Samir Husni to Launch Magazine Innovation Center in August

Samir Husni, the University of Mississippi professor known as “Mr. Magazine,” is relinquishing his duties as chairman of the journalism department at the school on June 30, and will not seek the role of dean.

Instead, Husni is launching the Magazine Innovation Center, a non-profit think tank of sorts, and says he will devote the remaining years of his professional career to furthering the future of print.

The center, which will be housed at the University of Mississippi, will launch in August, Husni said.

“As an industry, we’re so cocooned in what we are doing,” Husni told FOLIO:. “We’re going to use this as a base, a think tank, where we’ll bring in people from publishing, advertising, and printing from all over the world—away from the daily grind of New York or other major cities—to spend three or four days here working on a specific problem.”

One of the center’s first goals, he said, would be to come up with new ways for magazine distribution.

Since posting a note about the idea for the innovation center on his blog last week, Husni said he has received 120 e-mails from people who “are very interested” in participating. The post—entitled “Once again the American publishing model proves to be DEAD”—was born out of frustration over the shuttering of Hallmark magazine, despite showing significant growth in advertising and circulation.

“I saw that, and said ‘This is it, it’s time to do this,’” he said.

Husni is seeking $1 million to jump-start the center, and said he has already spoken to many CEOs interested in the project.

While Husni has yet to seek the assistance of associations like the Magazine Publishers of America, he would welcome their help. “Would they rather spend $4.7 million on an advertising campaign that got them nothing, or $250,000 on the Magazine Innovation Center?”

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All money flows to google and that is state of the industry

Submitted by John on Tue, 03/03/2009 - 11:59.

The death of print that was forcasted for us back in 1995 is happening online as well. Google, the ones who "don't be evil", continue to borrow and sell penny ads alongside it, and along the way they have not only succeeded in putting much of print out of business, but now are threating entire media empires. No worries, there is always the bloggers and social media folk to fill the void, which is basically what is happening now for many searches. Meanwhile, back in New York, Gordon Hughes whose organization I know rasied questions 10 years ago as to the fairness of a potential Microsoft take over of the internet appears silent this time around as google destroys media businesses world wide while enriching itself, and some would argue, unjustly

The State of the Industry is That the Industry has Evolved

Submitted by Gordon Peery on Tue, 03/03/2009 - 14:46.

How wearying to keep hearing that Google is destroying the media business, as if it were some great conspiracy. Google has figured out how to do stuff that provides value to people - the core concept of any business. This is like saying that the web press conspired to put the letterpress out of business, or that computerized typesetting should have been forbidden so that the art of typesetting would be retained. Media is the art/science of providing information to people, not the business of printing magazines. And someday, Google too shall pass, perhaps lamented in the same fashion.

Innovate This

Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 03/06/2009 - 13:06.

I wish Mr. Husni well on his venture. One thing I hope he and this top expert thinkers will address is how to design a magazine business model in which paying writers for their work is not an option; paying them on time is standard; and not wresting every single right possible out of writers is not even considered. Good luck.