Mr. Magazine

The status and future of magazines distributed via newspapers will be the topic of the panel that I will be moderating on Thursday Jan. 20 in New York City. The panel will include the four CEOs of the major media companies that publish and distribute such magazines. The panelist are John Cobb III, CEO, Publishing Group of America; Stephen Duggan, CEO, Athlon Sports; Chuck Gabrielson, CEO, USA Weekend; and Jack Haire, CEO, Parade. (Full bios are at the end of the blog).

I have asked three colleagues to comment on the event and on the status of magazines distributed via newspapers. Lisa Scott, the executive director of PBAA and the event co-host answered my questions regarding who and why folks should attend the panel; Steve Cohn, editor in chief of min: media industry newsletter on the status of magazines distributed via newspapers; and Bob Sacks, founder and CEO of the Precision Media Group on the state and future of such titles.

I asked Lisa Scott who should attend such a panel? Her answer:

This panel, comprised of experienced CEO’s, offers anyone interested in the future of print media an opportunity to benefit from the panelists’ varied and cumulative insights, experiments, successes, mistakes, and reasons for optimism. Whether the attendee is a journalist, advertising professional, consumer marketer, media buyer, or supply-chain professional, there should be something to provoke or inspire or ponder on January 20.

And I asked, why should anyone attend such a panel?

Magazine and newspaper publishers and distributors will be able to understand why CEO’s are continuing to “bet” on print as a revenue source. More specifically, CEO’s can share real insight on the results of their research on their consumer audience, the role/value of digital media to these print-engaged consumers, and how and why they believe they can continue to woo investors in print media in the coming years. These insights can assist publishers and distributors to continue to build the case proving the vitality of print as a consumer’s media delivery vehicle in the years ahead.

As for Steve Cohn, the knowledgeable and well versed editor in chief of min:media industry newsletter, shed some light on the status of such magazines. He answered my questions about the magazines distributed via newspapers:

Newspaper-distributed magazines are growing because of (1) they fill a void created by the cessation of newspaper-published magazines due to their expense in a tough economy; and (2) they give newspapers added value.

Until 2000, newspaper-distributed magazines were the realm of Parade and USA Weekend (formerly Family Weekly). Then, Publishing Group of America came in with the successful launch of the largely “C”- and “D”-county targeted American Profile, followed by the monthly Relish (epicurean) and Spry (health). Now, there are periodically released health titles from Parade/USAW, and the Parade-owned epicurean magazine Dash is about to start a regular monthly frequency in February.

The advantage of newspaper-distributed magazines is that they don’t have to worry about circulation. Newspaper sales take care of that.

Disadvantage, until recently, was that newspaper-distributed magazines were solely dependent upon advertising for revenues. Online is beginning to make a contribution here.

Traditionally, advertising in newspaper-distributed magazines has held its own in tough economies, because the titles’ large circulations and low CPMs versus television makes them comparably a bargain.

And of course my friend Bob Sacks of the bosacks.com fame offered this view of the status and future of magazines distributed via newspapers:

Magazines inserted into newspapers surely are an interesting and successful business model for some on-going publications. It is still difficult to attain those types of huge circulations from any publisher’s perspective. The numbers in your blog are, indeed, large and will stay that way for some limited time to come. But simple trend analysis reveals some interesting long-term data. In 1960 the penetration rate of newspapers into the American home was in the range of 1.1 newspapers per household. By 1995 the year before the great Internet adoption, it was down to .60 per American household, and by 2010 the penetration rate was resting under 0.35 per household.

I guess my question is, where and when is the circulation plateau rather than the continued plummet of a 50-year decline? I would add that it is extremely important to note that the decline in household penetration for newspapers happened long before the rise of the Internet.

So, what do you think? Is the future bright and rosy for such publications? Or is it a lost cause? I guess on Thursday we will have the answers when we listen to those four CEOs answer the aforementioned questions. What follows are the short bios, in alphabetical order, of the four CEOs:

John W. Cobb III
John W. Cobb III is CEO of PGoA Media, a publishing, digital media and event company built around the American Profile, Relish and Spry brands.

Cobb’s extensive background managing the expansion of print and digital brands puts PGoA Media in the best possible position to continue to deliver outstanding results for advertisers, tremendous value for newspaper partners and robust content for consumers.

Prior to joining PGoA Media, Cobb was Senior Vice President, Digital at Source Interlink Media, which is the leading provider of automobile, action sports and high-tech content. He managed more than 100 web properties, including Motor Trend, Automobile, Hot Rod, Motorcyclist and Surfer with revenues of $50 million and 22 million unique visitors a month.

With more than 20 years as a senior media/internet executive, Cobb has led and developed large-scale, multi-media properties for Petersen Publishing, EMAP, PRIMEDIA and Source Interlink Media.

Cobb is based in New York and has a wife and two children. He’s an avid pilot and an active snow and water skier. He also enjoys golf, travel and technology.

Stephen Duggan
Stephen Duggan serves as President & Chief Executive Officer of Athlon Sports, publisher of Athlon Sports – the largest sports magazine in the U.S. with 9 million monthly circulation. Athlon is also the leading publisher of sports annuals with titles covering College Football, Pro Football, College Basketball, Pro Basketball, NASCAR, Pro Baseball and Golf.

Prior to joining Athlon, Stephen spent the previous decade working with private equity backed media companies. In 1999 Stephen helped found Publishing Group of America. Stephen was integrally involved in the successful launches of newspaper distributed American Profile, Relish and Spry magazines. Following the Sale of PGA in 2007, Stephen served as Chief Executive Officer of Alpha Media Group, publisher of Maxim magazine, where he led the Company’s successful business and balance sheet restructurings. Maxim is the leading magazine targeting young men 18-34 with a rate base of 2.5 million copies monthly.

Stephen currently serves on the Board of Directors for Questex Media Group, Inc, a leading global business-to-business (“B2B”) communications company serving multiple industries through a range of well-established, market-leading publications, events, interactive media, research, information and integrated marketing services.

Stephen is a graduate of Murray State University.

Chuck Gabrielson
Charles “Chuck” Gabrielson joined Gannett in 1971 at The Journal News in Westchester County, NY (then Westchester-Rockland Newspapers). He began his career as a management trainee in the advertising department then served in advertising and marketing management roles, including Advertising Director.
He joined USA WEEKEND in 1989 as Executive Vice President, named Publisher in 1996 and President and Publisher on January 2010. He previously served as Advertising Director of Macy’s Co. and Marketing/Sales Director of Advertising Age Magazine and Founder and Publisher of Creativity Magazine.

In 2009, Chuck was inducted to The Advertising Hall of Fame presented by MIN (Media Industry News). He is a graduate of Long Island University (LIU) and resides in New City, N.Y. with his wife Lisa.

Jack Haire
Jack Haire is President and CEO of Parade Publications. In his year and a half at the helm of the most widely read magazine in America, he has invested important resources in the brand and re-energized its business and editorial models. In addition to bringing top talent to Parade, Jack has helped forge strong partnerships with key newspaper and advertising partners. Under his leadership, Parade built a unique content distribution network with 40 million monthly unique visitors across 400 trusted newspaper web sites. Last November, Parade launched dash, a new food magazine and web business that will include branded content from Bon Appétit, Epicurious.com and Gourmet, marking the first editorial collaboration between Parade and Condé Nast.



Prior to joining Parade, Haire spent twenty-eight years at Time Warner Inc. During his tenure, he was publisher of Time Magazine, President of the Fortune/Money Group, and Chairman of the Time Warner Advertising Council. On his watch, both TIME and Fortune were chosen as Adweek’s Hottest Magazine, measured by 3 year advertising growth. He also partnered with CNN on the launch of CNNMoney.com, one of the Web’s most successful and profitable finance sites. He serves on the board of Concern Worldwide, U.S., an international humanitarian organization, and as a director of LodgeNet Interactive and Top Ten Reviews.



Haire lives in Connecticut with his wife and two children. He enjoys reading, golf, fishing, and playing or watching all sports.

To join us at this event, click here to register.

Today marks the beginning of a new year. A very good beginning indeed. A beginning that starts with nothing but ones. Today is 1, 1, 11. So, in honor of this new beginning, here is The Mr. Magazine™ 2011 Manifesto, published in min: media industry newsletter‘s Jan. 3, 2011 issue:

GUEST COMMENTARY
SAMIR HUSNI

The Mr. Magazine™ 2011 Manifesto:
THE LUCKY 13 FOR A HEALTHY, WEALTHY AND LIVELY MEDIA FUTURE

Happy New Year! My “resolutions” are this manifesto, which I believe will make your season bright in 2011. Here’s my “baker’s dozen”:

1. Romance the customer, the reader, the user, the viewer, the listener– but NOT the machine. That should be your motto in 2011.
2. Stop renovating if you are going to be in the business of innovation.
3. Throw a ball from left field, surprising your customers, readers, users, viewers, and listeners every time you interact with them. Give them what they expect, but surprise them with what they don’t.
4. Humanize your medium. Focus on the human voice, values, and vision behind the ink on paper, pixels on the screen, or bytes on the sound waves. In an age of isolated connectivity, humanizing the medium is a MUST, not an option.
5. Do not be afraid to charge for quality content. People are paying big money for what you think is not quality content.
6. Change your thinking and decide what is quality content based on your customers, readers, users, viewers, and listeners. Do not create based on you, but based on them. YOU are NOT THEM. Big surprise.
7. Hire someone younger, much younger, if you really want to innovate. Established folks drag a lot of luggage with them, intentionally or otherwise. Some may call this the wisdom of age, but I call it old habits that are hard to die hard. The “young and restless” drag very few and have yet to cement their feet in old or new habits.
8. Free yourself from the past but do not uproot yourself during the pruning season.
The new leaves and branches are what make a tree look good, not the roots. However, without the roots there will be no tree.
9. Keep in mind that only 9% of companies survive any disruptive innovation. Start thinking (and bring in someone new to think for you) on how to be a minority survivor rather than a majority has-been.
10. You are living the dawn of a new age, the age of Transcended Media. Are you ready to start the conversation with your customers, readers, users, viewers and listeners? Are you ready to keep the conversation going and whet their appetite for more?
11. 2011 is no different from 2010 or 2000. If you are NOT creating an engaging, addictive, repetitive conversation with your customers, readers, users, viewers, and listeners, that only means one thing: you are DEAD.
12. So show the world you are ALIVE and START romancing your customers, readers, users, viewers, and listeners. Make love to them and not to the platform or machine. You OWE it to them. And…
13. Stop being only a content provider and marketer. Start becoming an Experience Maker. There is where your media future starts.

And that, my friends, will lead you into a healthy, wealthy, and above all, lively media world of 2011 and beyond.

Samir Husni, Ph.D., is founder (2009) and director of the Magazine Innovation Center at the University of Mississippi, where he previously chaired the journalism department. Husni’s Mr. Magazine™ monicker comes from his tracking more than 18,000 launches since 1986, when his Guide to New Magazines debuted. The 26th edition of the Guide (Nautilus Publishing/Oxford, Miss.) will be released in February 2011.

A very happy and fruitful 2011 to all.

“Change” can easily be the word that defined the publishing world in 2010, and “Adapting to Change” will be the sentence defining the publishing world in 2011. One major change taking place in 2011 is Oprah Winfrey, the “show queen” of television, closing the “window” on her daily show and opening the “door” to her own television network OWN. A network that O, The Oprah Magazine is used “as the basis for the network’s programming.”

How will this end of an era, and the beginning of a new one, effect O, The Oprah Magazine, one of the most successful magazine launches of the last decade? I had the opportunity to ask Jill Seelig, vice president, publisher and chief revenue officer of O, The Oprah Magazine few questions regarding the forthcoming changes and in the words of the main cover-line of the January issue of O, The Oprah Magazine, “What’s Your Next Chapter?”

Here are the sound-bites followed by The Mr. Magazine™ Interview with Jill Seelig, publisher of O, The Oprah Magazine.

The magazine has very little duplication with viewers of The Oprah Winfrey Show.
Oprah loves the iPad – it was even part of her Favorite Things episode this year.
The app is an enhanced version of our print product, offering video and audio — much of it featuring Oprah herself – animation, interactivity, customization and tap-to-buy functionality.
The print and digital editions of our magazine live side by side comfortably.
O offers one of the most unique reading experiences for women. We are the only women’s magazine that comes from a place of optimism, inspiration and authenticity.
Advertisers tap into the depth of this reader connection, and it enhances and elevates the credibility of their brands.

And, now for the full interview:

Samir Husni: As the Oprah daily show comes to an end and a new era of Oprah starts, how will that effect O, The Oprah Magazine? Will the out of sight out of mind premise work here? Some say that repetition a major source of addiction, what will happen to the magazine without Oprah being seen on television every day?

Jill Seelig: O, The Oprah Magazine and OWN will be the go-to places for women who want to connect with Oprah and her message. Interestingly, the magazine has very little duplication with viewers of The Oprah Winfrey Show – currently only 19% of the show’s audience are O magazine readers. We believe that OWN – a 24/7 television presence – will drive more readers to the magazine, with more synergy and shared content living across both platforms. After all, as Oprah has said, David Zaslav came to her holding a copy of the magazine and said he wanted to use it as the basis for the network’s programming. OWN is dedicated to Oprah’s Live Your Best Life mission, just like the magazine.

SH: With Oprah now having her OWN, what are the plans to expand O, The Oprah Magazine? You’ve launched the first App. in Dec., any other plans of expanding and promoting the brand?

JS: We’re very excited about our iPad app, which launched as a monthly with our December issue. It has been extremely well-received, and was a featured app in the iTunes store from the moment it launched, taking the #1 spot in the lifestyle category right out of the gate, and we also have a digital edition available on the Nook as well as through Zinio.

Oprah loves the iPad – it was even part of her Favorite Things episode this year. Each month the O, The Oprah Magazine app gets richer and more compelling, as our editors incorporate innovative functionality and exclusive content – all filtered through the prism of Oprah’s philosophy and uplifting message. The app is an enhanced version of our print product, offering video and audio — much of it featuring Oprah herself – animation, interactivity, customization and tap-to-buy functionality. And Oprah loves books, and they are an important part of the magazine so one of the most unique features on the app is that users may access, for free, the first chapter of every book featured in the issue. If users like what they read, they can tap-to-buy through Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

SH: Hearst Magazines have invested a lot in enhancing and promoting their print products. What are you doing specifically with O, The Oprah Magazine to enhance and promote the print magazine? Are you working on ensuring a print future in a digital age?

JS: The print and digital editions of our magazine live side by side comfortably. O, The Oprah Magazine is the #3 monthly magazine at newsstand, and demand is high – readers love the tactile experience of holding our beautiful, glossy magazine and they love to interact with our brand up-close and in-person. Every year, thousands of readers join us at our signature event, O You!, which is a day of inspiration and education, delivered directly to our attendees by the experts they connect with every month in our pages. Over the years, we’ve held the event in cities from coast to coast. Speakers have included Dr. Oz, Suze Orman, Nate Berkus, Martha Beck, Donna Brazile and others, and of course our editor at large, Gayle King, who welcomes everyone and broadcasts her radio show from the venue. It is amazing to see the readers relating to our content in a dynamic way – we get (mostly) women from around the country and around the world who are passionate about the magazine.

Social media is proving to be a great way to stay in close contact with our audience – and it is not only the tweets from our magazine, or from creative director Adam Glassman or Gayle King – women can interact with nearly all of our contributors through social media. And of course we use emails and Facebook postings to ask for our readers’ opinions, encourage dialogue as well as invite them to attend events and enter amazing sweepstakes.

One recent example of print and digital working side-by-side was our 12 Day Holiday Give-O-Way, which was featured in the December issue, and awarded 12 winners all 70 products from the Holiday O List, plus select items from Oprah’s Favorite Things episode. Codes were hidden within the magazine’s pages and were accessible via the iPad, both of which drove readers to Oprah.com to enter every day for 12 days for a chance to win. In addition, we tweeted reminders, posted messages on Facebook and the result was more than 2.1 million entries!

SH: With the hope that the economy is rebounding, are there any plans to bring back O At Home or launch any other spinoffs?

JS: We’re focused on O, The Oprah Magazine and our digital editions at the moment.

SH: One of my mantras for the New Year is to Romance the Customer and not the platform. How do you see your readers, users, etc. interacting with the product and what are doing for them? The same when it comes to the advertisers? How would you answer the simple question for both readers and advertisers, “What is in it for me?”

JS: O offers one of the most unique reading experiences for women. We are the only women’s magazine that comes from a place of optimism, inspiration and authenticity, and because of that, 16 million readers connect with O on a deep emotional level every month. This magazine is truly a guide for our readers – helping them recognize what is wonderful about their lives and offering sage wisdom from our contributors on everything from achieving goals and dreams and making the most of their relationships, to financial planning to the best fashion and beauty buys.

Advertisers tap into the depth of this reader connection, and it enhances and elevates the credibility of their brands. Our readers tell us that when they consistently see an ad in O it’s a signal to them that the advertiser supports and shares the mindset of the women who read the magazine….that’s a powerful endorsement that moves readers to action and drives sales.

SH: If I am to give you a magic wand and you strike O, The Oprah Magazine to create a human being, who will it be? Can you describe that human being?

JS: That’s easy…it’s Oprah Winfrey. A woman in process who is curious about the world, eager to learn and grow, works in service of others, and challenges herself to Live Her Best Life everyday.

SH: Thank you.

Taking the literary definition of a magazine as a storehouse, Dave Eggers and his team at Timothy McSweeney’s, delivers one of the best stores that can only be build in print. Inside the “head”, aka the store, McSweeney’s offers “a headful of new and unseen work” by Michael Chabon, John Brandon, Jack Pendarvis and Adam Levin among others. As you sift through the head you will find a roll of “fortunes” including the one that informs you that “Oliver Pratt is your real dad. Sorry for the late notice;” A “Catfish Scene” painting in four postcards; A mini “Fancy Times” book-a-zine; a novel in a bag; a mini booklet; and many other good, really good stuff, as you can see in the picture below.

The experience, and yes, it is an experience to open the “head” and take a peek inside. Pulling the ten different “products” from inside “the store,” the reader, turned shopper, gathers a wealth of information that is both entertaining and informative. An experience made for print and print only. And before your head starts spinning, take a look at the products inside the store.

In order for you to see the entire spinning store, I have shot of a mini video showing all sides of McSweeney’s Issue 36.

As for what is under the “head” or at the bottom of the store, well, I am not going to spoil all your fun. You have to buy the magazine to find out. Enjoy the experience! It is worth every penny of the $26 cover price.