Mr. Magazine

A Mr. Magazine™ Musing

It never ceases to amaze me that when a magazine announces it’s folding its print edition, some people in the media world are quick to jump on the bandwagon, sending the lifeless body of the title to the cemetery barely before it has taken its last breath of ink.

For example, when Meredith announced it was stopping the publication of Country Home in 2009, the stories abounded about the demise of print and the poor, sickly titles that were on their last legs and probably on the way out too.

The oddity about this entire process is how quiet the response is when that same magazine comes back to life. While the death celebration was raucous, the resurrection is subdued.

From the editor of the newly-reborn Country Home:

We’re thrilled to report that Country Home magazine is now available four times a year. As always, it’s on newsstands everywhere. Plus we’ve added a subscription option so you don’t miss a single issue. Visit themeredithstore.com to sign up today.

And from our friends in the North, Canada’s Skunk Magazine, a year since they’ve printed the magazine “an awkward silence during a time when cannabis became teh number one topic around the world.” After a year of not being on newsstands, it’s back, but with a modicum of herbal fanfare as its editor in chief thanks the people who stood behind the title. The editor-in-chief writes:

Rather than being a footnote in history, our magazine is now needed more than ever because we will tell you what you don’t want to hear while telling you what you need to know.

And then there’s Vogue’s L’UOMO, the Italian men’s version of the magazine, which launched in 1967 and closed a year or so ago. Condé Nast Italia is relaunching the title just in time for its 50th anniversary. The new incarnation of L’Uomo Vogue will publish twice in 2018, and will be available on newsstands and initially bundled with Vogue Italia subscriptions. It will also be available in English throughout with Italian translations.

Vogue Italia editor-in-chief Emanuele Farneti writes in his editor’s letter:

Every magazine that emerges, or re-emerges, is a small piece of good news: a voice that is added to the conversation, or freshly returned to it. This issue is for all those people – men and women – who have let us know L’Uomo was something they’ve been missing.

It really makes no sense that some in the media world shout loudly when they hear the death knell of a magazine and barely mention the wonder of its rebirth. It makes Mr. Magazine™ muse…

What’s wrong with that picture?

Until next time…

See you at the newsstands….