Mr. Magazine

The baby is born and here is the proof of the delivery.

The picture above of the entire team of Condé Nast Portfolio, with packages containing the first issue of the magazine ready to be shipped late on Sat. night in front of the Fed Ex truck on 43rd street at 4 Times Square (Condé Nast headquarters) in New York City. As the countdown continues, David Carey (thanks for sending the evidence) described the events of the day to me. “As a ‘launch fan’, you would have loved today,” he wrote in an e-mail. “Our entire team gathered in NY, to assemble by hand our very handsome ‘charter advertiser packages’ — for most of the team, it was the first time they had seen the actual magazine (we’ve kept it under wraps internally as well as externally), and it was so exciting.” He added, “At the end of the day, we all walked down nearly down 500 boxes to a waiting FedEx truck on 43rd Street, and sent out the first copies to top CEOs, clients, press… — all to arrive on Monday morning, the exact same day the issue press breaks…” David sounds like one proud daddy, and he ought to be. In a climate of magazine industry leaders self-made “doom and gloom predictions,” here comes a major sense of “proud bloom” to remind us that print is not dead, but is alive, well and kicking. If nothing else, Condé Nast is sending a loud and clear message that they still believe in print and its power, and in the same time they are using the power of the print brand to expand to other forms of the media as they become available whether online or on your mobile phone.
Thanks David for sharing and all the best on the birth of the new baby. As a quick reminder, the baby was born with 332 pages from which 185 are ad pages. Indeed, a healthy one.

What does Garden & Gun have in common with Condé Nast Portfolio besides being born on the same day? The publishers of both magazines are ex-publishers of The New Yorker. Rebecca Darwin, shares the same honors with David Carey as being a former publisher of The New Yorker. And in the midst of all the fanfare accompanying CN Portfolio’s launch, Ms. Darwin ushered her first issue of the 21st Century Southern America to the market place without any fanfare compared to that of her colleague at her former employer. As for the cover, no surprise here. Pat Conroy graces the cover of the first issue of Garden & Gun. The magazine has a total of 132 pages from which almost 23 pages are ad pages. Editor in Chief John Wilson has managed to create a first issue with a lot of “fanfare” writings and photography. To get your hands on the first issue of Garden & Gun, click here, or just visit a newsstands and spend your $4.95. It is worth it. The second issue is set for June and the magazine plans to publish 10 issues a year.

The countdown continues for the launch of Condé Nast Portfolio with the media reporters and the bloggers running competitions on who will grace the first cover and where the image of the cover will first appear. Media Industry Newsletter online is running a Quick Pulse survey asking its readers Where will the Condé Nast Portfolio launch cover first appear? Advertising Age, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, or Other… to cast your own vote click here. My friend Rex Hammock, of Hammock publishing already voted for the other option. Rex thinks it is going to be on Portfolio.com that will launch on Monday. I will have to wait and see.
In the meantime, here is some more information about the most talked about launch of the year. “Condé Nast’s launch methodology, developed over the course of several award-winning product introductions, schedules a pause between the first and second issues,” says a Confidential Closing Report for Charter Advertisers sent to the magazine advertisers. This strategy was first used with the launch of Lucky, then Domino, and now Portfolio. All three are Condé Nast properties. It “enables a new property to gather extensive feedback and implement any recommended fine-tuning immediately for the second issue and beyond.” The first issue of Condé Nast Portfolio carries 185 ad pages divided among 95 charter print advertisers representing “the largest single collection of blue-chip brands ever found in a magazine in the business category.” Portfolio.com launches with “ten exclusive charter advertisers, a tier-one group of financial, technology, and travel marketers,” the report stated. The second issue of the magazine will be out August 21 and commences its monthly frequency with a 350,000-rate base. Portfolio.com 2.0 will go live in September. To quote David Carey, the group president and publishing director, “It has been years since a new magazine arrived in the marketplace with this level of ambition — and heft.” I agree wholeheartedly. 36 more hours to wait…and counting … 35 hrs, 59 seconds, 58, 57, 56…..

Once a week, I highlight three new magazines on my web site www.mrmagazine.com. This week the three new magazines are First Home, Good Food and National Geographic Little Kids. Read here about these new launches. To be considered for review on my web site, please send a copy of your first issue to Samir “Mr. Magazine™” Husni, Department of Journalism, The University of Mississippi, University, MS 38677.

Do you know what is in common among the following people: Ted Turner, Archie Emmerson, the Irving Family and the Singleton Family? Well, you are in good company if you did not know the answer until now. The Land Report, the new magazine of “The American Landowner,” lists the four aforementioned names at the top of its list of the “100 Largest Landowners in the United States.” Each one of the four owns more than one million acres of land. The editors promise that the premiere issue of The Land Report and every monthly issue after that will differ from the hundreds of shelter magazines out there by going “one on one with passionate landowners and get them to share their dreams and laugh at their mistakes…” every single issue. In addition to their signature story on The Land Report 100, the first issue contains features and photos that explain the many aspects of taking care of the land and showcases the gorgeous beauty of different property throughout the United States. The name and cover of this magazine may not look like the Godiva’s box of chocolate, but the inside sure taste like the best Godiva chocolates money can buy. To learn about the remaining 96 largest landowners in our country click here to access the listing of the nation’s largest landowners. The magazine is the latest publication of the Dallas based Patience Publishing group.

Well, the answer is to Go. Mariah Media, the publisher of the 30 years old Outside magazine, has just launched the premiere issue of the new quarterly Outside’s Go: Travel & Style for Men. The new magazine comes on the heels of Outside’s other spin off Outside Traveler. Go joins a crowded travel magazine field, but adds a double twist of its own to that market. Style and Men. Aimed at an upscale (the metallic cover says it all, although it is hard to see the logo on the newsstands under the neon lights of the stores… the only form beats function page in the magazine) male audience the premiere issue delivers great content in great style. Something that is not foreign to the editors of the multiple-award wining Outside magazine. The magazine is definitely not aimed at the armed chair traveler, nor the 48 states tourist. To paraphrase Dr. Seuss “I don’t care how you go…just Go” seems to be the motto of this new magazine. And go you shall…from A (as in Australia) to Y (as in Yemen) and every thing in between, Outside’s Go is a must for the traveling man with style. So if your future plans call for travel, now is the time to stop reading this blog and run to your nearest newsstands and pick up a copy of Outside’s Go. You will be glad you did.

Lately we have been reading about magazines folding shop in print and claiming to stay alive on cyber space. FHM, Teen People, Shock, Info World and Elle Girl, to name a few, decided to cease the ink on paper editions and concentrate on pixels on the screen. Kimberly Toms spotted this trend and decided to do the opposite. Rather than publishing her new magazine BLU (a magazine for single men and women) in print first and face all the problems of a new launch such as the cost of printing and production, no advertising, low sale through numbers and a lot of waste, Toms opted for the pixels on the screen. She said that the “Magazine BLU is in digital format for the first five bimonthlies (through the December 07 edition) for brand-building and working out of the design/inclusion kinks, then monthly and in hard copy (with distribution already lined up) as of January 2008. The next issue is June/July 07 with a major launch event in Philly in July.” To say that Kimberly is having a love affair with this magazine concept will be an understatement. Kimberly told me that, “This has been the concept that would not die, no matter how much I wanted it to some days!! It has been the most difficult, yet most rewarding journey, and I look forward to every day it presents as Magazine BLU.” I only wished that the passion that Kimberly has for the magazine and the magazine busniess is evident in her first issue. A digital magazine with all the type and design that BLU offers makes it hard to read and enjoy, but I am sure that Kimberly knows that since she mentioned the ongoing work on the design kinks in the magazine. A digital magazine should not be a replica of the print magazine or an imitation of it. It does not even need the space for a UPC. The screen viewers are not the same as the page viewers. To view the first issue of BLU magazine click here, and to see a great example of a digital magazine click here to read Felix Dennis’s magazine Monkey click here. Magazine BLU is not the first magazine to publish via the web first and turn to print next, and it will not be the last. I continue to believe that, in this day and age, if you are really going to survive and make a profit, you have to pay your dues in ink on paper. If you think the competition to establish yourself in print is tough, then you do not know how big is the competition in the virtual space out there. It is good to dream big… but one day you have to wake up (and smell the ink…)

Once a week, I highlight three new magazines on my web site http://www.mrmagazine.com. This week the three new magazines are Be Well, Real Simple Travel and Stock & Custom. Read here about these new launches. To be considered for review on my web site, please send a copy of your first issue to Samir “Mr. Magazine™” Husni, Department of Journalism, The University of Mississippi, University, MS 38677.