FOLIO: Section Blogs by Consumer

The FOLIO 40: A Call for Nominees

Bill Mickey — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 13:13:37 -0500

The year, as it always does, has flown by and we're already in the midst of compiling our annual list of the top innovators in the magazine business and the markets that intersect and influence it—the Folio: 40.

We're excited to announce that starting now, you can have a hand in how the list turns out by nominating a colleague—either at your company or from another one—that has had a meaningful impact on a product, company or even market.

We're looking for nominations in the following categories:

C-Level Visionaries
Top execs that transform culture, company or markets

Industry Influencers
Individuals that have single-handedly sparked a trend

Director-Level Doers
Managers and other senior level executives that develop and execute on wildly successful new initiatives

Under the Radar
Unsung heroes or individuals that quietly work on transformative new ideas or operational breakthroughs

As we note every year, we're not simply looking for the marquee names. There will be some of those on the list for sure, but there are plenty of examples of envelope-pushers, bootstrappers and change agents that toil in the trenches, too. Nominate them.

Click here to fill out our easy nomination form. Nominations are due by March 2nd.

Here's last year's FOLIO: 40 to get you in the mood.

The FOLIO: 40 will be unveiled in April. Submit your nominations now and good luck!

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Report: Three Demand Media Founders Out

sbotelho — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:11:41 -0500

Demand Media has lost three of its founders. According to a report from paidContent, Larry Fitzgibbon, Joe Perez and Steven Kydd are leaving the company.

Fitzgibbon was EVP of international operations; Perez was executive vice president of products; and Kydd acted as EVP of studios. All three have already been removed from Demand’s masthead.

A rep for Demand said the exits were “just coincidence”, and departed execs will “pursue separate opportunities and new business ventures”. EVP of media & marketplace Michael Blend will assume the majority of the responsibilities left open by the staff changes.

Demand Media has been dubbed, less than affectionately, as a prime example of a “content farm” in the publishing industry. A company churning out piece upon piece of SEO-enhanced, freelance-produced copy may be successful, but its model is not viewed as an admirable strategy, especially among publishing vets (see one reaction here).

Perhaps in part to appease its critics, Demand improved wages for its writers in May 2011. Feature writers are now compensated $80 to $350 for their contributions; previously, they earned roughly $15 per article.

Upon closer inspection of Demand’s executive roster, I also noticed a rather odd title: EVP, people operations, held by Courtney Montpas. This appears to be a human resources role, and it’s a shrewd move by Demand to include “people” in this title, almost as if to say, “We really do recognize our employees as human beings!”

While not much is known about why the trio left, or where they are headed next, it is interesting to watch a company so scrutinized in its industry move forward. Three founders, Richard Rosenblatt, Shawn Colo and Montpas, remain with Demand. The company’s video division is set to partner with YouTube in 2012 for its premium content video launch (other partners include Warner Bros. and the Shine Group).

Demand is expected to announce fourth quarter and fiscal 2011 results on February 16.
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Twittifying SPIN

sbotelho — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 13:02:32 -0500

This week, music magazine SPIN announced its decision to run the lion’s share of its music reviews on Twitter in 2012. Under the handle @SPINreviews, SPIN’s eight staff editors (and a team of freelancers) will weigh in on over 1,500 albums in 140 characters or less throughout the year. The decision comes amidst other changes at SPIN, including an editorial realignment marking a heavier focus on digital.

On SPIN’s blog, senior editor Christopher Weingarten makes valid points to back this decision. In the digital era, fans often privy to records at the same time music critics are. Leaked albums abound; though, the cynic is me suspects the artists/record labels/PR teams behind them sometimes may be responsible for these leaks. Case in point: in the summer of 2010, songs from Taylor Swift’s hit album “Speak Now” leaked 12 days before the official launch, forcing Big Machine Records to release it early. Within hours, the single “Mine” was number one in iTunes. Hello, publicity.

Weingarten rationalizes, “The value of the average rock critic’s opinion has plummeted now that…you can listen and decide for yourself whether it’s worth a damn.” He also says this method will spare SPIN readers lengthy reviews of mediocre bands: 140 characters later, we’ll know whether an album is worth buying.

Weingarten is correct in this thinking, to an extent. But I think he’s neglecting some of the largest pleasures of an album review, perhaps purposely: the in-depth parsing of a band’s journey, the decoding of instrumentals and influences from an expert’s point of view. In an overly politically correct, PR-manned media world, candid music reviews are refreshing, and never more needed. What would Cameron Crowe say about all of this? The music review is considered an editorial staple in a music mag’s table of contents.

That being said, SPIN will still run 20 long-form reviews monthly on its website. SPIN released 1,000 album critiques on Twitter in 2009, and the strategy must have produced measurable success to be repeated in 2012. I also suspect the one-sentence reviews are borne of a business necessity: 1,500 reviews are a lot, especially for an in-house editorial staff of eight undoubtedly crazed with other responsibilities.

Fortunately, like many digital decisions, this strategy does not have to be a permanent model. It will be interesting to see how fans, and the music industry overall, react to SPIN’s compressed reviews.
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Consumer Mag Advertising Sputters in Second Half 2011

Bill Mickey — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 15:01:42 -0500

The MPA released full-year 2011 PIB numbers today and, as individual consumer publishers already know by now, the third and fourth quarters were not very kind.

There were some exceptions among specific titles of course, which I'll get to in a bit, but in 2011 overall advertising revenues were flat and pages fell about 3 percent compared to 2010.

In the first quarter of 2011, pages jumped 2.5 percent and revenue was up 6 percent compared to same period 2010. In Q2, in hindsight, you can see the slide beginning. Pages were flat at a .3 percent gain over same period 2010 and revenue was up only 2.4 percent.

Then in the third quarter, the numbers quickened their decline—pages falling 5.6 percent and revenue down 1.5 percent compared to same period 2010. Further, the fourth quarter of 2011 saw almost a 5 percent dip in revenue and an 8 percent tumble in pages.

Of the 12 ad categories tracked, 9 of them were in the negative for the full year. The three that grew were Toiletries and Cosmetics (3.8 percent); Apparel and Accessories (5.5 percent); and Financial, Insurance and Real Estate (12.7 percent).

The categories that saw the biggest drops were Home Furnishings and Supplies, down 16 percent, and Food and Food Products, which declined 17 percent.

Among individual magazines, Amex Publishing's Departures led the pack with a 43.3 percent jump in pages. AARP—The Magazine also did well, gaining 29.5 percent in pages for the year over 2010. Meredith's Siempre Mujer jumped 31.5 percent in pages.

People En Espanol and People Style Watch increased pages by 31.5 percent and 38.6 percent respectively. People itself, however, declined 5.6 percent in pages.

In fact, as a category, celebrity weeklies didn't do very well. Star fell 3.8 percent in pages for the year, US Weekly was flat at 1.8 percent, In Touch fell 13.1 percent, and OK fell 1.2 percent.

The two big newsweeklies, Time and Newsweek, were down 2.5 percent and 16.8 percent and The Week dropped 12.9 percent in pages.

Bloomberg Businessweek continued its comeback, ending the year up 19 percent in pages, while Forbes and Fortune were down 3.9 percent and .9 percent respectively.

In terms of total pages sold in 2011, People topped the list at 3,357. New York magazine came in at number two with 2,608 pages sold—not bad for a regional pub. Brides sold 2,603 pages. In Style tallied 2,544 pages and Vogue sold 2,509 pages to round out the top 5.

For more details on the numbers, visit MPA's PIB numbers here.

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Hearst’s David Carey Calls for Aggressive Growth in 2012

sbotelho — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 12:10:46 -0500

Hearst Magazines president David Carey addressed the past year and what’s next for the publisher in a letter to employees sent out this morning. According to Carey, Hearst’s aggressive growth in 2011 (including the acquisition of Lagardere and Hachette Fillappacci; the launch of HGTV Magazine; the debut of brand supplement Marie Claire @Work; and purchases of Red Aril and PayDQ) will continue in 2012.

Now claiming 400,000 digital edition sales a month (the publisher hit 300,000 in late September), Carey reiterates Hearst’s goal to tip one million monthly paid digital subscriptions in the new year. He seems to have found the recipe for instant media attention: call out a projected audience number, and watch as web buzz booms.

Other digital initiatives include the continued transition of Hearst’s magazine sites to HTML5. Good Housekeeping’s website (which was once included among the worst magazine websites on the 'net) was the first to get the HTML5 treatment in 2011.

Though digital may be considered the sexier playing field in the publishing industry, Hearst’s print portfolio will not be neglected in 2012. Aside from the forthcoming semiannual Cosmopolitan Latina, Harper’s Bazaar print presence will launch a revamped look; an increased trim size will debut in February.

Carey highlights streamlined production through the Hachette merger as another benefit of the deal (a less obvious coup than titles like Elle magazine), “[We] are able to realize significant cost synergies through the…work of our service departments, particularly our production, IT and consumer marketing teams.”

As a result of these cross-company initiatives, Carey says, “…roughly 40 percent of our revenues are U.S. print and digital, 40 percent international print and digital, and 20 percent are services (iCrossing and CDS Global).”

Hearst’s growth is impressive, but lends little actionable strategy to publishers of smaller scale and lesser resources. With its new YouTube channels, large acquisitions and flashy media partnerships (Hearst took a 50 percent stake in reality television company Mark Burnett Productions in April), Hearst continues to perpetuate one of the most pervasive trends in the magazine industry as of late: publishers doing a lot of business besides publishing.
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Condé Nast Partners with HP for Print-On-Demand Content

sbotelho — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 12:40:00 -0400

HP and Condé Nast are partnering in an on-demand, digital-to-print pilot program that will allow readers to, via a desktop printer widget, download selected content and print it from home.

At this point, says a Condé Nast spokesperson, the publisher is determining the kinds of content that would be appropriate for this delivery mechanism. Recipes from Epicurious, for example, might make sense, but the publisher is still trying to figure out how content from, say, Glamour might work in this setting.

In announcing the program, HP says Allure, Details, Epicurious, Glamour, Golf Digest, Self and Wired will participate in the pilot.

HP is trying to position itself as a way for content publishers to reach end users. With this digital-to-print effort, readers will see a downloadable widget on a brand's website.

The widget allows readers to schedule when they want their content printed.

The widget works with any Web-enabled printer, not just HP brands—a point that content publishers made clear with HP in order to open up the program to a wider segment of customers.

According to Annette Friskopp, HP's head of IWS strategic account management, there are two other paths of discovery to the content. HP's ePrintCenter has an apps page that showcases the various print-on-demand content options; and the HP printer itself—content brands will display on the printer's panel.

It may seem like a strange nook for Condé Nast to be exploring, but these days who knows what might stick with consumers. Nevertheless, Friskopp notes that HP customer research says people still like printing out content for reference, sharing and, she says, "once you've printed it you can find it again." Take that, digital information overload.

And with all this home printing HP and Condé Nast hope people will be doing, HP is introducing its Instant Ink program, a subscription-based home delivery service for ink cartridges.

Condé Nast will initially roll out with an ad-based revenue model, but that might change if the project catches on. "Again, this is a pilot program that's still in an infancy stage," says the spokesperson. "There are multiple ways that this could be monetized and we will look into all of them."
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A Sad Goodbye to Borders

sbotelho — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 11:44:47 -0400

The Borders bankruptcy has been a long time coming. It was well over a year ago when a Borders executive walked away from a conversation in which I asked, in a less-than-diplomatic way, about the long-term chances of the chain. So we’ve had plenty of time to go through the stages of grief, and also to modify our budgets and business plans, and to think about where we would sell our copies when the giant was gone.

All the preparation hasn’t made it easy. For many of my publisher clients Borders was the second biggest source of distribution and sales for their publications: a sturdy prop in a difficult time. Along with Barnes and Noble it represented a remaining place where a special interest publication could find a home and an audience, and where the cost of returns wouldn’t cripple the possibility of some positive revenue flow.

In fact, Borders’ demise is a surprise to no one—not even to my daughter’s college-age boyfriend who said he knew, when he heard (years ago) that someone from the chain had dismissed the e-reader as inconsequential, that this company wouldn’t last. “To deny new technology because it threatens your profits never works,” he said. “The new technology always wins. Always.”
Well said, Ben, and oh, so true. But from a magazine point of view I would never dismiss the chain as lacking in vision. I remember years ago when Borders was on the cutting edge of the magazine superstore concept. Waldenbooks, once a huge powerhouse of magazine distribution, was starting to wither away in its shopping mall locations, and little upstart Borders was becoming the robust hope of magazine publishers. When Walden was moved from Stamford, Connecticut to take its place under the wing of BGI in Ann Arbor it almost seemed like a case of the tail wagging the dog; but Borders grew and thrived and sheltered magazine publishers from the dwindling sales from Waldenbooks.

As we struggled for incremental magazine space in supermarkets and drugstores there was relief to be had in the miles of mainline in the Borders chain. I remember magazine buyer Bill Jourdan looking for independent comics and “’zines” to add to the magazine racks—who would even accept those products in those days? He wanted a true mix with lots of choice for his customers; he wanted to carry everything. More recently Carla Bayha met with publishers to customize “out of the box” promotions programs that would play to the strengths of their magazine line.

Consumer magazine publishers have gotten very used to the changes brought about by bankruptcies over the past couple of decades. The first ones I remember happened back in the 1980s when a big national distributor and a smaller direct distributor went out of business.

Ironically, the direct distributor had built its business around Waldenbooks, and the removal of that pin was what sent it under. Then Unimag, ANCO, and countless more of the little guys…

But, unlike WB Yeats after the 1916 Irish uprising, I’m not going to “murmur name upon name” of the fallen heroes of newsstand distribution. Now we have a new storm to buffet our tiny boats and one less safe haven to sail into. We’ve been through many bankruptcies, yes, and more might be pending. As a business we’ve learned not to let collections get too far out; we’ve learned how to regroup and re-strategize and re-forecast and respond. We’ll move forward; we’re moving forward now. And as we do, we take a moment to say goodbye to a once great chain.

Linda Ruth is Principal of Publisher Single Copy Sales Services. Her book of case studies, "How to Market Your Magazine on the Newsstand," is available at BookDojo.com and at Amazon.
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Magazines Expand Business Models With Marketing Services, E-Commerce…and Matchmaking

sbotelho — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 14:58:11 -0400

Personal ads, once a staple of the publishing industry, have gone to the wayside with the emergence of online dating sites, as well as classified ad prejudice (Craig’s List, anyone?).

Depiction of “Want” ads have suffered greatly in the media – Sleepless in Seattle may have gave lonely hearts hope of meeting blue-eyed strangers through media in the 90’s; but Lifetime’s recent Craig’s List Killer made-for-TV movie warns contemporary audiences against inter-Internet rendezvouses.

New York Magazine is attempting to bring the personal ad boom back into the mainstream of publishing by partnering with online dating site HowAboutWe.com. On NYmag.com, HowAboutWe.com is included in its editorial content, and “will feature Nymag.com’s top navigation”, according to a press statement. Located in the dating section, the site can be found at nymag.howaboutwe.com.

HowAboutWe.com users finish the phrase “How about we…” with an activity of their choosing, and other interested users can take them up on the suggested date if they decide to do so. The dating site was founded in 2010 in Brooklyn, New York.

As publishers struggle to keep their audiences engaged and advertisers buying across a multitude of platforms (print, in app, on the Web), more and more often services outside of content are being developed to strengthen business models.

For readers of print and users of digital, publishers continue to find new ways to fulfill needs and/or wants of their audiences. E-commerce is gaining speed with large publishing companies like Hearst, offering readers the chance to buy what they see on the websites and in the apps of their favorite publication.

Commerce entering editorial is extending into the print world as well, with publications like Lucky Magazine offering “text to buy” options below select products.

Now with New York Magazine’s new partnership with HowAboutWe.com, looks as if users can not only purchase the season’s newest accessories through editorial content, but find a date to wear them to. It’ll be interesting to watch if this new faction of NYMag.com becomes “a lucrative source of revenue”, as they claimed their former back-of-the-book classified section used to be.
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Red Bull Magazine, “The Red Bulletin,” Priced at $4.99 a Pop

sbotelho — Tue, 17 May 2011 13:26:17 -0400

In an attempt to bring the success of the energy drink to their media branch, Red Bull is taking branded content to another level. The Red Bulletin, a monthly periodical of original content based on the “Red Bull lifestyle”, includes features on Red Bull-sponsored athletes, as well as other extreme sport and musical coverage.

The Red Bull Media House, a media division of the Red Bull brand, began The Red Bulletin in fall 2007 in Austria. The Bulletin was then launched in Germany, the U.K., Ireland, South Africa, Kuwait, New Zealand and Poland. Other offerings include a TV channel, a production studio, mobile content and a Red Bulletin iPad app.

The June 2011 issue marks the first American issue, with an editorial note penned by Red Bull founder and CEO Dietrich Mateschitz. The glossy mag will be distributed on newsstands the second week of every month, as well as on the third Sunday for select subscribers of major regional newspapers across the country.

According to CNBC.com, Red Bulletin has a circulation of 1.2 million; for some perspective on this number, ESPN The Magazine distributes only twice that amount. 12 issues of The Bulletin can be bought for a discounted price of $12.00.

Available for purchase at $4.99, The Red Bulletin has the same newsstand price as the In Style magazine currently lying on my desk.

Companies have long created magazines to reflect a lifestyle that their brand promotes. American Express has its own publishing arm; luxury brands Cartier and Hermes have given branded magazines a go. Denim line Acne releases Acne Paper biannually, with their Winter 2011 issue marking its 11th edition; a past issue of Acne Paper is priced at $15.00.

The table of contents begins, “Welcome to the world of Red Bull,” and listed sections include one called “Bullevard”. Each pagination is accompanied by the logo found on the energy drink’s can, and it appears on 64 of the 98 pages in the magazine.

Not every athlete, celebrity and musician seen on the pages of The Red Bulletin don a Red Bull logo, but enough do that the reader never forgets what company publishes the mag.

As for the magazine itself, the photography is beautiful; the action shots in particular work well on the page to illuminate the extreme lifestyle The Red Bulletin is attempting to capture. The content seems well-researched, though many of the closing paragraphs feel a bit clichéd.

Since brands began to cross into the content world, publishers have remained skeptical. The bar seems to be lower for quality content; after all the companies spearheading these magazines aren’t publishers, right?

However, if a reader is expected to pay the same price (or more) as they pay for other publications, it’s only fair that they expect the same standard of content. Besides the battle of carving out an audience as a new publication, The Red Bulletin is faced with weighted skepticism from its peers and potential readers weary of a magazine-length advertisement.

We’ll have to wait to see if The Red Bulletin will sprout “wiiiings”, or if it will set another failed example of a brand treading into territory it doesn’t fully understand.
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Liveblogging/Tweeting the 2011 Ellies

Matt Kinsman — Mon, 09 May 2011 11:34:15 -0400

The consumer magazine elite will gather tonight at 583 Park Avenue for one of the biggest events in publishing--the 46th annual presentation of the American Society of Magazine Editor's National Magazine Awards (nicknamed the Ellies).
In addition to the usual hour-long block of power networking (and power drinking), the sold-out event includes a sit-down dinner for the first time in its history, hosted by ASME.

A total of 20 magazines received multiple nominations this year, with Conde Nast leading the pack at 25 (accounting for nearly a quarter of the total nominations--The New Yorker racked up 9 nods on its own). New York, The New York Times Magazine and Virginia Quarterly Review all received six nominations while first-timers include Cooking Light, House Beautiful, Lapham's Quarterly, OnEarth, The Sun and Women's Health). Close to 270 magazines submitted a total of 1,673 entries judged by 359 magazine journalists and journalism educators. A full list of finalists is available here.

Will Conde Nast dominate the winner's circle or will some of the first-timers and smaller publications (including 3,000-circ. The Antioch Review) break through? Who will the surprise celebrity presenters be and will author and New Journalism founder Tom Wolfe (who is receiving the Creative Excellence Award tonight) challenge Anna Wintour for sartorial splendor?

FOLIO: will be there live-tweeting, keeping you posted minute-by-minute. We'll also be cross-posting our tweets here, so keep refreshing this link as the evening progresses (the awards kick off around 7:45 EST).

@foliomag.com: The 2011 National Magazine Awards begin. Press seating redefines "elbow room." Fortunately I have six years of Krav Maga.

@foliomag.com: First-time nominee Women's Health wins General Excellence, fashion, service, lifestyle. Follows up on Men's Health's win for General Excellence last year.

@foliomag.com: Los Angeles wins for Best Feature Writing. Editor Mary Melton: "It's a delight working for a company that appreciates journalism." Applause.

@foliomag.com: ESPN the Magazine win Best Feature Photography for "Bodies We Want." Go figure.

@foliomag.com: Dinner break. What lasts longer, an iMac battery or the National Magazine Awards?

@foliomag.com: Attendees wonder--where is rumored host Katie Couric?

@foliomag.com: Katie Couric in the house! "You magazine people are really fun."

@foliomag.com: Couric :"There's nothing I like better at the end of the day than relaxing with my copy of Garden & Gun. Table 33, I'm looking at you."

@foliomag.com: Winner, General Excellence, literary, political, professional: Poetry Magazine

@foliomag.com: Excellence in magazine design goes to GQ. Designer Fred Woodward: "I should thank every editor and publisher who let me learn how to do this under their watch."

@foliomag.com: Couric: "No offense, but now I know why none of you guys went into television."

@foliomag.com: Men's Journal wins Leisure Interests. "Five Meals Every man Should Master."

@foliomag.com: Personal Service category. Random dog returns for second time onstage. Men's Health wins for "I Want My Prostate Back."

@foliomag.com: General Excellence: Special Interest Magazines: Los Angeles takes top prize again! This coming off big win at last week's City & Regional Magazine Awards.

@foliomag.com: Los Angeles editor Mary Shelton hefts Ellie Award: 'The real test will be getting this through TSA tomorrow."

@foliomag.com: Public Interest, The New Yorker for "Letting Go." EIC David Remnick: "There are many ways to have a good day in the mag biz. Ours is to see our app passing 'Angry Birds' on iTunes."

@foliomag.com: The New Yorker wins Public Interest category

@foliomag.com: News and Documentary Photography: The New York Times Magazine wins for "The Shrine Down the Hall." EIC Gerald Marzorati--"Really excited."

@foliomag.com: Best Magazine Section goes to New York for "Strategist," EIC Adam Moss: "A magazine section that's nearly a magazine itself."

@foliomag.com: Single Topic issue with presenter/magician David Copperfield! National Geographic wins for "Water: Our Thirsty World."

@foliomag.com: General Excellence, Finance, Tech and Lifetsyle: David Copperfield magically opens envelope--Scientific American wins.

@foliomag.com: Copperfield: "Best advice I ever had was to move the show along." No kidding, Dave.

@foliomag.com: Jan Wenner to present Tom Wolfe with "Creative Excellence" award. Jan dons whitish suit in tribute.

@foliomag.com: Tom Wolfe: "I just hope everyone notices how fabulous Jan looks tonight."

@foliomag.com: The New York Times Magazine wins again, this time in the Profile Writing category for 'The Man the White House Wakes Up To." Guessing it's not Couric.

@foliomag.com: Couric's favorite mag, Garden & Gun, takes General Excellence award in Food, Travel and Design.

@foliomag.com: Harper's Magazine takes the Reporting category with "The Guantanamo Suicides."

@foliomag.com: W, for Best Photography

@foliomag.com: New York again, for General Excellence in News, Sports and Entertainment

@foliomag.com: And Magazine of the Year goes to...National Geographic!
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The Royal Wedding = A British Public Holiday + Astronomical Media Numbers

sbotelho — Tue, 03 May 2011 11:07:34 -0400

With all the hubbub about the “Royal Wedding” that took place on April 29th between Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and Catherine Middleton (the dresses, the guest list, the disappearing hairlines), some of the most astounding news was the numbers media sites covering the wedding saw on the big day.

PEOPLE.com reports 162 million page views on Friday the 29th, doubling its previous record of 76 million page views in one day.

PEOPLE followed the success of the wedding day with a Royal Wedding special collector’s issue that went on sale May 2.

The issue contains 105 ad pages out of the book’s total 220 pages, which marks the largest number of ad pages for a single issue of PEOPLE since 2007.

To display this issue, an estimated 15,000 Royal Wedding display bins were sent to PEOPLE retail and wholesale partners across the nation.

According to the Web site, CNN.com experienced 45 million page views by 3 p.m. EST (that’s 8 p.m. London time, where the wedding took place). This is up 45 percent from “prior four-Friday average through the same hour”.

Video usage on CNN.com was up 318 percent over the prior-four day average, with 7.7 million video starts occurring before 3 p.m. EST on April 29th.

Since the engagement announcement on November 16 2010, media attention to the royal nuptials had built at a frantic pace. After a highly publicized relationship (the British press nicknamed Middleton “Waity Katie” in reference to her and the prince’s nine year courtship), retailers are also getting in the Royal Wedding game, slinging Middleton dolls, collectible china, shot glasses and cardboard cut-outs features likenesses of the royal pair.

According to FOLIO:’s sister site, minOnline, USMagazine.com racked up three million pages views between April 29 and April 30. A reported half of this traffic was made up of visitors new to the site.

The week before the royal nuptials, USMagazine.com experienced the most traffic ever in site history.

TIME magazine also capitalized on the British wedding madness, releasing a special Royal Wedding issue on May 2. TIME’s regular issue was on newsstands April 29, and a third special issue on 9/11 terrorist Osama bin Laden’s death (with the fourth red “X” over a cover subject’s face in the magazine’s history) will be released on May 5.

This marks the first time in TIME’s run that three issues will be released within a one-week span.

Steering away from the more popular Middleton scrutiny, “the collection”, an international iPad-only magazine, released an issue themed, “Prince William: The British Monarchy’s Great Hope” last week.

Set to possibly release download numbers on May 6th, “the collection” offered free access to the “appazine” issue on the Royal Wedding day and the following Saturday. The issue is typically sold for $4.99 stateside.

Now that Kate and William are married (and bin Laden is buried at sea), what will the media fixate on next?
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Grading the Tina Brown Newsweek

Matt Kinsman — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 14:46:49 -0400

For all the fuss that Newsweek is chaperoning a new era in journalism with the print and online versions soldered together, Newsweek, in fact, is a throwback to another century.
This is because everything that appears in the magazine is dictated by one person's tastes. The big question is this: can Tina Brown's world be of constant interest to a couple of million people?

On one hand, I admire her extreme confidence; but on the other, I worry that she's sometimes off the mark.

Take this week's cover with Kate (Kate the Great) Middleton. Is there anything that Newsweek can bring to that royal party that People and US wouldn't do better?

The deck announces "In a world gone to hell-thank God, a wedding". Really? A wedding is going to bring back ten thousand tsunami victims, exile Kaddafi to Switzerland, bring back $1.20 a gallon gas and stop the ice cap from melting?

In fact, Newsweek's cover is relying on what makes The Daily Beast fun: gossip. Every cover line is either a gossip story (Kate, Madonna's African charity) or a gossipy take on an existing story (male-rape in the military, Sarkozy's supposed war advisor, Syria's evil ruling class). But is any of this indispensable?

There's good news however. Newsweek has greatly improved its design and overall packaging.

1. The cover: There is now more than a single cover line, which was the last regime's limit. There are at least five stories and, most important, cover story number two, above the flag.

The bad? There's no eye contact from Kate. Maybe it's a deliberate choice not to have eye contact this time, but eye contact has proven effective on covers because it makes them more accessible. Out of 69 covers on my local newsstand, I counted 65 with people and all of them were looking at the reader.

2. Pictures: They were considered a nuisance under the last regime but they're back. And most of them have captions.

Best new addition is NEWS GALLERY, which consists of several double page pictures from around the world with long captions, something that would have been unheard of a few weeks ago.

There are a number of mini picture essays. Most are gossip-based and superficial. Dumbest of the bunch is a group comparing Kate to Diana. Did you know that they both wore khaki sweaters? Now you do, thanks to Newsweek.

3. Navigation: It goes from a D before to an A now. The body type is easier to read, the headlines come with decks and there are pull-quotes to break-up grey pages.

4. Graphics: There's a concerted effort to bow to the state of the art with side bars, info-graphics and time-lines.

The most ominous is a two-page chart right out of the old SPY magazine called THE DESPOT INDEX which compares ten dictators around the world.

The stuff is fun; however, by no means indispensable. Did you know that Kim Joong-Il's trademark is matching pajamas? Did you know that Belarus' Alexander Lukashenko's vice is roller-skating?

Now you know, thanks to Newsweek.

5. Pet Peeves:

*Dumb section names: "The Big Fat Story" is especially irritating.

*Me-too graphics: "Conventional Wisdom" which sports arrows pointing up and down looks like it's been xeroxed out of Time.

*Gratuitous pictures: A full page portrait of a model pretending to be a repentant Marine illustrates "The Military Secret Shame". It's clearly not a news picture, but will everybody know it?
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VIDEO: Esquire's Mini-Movie iPad Covers

Matt Kinsman — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 14:09:39 -0400

At the MPA Digital E-Reading event yesterday, several publishers shared "Two-Minute Drilldowns" of some of their best app ideas. Esquire associate editor Julian Sancton shared how the magazine has turned some of its iPad covers into almost "mini-movies," including live action direction of its subjects, such as "Sexiest Woman Alive" Minka Kelly doing her thing and actor Liam Neeson (a former boxer) throwing a couple shots at the cover/screen. (Sorry about the obligatory sponsor message but it's worth the wait.)
Necessary? Probably not. Fun? Absolutely. Esquire, by the way, picked up the Digital Ellie for "Best Mobile Edition."
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The FOLIO 40: A Call for Nominees

Matt Kinsman — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 10:41:35 -0500

The FOLIO: edit team has spent the last year, as we always do, intensely examining the magazine publishing industry as well as some of the markets that intersect it. Now, we're working furiously to assemble a list of the 40 most innovative, creative-thinking individuals who have pushed the boundaries of our business in this ever-evolving and multifaceted media landscape.

And we need your help. FOLIO: is looking for nominations in the following categories:

C-Level Visionaries
Director-Level Doers
Industry Influencers
Under the Radar

If you, a colleague, your boss or even a competitor deserves to make this year's list, please fill out the form below and let us know. Keep in mind, of course, that serious nominations require quantifiable stats to back up your pitch. The FOLIO: 40 is the real deal---it's the oldest, most prestigious and comprehensive list of its kind.

The 2011 FOLIO: 40 will be unveiled in April. Submit your nomination(s) now!
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At Dealmakers Summit, Execs Imagine the Media Company of the Future

Matt Kinsman — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 14:18:11 -0500

New York--Media companies of the future will be organized differently from the way they are now, with much higher capital expense costs and much greater need for in-house digital development skill.
That, with some accommodations for varying markets and editorial missions, was essentially the conclusion of a panel of media executives at the DeSilva + Phillips Dealmakers Summit last week.

The panel, called "How Will Media Companies Be Organized in the Future," featured four well-known executives: Frank Anton, CEO of Hanley Wood; Dan Lagani, president of Reader's Digest Media; David Liu, CEO of The Knot; and Vivek Shah, CEO of Ziff Davis Media.

It was one of several timely sessions at the event, the ninth annual Dealmakers Summit, which is produced by the deal brokers DeSilva + Phillips. Liu, CEO of the Knot, described the disorientating nature of media-industry competition these days: "The big threat to most people is that it used to be, say, Travel +Leisure competes with Conde Nast Traveler. But now, you find yourself competing with people who weren't even in your Zip Code. If your competitive silo doesn't exist anymore, and if your internal silo doesn't exist anymore, then you really have to re-imagine your business.

"We have people tracking Twitter feeds and Facebook feeds that you didn't have to worry about 18 months ago," Liu said. "You used to want to just hit a groove and not have to worry about [the business model] for a while. You can't do that anymore. "

Liu added this anecdote: "In the early days, I had an investor say to me, and it was an epiphany: ‘In software there's no number two. There's no second operating system. There are no alternate standards. In media, as we're moving toward being more like tech companies, we have to be thinking like software companies too."

The challenge to that type of thinking was pointed out by Anton. "We have a quandary," he said. "Our average reader is male, 57-years-old, and fewer than half have a smart phone. You come to a conference like this, and you come away convinced that you have to do this online stuff. But those 57-year-olds are not online."

The other challenge, Anton said, is in developing digital skill sets among the staff. "We wonder why the best and the brightest in digital technology would want to come to Hanley Wood," he said. "We're not a technology company."

Lagani, for his part disagreed, saying the best and the brightest in any venture are attracted to a brand. "The number of people actually looking to move east [presumably from Silicon Valley] and work for Reader's Digest, it's fascinating," he said. "It doesn't have to be a great digital-only pure play in order to excite people."

In one of the most interesting exchanges of the session, Ziff's Shah pointed to an entirely new cost structure that media executives have to deal with. Traditionally, he said, media companies have had predictable costs in various areas, like content creation, sales, central services and manufacturing. But now, he said, "What we're seeing at least, is that traditional costs are now about 65 percent of the total. And that's not because they've gone down, but because we have new costs in commerce and other areas."

Essentially, he said, the cost structure has expanded to the point that total costs are 120 percent of what they once were.

Added Anton: "We used to spend maybe $2 million per year in capital expenses. Now it can be five times that. Private equity used to invest in media companies because they had strong cash flow. But now our expenses are much higher."
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