any more than I’m against pay walls. I, too, crunch granola (and sell books). But I do not believe that begging for money from foundations, the public, or especially government is the solution to journalism’s problems. And I am certain that there is not enough charity in the nation to support the journalism it needs. Lately we are seeing too much evidence that the siren call of not-for-profit journalism seduces news organizations away from sustainability, survival, and success (more on the Chicago News Cooperative and Bay Citizen in a moment).

I insist on teaching our students the higher discipline and the greater rigor of seeking to create profitable enterprises. I also believe they are more likely to build better journalistic products, services, and platforms if they are accountable to the marketplace. When class starts, many students invariably talk about what they want to do. In my best imitation of a gruff old-timer, I tell them nobody gives a shit what they want to do, save perhaps their mothers. They should care about what the public – their customers – want and need them to do. They need to care about the market if they have any hope of the market sustaining them. That is why they start every term talking with the public they hope to serve. They always come back with surprises.

Of course, the market, too, can be corrupting. I’m tempted to use Rupert Murdoch as the best exhibit of the argument, though in that case, it’s hard to tell which came first, the rabid chicken or the rotten egg. In the long run, cynically giving the public only what it thinks it wants will not deliver value and will fade like the fad it must be. I have that much faith in the market.

And, of course, we can point to many valuable and well-sustained not-for-profit news enterprises: NPR is the best we have, but as its former CEO Vivian Schiller has said, it is very much run like a business, complete with advertisers (pardon me, [cough] underwriters). Texas Tribune is doing a brilliant job of bringing in the support needed to continue its brilliant work (though I argued with its founder and funder, John Thornton, a venture capitalist, that he’d serve the news industry better by demonstrating profitable models). Pro Publica is already a national treasure (though let’s note that it had to get a grant from the Knight Foundation just to figure out how to diversify its funding beyond its original patron, mortgage man Herb Sandler).

But there are other less shining examples. Now we turn to the Chicago News Cooperative, which just announced its closing. It found itself too dependent on a foundation
(MacArthur), a customer/benefactor (The New York Times), not to mention the IRS
(which needs to clarify the rules for not-for-profit news). Dan Sinker argues that it never met is promise of building news with the community.

Then there’s the Bay Citizen, which ran through $11.4 million in 2010 before collapsing last year; it will merge in still-uncertain terms with the better-run, more penurious Center for Investigative Reporting. When the Bay Citizen started with a pot of cash from investor Warren Hellman, I remember the San Francisco Chronicle complaining that this non-market player could unfairly compete with the paper and hasten its demise, an unintended consequence that didn’t come to pass mainly because the Bay Citizen was to terribly run. Non-market entities often are.

I recently judged a contest for an international journalism organization that received a large grant from a very large corporation to fund journalism startups and – here’s why I’m naming neither – I was appalled at the complete lack of thought that went into sustainability and responsible fiscal management in every one of the proposals. I urged the organization to not give away one penny and to start over. It didn’t quite do that.

The problem is that journalists don’t know shit about business. Culturally, they don’t want to. I often hear from journalists who are downright hostile to corporations and even capitalism not because they’re commies but because they believe they’re above it all (there is the root, I believe, of much of their cynicism about Google and other large technology companies). As I’ve said here before, when I came up through journalism’s academy, I was taught that mere contact with business was corrupting. I’ve had bosses scold me for considering the business of journalism. When I started Entertainment Weekly, I could not protect my baby from the expensive idiocy of my business-side colleagues because I didn’t have the biz cred. I vowed that would not happen again. That’s why I insisted on learning the business of journalism.

That is why I insisted on teaching the business of journalism. For we journalists have proven to be terrible, irresponsible stewards of the craft and its value to the nation. Feeding at the teat of monopolies, we grew fat and complacent and snotty about the markets we were to serve. We wasted so much money on duplicative, commodity coverage for the sake of our egos. We were willfully ignorant of how our industry operated and thus how it is dying, making us complicit in its death. We have only ourselves to hold responsible.

And that is why I so respect my friend John Paton, a newsman’s newsman who learned the business of journalism and is taking responsibility for its fate, as head of Digital First Media (where I am an advisor), which now runs the second-largest newspaper group in the U.S. John does not have the answers but he does have the questions and he’s not afraid to challenge executives in our industry with them. He’s willing to disrupt and experiment and learn. And he’s willing to teach what he learns. “Crappy newspaper executives,” he just said, “are a bigger threat to journalism’s future than any changes wrought by the Internet.”

Yes, it’s not just not-for-profit thinking that’s dangerous to journalism. It’s the unprofitable thinking of for-profit news companies. That is why, again, I insist on holding students and the industry they’ll lead to the more diligent standard of true sustainability. That means profitability. There’s nothing wrong with that.

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BoSacks SPONSOR The 3d Annual TH(ink) E-Reading Summit: Brands, Content and Discovery is fast approaching – March 21st. I would like to invite you to the Summit (held in conjunction with the Publishing Business Conference and Expo). Come hear about the latest developments in e-reading technology, best practices, and digital business models that work. We have our best ever lineup of speakers ths year that include: John Loughlin, EVP & GM, Hearst Magazines; Tom Burke, Chief eCommerce Officer, Scholastic; David Steinhardt, President & CEO, IDEAlliance; Mindy Stockfield, VP Marketing and Digital Media, Hyperion Books; Glenn Hansen, President & CEO, BPA Worldwide; Marc Jeffrey Mikulich, VP Br
and Management & International Rights, Wiley; Staffan Ekholm, CEO, MAG+; Brad Inman, CEO, Vook; Peter Faralgo, VP Marketing, Flurry; Caroline Marks, CEO, Bookish; Peter Hildick-Smith, President, Codex-Groupt; Andy Arluk, Partner, mediaIDEAS; and of course Bob “BoSacks” Sacks, Partner, mediaIDEAS Get your tickets today!

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Two Become One: How Magazines Will Ape Their Apps

By Robert Andrews

In a reversal of today’s content publishing model, print magazines pretty soon could start looking a lot like their app equivalents.

“The next redesign of our titles will see them redesigned with our tablet versions in mind,” magazine publisher Future’s tablet editor-in-chief Mike Goldsmith told an industry forum this month.

As publishers extend their print titles to iPad, they can choose either to repurpose the paper originals, which can seem lazy and ill-suited to the touch screen, or to custom-produce interactive apps with a native interface in mind, which is expensive.

If he did that for Future’s 60+ titles, he would “bankrupt the company”, Future’s Goldsmith said. So, today, only three Future titles have the shiny iPad treatment.

But re-imagining today’s disparate print and tablet production workflows in lock-step from the start, making tablet requirements less of an extension, could cut costs. And that could make it feasible for publishers to out their entire portfolio as full iPad editions, as well as in their core printed form.

Already, one Future title, Tap!, is sized to match iPad dimensions. That was a no-brainer
(after all, Tap! is all about apps). But many other magazines, too, are now published in a secondary, miniature form factor that increasingly references the tablet’s own.

And upcoming revisions at Future will borrow further stylistic conventions, as a recent iPad-inspired refresh to Future’s flagship gadget magazine T3 suggests. T3 has begun conceiving some editorial in fragments – swiped through on screen to satisfy readers’ fingers, as well as broken up in short, boxy segments in print. Nowadays, print must satisfy the shorter attention spans of a generation hooked on fragmented and intimate, tactile engagement.

This ironic repurposing of apps back in to print could, in time, significantly re-shape the discipline of magazine design. But that’s something many readers may now be ready for. So potent is the agency users feel when controlling their screen with their fingers, growing numbers of them are catching themselves pinch-zooming a printed leaf in the expectation of interaction.

Other publishers are approaching the same possible solution, but weighing up factors. “Tablet engagement metrics almost perfectly mirror what you see in magazines,” Hearst president David Carey tells paidContent. “We’re looking to do tablet and magazine as efficiently as possible.

“How much interactivity and enhancement is right for the reader? In the first wave of devices, every page had something (interactive). That got a little tiresome. So we’re looking to find the right balance. If they (Future) are trying to design their magazine to fit this screen, those are pretty dramatic differences.”

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Knocked out Loaded: men’s mag suffers 30% sales drop

Former 1990s men’s mag sector leader crashes to loss of 30.2% year-on-year, having shed over 50% of circulation since 2009

By Ben Dowell

Loaded magazine’s circulation fell to 34,505 in the second half of 2011, a vertiginous 30% decline on the same period the previous year.

The former darling of the 1990s men’s magazine sector, bought from IPC buy Vitality Publishing in late 2010, was down 30.2% year-on-year, according to the latest Audit Bureau of Circulations figures for the six months to the end of December published on Thursday.

Loaded has shed more than 50% of its circulation since the second half of 2009, when it reported an average monthly sale of 71,251. At its peak in the late 1990s Loaded sold more than 450,000 copies per month and duked it out with FHM for the top spot in the men’s magazine market.

FHM saw its circulation fall 20% year-on-year in the second half of 2011, in another disappointing set of sales figures for the men’s magazine sector.

The Bauer Media monthly had an average circulation of 140,716 in the six months to the end of December 2011, a 9.5% fall on the previous six month period and a
20.6% fall year-on-year.

Another big faller was Dennis Publishing’s Men’s Fitness, which declined 10.3% year-on-year to report a circulation of 61,721. This was a 8.9% fall for the period.

Hearst Magazine’s Esquire also declined but not as sharply, falling 2.8% over the period to report a circulation of 56,583, a 4.7% year-on-year decline.

The circulation of the NatMag Rodale fitness and lifestyle title Men’s Health was 221,176. While this represented a 10.1% year-on-year fall, it was a 1.3% increase on the previous ABC reporting period.

Men’s Health also remains by some distance the most popular paid-for men’s magazine, ahead of FHM in second place and Condé Nast’s GQ in third place. GQ increased its circulation by 1.6% compared to the previous six month period to 120,094. This represented an unchanged sale year-on-year.

Condé Nast’s UK edition of Wired kept its head above the 50,000 mark, but only by giving away nearly 20% or 10,000 of its copies for free. It was up 1.8% on the previous six months and 2% year on year to 51,056.

However a total of 9,463 were giveaways – or so-called monitored free distribution – with 41,033 copies paid for.

GQ stayed ahead of IPC Media’s men’s weekly Nuts which steadied recent falls to report a 114,116 circulation, up 0.1% on the period but down 19.8% year on year.

Nuts’s rival lads’ weekly Zoo, published by Bauer Media, also managed to stem recent losses. It was up 0.5% on the period at 54,599 but down 20.4% year-on-year.

The market leaders in the sector remained the free titles, with Shortlist leading the field with a distribution of 526,359, up 0.5% on the period and 0.9% year on year.

In second place was another free title, UTV Media’s Sport which was down 0.5% on the previous six months and down 0.6% year on year to report an average circulation of 304,700.

Overall it was another tough six months for the men’s lifestyle sector which was down 5.2% year-on-year overall with a total circulation of 2.21 million. The figures for the six-month percentage move for the sector were not available.

Tough Start for AMI’s ‘Reality Weekly’ Mag

New publication aims high but misses its short-term mark

By Emma Bazilian

While Brangelina and Jennifer Aniston still get shoppers’ attention at the newsstand, the Kardashians, Housewives and Teen Mom are the new cover stars. So American Media Inc.’s Reality Weekly, a new magazine focused on the exploits of reality TV characters, might have seemed like a no-brainer. But so far, it hasn’t come close to matching the popularity of the genre.

AMI initially put 350,000 copies on newsstands, with hopes to get that number to 1 million newsstand copies in six weeks. But with that date passed, Reality Weekly was just nearing a 500,000 distribution and sales of around 100,000, according to the publisher, even with the lowest cover price in the celeb weekly category ($1.79).

Advertising also has been inconsistent. AMI said it hoped to have 10 to 12 pages per issue, but they’ve dipped in recent weeks (the Feb. 20 issue sold just six ad pages), and many of them are of the less-desirable diet pills ilk.

Execs said they started selling the magazine late in the planning process and that advertisers are cautious about buying a new product, but expressed optimism about the title’s future.

“A new magazine can be a tough sell,” said David Jackson, AMI’s evp and group publisher for entertainment. As for growing circ, AMI says it’s still learning what’s catching on with readers and is considering a digital format for subscriptions, which will save money on mailing costs. “I think there’s a learning curve that we’re going through,” said David Leckey, AMI’s evp for consumer marketing. “What we’d like to do is get [sales] up to 200,000 or more. We need to establish what are those dozen or so cover subjects that can carry the sale.”

But Reality Weekly has some built-in limitations. “You’re not guaranteed to have something that people will want to buy every week,” said Jack Hanrahan, editor of industry newsletter CircMatters. “The editor of Us Weekly or People can decide when it’s time to put one of those reality stars on the cover, but the editor of Reality Weekly doesn’t have a choice-whether there’s something to say about one of those individuals or not.”

Getting retailers’ support is another issue, given they can make more money by selling additional copies of a more established (and expensive) weekly, Hanrahan said. AMI claims retailers have been very supportive.

For now, it seems, Reality Weekly just has to hope that reality stars keep misbehaving-and continue to give up all the salacious details.

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BoSacks SPONSOR The 3d Annual TH(ink) E-Reading Summit: Brands, Content and Discovery is fast approaching – March 21st. I would like to invite you to the Summit (held in conjunction with the Publishing Business Conference and Expo). Come hear about the latest developments in e-reading technology, best practices, and digital business models that work. We have our best ever lineup of speakers ths year that include: John Loughlin, EVP & GM, Hearst Magazines; Tom Burke, Chief eCommerce Officer, Scholastic; David Steinhardt, President & CEO, IDEAlliance; Mindy Stockfield, VP Marketing and Digital Media, Hyperion Books; Glenn Hansen, President & CEO, BPA Worldwide; Marc Jeffrey Mikulic
h, VP Brand Management & International Rights, Wiley; Staffan Ekholm, CEO, MAG+; Brad Inman, CEO, Vook; Peter Faralgo, VP Marketing, Flurry; Caroline Marks, CEO, Bookish; Peter Hildick-Smith, President, Codex-Groupt; Andy Arluk, Partner, mediaIDEAS; and of course Bob “BoSacks” Sacks, Partner, mediaIDEAS Get your tickets today!

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The Real Story About Print Sales at Retail

4 facts and a bunch of figures that paint an optimistic picture.

By Lisa Scott and Jay Annis

http://www.pubexec.com/

In a frenzied, media-rich world, it becomes very easy to embrace each new content-delivery system as though it will become the next, and only, big thing. Massive investments? Of course. Proven results? Not so sure. Strong revenue streams? Not yet. Paywalls rather than free content? Still hoping.

Yet print continues as a thriving, profitable business for publishers; so what’s the real story about print sales at retail?

Fact #1: Consumers LOVE print magazines-and value them!

Fact #2: Savvy Retailers LOVE print magazines-and value them!

Fact #3: Digital and print are complementary, not cannibalistic!

Fact #4: It’s the economy, stupid!

So do you still think that digital is “cleaning our clock?” Well, you’re wrong … and there’s so much more that you should know. Come to our Publishing Business Conference & Expo panel in New York on March 20 at 1:15 p.m. (visit PublishingBusiness.com for more information), and also join us at the 2012 Retail Marketplace Conference in Baltimore, June 10-12 (visit PBAA.net for details). PE

Lisa Scott is the executive director of the Periodical & Book Association of America
(PBAA). Jay Annis is vice president, Trade Sales, The Taunton Press, and president, PBAA.

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Popular Demand http://www.nytimes.com

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BoSacks Sponsor The 3d Annual TH(ink) E-Reading Summit: Brands, Content and Discovery is fast approaching – March 21st. I would like to invite you to the Summit (held in conjunction with the Publishing Business Conference and Expo). Come hear about the latest developments in e-reading technology, best practices, and digital business models that work. We have our best ever lineup of speakers ths year that include: John Loughlin, EVP & GM, Hearst Magazines; Tom Burke, Chief eCommerce Officer, Scholastic; David Steinhardt, President & CEO, IDEAlliance; Mindy Stockfield, VP Marketing and Digital Media, Hyperion Books; Glenn Hansen, President & CEO, BPA Worldwide; Marc Jeffrey Mikulic
h, VP Brand Management & International Rights, Wiley; Staffan Ekholm, CEO, MAG+; Brad Inman, CEO, Vook; Peter Faralgo, VP Marketing, Flurry; Caroline Marks, CEO, Bookish; Peter Hildick-Smith, President, Codex-Groupt; Andy Arluk, Partner, mediaIDEAS; and of course Bob “BoSacks” Sacks, Partner, mediaIDEAS Get your tickets today!

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No doubt because I have started many regional publications I found this an amusing tale. In my very first publication in 1971 I went head to head with another local publisher, and there were some great times and great competitive and combative moments, that today I look fondly back upon as training ground for my later, big corporate competitions.

Business is a good game - lots of competition and a minimum of rules. You keep score with money." - Atari founder Nolan Bushnell]

Publishers’ emails: What 2 city magazines say about each other

Month after month, Seattle Magazine and Seattle Met battle it out, offering like content and sometimes similar covers. Asked to size up the competition, the publishers took off the gloves.

By Ek Lacitis

Seattle Times staff reporter

OK, maybe “hate” is a little strong. “Miffed” might be more appropriate, but that’s not a teaser headline to keep you reading, is it?

This story started innocuously enough, with the editors for each publication keeping their comments nice.

Then the publishers got involved – and, well, read the emails yourself.

The story originally was to be about the kind of coincidence that can make magazine editors wince as they try to separate themselves from competitors; after months of planning, you end up using the same cover photo as your rival.

That’s what happened this month when Seattle Magazine and Seattle Met had special issues commemorating the 50th anniversary of the 1962 World’s Fair.

Digging up archival photos, their respective art directors separately found a compelling image in the photo archives of Seattle’s Museum of History & Industry.

It showed a young woman named Shirley Farnham taking a photo in 1962 of the Space Needle looming above her.

“I was drawn to this image … because of its simplicity and how it puts you in a familiar spot. I also like that you could basically recreate it today if you visit the Seattle Center,” says Andre Mora, Seattle Met’s design director.

Actually, Seattle Met published four different covers for that issue, a different World’s Fair historical photo on each.

But it was the two covers with the same photos that were noticed.

In The Stranger’s news blog, called Slog, writer Brendan Kiley posted both covers, so they flashed back and forth, with the headline, “Now More Indistinguishable Than Ever!”

The label comes from those who peruse both city magazines and can’t help noticing that both are heavy on “service journalism,” with lots of “best of” lists.

Both magazines, for example, offer their own lists of Top Doctors, Best Restaurants and Best Burgers.

A commenter on that Slog posting helpfully explained how the two city magazines were actually different:

“Seattle Magazine: For Redmond parents researching dentists and schools for their kids, and who rarely cross the bridge.

“Seattle Met: For Belltown/Cap Hill residents aspiring to be the above, but looking for a new bar to ruin in the meantime.”

Rachel Hart, editor of Seattle Magazine, says about The Stranger’s posting, “They like to poke the hornets’ nest. We take it as a compliment if The Stranger pokes fun at you.”

Hart, and Katherine Koberg, editor of Seattle Met, both said when asked about the other’s magazine that they don’t pay that much attention.

It was when the publishers got involved that things took a sharp turn and the niceties evaporated.

It started with questions about circulation figures, an important statistic when it comes to selling ads.

Both publications say their paid circulation is in the 33,000 to 36,000 range, with about three-fifths as subscriptions.

In addition, both magazines pump up circulation figures by giving away thousands of free copies, mostly at high-end hotel rooms, but also at doctors’ offices and special events.

And it would not be an understatement that both publications criticize each other’s figures and how each publication interprets them.

Email vs. email

It was in responding to a question from this reporter about circulation numbers that John Kueber, chief operating officer, Seattle at Tiger Oaks Publications, owner of Seattle Magazine, also wrote, “one of the maddening things about the magazine situation in our city is the consistent pattern of imitation. As we both know, ‘Scooping’ one another is fair game and part of our business (i.e. Met moving their Space Needle issue up a month to match ours), but it gets a little old. We do series of food truck events (‘Mobile Chowdown’) … they follow up 6 months later with an imitation. We put a ‘Love and Sex’ cover on our media kit in Fall 2010 for Feb
2011, lo and behold, Seattle Met does the same (non traditional) cover in Feb 2011.

“Again, we recognize it’s part of the business (and there’s the old saying of the sincerest form of flattery), but we live in an incredibly dynamic city. There’s plenty of room for innovation and great stories to cover. If Met wants to be so young, so hip – then they should be original!”

The “young and hip” reference was to how Seattle Met touts its readership’s median age as 40. In its media kit, Seattle Magazine says its readership’s average age is 51.

Kueber’s email resulted in this email response to the reporter from Nicole Vogel, founder and president of SagaCity Media, which owns Seattle Met:

“I feel like I’m having a Stephen Colbert moment. Does John Kueber think his magazine owns the rights to coverage of love and Valentine’s Day in February? I’ll call Hallmark. Or the 50th anniversary of the 1962 World’s Fair? I’ll alert all other media outlets.

“All joking aside, Seattle Met’s reader is 15 years younger than Seattle Mag’s, as a result we have no interest in looking to their editorial direction for ‘inspiration.’ As for the circulation, I’m confident that our media kit reflects the truth; Kueber’s on the other hand, more like truthiness.

“I also find it funny that he would accuse anyone of ‘imitation.’ As you can see from the attached images, imitation appears to be a big part of their strategy.”

Vogel’s email contained an attachment showing covers from other city magazines, alongside very similar covers then by Seattle Magazine.

One example showed the June 2003 issue of New York magazine with a cover story on “Best Doctors.” The visual was a person’s hand in a cast, thumb sticking up, and stuff scribbled on the cast.

In July 2010, Seattle Magazine ran its “Top Docs” issue, the visual on the cover showing a person’s hand in a cast, thumb sticking up, and stuff scribbled on the cast.

Round two

Seattle Met’s Vogel’s email then resulted in this response from Kueber:

“We could all play the game of who is influenced by what from a ‘design’ standpoint
(isn’t every form of media guilty of this?). She is missing the point.

“There have been instances where there is some similarity in design with some other city publications, but my point remains that we continue to work in the spirit of innovative ‘ideas, topics and events’ in tandem with the usual topics (best restaurants) of city magazines. I can’t say the same for them.

“I guess I challenge Seattle Met to find an example of Seattle Magazine imitating Seattle Met on an original ‘idea.’ A font on a single issue of ‘Comfort Food’ four years after the fact, doesn’t really fall into the category of imitation.”

To this, Vogel responded, “I was up half the night feeling deeply offended and thought I should respond once more to accurately reflect both our staff’s feelings and my support and belief in them. This is what I came up with:

“The work that Katherine Koberg and her editorial and design teams put into the sweeping coverage of our city through Seattle Met is a real and true contribution. They work tirelessly at it. To insinuate that this hard working group of people is being repetitive and only copying ideas is simply wrong and insulting.”

Let’s just wrap this story up.

You know, maybe that teaser, “Top Reasons Why They Hate Each Other!” wasn’t an exaggeration.

Seattle Times researcher David Turim contributed to this report.

The 3d Annual TH(ink) E-Reading Summit: Brands, Content and Discovery is fast approaching – March 21st. I would like to invite you to the Summit (held in conjunction with the Publishing Business Conference and Expo). Come hear about the latest developments in e-reading technology, best practices, and digital business models that work. We have our best ever lineup of speakers ths year that include: John Loughlin, EVP & GM, Hearst Magazines; Tom Burke, Chief eCommerce Officer, Scholastic; David Steinhardt, President & CEO, IDEAlliance; Mindy Stockfield, VP Marketing and Digital Media, Hyperion Books; Glenn Hansen, President & CEO, BPA Worldwide; Marc Jeffrey Mikulich, VP Brand Mana
gement & International Rights, Wiley; Staffan Ekholm, CEO, MAG+; Brad Inman, CEO, Vook; Peter Faralgo, VP Marketing, Flurry; Caroline Marks, CEO, Bookish; Peter Hildick-Smith, President, Codex-Groupt; Andy Arluk, Partner, mediaIDEAS; and of course Bob “BoSacks” Sacks, Partner, mediaIDEAS Get your tickets today!

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Email stumbles in digital paradigm shift

Alan Muter

The use of email has plunged by more than 30% in the last year among consumers under the age of 24, owing to the increased use of texting and Facebook to stay in touch. That’s one of the eye-opening paradigm shifts identified in a must-read report from comScore on the fast-changing state of the digital universe. A primary activity among wired individuals since the arrival of the Internet, email use in the last 12 months fell by more than 30% for those under the age of 24 and stayed absolutely flat among those aged 24-44, according to the audience measuring service. As illustrated below, only those aged 45-54 are pecking out more emails today than they were a year ago. The reason, of course, is that a growing number of people are communicating via Facebook and/or text messages on their mobile phones. Many, of course, also are chatting on the Facebook apps on their
smart phones. The rapid shift in one-on-one communication is not the only disruptive trend noted in the comScore study. Traditional portals like Yahoo, MSN and AOL are “conceding ground to Facebook and other social networks,” said comScore. Noting that portals represented 16.7% of time on site in December vs. 16.6% for Facebook and its brethren, comScore said social sites are on track to “soon declare supremacy over portals.” Putting its growing traffic to good use, Facebook last year became the top publisher of digital display advertising. Facebook ran more than 1.3 trillion ad impressions, as compared with 529 billion at Yahoo, 215 billion at Microsoft and 174 billion at Google. While Google remains the king of search advertising, comScore notes its vulnerability, saying:

“Advertising on Facebook – which combines many of the attributes of search such as granular targeting, small ad formats and self-purchased ad buys – presents a unique offering for many marketers looking to bridge their search and display advertising.”

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The Guardian Thrives in Facebook’s Walled Garden

By Josh Sternberg

In September, British newspaper The Guardian was one of the first publishers to build an app designed specifically for its content to be consumed (and shared) within Facebook. The upside: The prospect of added visibility to 850 million users. The downside: Publishers need to port their content over to Facebook, where there’s no guarantee users will visit the publisher’s site.

There have been grumbles from some that the “frictionless sharing” of these apps are annoying or even invasive. There are other concerns that such editions will eat into traffic to publishers’ sites. But for now, the Guardian isn’t seeing that.

Nearly 6 million people have signed up and installed the app as of Feb. 3., according to Martin Belam, The Guardian’s lead user experience and information architect. Perhaps most important: over half are under 25. That’s an audience that a 191-year-old newspaper isn’t exactly known for.

Belam subscribes to the “fish where the fish are” theory when it comes to building within the Facebook environs rather than attempting only to lure Facebookers to The Guardian’s site.

“In the U.S. people spend about 25 minutes a month on news sites, and eight hours a month on Facebook,” he said. “As a news organization, why wouldn’t you want to publish where the audience is?”

The case for publishers to build on Facebook is its status as a sprawling social utility. Look at what Facebook distribution has done for Zynga or Spotify. The social gaming and music companies are hedging that with more users on Facebook than anywhere on the Web, that’s where they can build distribution. And it’s worked for them.

Content publishers are in a different situation, if only because they can more easily monetize users on their site than on Facebook. The only ads in the Guardian’s app are in-house ads, sandwiching nine content categories. The outlet only monetizes the ads served within its app. Facebook gets paid on the ads placed around the edges of the page.

The high user numbers for The Guardian point to how quickly Facebook can favor apps. There’s little doubt it is giving more weight to the stories shared by users of apps built by The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, Yahoo News and others. Chances are you regularly see what your friends are reading via one of these apps. Clicking on the headline for a story will usually take a user to a page asking them to install the app. That feeds even more distribution. Any story read triggers a notification that vies for attention in the news feed. This “frictionless sharing” by the news apps is so prevalent that one writer complained it’s “ruined sharing.”

It also brings up a sensible question: Isn’t The Guardian training users to consume its content on Facebook, where it’s a renter and not an owner? In the words of venture capitalist Fred Wilson, “Don’t be Facebook’s bitch. Be your own bitch.” (Wilson was warning against app developers betting on one platform, but it could also apply to publishers.) Belam, however, said the app truly is a virtuous circle. While it keeps users on Facebook, it’s also ended up feeding traffic back to The Guardian’s website, where it fully monetizes them.

“What we see is that apart from the traffic within the app, we also see additional traffic because stories are being advertised in people’s Facebook feed,” said Belam. “Even if you don’t install the app and opt to always go through to the website, you see your friends’ activity. There has been a net gain in audience and referrers from Facebook to the site.”

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What if we in media are not in the content business?

By Jeff Jarvis

Oh, yes, we will produce content; that’s what we do. But perhaps our greatest value is not in what we produce but in what it produces: signals about people’s interests, about authority, about topics and trends.

That is how Facebook, Google, Twitter and company see content – as a signal generator. That is how they extract value from it, by using those signals to serve more relevant content, services, and advertising. But they are not in the content business. They are in the relationship business. Shouldn’t we also be?

A US TV news executive I know complained to me recently that Facebook and Google, in his words, use media’s steel to build their cars. “Mark Zuckerberg,” he said, “does not value content.”

No, I said, Zuckerberg values more content than we do. We think content is that which we make because we are content people – we see content as a scarcity we produce and control. Facebook and Google, on the other hand, see content everywhere – in the allegedly useless creations, chatter and links made by people in the course of their lives. They see content as an abundant resource to learn from, value and exploit.

The problem is, the media is not built for relationships because our industry was born in a time of factories, not services. We rarely know who our readers are (and we still call them just readers or at best commenters, not creators or collaborators). We do not have the means to gather, analyse and act on data about their activities and interests at an individual level. Thus we cannot serve them as individuals.

Our product, content, is not built for that. It is built for masses. That is what our means of production and distribution demanded. So now we try to adapt that content for new tools, impressed that we can add motion, sound or touch to what we have long done. But our online books, magazines, and newspapers are still recognisable as such. We haven’t gone nearly far enough yet to rethink and reinvent them….

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Hey, how’s Newt Gingrich doing on Twitter?

Twitter + Robots = Instant Stories, No Humans Required

by Peter Kafka

You could try answering this question yourself by combing through Twitter and looking at what Newt says there, and what people are saying about Newt there. But that would take time and effort.

Much easier to have a computer track this down for you – and then ask the computer to write up a story about it, too.

That’s what Narrative Science, the start-up that specializes in robot-written stories, did earlier this week. The result isn’t elegant, but it gets the job done, in a brute force sort of way.

NEWT GINGRICH GAINS ATTENTION WITH HOT-BUTTON TOPICS TAXES, CHARACTER ISSUES

Newt Gingrich received the largest increase in Tweets about him today. Twitter activity associated with the candidate has shot up since yesterday, with most users tweeting about taxes and character issues. Newt Gingrich has been consistently popular on Twitter, as he has been the top riser on the site for the last four days. Conversely, the number of tweets about Ron Paul has dropped in the past 24 hours. Another traffic loser was Rick Santorum, who has also seen tweets about him fall off a bit.

While the overall tone of the Gingrich tweets is positive, public opinion regarding the candidate and character issues is trending negatively. In particular, @MommaVickers says, “Someone needs to put The Blood Arm’s ‘Suspicious Character’ to a photo montage of Newt Gingrich. #pimp”.

On the other hand, tweeters with a long reach are on the upside with regard to Newt Gingrich’s take on taxes. Tweeting about this issue, @elvisroy000 says, “Newt Gingrich Cut Taxes Balanced Budget, 1n 80s and 90s, Newt experienced Conservative with values”.

Maine recently held its primary, but it isn’t talking about Gingrich. Instead the focus is on Ron Paul and religious issues.

No Pulitzer for that one, but that’s not the point. This is a work in progress that’s meant to illustrate an interesting project Narrative Science is working on: The Chicago-based company got its start by creating stories out of “structured” data sets, like baseball box scores. Now it is looking at “unstructured” data – like the thousands of messages that Twitter puts out each second – as story fodder, too.

Stories about things people say on Twitter aren’t super compelling (though if you checkTechmeme, you’ll see that my fellow typers and I sure make a lot of them). But if Narrative Science gets good at this, it could end up somewhere interesting.

“This is a really basic story, but it’s fully automated,” says CEO Stuart Frankel. “No human touched it at all. You can see where this thing is going.”

Meanwhile, Frankel says, Narrative Science’s core business is taking off. The company, which raised $6 million last year, now has 30 clients, many of whom use the company to produce stories and reports they use internally. But you can see public examples of it via publishers like Forbes, which is using the service to crank out automated earnings previews.

Again, those previews aren’t made up of sterling prose, but they are very serviceable. Which means Forbes can either save the money it would have spent paying someone to mash that stuff out – or it can free up a writer to do the interesting kind of stories that only humans can do.

And now I’ll save myself a few minutes of work by citing myself from last year, where I tried to assure myself that Narrative Science wasn’t going to put me out of business: “The trick for content makers like myself is to find work that only content makers like myself can do – work where human qualities like experience, judgment and creativity get rewarded. And if we can’t do that, we ought to be doing something else, anyway.”

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