Mr. Magazine

Bo Sacks wound up the Magazine Innovation Center’s ACT 9 on Thursday with a much-anticipated capstone speech, where he sounded some very strong warnings and spoke of great opportunities. Sacks, we remember, spent a decade debating the future of journalism with Dr. Samir Husni, Mr. Magazine™; and Sacks reminded us that Husni actually created the Ph.D. in magazine journalism that did not exist. Mr. Magazine™ has been recognized for his significant influence in shaping this business and popular perception of it.

Sacks referenced the highlights of the conference: Linda Brooks identifying magazines as invited guests; Jeff Joseph mentioning the history of vinyl as a comparison to print; Lori Oglesbee saying that without a free press, democracy dies; James Hewes warning of the risk of depending on a single revenue stream.

Tying it together, Sacks spoke of the incredible acceleration of growth of technology into the present. Soon nothing will be mobile because everything will be mobile. It came too fast, and it led to some chilling consequences. Today, the digital giants are exploring every part of our lives. Facebook, Amazon, and Google, are intruding into every part of everyone’s existence, learning where we are going, what we are doing, what we are saying, what we are thinking, and using it to sell to us.

No one could have known the Gutenberg press would have had effects from fueling the reformation to changing the shape of our brain. Today, new technologies have started a new revolution. Living through this revolution makes it impossible to take a long view. We have combined digital technology with a mutant form of capitalism—surveillance capitalism. It takes our private experiences and turns them into revenue opportunities. It changes everything.

It’s impossible to overstate the peril of our times. Robber barons of yesterday have been replaced by e-robbers. We used to fear the totalitarian government who knew everything about us, followed us everywhere. Well it isn’t the government, but it’s happening.

Digital advertising has surpassed the other forms, including TV—yet the level of fraud in digital advertising is mind-boggling. It’s the largest crime in terms of money generated globally. Fake humans, click fraud, fake ad placement, fake websites, are all grabbing loot online. And technology companies are designing content with the sole intention of capturing as much attention as possible, creating a race to the bottom of the brain stem.

The online advertising ecosystem is impossible to understand or control, and there is no competent leadership. Why is it happening? Ad trade organizations and marketers are making too much money to change anything. The intrusion and fraud could be ended in a heartbeat—but there is no cure for greed. The lawmakers with the power to change it have absolutely no idea how it works.

Print should be a shining beacon in a sea of criminality. We have the trusted content. Everywhere on the planet, it’s as simple as this: Let’s have the readers pay for the content. Ad revenue should be the gravy on the meat, not the unreliable indigestible thing advertising has become. Give the readers what they want, when they want it, and have them pay for it—that’s the formula for success.

Diversification is opportunity. Your brand may be venerable, but it shouldn’t be static. Without alternative revenue streams you have zombie momentum. Create a better user experience. Add experiences, memberships, products. A relationship is a strong building block to revenue. Consider every option to keep readers engaged with personalized bundles. There are billions of dollars left to earn.

And try new things. Structure follows strategy. If you base your strategy on your existing structure, you limit your potential to what you’ve already done.

Addressing the students, Sacks finished: Now is the time to re-think the unthinkable. This is a unique and historic period where the unthinkable has never been more possible.

To watch Bo Sacks presentation click on the video below:

Jay Annis, VP of Hello Media, invited us to celebrate with him on day 3 of Mr. Magazine’s ACT 9 at the University of Mississippi. It’s the 75th anniversary of Hola! magazine, launched in Spain in 1944. Coming out of Spain’s bloody civil war, followed by the impact of World War 2 on the country, Hola’s mission was to offer good news and uplifting features. There is not and never will be anything dark or negative in this magazine.

Hola! is credited as the first magazine to create celebrity journalism. Hola! covered Elizabeth Taylor throughout her life; it covered the royal family of Monaco from childhood to old age. Its interest in the full range of celebrity lives creates continuity, so that generations of families read this publication. It covers tragedy—for example JFK’s assassination—but in a way that celebrates the victim’s life. Celebrities trust Hola, because they know there will be nothing negative in their coverage.

Hola! came to the UK thirty years ago as Hello magazine. Now there are 30 editions in 10 languages reaching 20 million readers per week. Every second around the world 15 people pick up their magazines. They do SIPs—cooking, homes, décor, parenting, travel, in packages ranging from 250 to 400 pages. Hola runs eight different websites with 27 million monthly uniques, tied together by design and voice. They have 18.5 million social media follows; a Spanish YouTube channel with influencers submitting content; the channel has over 16.5 million viewers and almost 200,000 subscribers.

With this global footprint, the US has been in the franchise’s sights, and they decided to launch in the US in 2016. The US hispanic community is 54 million, making the US the second largest Spanish-speaking population in the world. This big, broad, young, growing market is perfect for Hola magazine. They launched with print, Hola.com, social media, Hola TV. Now they have between one and two million on every digital platform; in print, their readership has grown to 400,000 in less than three years.

Hola! is published in both English and Spanish; subscribers can take their pick. Older readers want to read in Spanish; the younger readers prefer English. The magazine accommodates reader preferences, both online and in print. And because the readers are different, the online content is not necessarily the same.

Getting advertising is tough—but Hola had over 60 major advertisers in its first year. They work with their advertisers on branded content, video, cross platform.

Hola! is a global brand with local relevancy. Their global prestige allows for worldwide exclusives.

Hola! was recognized as one of the ten best magazine launches in 2016.

After 75 years, the magazine that celebrates the good, the happy and the uplifting has amply earned its own celebration. Happy birthday, Hola!

Click the video below to watch Jay Annis presentation:

The third morning of ACT 9 brings together for the first time the heads of the four major trade associations: Linda Thomas Brooks from the MPA, James Hewes from FIPP, Jerry Lynch from MBR, and Michael Marchesano from Connectiv.

Yes, the magazine industry is disrupted, says Brooks. So is every business I’ve every been in. There is no one answer, there are lots of answers. There is no silver bullet but there might be silver buckshot. I signed up for this business because it really, really matters.

Lynch adds that there are lots of industries (e.g. video rental) that are gone; magazines are still here and worth fighting for. This is a passionate business, and that passion is what brought me into this business.

In fact, says Hewes, this is the most exciting time to be in the business, with so many new ways to get our content to our audience. Most people would kill to have a job in media.

The biggest job this industry faces, says Hewes, is vocabulary. What do we call ourselves? We need to be more comfortable and confident as to how we describe ourselves.

From the distribution side, says Lynch, there is a disconnect between the understandings of the publisher and the retailer. It’s hard to bring the two parties together. The opportunity is in bringing the two parties together around the consumer. That relationship is so valuable, publishers need to show retailers that relationship can benefit the store.

On a B to B level, says Marchesano, the challenge is to make sure the audience, who has a buying influence, recognizes the value of the data provided. Making the investment, making the commitment, and looking for ROI.

From Brooks’ perspective, data can be a challenge. Data—and especially a single piece of data—does not equal truth. You can lead yourself to bad business decisions looking at individual bits of data. Algorithms do not get handed down from on high, they are written by people, and included the biases or limitations of those people. We need to use those algorithms and data in the right way. Understanding data bias, data perspective, is hugely important. Business fundamentals are math—never say you hate math when interviewing for jobs in journalism.

Putting together data, legacy and passion: computers are great for correlating data but not good at finding what the correlation means. You have to have a combination of understanding data and using your common sense to evaluate it, says Hewes. Consumers have no idea how much data is being collected about them. When they find out, there will be blood on the streets. Do the mattress test—put your phone on the kitchen table, talk about mattresses for an hour, then see how many ads you get served about mattresses.

This led to a flurry of comment:

Brooks: It’s like you’re sitting in a bar talking about mattresses, and a mattress salesperson interrupts to try to sell you one.

Hewes: This behavior might be getting normalized. It doesn’t mean it’s right.

Brooks: In China they’re collecting a social score. They’re assessing your worth based on it, and assigning consequences to it.

Hewes: And it’s a short step to assigning credit ratings in this country.

Brooks: Many industry bodies are working on privacy issues, but it’s going to take everyone in our industry working with our government to figure this out. MPA spends much time in Washington talking about it.

Marchesano: State level laws with strong consumer rights bias could have an impact on the national agenda.

Lynch: This kind of data is key to business. We need to get in early to help craft the right decision.

Hewes: Facebook will be broken up. They don’t know it yet; but the EU and other bodies will be creating regulations. This is the reason we need trade associations. There are issues to consider that these associations can address.

Lynch: These associations can craft a consistent message in a diverse category.

Brooks: The business isn’t changing as fast or dramatically as we’d like it, but we’re seeing some good indicators.

Ten years ago when I started the MIC, says Dr. Husni, my goal was to amplify the future of print, and everyone thought I had lost it. Last year Linda Brooks stood in front all the ACT Experience attendees and said, don’t ever say print is dead or print is not dead. It’s a vindication.

To watch the entire panel discussion please click on the video below:

People tend to look to the past to predict the future, said James Hewes, president and CEO of FIPP, on the third morning of Mr. Magazine’s ACT 9. But the rate of change is happening faster than anyone could have foreseen. To be successful in the modern world, publishers need to change their business, to have four robust revenue streams. The number one stream should be paid content. As an industry we’re beginning to make back some of the ground we lost when we started giving away content for free. However there are ten additional revenue streams that Hewe identified, including philanthropy, IT, memberships, and events. The ad dependent model is not gone; however, it now needs to be one stream among several.

A second trend is consolidation, which, along with its attendant churn, will continue. At the same time, we’re seeing the emergence of new, independent publishers. New ideas and new thinking are coming into the market.

The most important revenue streams, paid content, has required some re-education of consumers, who are becoming more savvy as to the need to pay. In the news space, if you are not charging for content online, you’re not in the game anymore. The Economist is now charging the same for a digital subscription as for print, on the grounds that they are paying for the content, not the format. Then, once you have a focused audience, you need to transact with them through e-commerce and events. A lot of work needs to be done, however, to make the process seamless. It’s so easy to buy through one-click on Amazon, so difficult on most publisher sites.

Advertising has never been less important to the industry, which is in some ways a good thing. Publishers need to break down the silos in their business and create authentic, opinionated and purposeful native copy. Editors are the best guardians of content; they need to be part of this process. Ad blocking is everywhere prevalent; publishers can communicate the need to their readers to turn off the ad blocking technology.

Only about half the traffic on the internet is real people. The rest are bots. And half those bots are impersonators, scraping money out of the system to the tune of many millions of dollars of loss to publishers. About three quarters of online ad revenue goes to three players: Google, Facebook and Amazon. Everyone else splits up the rest.

Print is regaining its prestige. Every year FIPP finds innovations in the print space. Print offers strong journalism unavailable online. Private Eye, the UK satire magazine, is growing because it never embraced digital. Publications are creating new packaging for enhanced reader value. Brands are exploring higher quality premium products.

You cannot rely on Facebook for traffic. A lot of companies did; but Facebook can change their algorithm at any time. Eitghteen months ago they did so, and publisher traffic fell by half. The ad-funded digital editorial model might not be sustainable for this reason. The change made Google the single biggest source of referral traffic. All the others put together are insignificant. Apple’s business model is to destroy anyone else’s business model. In any case, reliance on a single revenue stream is risky.

Platform-focused content: ask yourself, do they enhance your brand? Does a financial services brand need a snapchat account? Each platform really needs original content.

Ai is being used to power content recommendations; to edit homepages or section pages on a site; routine journalism; changing marketing approach for dynamic paywalls, and, crucially, translation. Look at the potential of AI and what it can do for you; it could enhance content output by aiding research and commoditizing dull and repetitive tasks. AI is going to have the biggest effect on media among all industries.

Diversity is the biggest issue in the question of talent and culture, creating an attractive workplace environment. Companies need to cultivate it. Change can’t be driven from the top down; it needs to percolate up from the base.

The trend report was taken up by Jerry Lynch, president of the MBR, who takes us beyond the transaction to the audience. Who is reading this product?

45% of all US growth is coming from non-store retail. Retailers need to change with their customers, who are getting more urban, older, more diverse, and more polarized in terms of income. Retail growth reflects evolving shopper priorities with online growing the most; however, supermarkets are still big and growing. If you look at the online sales environment, for the most part magazines aren’t there.

The omni channel evolution is closely anchored into the evolving fulfillment system: ship to home, in-store pickup, curbside pickup, grocery delivery, on-demand delivery, surprise subscription, and auto-replenishment subscription. The store offers scale, but the omnichannel shopping represents growth. As omni channel takes market share, it’s going to effect the retail mix also.

No category in the store has a stronger presence in mobile than publications. We need to use that mobile connection to sell products.

The trends reveal opportunities. We can see the changes, and need to adapt our business models to take advantage of them.

To watch both of the aforementioned presentations please click the videos below:

When did “legacy” become a bad word? James French, President of French LLC asks. We used to want to leave a legacy. And what is the difference between journalism and “new media”? We shouldn’t even need the name.

You should expect as much sizzle, as much beauty, in trade magazines as in consumer—because the people who read those magazines are consumers, professional consumers. When French improved the look of his print magazines, the digital design improved along with it, tracking the improved morale of his team. Magical things can come from makeovers. If something is legacy, is old, is not working—ask why. What can a redesign, a fresh perspective accomplish?

There are no legacy products. It’s how you view the product and what you do with it. How many swings at the piñata are allowed? As many as it takes to break through. You don’t only get one shot. There are lots of shots. No matter how good the dogfood is, if the dog doesn’t like it t’s no good. Keep changing it till it works.

Nowadays everything is legacy: print, online, events, mobile, social. It’s all legacy. What you need to figure out is what it’s going to take to make it vibrant.

Be a force in the industry. Treat everything as new, fresh, worth work and change. Don’t treat it as legacy. Print is personalized, changed, evolving—but it isn’t legacy, French told the assembled students. It’s part of the mix. You are alive, you have a chance to change something. Don’t say you’ll work on this, not that. You are in media. Be in media.

To watch John French’s presentation please click on the video below:

After the catfish fry, after the ice cream, after the mingling and talking and cocktail hour, Stephen Lomazow is going to walk us through the great moments in magazine history. He’s been collecting magazines since 1974 (americanmagazinecollection.com). The word “magazine has a military origin, meaning a “storehouse”; these publications were seen as a storehouse of information, and continue to be so.

America’s first magazine idea might have come from Benjamin Franklin, but he was scooped by Andrew Bradford; however, the first successful one was called The American Magazine, launched in 1745. Benjamin Franklin did sell it. The first American political cartoon was published in this magazine in 1758, a pro-British, anti-French advertisement.

The Royal American Magazine, published between 1774 and 1775, was one of the great inciters of revolutionary passion; its engravings were done by Paul Revere.

Thomas Paine’s Pennsylvania Magazine was the only magazine printed in 1775 and 1776; the June 1776 issue contains the first printed notice of independence, referencing the date of July 2nd. In April 1776 a black ex-slave, Phillis Wheatley, published an ode to George Washington as the first literary work in an American magazine.

In 1812 The War was the first magazine published to share contemporary reports of war.

The most important magazine in the second decade of the 1800s was the Analectic Magazine, published by Washington Irving of Rip Van Winkle fame. It published the poem which became America’s national anthem, sung to the tune of an old English drinking song.

Herman Melville published a series called Authentic Anecdotes of Old Zack (Zachary Taylor) in Yankee Doodle Magazine.

Leading up to the Civil War, the Anti-Slavery Almanac of the 1830’s published exposes of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Jennings. The most important anti-slavery magazine was The Liberator, published throughout the Civil War. The African-American Frederick Douglass published the North Star in the 1850s, along with Martin Robinson Delaney, an African American who graduated from Harvard Medical School and published the first novel by a black man in America.

The magazine that started the Civil War was The National Era, in which Uncle Tom’s Cabin was serialized. The two most widely circulated periodicals in the North were Harper’s Weekly and Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper. Illustrations included The Sharpshooter by Winslow Homer. Broughton’s Monthly Planet Reader correctly predicted Lincoln’s assassination. The South’s equivalent publication was Southern Illustrated News.

The Spanish American War was the journalists war. They commissioned an artist to create The Yellow Kid and wrote sensationalist articles featuring him; hence the term “yellow journalism.” Hearst sent Remington to Cuba saying, “You furnish the pictures, I’ll furnish the war.”

The famous iconic image of Uncle Sam by James Montgomery Flagg was adapted from a 1914 British poster of Lord Kitchener.

Norman Rockwell began his magazine covers during World War 1.

As a sign of unity and resolve, every magazine published in America in July 1942, had an American flag on the cover. Disney published a magazine with a racy centerfold illustration and sent it to all their employees fighting in the war; and Norman Rockwell adapted Rosie the Riveter from a Michelangelo. Amerasia magazine published leaked a top-secret state memo.

To watch Dr. Stephen Lomazow’s presentation please click on the video below.

Day 2 of ACT 9 at the Magazine Innovation Center wound up with a panel of independent publishers, each with their own stories to tell:

Darren Sanefski, Moderator, Associate Professor of Multiple Platform Journalism, University of Mississippi
Jimmy Dean, former publisher Sarasota magazine, telling the stories of the community
Rob Hewitt, Founder, Oh-So magazine, celebrating the girls’ skateboarding community
Michael Kusek, Publisher, Different Leaf magazine, for the more mature cannabis consumer
Doni Ambrosine, Founder and Publisher, Culturs Magazine, the global multicultural philanthropic brand
Andrea Butler, Founder and EIC, Sesi Magazine, a teen magazine for girls of color
Monique Reidy, Publisher and EIC, Southern California Life and Weekend Escapes magazines.
Pam Woody, EIC Brio magazine, a voice for the teen space.

The panel has tips for magazine survival and success:

1. You need funding—but if you have the passion, go for it anyway. Sesi launched with basically no money, and is on its seventh year.
2. Choose carefully how you spend the money you have. Sesi saves it for their cover shoots.
3. You need a passion for what you’re doing, to get you through the inevitable valleys.
4. You need courage.
5. You need business savvy.
6. At some point you need to shut everything out and just go forward.
7. Look for the rewards. People stop Ambrosine on the street, cry, tell her how she changed their lives.
8. Keep learning. Read the trade press.
9. Be creative. Find your way around problems.
10. Print. There is still a desire and need for the tangible product, and it will be the driver of other platforms. 11. Use digital to drive people to print. Going from online to print Culturs stature rose a thousand percent. They doubled their reach in six months. Kusek says that at his level he will never make his money back on digital. And the creativity in graphic design has moved back to print, now that social media has killed the home page and digital design has moved to mobile.And as long as the platform isn’t yours, they can change and algorithm and shut you down tomorrow.
12. Put your digital focus on email. That list is yours, and a third party platform can’t take it. Use digital to give your readers ownership of the magazine. Use it to learn about your readers.
13.Innovate. Change with the times. Brio dropped celebrity, includes space for the girls to add their own thoughts, to interact with the publication.
14. Target your audience. It reduces the risk. Different Leaf is launching with 5000-7500 copies in the Massachusetts area, self-distributed into dispensaries and independent outlets.
15. Events can both generate revenue and build community. Gather your readers together. Different Leaf is doing an event on how to design a dispensary. It will also bring them to the attention of potential advertisers.
16. Know your vision, know your brand, stick with brands that align. You become known for who you are. Reidy’s magazines are mistaken for regional, but they’re not—they are travel magazines, so they don’t run articles about politics or businesses.
17. Keep your eye on your audience and make the best product you can for them. Don’t try to be all things to all people.Don’t let naysayers pull you off brand. Teen Vogue can never do what Sesi can, for example.
18. Remember to have fun while you’re doing it. Use this job to create the life that you want.

To watch the entire panel discussion click on the video below.

“The future of democracy depends on you,” Joe Hyrkin, CEO of Issue, told the journalism students present at Mr. Magazine’s ACT 9, reflecting what Linda Thomas Brooks had said earlier in the day. Over the last couple of decades, the folks in the digital world have gotten in the middle of the relationship between the publisher and the audience. These platforms are amazing to enable a publisher to reach an audience; the key is to be able to reach this audience without doing endless versions of the content customized by platform. Think of it as providing pieces of existing content in ways consumers can read on any platform, wherever they are.

“I am out of a job today because of my stand for first amendment rights,” reported former journalism instructor Lori Oglesbee. “I was teacher of the year in Texas, and I lost my job because I refused to take down three articles.” Five kids can change a state, she tells the audience of enrapt students. Journalism is under attack today; but iwithout journalism, democracy fails. Students need to learn to be inquisitive, to discern the difference between biased and balanced reporting, to become thoughtful consumers of the news to improve their world.

No one has done more to get magazines into the hands of the at-risk communities than John Mennell, the founder of Magazine Literacy. Earlier today we leaned that children need print for the development of their brains, which stay on a distracted level in a digital-heavy environment; Mennell’s mission is to provide children throughout the world with magazines. Literacy, he told us, ends poverty of the pocket, mind and spirit. Echoing the other panel speakers, he said that freedom, independence and prosperity depend on literacy. In the US 18 million people live in poverty; 2/3rds of those children have no books at home.

A child unable to read is a child lost. Magazines, he told the group, are the most powerful literacy engines on the planet. There are over one million homeless students; these children are effectively invisible. Imagine giving a magazine to that child. It says: you see me. I matter. “I am here today because I want to share the joy I experienced from magazines as a child; I want to share it with the most vulnerable among us.” Our industry’s undivided attention toward literacy is crucial; the experience with reading materials is what is needed to create readers. There are tens of millions of magazines available that we as an industry can get into those homes, onto those coffee tables, into those backpacks. Because there are magazines for every interest, we can reach deep into this inventory to address specific literacy needs. Magazine Literacy has airlifted magazines to Inuit families in the Arctic Circle; and one of the families served opened a magazine stand in the village food pantry. One of ML’s goals is to open magazine stands in every food pantry throughout the world.

Magazine Literacy’s mission is to build the most powerful literacy marketplace on earth by tapping the enormous potential of magazines, and by engaging every stakeholder in the magazine supply chain to share the joy and the love and the incredible power of reading magazines with at risk readers. He has the mission that Jo Packham told us we all need; he has a dedication to the journalism that Lori Oglesbee has told us is necessary for the survival of a democracy; he provides children with the reading material they need, according to Linda Brooks, for the development of deep, undistracted thinking.

People died for free speech, said Oglesbee. It’s important. And, said Mennell, let’s get these reading materials into the hands of the next generation.

To watch the entire panel click on the video below: