Folio Blogs

Time in Which Content Retains Value is ‘Rapidly Compressing’

Jason Fell — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:00:54 -0500

Last week, I attended the Fulfillment Management Association’s annual President’s Panel, which features the leaders of the major fulfillment houses talking about the business. It’s always a great and informative session.

I was particularly struck by comments from Ray Butkus, CEO of ARGI. Media companies are in crisis, Butkus acknowledges, and because of that, their supplier partners are as well. But the crisis, he said, has nothing to do with readership and circulation. Online or off, the readership is there. “The crisis has to do with the ability to make money off [readership and circulation],” Butkus said. “You create content, but the time within which content retains value is rapidly compressing.”

According to Butkus [pictured], database and fulfillment partners need to facilitate a media company’s ability to create content products based on knowledge of what the market needs, and the traditional two-week window for reports and other information is no longer good enough.

Butkus’ point is important. Fulfillment providers need to think differently about what they do for media companies. They need to help media companies generate revenue in the new world of digital media. And that means providing real-time intelligence on the audience, and creating a software infrastructure that enables transactions based on content.

Butkus said it this way: “Bringing the financial transaction together with the person who wants it, when they want it, requires a moment of truth. It’s altogether fitting and proper for that to reside with us.”

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It’s 2010. Do You Know Where Your Exhibitors Are?

Jason Fell — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 11:06:34 -0500

Having just come back from a speech to the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributor’s Executive Council meeting, I’ve got meeting attendance on the brain. It’s down, in case you hadn’t heard. It’s way down in some industries, and not just because of the recession. Conventions, trade shows, conferences are becoming a commodity for a lot of industries. For the wholesalers, buying groups were already stealing their thunder and now are adding networking in ways that really undercut their value propositions as premier networking venues.

The business model was already pretty wonky. Matt Rowan, executive director of the Health Industry Distributors Association is trying to change the 80-20 model where 80 percent of revenues are eaten up by shipping, logistics, booth companies, AV providers, etc. and only 20 percent ends up in the association’s pockets. He’s coming up with packages for his biggest exhibitors which save them 20 percent and allow the association to keep 50 percent of the revenues. “We’ve gotten into the booth-building business,” Rowan said. That was only one example from his “power package” idea that will give exhibitors what they want: “not more relationships but deeper relationships.”

“We were slaves to the number of attendees, the number of booths, the square footage,” Rowan said. “Now the metric is how many meetings exhibitors hosted. There’s meeting space in each booth along ‘Main Street’ plus private meeting spaces around the periphery of the hall. Exhibitors want to know who they’re meeting with even before they come to town.”

The makeup of HIDA’s attendees fit the dance card approach very well. Buyers can select sellers they’d like to talk to and vice versa so that everyone’s dance card fills up and HIDA has a basis for pricing.

John Garfinkel, executive director of the International Sanitary Supply Association, has managed to maintain attendance at or near the same levels as prior to the recession by opening the doors to service providers and end users through alliances with other associations.

These are only two ideas. I’m part of a major study that will look for more.

Fast Future Research’s Convention 2020 just kicked off and will look at the future of live events, venues and meeting destinations. The study’s site allows anyone to contribute their thoughts via a Trend Wiki. The study will run through October so that meeting planners can make better decisions this year for future meetings. After we gather everyone’s input, participants will be able to vote on which trends they see as most likely. I hope you’ll join up.

[This post originally appeared here.]
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Demand Media Can Go To Hell

Jason Fell — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:36:47 -0500

EARLIER: The Value of Online Content: Practically Nothing

I used to scoff at what newspapers paid freelance writers for stories. Then I heard about Demand Media.

In the magazine industry, somewhere around $1 per word has been the going rate for most magazines for at least 20 years. Write a 1,500-word story, get paid $1,500. Large consumer magazines pay significantly better, going as high as $4 per word for the large magazines. There’s been no increase in fees in 20 years, but you can make a living.

Newspapers traditionally were much worse, paying $250 or so for that same 1,500-word story.

But Demand Media trumps newspapers for cheapness. Demand pays its contributors $15 per story, or 3 cents per word on a 500-word story. Demand, a four-year-old company, creates a huge amount of content that goes on various how-to sites, and is designed in part to attract Google ads. In a story yesterday on Vanityfair.com, author Matt Pressman describes the process.

He says Demand Media employs 7,000 writers, editors and videographers and produces 4,500 pieces of content a day. He adds that writers are flocking in droves to Demand Media. Pressman quotes Steven Kydd, Demand Media’s executive vice president in charge of content, as saying that writers have the benefit of steady reliable work and a quick turnaround on payments.

Please. Spare me. Getting a quick turnaround on nothing is meaningless because it’s still nothing.

Demand Media isn’t really a new idea. Sites like About.com and Themestream relied on freelancers and non-professional enthusiasts. There’s a site used by the newspaper industry called Helium that pays writers something like $25 per article. Kydd, who spoke at an MPA lunch this week, wants to partner up with magazines.

I hope no magazine ever partners with Demand Media. In fact, I hope Demand Media and any site like it goes out of business. They demean and abuse professional content creators, leveraging them to generate revenue from Google ads.

They’re sweatshops. No magazine should accept content from a company that treats content with such disrespect. In the end, too, you get what you pay for.
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Five Things Your Digital Staff Is Dying To Tell You

Matt Kinsman — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 06:39:51 -0500

Digital media may have grown from basically zero to 8 to 15 percent of total revenue for most magazine publishers in recent years but the gulf between online staffers and traditional employees (particularly the executive level) remains large.
Below are five verbatims from a mix of e-media strategists, developers, project managers and digital marketers on what they would love for the rest of their colleagues to realize.
1. "Instead of designing a site around editorial or spending days fretting over what color to make a link, actually think about a business model. Too many times we are tasked with a huge design and programming effort only to have someone say, ‘Oh, we'll just sell ads on it.' And then they don't. There's money to be made online, but you actually need a product to sell."
2. "All the higher-ups are publishing people. You need C-level people who understand the technology and what it takes to market a successful web business. When they do hire someone with a digital background, it's almost never someone with any practical development or business experience. They prefer the types that like to sit around all day with overpriced agencies fantasizing about ‘user experience.'"
3. "Trust our advice. We're always happy to explain if you're willing to learn. Publishing people say they want to understand digital, but in practice they are stuck in their old ways, and keep going back to what they know."
4. "Don't launch a Web product without a serious marketing plan to drive traffic. And no, a few e-mails to our existing customer base and two Google ads don't cut it."
5. "I'm not in IT. I'm not here to fix your printer."
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Life After Doubledown

Jason Fell — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 21:04:40 -0500

One year ago Wednesday, FOLIO: broke the news that Doubledown Media, parent of wildly popular Wall Street trade publications Trader Monthly and Dealmaker, shut its doors.
I remember it well. I was there.

While the fall of Doubledown was slow, painful and embarrassing, the experience of working there as an editor is one I view with great fondness. My colleagues were hardworking and smart, and I got to meet and interview dozens of very important people on Wall Street.

The near economic collapse during the fall of 2008 only accelerated the downward spiral that had begun in earnest months before. After the June departure of Rachel Pine, the woman who single-handedly built the publisher’s brands with tremendous success, it was hard to maintain momentum. At the same time, the “Working Wealthy” was quickly becoming the “Unemployed Upper Middle Class.” With high-end consumers dwindling, there would be no more high-end ads. No high-end ads, no revenue. No revenue, no paychecks. No paychecks, no employees. No employees, no company. What about subscription revenue? The magazine was mostly given out for free, so no dice there.

On January 30th, 2009, the company failed to meet its full payroll, despite having been slashed dramatically just two months prior. Like an airline pilot, I had been “furloughed” as an associate editor, while several of my colleagues were getting by on half pay. I remained faithful though, working for free coffee and snacks at the office in hopes that a turnaround was near. But after my bi-weekly paycheck failed to hit my account that morning, I dragged two duffle bags to work to clean out my desk.

The following Monday night, president Randall Lane sent the staff an e-mail declaring that the company’s credit line provider would “no longer fund our working capital” and that operations would cease “effective immediately.” We all said our goodbyes the next day, and got together a few weeks later to drown our sorrows at a downtown Manhattan bar. Soon after, the company declared Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

Learning, Then Leaving

Despite its sad demise, I view my time at Doubledown with great professional satisfaction, and refuse to disparage any of my former colleagues. Enough people have taken shots at each other already, so I’ll keep my thoughts to myself. If anything, I wish I had started with them earlier.

I got on board toward the end of Doubledown’s existence—in January 2008, with the credit crisis firmly in play. I missed out on most of the lavish parties that the magazine was known for and also the chance to write more puff pieces on top traders. Thankfully though, I had avoided the media fiascos involving young traders Tim Sykes and Zack Michaelson.

Prior to Doubledown, my career to date had been in foreign exchange trading, with a short stint as a film crew member in between jobs. I had grown up in a town where half my friends’ fathers were bond traders, and along with my recent experience for a fledgling broker, I had plenty of finance tales to tell. Somehow I convinced Trader Monthly’s executive editor Rich Blake to let me do so.

To show just how much of a jump this was for me, my first project for Trader Monthly was putting together the ever-controversial Trader 100 list. Just a few months prior, my big task was servicing a $10 million forex managed accounts program. Now I was debating PR men of multi-billion dollar hedge funds about whether or not my compensation estimates for their star managers were correct. These numbers ranged from as high as $3 billion+ to as low (low??) as $75 million. Talk about going from pikers to producers! No wonder everyone from investment banks and MBA programs wanted to work at hedge funds. After all, where else could you make $100 million a year?

After Lehman went bankrupt, Merrill was sold, and TARP was passed, the most bull market of bull market publications could not last for long. When one of my colleagues asked me in late 2008, “Chris, did you hear about Citi? They’re laying off FIFTY THOUSAND PEOPLE!” I knew in my heart it was over.

Moving On

After the shut down, everyone from the Doubledown diaspora hit the ground running, despite being bitter over lost pay and abrupt unemployment. A handful had gotten new jobs right beforehand, including Web guru Todd Tarpley at Nielson Business Media. The rest of us immediately reached out to old clients, sources and other publications, securing short-term freelance and consulting work.

Among my editorial colleagues, we have parlayed our experience at Doubledown into great new ventures. I have been freelancing, helping ghost write and edit two books, and have been covering hedge funds as a contributor for AR magazine. My mentor, Rich Blake, published a book and is now a blogger for Reuters HedgeWorld. My cubicle buddies who covered travel and lifestyle, Nick Kolakowski and Cristina Velocci, write for eWeek.com and Time Out New York, respectively. Scott Eden and Ty Wenger ended up together at TheStreet.com. Leah McGrath Goodman is still successfully freelancing and just finished a book about the New York Mercantile Exchange. And though she left in early 2008, former editorial assistant Teri Buhl is now the hedge fund beat reporter for the Greenwich Time, the equivalent of being an auto industry reporter in Detroit.

And, finally, Randall Lane has secured a book deal, a memoir entitled “The Zeroes: My Misadventures in the Decade Wall Street Went Insane.” I guarantee you that all of my ex-colleagues are anxious to hear his side of the story.

Though as proud of my colleagues as I am, and how I still yearn for the bubble days, I'm still waiting for that last paycheck.
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Busted! Media Gets Burned on iPad Unveiling Prank

Jason Fell — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 12:46:34 -0500

The technology and publishing worlds held their collective breaths last Wednesday, awaiting Apple’s unveiling of its iPad tablet device. However, according to his Twitter feed, outspoken Weblogs Inc. founder and Mahalo.com CEO Jason Calacanis had beaten us all to the chase. On the eve of the unveiling, he informed his more than 90,000 followers that he already had the tablet device and had been beta testing it for 10 days.

“Yes, it’s true… I’ve been beta testing the Apple tablet for the past two weeks and it’s amazing” read one of Calacanis’ tweets. Here are two more:

@Jason: the apple tablet is running an iphone oc flavor with ability to have multiple apps running at same time (ie pandora, browser

@Jason: Ok, I’m going to bed (with apple tablet after reading nytimes + Vanity Fair on it!), steve jobs outdid himself, its greatest device ever!!!

He also claimed the device includes wireless charging, face recognition and an “insane” Farmville app.

Wait, what? First of all, I’m pretty sure Apple doesn’t hand out forthcoming devices to beta testers. And, as we found out when Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the device, a lot of the functions Calacanis tweeted about don’t in fact exist on the iPad.

It was all a prank. A joke. Calacanis squashed any speculation about the validity of his tweets the following day by linking to a YouTube video called “Jason Calacanis Destroys Tech ‘Journalism.’”

But, of course, not everyone in media got the joke. The Wall Street Journal, BusinessInsider—even TechCrunch—ran items the morning of the big unveiling about Calacanis’ claims.

“Mainstream media journalists are so on tilt because of bloggers scooping them that I think that at one in the morning, two in the morning, maybe they lost a little bit of common sense to get a jump on the story to get the pages, to get up on Techmeme, to get the tweet out first,” Calacanis [pictured] said in a recent video interview with All Things Digital’s Kara Swisher. “I think the people who made the mistakes should say they screwed up and that Jason was obviously joking.”

When Swisher asked Calacanis if he should have pulled the prank in the first place, he replied: “Well, it has been a pretty amusing 48 hours, and I did add 10,000 more Twitter followers. It will only make my reputation more controversial, which I love. And, there were 732 more inbound links to Mahalo.”

Clearly, this goes to show that journalists need to fact-check their stories before posting them (uh, duh). This also goes to show that as more and more journalists become dependent on social media for tips and background for stories, they should be far more skeptical of the information they find there if they don’t want to get burned.

[Image via All Things Digital]
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Inc. Edit Staff to Try Virtual Office for One Month

Matt Kinsman — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 12:11:02 -0500

For the month of February, the Inc. magazine editorial staff is going to run an experiment on the virtual workplace with all editors working from home.

According to senior writer Max Chafkin:
"To prepare, we've talked to experts in the field of organizational behavior and entrepreneurs who believe in virtual work, such as WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg and 4-Hour Workweek guru Timothy Ferriss. The reporters and editors have taken surveys on our work habits, downloaded new applications onto our computers and smartphones, and created checklists to help us collaborate even when we won't see each other face to face as we normally do. Most of us will be working from home offices for the month of February. The rest will be scattered among hotels, co-working spaces, and the occasional laptop-friendly café.
As the experiment progresses, we'll be blogging about our experiences here on a regular basis. We also plan to post video interviews with experts and consultants who study virtual work. Then in the April issue of the magazine, we'll publish a definitive piece on virtual work-a look at pros and cons of running a highly-dispersed team (namely, ours), plus, tips on how to work virtually that any start-up or small business can use."
A New Reality For Other Publishers?

While Inc. is experimenting with the virtual office as a way of relaying its experience to its audience of small business owners, it's hard to find any publisher who doesn't have at least a few staffers commuting from the "virtual workplace," whether it's an editor cross-country, a freelance designer or a remote sales rep.
A few years ago, Nielsen Business Media encouraged staffers to work from home and even developed a plan in which each staffer would have a laptop while central docking stations would do away with cubes at the office and allow employees who had to come in for meetings access to the network. Nielsen never went as far as creating the docking stations although recent rumors have emerged that the company has advised the editors of its remaining magazines to start working from home (something a spokesperson denied).
However, as publishing staffs grow smaller while companies are still laboring under multi-year leases that don't look so attractive any more, the results of Inc.'s experiment could have particular significance for the magazine industry. Stay tuned.
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Apple's iPad: A Question for the Magazine Industry, Not an Answer

Jason Fell — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 13:12:54 -0500

In the weeks leading up to Apple's launch of its tablet device Wednesday, a strange fairy tale started to gain currency. It cast the publishing business as a hapless Sleeping Beauty—and Apple CEO Steve Jobs as a Prince Charming who'd kiss the industry out of its slumber with a combination of hardware, software, and services that would instantly restore consumers' willingness to pay for quality content.

As I sat in the audience at the event, I slowly figured out that it wouldn't provide a ready-made happy ending for magazine publishers. Apple did reveal that the gizmo includes an e-book reader, iBooks—but as the name suggests, that software is meant for books, not periodicals. It also let the New York Times show off a handsome app for reading that paper. But the only magazine that came up during the event was Time—and that was when Jobs showed how good its Web site looked in the iPad's Safari browser. It mostly served as a reminder that it's not entirely clear why many consumers would choose to pay for digital magazines when the same content is available on the Web for free.

Despite everything, the great unveiling left me feeling optimistic about the the iPad's impact on magazine publishing, as did the hands-on experience I got with a unit after the presentation. The PC has never been a very satisfactory device for reading magazine-style content—even the landscape orientation of desktop and laptop displays is all wrong. And for all the things that are right about the Kindle and its competitors, their sluggish monochrome E-Ink screens are a massive compromise that leaves vibrant print (and online) content feeling lifeless.

The iPad, by contrast, is the first device that packs all the visual punch and interactivity of the Web into a form factor designed with reading in mind. The 9.7-inch color screen may suck far more power than the Kindle's E-Ink, but it does crisp photos and smooth video and elegant typography, making it an upgrade over print's visuals rather than the Kindle's downgrade. And Apple took everything it learned about touch interfaces, added some potent hardware components, and came up with a breathtakingly fluid, intuitive user interface. (Trust me on this one: You need to touch an iPad before you render a verdict on it.)

But Did Apple Have Magazines in Mind?

What Apple didn't do this week is to solve most of the magazine business's problems for it. The iPad doesn't come with e-reader software designed with magazines in mind, so it's neutral on the subject of what a print periodical should look like in iPad form. Apple also said nothing about selling periodicals through its iTunes Store, a move which would have helped kickstart new paid-content initiatives.

In time, it wouldn't be the least bit surprising if the iPad added magazine-ready software and services. For now, though, the gadget is a fascinating container for the ideas of any magazine publisher that chooses to support the platform. "Here's an amazing piece of hardware," Jobs seemed to be saying, by not saying anything about magazines. "You figure out how to make magazines make sense on it."

What's In It for the Publisher?

My guess is that the publishers who take up the challenge won't realize any immediate financial windfall. But they'll get something better out of the deal: A chance to reimagine their content and their business on a device that offers infinitely intriguing possibilities for both.

That's no fairytale. But wouldn't it be more magical if our industry wound up solving its own problems rather than complying with Steve Jobs' vision of its future?
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What If ‘Print’ Got Off the Web?

Jason Fell — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 10:25:19 -0500

I know that sounds a little crazy. OK, a lot crazy. But what if print brands leave the Web, closed their traditional Web sites and moved to a model that only delivers to reader devices like Apple’s iPad?

We're in the very infancy of these devices and they will change and morph in the very immediate future. But they will become popular very quickly. They open the door to real-time on demand delivery of content of all kinds. Apple has already shown with music and apps that people will pay for content they want. Their revenue numbers prove that.

By leaving traditional websites you also take away the ability for others to easily grab and reuse your content. And as far as I can see, very few consumer content websites are profitable.

These devices open up the possibility of paid copies directly to subscribers. If you take away the free content on traditional websites, there is only one place for people to turn for your brand's expert content.

Could it work?
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What Geeks and Marketers Can Learn From the Next 60 Days

Jason Fell — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 12:22:09 -0500

I woke up today to hear two NPR stories about the iPad.

Story one was a technology analyst blasting the device because it doesn’t have a camera and so, therefore, isn’t taking advantage of social media.

Story two was a publishing analyst describing the device as a savior of book publishing.

Of course, both of these analysts are right—and wrong.

The first analyst sees the iPad as a Swiss Army Knife that left off a cork screw and being a wine lover, he can’t understand why anyone would want a Swiss Army Knife without a cork screw.

The second analyst sees the iPad as a Kindle with color and video that will enable publishers to have an alternative to the pricing on Amazon—which publishers hate.

Like I said, both are right—and wrong.

Over the next 60 days, Apple will start bombarding the channels of traditional (old) media defining what one can do with the iPad. They will never mention features. Only what one can do.

The people who purchase the iPad will use it 90% of the time to do 4-5 things they’d rather do on the move than sitting at a computer.

The people who purchase the iPad will use it because they already own an iPhone and would like to watch movies or read books or tweak a presentation on a 9 1/2 inch screen rather than a micro-screen.

The people who purchase the iPad will use it because it will help them define themselves to those around them.

I could go on-and-on about the reasons people who purchase it will do so.

Watch. Learn.

It’s not about features something has or does not have.

And it’s not about what missing features prevent someone from doing.

It’s about what the existing features enable someone to do.

That’s all.

[This post originally appeared here.]
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Reaction to Apple’s iPad Unveiling

Jason Fell — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 15:57:56 -0500

The anticipation today ran thick. I almost passed out at my desk awaiting the news.
Wednesday afternoon, at an event in San Francisco, Apple co-founder/CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the company’s much hyped tablet device. Called the iPad, it enables users to browse the Web, read e-books, watch videos, listen to music and play games, among other things. The iPad has a multi-touch screen with a virtual keyboard and is available with 16, 32, or 64 GB of SSD storage. (The device will sell for $499 for 16GB of memory, $599 for 32GB and $699 for 64GB.)
At the event, Jobs said the Wi-Fi version will be available in 60 days, while the 3G version will be available in 90 days.
So far, the iPad has major book publishers on board and a version of the New York Times has been adapted for the device.
OK, so maybe I didn’t really almost pass out at my desk, but I did follow some live blogging about the unveiling. I thought it strange that as much talk as there had been about the device being a “game changer” for newspaper and magazine publishers that Jobs made no mention of magazine clients at the unveiling.
Sure, Apple got some things right, and some things wrong. But, either way, will consumers want it? Will it in fact change the way they consume magazines and newspapers?
I reached out over Twitter to get some initial feedback from our followers. Here’s a sampling of the responses we’ve received so far. Leave yours in the comment section below.
@mattrett: Worst name ever = 1st thought.

@pacificweddings: awesome! I want one.

@givingcity: Are they really calling it iPad? Seriously? Did they ask any women at all before they came up with this clever mark?

@breizh2008: Awesome !

@marcusgrimm: Priced to make an impact. Given the large format, though, publishers will need to think how an app is different than the website.

@mcnamdave: Surprised by the low price, lack of multitasking and camera etc... Underwhelmed on the whole.. Game changer? NO, Player, YES
@Ana_P_Rodrigues: I want an i-Pad! I want an i-Pad! I want an i-Pad! I want an i-Pad!

@henrydonahue: why no mags on #ipad? 1) limits of rich media on 3G 2) pubs want customer info 3) expense ($629 + $30/mo.?)= lack of ubiquity
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Who Cares How Much GQ's iPhone App Made?

Jason Fell — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 09:44:17 -0500

Adding up the revenue from GQ's 18,000 $2.99 iPhone app downloads is, for now, missing the point.

Rather, publishers should be knocking on Charles Townsend's door with a list of questions about who those downloaders are and what, exactly, their behavior and engagement metrics are like. How many articles were read, how did they swipe and pinch their way to that article, how many jumped from an ad or story directly to a product and bought it?

Yes, 18,000 readers at sub-$40,000 is chump change when held up against the print magazine's distribution and ad sales. But we're two months into wondering how readers are going to interact with a full-text and image magazine squeezed onto a device with a 3.5-inch screen with, I'm guessing, fairly minimal marketing muscle behind it. Let's see how that goes first. 18,000 people is a pretty good-sized focus group.

I like Condé’s move. They went all-in, offering the full magazine. No half-step, incremental, bite-sized experiments. GQ is a strong brand and Condé put that strength to the test by seeing how it holds up and translates to a mobile environment.

A spokesperson at Condé Nast told me readers spent an average of 83 minutes with their iPhone GQ. That's a pretty long time.

There's been a lot of discussion about whether publishers are missing the point by trying to shoe-horn a print product carbon-copy, and its business model, into a mobile context. But let's use the GQ experiment, and any others like it, as the control and first see if it has legs on the small screen. Let's understand how readers interact with the functionality. Let's see how many ultimately download it, if it's worthwhile to market it, how users interact with it after they get it. Then, beyond the initial $2.99 sale, let's look at how else to monetize it if the audience density is there.

Condé Nast chose the proprietary route and built, along with Adobe, their own reader app for the iPhone. But I'd also like to see the digital edition providers, like Zinio and Nxtbook, that are developing platform-neutral access to digital editions pile on with their app and mobile device usage metrics too.
UPDATE: Nxtbook Media's Marcus Grimm has offered up some interesting stats of his own, and rightly questions Conde's method of acheiving that 83-minute average. Is that stat survey-sourced or from actual metrics? In the meantime, Grimm notes that, for mobile device Nxtbook readers, the iPhone has the highest time-spent metric with a more down-to-earth 3.5 minutes. Blackberry readers were next at just over 2.5 minutes. For a full breakdown, read Grimm's post here.
UPDATE 2: A Conde Nast spokesperson said the 83 minutes was lifted from actual app metrics, it's not the result of a user survey: "[The metric] comes from the analytics package built into the app. In other words, it is a metric that comes from real-world app use and our measurement of it."
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Why Carry Magazines When You Can Wear Them?

cgreene — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 16:53:45 -0500

Sure, manufacturers of e-reader technology tout the convenience that consumers can gain from having access to all of their favorite books and/or magazines on one portable device. But imagine if you could read a magazine article right from—ahem—the shirt on your back?
Well, you can. Created by a Sweden-based company of the same name, T-Post—which calls itself the “world’s first wearable magazine”—is a graphic T-shirt with a news story printed on the inside and a graphic artist’s interpretation of the news story printed on the front.
Strange, right? Absurd? Most definitely.
The T-Post is sold via a subscription-based model—customers sign up online and shell out 19 Euros, or about $26. Three weeks later they receive their first T-shirt and a new one arrives by mail every six weeks after that.
T-post currently has 2,500 subscribers in more than 50 countries; 400 subscribers are from the U.S., which the company says is its fastest growing market.
According to publishing director and editor-in-chief Peter Lundgren, the process of choosing news stories is a collaborative one. “It all starts with the news editor. He keeps in touch with news blogs all around the world, scans newspapers and connects the dots,” he wrote in an e-mail to me. “From there, the whole editorial team sits down and decides on which story to run. T-post stories often consist of two or three different news stories and reflections that we think have some connection to each other and are intriguing enough to tell our subscribers. Our stories usually end up living somewhere in-between a news story and a column.”
T-post’s most recent “issue” features a news story entitled “Higher Education,” which explores how more college courses are focusing on topics like marijuana use and cyber porn. The front of the shirt—interpreted by Swedish designer Marc Stromberg—features a collage of rocks, paper and scissors in reference to the last sentence of the article: “Who knows, perhaps a course in the game Rock, Paper, Scissors could come in handy when negotiating big business contracts.”
And T-post took the “Rock, Paper, Scissors” concept virtual by adding an augmented reality feature, enabling “readers” who wear the that particular T-post in front of any Web camera and play a game of—you guessed it—Rock, Paper, Scissors against a computer-generated arm that extends from the shirt itself.
Take that, e-readers.
Or maybe not.
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What Happens If (When) Big Trade Publishers Stop Publishing Magazines?

Jason Fell — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 16:44:47 -0500

Some recent events have pointed to the acceleration of two trade publishing giants leaving the magazine publishing industry.

After a failed auction in 2008 and closing all but one of the magazines published under its Associated Construction Publications group last spring, Reed Business Information in July said it was putting its portfolio of U.S.-based titles back on the block. Last month, it sold Broadcasting & Cable, Multichannel News and This Week in Consumer Electronics (TWICE) to Wicks Group-owned NewBay Media. And this month it ceased publication of Video Business, Manufacturing Business Technology and Industrial Distribution.

When it said it was putting its U.S.-based titles back on the block, RBI said it would retain its Reed Construction Data, RSMeans, Variety, MarketCast, LA411 and BuyerZone properties. Now, it seems even flagship Variety could be sold off.

Last month, Nielsen Business Media caused a stir when it agreed to sell eight of its media/entertainment brands—including Billboard and The Hollywood Reporter—to e5 Global Media, a new company formed by private equity firm Pluribus Capital Management and financial services firm Guggenheim Partners. The publisher then decided to shutter heralded newspaper industry magazine Editor & Publisher, along with sister publication Kirkus Reviews. (E&P has since been sold to a new owner.)

Now, president Greg Farrar is leaving the company and Nielsen said it does not have plans to name a replacement. After a "transition period," senior vice president Andy Bilbao will oversee Nielsen's magazines that are not associated with trade shows, while the company evaluates "strategic alternatives."

As of today, Nielsen still publishes 19 magazines.

Nielsen—whose parent company has been focused on its ratings business—for years has reportedly been looking for a buyer(s) for its trade magazines. It’s no wonder. Through the first nine months of 2009, Nielsen reported a $151 million operating loss for its business media segment, compared to an $85 million operating income during the same period in 2008. Revenues for the segment through the third quarter were $258 million, down more than 30 percent from $371 million during the same period last year.

Shortly before the New Year, FOLIO: spoke to a source with knowledge of Nielsen who said that insiders were saying the company was working on a deal to sell its three-magazine food group and said Nielsen’s travel group might also be on the block. The source said Nielsen most likely would use the proceeds from the e5 deal and any subsequent asset sale to either reposition or shut down its other magazine properties.

“When business was good, publishing was not strategic to the Nielsen Company. When business is bad, they want the hell out,” another knowledgeable source, who also wished to remain anonymous, told me this week. “If Nielsen sold its crown jewels, namely Billboard, THR, Adweek, etc., then why wouldn’t it sell off the remainder of its publishing assets?”

I asked Nielsen’s spokesperson Wednesday if the company was working on additional divestitures and if it is attempting to exit the trade magazine publishing business altogether. Her response, not surprisingly, was more of the same: “We are continuing to access the strategic fit of the remaining publications, but there are no immediate plans at this time.”

It’s no secret that trade magazine publishing is hurting right now and that revenues, especially from print, probably won’t rebound to levels seen before the economic fallout. Perhaps the bigger issue here is if major players like Nielsen and RBI are moving away from magazine publishing, then what, if anything, does that say about the sustainability and the future of the business for the rest of us?
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New Owner: Editor & Publisher 'More Vital Than Ever'

Jason Fell — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 15:28:38 -0500

The fate of 126-year-old Editor & Publisher is no longer drifting in uncertain waters. The shuttered newspaper magazine was acquired Thursday evening by Duncan McIntosh Co. Inc., the Irvine, California-based publisher of Boating World, Sea Magazine and The Log newspaper.

Wait, what? Why in the world would the publisher of boating magazines want to buy a big-name property that covers the newspaper industry?

"I published newspapers when I first got into this business and have been reading Editor & Publisher on and off for more than 30 years," Duncan McIntosh told me over the phone today. "I heard about its closing and thought to myself, 'That can't be.' I started sending e-mails to Nielsen until someone would finally talk to us. And, now, here we are."

Nielsen closed E&P, along with sister publications Kirkus Reviews, last month after it announced the sale of eight media/entertainment brands—including Billboard and The Hollywood Reporter—to e5 Global Media, a new company formed by private equity firm Pluribus Capital Management and financial services firm Guggenheim Partners.

The newspaper industry's dramatic decline, Duncan said, is what made saving E&P so important. "When do you need a magazine like Editor & Publisher more? When everything is going great or in a tie of crisis,"he said. "It's more vital now than ever."

OK. But how is a newspaper magazine going to mesh with his stable of boating publications? "Maybe I'm not cerebral enough to worry about things like that, but I don't think it will be a problem," said Duncan."The back end, in terms of production, IT and Web, is the same regardless of the publication. As long as I have separate ad staffs and separate editorial staffs, everything else is the same. We think we can supply all the support services for it, we can bring it into a structure with a much lower overhead, and make it viable."

In terms of editorial direction, Duncan said E&P is and has been right on course, producing best practice-type content for publishers. He said he has no immediate plans to change the magazine's monthly frequency or circulation.

"The magazine has a great staff and we were lucky enough to keep about 80 percent of them," he said. E&P's former editor-at-large, Mark Fitzgerald, will now serve as editor, replacing former editor Greg Mitchell, who is no longer with the magazine. Charles McKeown will continue as publisher.

This isn't the first time we've seen a big b-to-b player shutter a magazine, only to be contacted by a smaller publisher who wants to acquire it. Last April, Reed Business Information shuttered all but one of the magazines published under its Associated Construction Publications Group, which consisted of 14 regional construction titles. John White, the original co-owner of the ACP titles, then reaquired the licenses and relaunched them gradually before the end of the year.
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