The current conventional wisdom states that people won't pay for content on-line. Even the Wall Street Journal, once cited as the model for premium content, appears poised to trade subscriber revenue for more advertising impressions.

The conventional wisdom is wrong, though, when it comes to online diet and fitness programs.

Look at Carmichael Training (promoted via Chris Carmichael's columns in Outside), Rodale's magazine-related fitness plans (including the Men's Health Personal Train More...

If you haven't stopped by our massive (and growing) list of magazine predictions for 2008, do so. In the meantime, for those of you who are more financially inclined, I've pulled out the banker predictions and compiled them here.

Interestingly—predictably?—there's a mix of optimism and wariness for the year ahead. On the one hand, we're coming off an amazing run of M&A action fueled by the deep pockets of private equity. On the other, we're still smarting a bit form last summer's credit crunch and staring at a possible recession in 2008, which may stop the overly-leveraged dead in thei More...

Aside from Southern Breeze magazine, my company also publishes several travel guides loaded with beautiful color photography and editorial, not to mention a plethora of newspaper and magazine inserts (most with editorial). As you can imagine, there's always something for an editorial staff to do!

All these projects are tackled by me and my assistant editor and editorial assistant. In the past I often turned to my stable of gifted freelancers, but this year the majority of the writing has been done in-house. The difference? My staff.

Last year I only had one staffer whose experience in More...

Google's announcement last week of their new Knol product sparked speculation about which online publishing models were marked for death. Post-bubble comeback kid Henry Blodget mused on Silicon Valley Insider:

"Google continues to take a page from the early Microsoft play-book: Take someone else's cool idea, do it better, and steamroll the competition. Next up: a human-generated Wikipedia and About.com (NYT) killer."

Google is taking More...

The Green Predictions for 2008 can be summed up thusly: growing momentum. We'll see that the increased attention towards the environment over the past year will continue and gain build in 2008. This momentum will become increasingly evident when working with the following five stakeholder groups:

1. Staff: Talented new staff will be looking for publishing houses that have strong commitments to the environment, while current staff will accelerate their efforts to green their offices from the amount of materials recycled to the environmental production of the publication. All departments from designers, editorial, marketing, production, and ac More...

Leave it to Wired to ruin Christmas.

In the December issue the editors call out Santa Claus in a three-page infographic. They spoke with business process consultants, surveillance experts, shipping professionals and even a former Navy SEAL to find out how the jolly man from the North Pole would really operate, without invoking supernatural powers.

Some of the unofficial findings:

• Santa's elves have names like Mattel and Hasbro. Santa apparently sources production to a number of companies to mask the scope of his operation.
  
• Santa knows if you've been naughty or nice. He taps into More...

If you haven't heard, Britney Spears' 16-year-old sister, Jamie Lynn spears, is pregnant. The story, first reported by OK! magazine, was picked up by, well, every media outlet in the entire world.

Here's the e-mail OK! publisher Tom Morrissy sent to advertisers this afternoon to remind them it was OK! who did the intrepid reporting, and that now is a good time to advertise in the magazine:

From: Tom Morrissy
Sent: Wednesday, December 19, 2007
3:21 PM
To: [REDACTED]
Subject: OK! Breaking News

D More...

I’m given to rail against the state of the world in terms of the overreaction in favor of online marketing methods over print advertising. As with any sea change in the sales end of our industry, there are multiple players (publishers, clients, ad agencies) and plenty of blame to go around. A frequent target for publishers is ad agencies. Part of this is historical, as an agency can stand between the publisher and his/her client. And part of it is structural. Clients squeeze ad agencies, who have to run leaner and often assign inexperienced media buyers to select media.

Today, there are two beefs we have with ad agencies: one is the “RFP due by the end of the day.” The other is “we’re only buying online.” Clearly, ther More...

Following up my previous rant on the business of investigative journalism at magazines, I was happy to see this from Texas Monthly's Evan Smith:

Long-form is not the disease, it's the cure. What distinguishes us from other magazines is that we believe enough in the intellectual and cultural passions of our readers to give them 6,000; 7,000; or 10,000 words, when appropriate, on big subjects. Our circulation numbers are strong, which tells me that rather than going against the wish More...

Art director Adana Jimenez says the cover of Scholastic Administr@tor’s October/November 2007 issue is “still too pretty” for her—it doesn’t reflect grossly enough the fact that most children seem to be eating junk in their schools. Our panelist Jim Nissen, publication art director at Switch Studio, agrees. “If it was sloppy and unhealthy-looking, they might have better set up an argument for change.”

Click here to read more. Then scroll to the bottom and take the survey to win an iPod Shuffl More...