Digital magazines have all of the advantages of print magazines except they are online. Right?

In addition, readers have instant random access to content. Everyone wins. Right?

Wrong. Advertisers can lose. If a reader takes a random access skip over their ad, that ad is not seen.

Although digital magazines may look more like a print magazine than a Web site, the random access issue asks us to sell ads more like website advertising.

You will do better to sell positions in a digital magazine that offer adjacency to content that a reader may take a "random access" skip to visit. It is helpfu More...

Customers who become conditioned to fast-moving, customizable, immediate digital experiences, eschewing human interaction. Advertisers who want to reach them. Magazines struggling connect both. Sound familiar?

Except it’s a story that, for once, has little to do with the Web. This week, Newport Communications announced that Roadstar, a magazine that serves the trucking industry, is folding. Among the reasons: truckers—like the rest of Hyundai-driving America—are paying at the pump with credit cards, bypassing the truckstop sales clerks and thereby the kiosks where R More...

The latest round of media layoffs has even the New York Times worrying that "Muckraking Pays, Just Not in Profit":

Investigative reporting can expose corruption, create accountability and occasionally save lives, but it will never be a business unto itself. Reporters frequently spend months on various lines of inquiry, some of which do not pan out, and even when one does, it is not the kind of coverage that draws advertisers.

With all due respect to David Carr, and at the risk of seeming like a broken record, I've got to disagree. Four years More...

Print designers are particular about quality. Paper type, color profiles, kerning, etc.; every detail counts in creating a polished final product. But there's one detail that doesn't make the difference it should.

Generally speaking, designers use TIFFs (containers for high resolution image files) when designing with photographs because the TIFF file format maintains the full quality of the image. JPEG is a file format that was created to compress images into significantly smaller file sizes in order to make them more flexible for things like use on the Internet. The difference in file size is substantial. For example, exporting a raw file taken on my digital camera as a TIFF created a 18 MB file; as a maximum size JPEG it was 2.6 More...

Paper price increases are painful. What do they mean for environmental publishing considerations? The good news is that being fiscally conservative with paper expenses can also be environmentally responsible with thoughtful planning.

The simple explanation for the increases is that supply has constricted due to mill closings, mergers and acquisitions while manufacturing costs have gone up primarily due to increases in oil prices. Experts in the industry predict that the prices will stabilizing anytime in the next six to 18 months–likely 18 months.

The high paper prices provide an opportunity to assess paper use efficiency and find ways to reduce relative costs. These savings will last beyond the current market fl More...

Whatever your feelings are on Martha Stewart and her brand-happy offerings, it's clear that this morning's shuttering of Blueprint after just eight issues continues the recent trend of publishing companies having a short-leash on launches, and a decidedly low tolerance for failure.

If true, this unattributed quote, as reported by mediabistro.com's FishbowlNY, is also telling:

"The magazine was billed as a 'fresh, fun guide to personal style'... but staffers were told that MSLO had 'misjudged the market.'"

Mo More...

4c is a new English-language annual from Belgium dedicated to the proposition that what’s important in life is only skin-deep. This is appropriate I suppose—the glossy, a new foray into publishing from Techni-Coat International, a manufacturer of plastic coatings knows the value of the superficial. If there is no there there in 4c—the magazine bounces from travel to fashion to industrial design to self-promotion (The first feature—and there’s no FOB to speak of—profiles the company’s vice president), at least it’s all done quite stylishly. 4c fits into the class of new magazines doggedly determined to prove the value of print by doing things with va More...

A change has been made at the top of Ascend Media. CEO Cam Bishop is out, Vicki Masseria, former group president of CMP Medica, is in.

The internal memo:

Roger Dusing
Sent: Monday, December 10, 2007 11:06 AM
To: All Ascend Team
Subject: Important Company Announcement
Importance: High

All Ascend Team,

This morning, the company is announcing that effective immediately, Vicki Masseria is assuming the role of CEO of Ascend Media. As has been previously discussed, the company continues to refine its focus in the healthcare sector. This, coupled with the increasing complexity of healthcare markets and government regulation, has defined the need for a seasoned healthcare industry media professiona More...

Do the ad programs you propose promote More...

For the better part of 2007, the market for consumer magazine mergers and acquisitions was pretty quiet. (Maybe not as quiet as, say, the stark open country of the Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men, but quiet still.) As one banker noted during the American Magazine Conference in Boca Raton, Florida, in October, he was there "to play golf," because "nothing is happening here. Zilch."

But within the span of 45 minutes friday morning, a pair of billion dollar magazine deals were announced.

The first, Gemstar-TV Guide's More...

I've done them. You've done them. Every magazine has done them: the year end list. Other than creating them—and claiming not to like them—I had never really given these ubiquitous lists too much thought until several years ago, when I ran across—and became totally addicted to—a Web site called Fimoculous.com that collects and organizes an annual mega-list of such lists. Since then—perhaps because we discovered we not only share the same first name, but also several mutual friends—I've gotten to know the list-guru behind Fimoculous.com, Rex More...

As you know, it's a long way to the top if you wanna rock and roll. And as far as magazine chatter goes, it's seemingly been a long week for Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner.

Let's start here: the magazine published its seemingly four-hundredth 40th anniversary issue with something called "Indie Rock Universe," a nine-page spread-sponsored by cigarette maker R.J. Reynolds-that drew the ire of indie rock bands and those who monitor Big Tobacco (think Pacino in The Insider) for using cartoons in what they claim is an adver More...