Mr. Magazine

Those of you who have been following my blog may remember that I have written more than once about Redbook magazine and the way it changes the word SEX to LOVE on the subscribers’ editions. Click here to read that blog.

Well, today Stacy Morrison, Redbook’s editor-in-chief responded to my blog with the following:

Hey there, Mr. Magazine. I wish I had seen this when you first posted it. I must have not read my Bloglines very closely that week.

In any case, I wanted to assure you that the switch between sex and love is a service for my at-home readers, who are constantly requesting that we “soften” our sex coverage on our covers because many of our readers have teenagers and other such types at home whom they don’t want perusing our sex content. Of course, I personally think that teenagers *should* peruse our sex content, but as an editor and a journalist and a person, I definitely know that my job is working for my readers and channeling their lives and desires, not telling them what those lives and desires should look like. So yeah, I guess that’s a marketing ploy, doing what my customers request.

We are very honest with our lives at Redbook, which is why our recent updates to the magazine have driven three record-breaking years in a row for the title. You’re not quite our target audience—that’s young women who are reinventing what it looks like to be a grown-up, aged 27 to 47—but we are flattered just the same.

Stacy Morrison

Editor in Chief
Redbook and redbookmag.com

Thank you Stacy for taking the time to respond and all the best. Samir

In an interview with the website ClickZ Howard Polskin, MPA’s (Magazine Publishers of America) senior vice president/communications & events told Matthew Nelson “[Magazines] are using whatever platform they can to touch their–and I’m not going to use the word readers–to touch their users 24-7,” he said. “The people that used to consume magazine content used to be readers and now there is the subtle shift that it’s more important to call them users.” Magazine users and not readers seem to be the new catch phrase of the MPA. Well, in my humble opinion, the MPA is once again dead wrong in its approach to the magazine industry that it serves. Magazine publishers should first and above all be magazine-centric, turning readers into customers. Magazines can never and should never be the 24/7 vehicle Mr. Polskin is advocating. They have a role to play and that role can never be like some other form of media. Magazines in the 60s tried to compete with television and we all know the rest of the story.

We ought to be proud of our magazine readers. We have to work with them to become magazine customers who will come back to the magazine because the content we offer is not available in any other place. Do not misunderstand me, there is nothing wrong with extending our brands and being available on the net and on television. However, if we focus on the lifeboats and let the ship sink, I am sure you will agree that it is not such a good proposal.

Magazines ought to focus on offering their readers unique content that is relevant to today’s marketplace without having to go and imitate what others are doing in other media. Focus on the content that serves the readers and those readers will become customers. Will they become Users? Only if by Users we mean addicts to the great content of the magazine.

In an article published in The New York Times on May 9, 2005 Janice Min, the editor in chief of US Weekly, justified the fact that her magazine paid $500,000 for the pictures of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt on the beach together by telling the Times’ reporter Lia Miller “that every magazine was still looking for that one special photograph. ‘Usually the big-ticket photos involve a pregnancy, a wedding, a breakup or a hook-up.'” Well, last week OK Weekly landed such a picture of the pregnant Jamie Lynn Spears. Us Weekly, in this week’s issue, slams Jamie Lynn’s mother Lynne Spears for selling the story to OK Weekly. US Weekly goes on to write, “Lynne soon sought out OK! magazine, a struggling British-owned tabloid that pays generously for celeb interviews…” OK Weekly is now a struggling tabloid! OK Weekly, in fact has been growing in circulation in the United States and have published several editions world-wide. I, for one, do not agree with the concept of anyone been paid to be interviewed, but for the kettle (US Weekly) to call the pot (OK Weekly) black strikes me as funny to say the least. If Lynne Spears made the same offer to US Weekly, those same pictures would have appeared on the cover of US Weekly, and no other magazine would have attacked the rest of the magazines because they did not win the bidding. It is amazing what passes today as journalism; journalism with no profound impact on the life of any of the readers. Shame on all of us and on all of those who try to push this type of media as journalism.

The Wall Street Journal’s Numbers Guy tackles this issue on his blog and provides some explanations for all the numbers floating around, including my own numbers. The Numbers Guy Carl Bialik starts his blog stating, “If you want to know how many magazines debuted in the U.S. this year, you have to start by answering the question: What is a magazine launch?” Click here to read his entire blog.

… And the baby here refers to both OK magazine and Britney Spears’ little sister Jamie Lynn. OK and Jamie Lynn were both born with silver spoons in their mouths and they were both in the shadows of other front runners, siblings or no siblings. With the latest “pregnancy” news both Jamie Lynn Spears and OK magazine landed a prime spot in the world of celebrity gossip. The pregnant teenager landed on the cover of OK magazine and together with her mom gave the magazine an exclusive interview. The rest of the media sadly jumped on the band wagon and spent hours reporting about the pregnancy and the exclusivity of the interview in OK magazine. What some may consider a great coup for OK magazine, I feel it is a sad day for a country where teen-age pregnancy has always been a problem. Rather than addressing the problem and the role and responsibilities of the parents, we are now celebrating kid pregnancies and referring to the pregnant teen as “the brave teenager.” Call me old-fashioned, but this is where I draw the line.

By the way, just in case you did not catch the irony behind the headline of this blog entry, “You’ve come a long way baby…” Here’s a brief explanation, it was the headline for an ad for a brand of cigarettes aimed at women. Well, now you know the rest of that story… need I say more!

“So, how is the magazine business?” a friend whom I have not seen for more than a year asked me. What do you tell someone who has not been on the scene for more than a year?“ Great! It has been great,” was my answer and I proceeded to tell him, in a true magazine fashion, what I consider as my 7 great magazine moments of 2007:

1. The launch of Condé Nast Portfolio: It single handedly brought back the faith in new magazine launches from a major media company who still considers magazine business as its core business. Thank you S. I. Newhouse Jr., David Carey and Joanne Lipman.

2. The reinvention of Time magazine: The weekly has gone through a major reinvention bringing relevance and intelligence to its contents and readers. The new Time set the stage for changes at both Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report. Thank you Richard Stengel and Edward McCarrick.

3. The creation of a new genre of man’s magazines: The launch of Outside’s Go and Men’s Health Living magazines created a new genre of man’s magazines that cater to non-woman related issues in a man’s life. Both magazines are catering to a new niche that has gone unfulfilled for years: travel that meets the needs of the active man and interior design and home that meets the needs of the affluent man. Thank you Larry Burke and David Zinczenko.

4. Giving a new meaning to Garden and Gun: Through the launch of the new regional magazine Garden & Gun the two terms bestowed a new meaning on both of the words. One no longer thinks gardening or guns when they hear the two words, rather they think “21st Century Southern America.” Thank you Rebecca Darwin and welcome Sid Evans.

5. The Week is not for sale: With the sale of all the U.S. properties, Dennis Publishing did not include The Week on its “For sale” announcement. Felix Dennis once told me that he is a poor consumer of popular media. “I watch no television, see no movies and couldn’t, quite frankly, care less about magazines, with the exception of The Week…”Thank you Felix Dennis.

6. The Mook, a new word in the magazine world: Monocle magazine launched in London and few other international cities at the same time, added a new word to the English language and gave a brand new meaning and respect to the world of book-a-zines: The Mook. A magazine that looks and feels like a book, but reads as a magazine with all new content and non of the recycled content book-a-zines accustomed us to see. Thank you Tyler Brulé.

7. The launch of Everywhere and the re-launch of JPG: Both magazines, published by 8020 Publishing, show that a partnership can exist between both technologies: paper and pixels. Just give to paper what is paper’s and to pixels what is pixels’. Thank you Paul Cloutier.

So here you have it, 7 great moments in the life of the magazine industry in 2007.I’m looking forward to a great 2008.All the best to all, and here’s for a great new year.