Mr. Magazine

Hearst and Condé Nast seem to have decided to import their “handy travel size” women’s magazines to the United States. It looks like the newsstands have been flooded with copies of the June 2007 of the British Cosmopolitan and Glamour magazines. The first offers “All the pages of Cosmo in a handy travel size,” and the second offers “Britain’s no. 1 women’s magazine” in the same handy travel size. Needless to say that it was Glamour that “glamorized” this “pocket size” for women’s magazines and is now being imitated all over the world (North America, as usual, is always an exception). Both magazines are offered at a very discounted price (a bargain compared to the rest of the British titles on the marketplace). Glamour with its hefty 388 pages sells for a mere $4.99. Cosmo with its 276 daring pages including an “exclusive sealed section” sells for a mere $5.95. It should be noted that the Glamour price seems in tune with its UK price of 2.20 British pounds while Cosmo’s price in the UK is 3.30 British pounds, thus some discounting is taking place here. The exchange rate of the British pound to that of the American dollar is almost two dollars. So you may ask, aren’t the American titles enough? Well, the simple answer seems to be no. I remember when it used to be that when a British title was first published in the States (Marie Claire {the UK’s and not the French}, Maxim, etc.) the importing of their British counterparts ceased or dwindled a lot. Times are changing and the world is indeed getting flat. Let us hope that the words of one newsstand’s seller do not become prophetic. He told me when he saw the two UK titles arriving in his store, “they look more appealing and revealing than their American counter parts.” Will that translate to more selling? Time will tell. Stay tuned.

Yet another step in the right direction for the British The Independent on Sunday newspaper. The paper merged all its sections starting last Sunday into one and did the same with the magazine. The editors wrote in last Sunday’s paper, ” Compact, concise and comprehensive, The Independent on Sunday will give you everything you want from the Sunday papers in one big newspaper and one big magazine. With a fresh approach to news presentation, new features, columns and a crisp, modern new design, the paper will give you the latest news and will also offer a comprehensive review of all the big stories and talking points of the past week, as well as all the big issues and big names that will be making the news in the week to come.
In the age of information overload, The Independent on Sunday will make sense of an increasingly confusing world, with all the news values of a daily paper and the production values of a weekly magazine.” Read the whole story here. In the meantime I will continue to watch the North American newspapers march slowly on the road of suicide. You all saw the news last week, we are the only continent that has witnessed a drop in newspaper circulation…the only one worldwide.

My friend Jeremy Leslie, author of the books ‘magCulture’ (2003), and ‘Issues’ (2000), is also Group Creative Director at London-based custom magazines’ publisher John Brown. He recently wrote a piece for 8 magazine which can be considered a “behind the scenes” review of Colophon 2007 and the We Love Magazines conference that was held last March in Luxembourg. A great commentary on the status of magazines, their designs and presentations. Read it all here. Also, if you’ve missed the Colophon 2007 conference, you can watch the video here.

In today’s British The Independent newspaper, Peter Cole, a professor of journalism at the University of Sheffield in the UK, has written a great column titled “Newspapers may be changing but we will go on reading them On The Press: The industry has nothing to gain by talking itself down.” READ IT HERE. It is a call that I have been preaching for years in the United States Newspapers’ newsrooms, and as I mentioned in earlier blogs, to no avail. Read the article from the Independent here and keep in mind that if you (the newspaper editor and publisher) cannot survive the present, who cares about the future. We must survive the present and we must do something about it. Visit The Independent and The Guardian web sites and see how much you can learn. I have written about plenty of other examples, but none of them is in English…so for now read professor Cole’s article and do something about it…

The (British) Guardian newspaper has added yet another innovative way to show how a newspaper can read, feel, and look like a magazine on a daily basis. The G24 daily magazine on the Guardian Unlimited newly revamped web site offers readers the opportunity to download and print, yes PRINT the pdf of five different sections that are updated every 15 minutes, yes UPDATED every 15 minutes. The sections offered are Top Stories, World, Media, (check it here media.pdf), Business and Sports. The family of The Guardian newspaper continues to grow and to provide readers/viewers a good, very good interactive paper that provides a link between the pixels on the screen and the ink on paper. Check it out here and note the content, the ads and the design of the G24 paper that publishes 96 times a day in five different sections. There are a lot of lessons to be learned here. Just keep in mind that all the planning for the future will not help if you can’t survive the present. When will our newspapers wake up and stop killing themselves…I keep on wondering which paper will be the first to take the lead and make us survive the present and help us look for a great future… Our industry needs a leader who is willing to look across the Atlantic and see what has been done with newspapers all across the world (including the one above). Our future is NOW… either CHANGE or DIE, there is no third option.