Mr. Magazine

My friend Bob Sacks discovered a major gap in his e-paper experience. For years he has been predicting the future of mass reaching magazines and books to be on-line or through some usage of an electronic device such as the Sony Reader or Kindle. Well, Bob had the chance to put his predictions to practice and lived to write about it. He summed his e-reader, the Kindle, experience as such:

•The Ebook experience is excellent and enjoyable. It was book like and yet had features that no book has.
•The Enewspaper experience was fair. With a newspaper the expected visuals, photos and charts were non existent and that colored my reading and my expectations.
•The Emagazine was a complete flop.

To say I told so will be entirely unfair. But, what I have been saying for years is that the new technologies are yet another way to spread the word and to have content delivered to readers and viewers. It is a new way and not a replacement or even a substitute. Each media must present the entire whole experience on its own. No media should be made to be like this or that. If we are working so hard to invent a medium that looks like paper and feels like paper, why bother? We have paper, so there is no need to reinvent the wheel.

Well, folks, click here to read Bob’s entire review of the Kindle and enjoy the “hole” in his “whole” experience.

I had to buy my copy. It cost me $4.99. The cover, as usual, outstanding and inviting, screams Free. Well, the folks at the newsstands ignored the big free and looked at the small $4.99 which I had to pay. No problem until I reached to my hotel room and opened the magazine to start reading it. On the masthead page (yes, I try to read every page) I saw the free sign again. This time with some copy. Walking the Walk reads the title under the free sign. Here is what the rest of the copy says:

We know, we know: A newsstand copy of WIRED will set you back $4.99, which is nowhere close to free (although we think it’s great value). In the spirit of the cover story, we’ll send a gratis copy of this month’s issue to the first 10,000 people who ask. See wired.com/free for details.

So, what are you still waiting for. Click on the link above and get your free copy of WIRED. Free or $4.99, trust me, it is worth the price. But, why pay for something you can get for free… it is starting to feel as if I am writing about those who put their content for free on the web… well, I better stop, this blog is about the March issue of WIRED, so let me stop here.

Adbusters magazine tags itself as the Journal of The Mental Environment and for years has been doing just that. The latest issue of the magazine celebrates The Reconquest of Cool with a parody cover that resembles the design of most of the so-called celeb magazines, i.e., gossip magazines. The issue starts with a visual essay on Cool : the rise, fall and rebirth of an attitude. The article traces Cool “from its roots in Africa through to the youth cultures of the present day, cool has always been an attitude of resistance to subjugation, an expression of rebellion and a posture of defiance.”
Adbusters is more than a magazine. They refer to themselves as “a global network of artists, activists, students, educators and entrepreneurs working to change the way information flows and meaning is produced in our society.”
The magazine is based in Canada and is published six times a year by the Adbusters Media Foundation which is soliciting support to its legal actions “Buy Nothing, True Cost and Media Carta campaigns and help launch the Spanish and Chinese editions of Adbusters…”
Interested, check the magazine and its foundation here. There is a lot more under the covers of this magazine.

Whether you are a magazine insider or just someone who loves to read and flip through pages of different magazines, this documentary trilogy DVD set is a MUST. A three part series that will keep you glued to your television set as if you are watching the Super Bowl of magazines. The series opens with “how magazines define our cultural and personal images, and fuel the growth of democracy and consumerism.” From the days of the first magazine in London to the first use of a photograph in Paris to the days of Life and Vanity Fair in the United States, the first DVD has it all. Magazines as an element of social change is the topic of the second DVD. Leading magazines in this era of social change are included in this DVD. Playboy, Ms magazine and The Advocate are presented as an example of “how magazines find the way to challenge us with ideas that have the power to shape our political and social landscape.” The third DVD “investigates the work of impassioned individual editors, writers and photographers within the new market realities.”
This trilogy is produced by Irene Angelico and Abbey Jack Neidik from the Canadian DLI Productions company. The price for the series is :
Home — $45 for the three-part series
Institutions — $270 for three-part series
It’s available on DLI Productions website. Click here for information about Inside the Great Magazines. You will not regret it. Watch the intro to the series below.

The bloggers and their websites have been filled of late with the news of the demise of journalism…real journalism, investigative journalism, journalism that matters, journalism that is necessary to run a democracy. We are told journalists have been exiting newspapers and are being replaced by soccer-mom journalists or what some like to call citizen journalists. News about Britney and Lindsy passes as journalism in this day and age. Is good journalism dead? Far from it. There is plenty of good, necessary journalism out there. All what you have to do is look in the right places.
One “right place” this week is Rolling Stone’s Feb. 7 issue. Even if you do not care about the cover story on Radiohead, three articles of good journalism caught my attention and I have recommended them to my students and colleagues alike. The first is The Fear Factory by Guy Lawson, the second is The New Nixon by Matt Taibbi and the third Blame Pedro by Tim Dickinson. Three articles worth much more than the cover price of $4.95.
So, yes it is getting harder to find journalism that is necessary, journalism that will have an impact on people’s lives, but it is still there. I am reminded by the biblical “parable of the weeds” where a man sowed good seed in the field, but at night an enemy came and sowed weed among the wheat. No doubt there is a lot of weed out there, but we can’t afford to give up now. There is still a lot of wheat. Tough it out and continue searching and recommending the necessity of journalism and thus journalism that matters. The three aforementioned articles, whether you agree or disagree with their points of view, are a prime example of journalism that matters and journalism that still cares to give a damn…

Here is a fact: In the UK more magazines are sold via single copy sales than subscriptions. Here is another fact: In the US of A more magazines are sold via subscriptions than single copy sales. Here is also one more fact: More magazines are now using split covers, dual covers, and even multiple covers of 3, 4 and in some cases 11 (Flaunt magazine)… So the question becomes when is a magazine cover a collector’s edition. Well the simple answer is never, especially if it says on the cover Collector’s Cover. Well, in the UK, Wallpaper magazine may have found a solution for the problem. Why not call the subscriber’s cover a limited edition cover: A cover that is designed specifically for the subscribers (above right). They are telling the truth because only a limited number of the issues are sold by subscriptions. As for the US of A, well our collector’s limited type covers are also aimed at the subscribers who represent the majority of the audience and not just a limited number. The Harper’s Bazaar cover below with limited typography is that of the subscribers (below left). The cover that is filled with cover lines is for the single copy sales. So, I wonder whether the newsstands’ copies of the American magazines should carry the limited edition cover phrase, since the newsstands’ sales are getting more and more limited by the day if not the minute. Let us give the Wal-Marts of this world a reason to sell more magazines on their newsstands. It is only logical that the American magazines’ single copy editions should be labeled limited editions, not only because they carry a different design, but also because they are priced 90% more than their siblings the subscribers’ copies of the same magazine.

It seems that no one knew that Wal-Mart was magazine heaven…when a magazine dies it continues to live on the books at Wal-Mart. Well the news today of Wal-Mart giving the boot to some 1,000 titles from its shelves has a lot of irony to it. Several magazines booted have been resting in peace for some time (no respect for the dead anymore) and several other magazines are big name titles that Wal-Mart uses the brand to sell other stuff under the brand’s name (think Better Homes & Gardens). Keith Kelly in today’s New York Post reported the story of the ousting of the magazines. Read Kelly’s entire column here. On the bright side of things an industry colleague from Penthouse magazine e-mailed me, “Well, PENTHOUSE wasn’t thrown out because it was never there in the first place, but this is not a good sign. It looks like a massive cut in rack space and cross merchandising is under way. Wait for the ripple effect!!!” Indeed.