Mr. Magazine

As I get ready to debate my friend Bob Sacks at the Florida Magazine Association’s annual convention at the Great Floridian Hotel in Disney World, I made my usual newsstand stop to get my ammunition for the debate. Well, guess what? My eyes started to play tricks on me…magazine after magazine in the women and fashion section were screaming at me “Biggest Issue Ever.” I rubbed my eyes and took a second look. I asked myself how can this be true? I thought someone told me (actually a lot of someones) that print is dead. Well folks, guess what, print is not dead. Soon the prophets of doom and gloom will wake up from their nightmare. The four magazines and their covers above are there for you (and them) to see and attest to the power of print. Four different magazines with hundreds of pages all ready for your fingers to do the walking… no matter how many pages you can store on one e-paper, the feeling is not the same. Buying those magazines, for less than $20 total, gave me the complete satisfaction of having my cake and eating it too. My friend Bob, you know you can’t have your e-paper and eat it too…

My friend Bob Sacks, commented today on my “Bringing down the house of Reiman” blog. Bob comments also mentioned the next dual that the two of us will have at The Florida Magazine Association in Orlando next Thursday. His comments follow:

BoSacks Speaks Out: This is a right on target article by Samir Husni (read it here), that also gives me the opportunity to tell you that he and I are once again putting on the verbal boxing gloves this week, to debate your future. That is correct. It is a point-counterpoint presentation on the future of print and how it will affect the distribution channels of magazines! It is the Keynote Session titled – Paper vs. Pixel.

This is a terrific and ongoing debate/discussion/assessment of our industry and where we see it headed.

There are some industry trends and business models that Samir and I agree upon and some where you will find us in dramatically and diametrically opposite camps. Either way you take it, this slug fest has received nothing but rave reviews by all attendees across the nation. If you are in Florida, you should make every attempt to be there. We may be the ones on stage, but we are talking about you and your career.

We will be at the Disney’s Grand Floridian Hotel in Orlando this Thursday, August 23, at 4 PM at the Florida Magazine Association’s annual Conference.

To see the entire program click here, and to get your own copy of the fight poster click here.

In the age of mergers and acquisitions, promises are rarely kept and previous owners/founders usually live to see the day that their babies lose their DNA and the original parents end up disowning the products emotionally after they have disowned them financially.

Reader’s Digest Association is a good example. RDA bought Reiman Publications (Country, Taste of Home, etc.) in 2002. (RDA paid $760 million for Reiman Publications; click here to order the book that tells the whole story of the sale, the history of Reiman’s “no ad” approach and more.)

The changes in the company started from that point on, with redesigns and repositioning of several of the titles. That was attempted to force growth, but it didn’t work. Then Ripplewood Holdings bought RDA, taking over in early 2007, and began accelerating the changes even more.

Now, according to sources knowledgeable with what Ripplewood is doing, the process of de-branding of Reiman Publications has started…and started big time.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported on June 19 that Ripplewood renamed Reiman Publications. It’s now RDA Milwaukee. “Reiman as an entity is going to go away,” company President Barbara Newton told the paper shortly before she lost her job.
According to my sources the RDA release reflected the fact that “Reiman is not a known brand. The brand is in the magazine names.”

So how is Ripplewood changing the Reiman brand? Well let me count the ways:

1. No leadership in Greendale, home of Reiman Publications:
Ripplewood terminated Barb Newton, Reiman Publications president, after deciding they don’t need a President in Greendale anymore, that they can run the whole thing from New York! So they now have nearly 500 people nearly a thousand miles away without a direct “leader”. However, RDA spokesman William Alder told the Journal Sentinel that this change represents “a re-upping of the commitment to work with the folks there (in Greendale).”

2. The end of the “No Advertising” model:
Reiman Publications created one of the most successful magazine publishing models ever–one that was strictly dependent on circulation revenues. When RDA bought it, the company was extremely profitable. It published 13 national titles reaching more than 16 million paid subscribers…without a single advertisement.

Now, Ripplewood has decided to remove that unique aspect; it has started carrying advertising. The first ad brought in $60,000 for the Select Comfort Bed ad that’s included in the current issue of five of the company’s magazines–Country, Birds & Blooms, Backyard Living, Reminisce and Farm & Ranch Living.

One of my sources feels that $60,000 ad will cost the company more than $6 million in renewals. Why? Because the no-ad approach was—more than anything else–the one thing that made the magazines “different”.

It was by far the magazines’ most talked-about element over the years. Now, with the removal of that unique element, this source believes renewals will drop off so fast that what started out as a Ripple will end up being a title wave!

Amazingly, the Ripplewood folks don’t feel the “no advertising” approach is essential to their success. In fact, their reaction to this unique approach of publishing is “utter disbelief that Reiman Publications has had this huge circulation and hasn’t bothered to sell advertising up till now,” a reliable source told me.

3. Readers are no longer the number one customer:
According to my sources, the Reiman Publications’ empire that was built on reader input is now heading toward a complete U-turn. In fact, an internal e-mail from one of the RDA managers last winter stated, “I don’t care what the reader wants…this is what I want!”

That’s not far from reflecting the current feeling at Ripplewood. One of its managers recently stated, “We need to turn over this circulation base anyway; we need to attract a much younger, more vibrant audience.”

In short, “the magazines just haven’t been the same for more than a year. And now with the inclusion of ads, they’re really not going to be the same,” my source said.

Am I surprised? NO. Why not? Well, the top 14 people who were in charge of Reiman Publications are no longer employed at Reader’s Digest Association. So, since most of these top people have been replaced by RDA’s chosen people…didn’t RDA pay all that money to buy themselves?

A final thought, a wise person summed for me this whole process of mergers and acquisitions as follows:

“The bottom line is this: Small companies do things that benefit the customer. Corporations do things that benefit the stockholders. Small companies think long-term. Corporations think short-term, as in quarterly reports. Small companies really get to KNOW their customers to sustain growth. Corporations aren’t much interested in getting to know the customers and concentrate on maintaining growth through what they learned works for other audiences.”

Krishna Prasad, the journalist behind the Sans Serif blog from India interviewed me last week for his blog. What follows are his comments and the link to the video interview conducted in Washington, D.C. He wrote:

WASHINGTON, DC: In a journalism ocean full of gloom and impending doom—full of pornographic navel-gazing over its current state—Professor Samir Afif Husni comes across like an isle of hope that American publishers, investors, and editors either can’t see or are trying desperately to swim away from.

Not only does the chair of the department of journalism at the University of Mississippi believe that news of the death of newspapers is vastly exaggerated, the man trademarked as “Mr Magazine” believes—pinch yourself—that magazines will not only survive but thrive.

That optimism may seem natural for a “minority among the minorities”, a Presbyterian among the Lebanese, who seen far worse. But that optimism is also a reflection of the passion for a genre of journalism that has captivated America’s “leading magazine expert” since he was eight.

Dr Husni, who holds a doctorate in journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia and a master’s degree in journalism from the University of North Texas, has over 24,000 magazines in his private collection—and over 800 neckties in his wardrobe.

And when he is not in his office reading magazines, he is at the newsstands buying magazines, as he was in Washington, DC, while attending the annual conference of the Association of Educators in Journalism and Mass Communications (AEJMC) last week.

In this sans serif exclusive video, shot against the backdrop of the Washington Public Library, Dr Husni explains why magazines will always be around—and just what they will need to do so as not to be overwhelmed by the surging waters of pessimism that has very nearly consumed American newspapers.

To watch the video click the play key above and to read the Sans Serif blog click here.

Online magazine web sites at Hearst are helping the company’s print products, says Chuck Cordray VP and general manager at Hearst Magazines Digital Media. In an in-depth interview posted on PBS MediaShift blog site, writer and freelancer Mark Glaser interviewed Mr. Cordray on a variety of topics related to print and online. Two highlights from the blog-in-depth interview:

“The print subscribers who subscribe online are generally eight to 10 years younger on average than the ones who subscribe through the traditional methods. The online people are finding us sooner. And of the online subscribers, more than 90% of them are brand new to the Hearst subscription world — they’ve never subscribed to any of our magazines before. They look the same as our other subscribers but we’re getting them earlier.”

“The likelihood of an individual online visitor to subscribe [to a print magazine] has gone up more than 50 percent,” he said. “We have had sites that have doubled their propensity for an individual visitor to subscribe. This isn’t about cannibalization, it’s about brand experience. If you have a good experience in print, you might try out the mobile experience. If you have a good experience online, you might subscribe to the print publication. This is about brand reinforcement, not about cannibalization.”

To read the entire interview with Corday click here.

The second issue of Condé Nast Portfolio is out. No more four months waiting period for the next issue. Its glowing gold premiere issue has ushered a bright green second issue cashing in all the gold accolades that the first issue has received. I loved the first issue and I was glad it took few months for the second one to arrive. The articles were engaging and educating and they hooked me longer than any magazine I have ever read. As I get myself ready for issue two, I better do some speed reading since the issues will arrive monthly now. I do not believe there is another new magazine that has been under the microscope more than Condé Nast Portfolio. Two simple reasons maybe the cause: it is the only major launch this year and the money Condé Nast is spending on the title is a major source of envy. The prophets of doom and gloom, and there is no shortage of them in our industry, prophesied the demise of the newborn even before they read the magazine or saw the issue. It seems that in the current climate of magazine publishing nobody dares to write about success. Failure and magazine foldings fill our pages, websites and blogs. A host of new magazines from Harris Publications, Highlights for Children, National Geographic Society and others have arrived to the market place this year with no, or little, kudos from the those prophets of doom and gloom. Condé Nast Portfolio is a different type of a business magazine, one that follows in the footsteps of the original Fortune magazine that Henry Luce started in 1930. I hope people will be able, for a change, to see the tree from the forest. You can sell magazines once based on the cover, but it takes good solid content to sell them twice. I for one is planning on buying Condé Nast Portfolio not once or twice but for years to come, if and only if the first two issues are nothing but a sample of things to come. I have no doubt they are. Pick some green using your own green. The return on your investment is going to be worth it in gold.

The Audit Bureau of Circulation numbers for the last six month are out and they provide yet another reason why wholesalers should reconsider their decision on how they want to handle the low-priced magazines they distribute or plan not to distribute. The three high-priced celebrity weeklies all witnessed a decline in single copy sales. People down 5.6%, Us Weekly down 3.4% and Star down 3.5%. On the other hand the so called low-priced celebrity weeklies witnessed yet another surge in single copy sales. OK weekly, that prides itself right on the cover that it is 50 cents less than Us Weekly, increased its single copy sales for the last six months period by 25.3%, In Touch up 10.6% and Life & Style up 6.8%.
Needless to say that there is an audience, big audience for single copy sales for the low-priced magazines; an audience that is responsible for bringing people to the check out counters to buy those magazines. I wonder if the wholesalers decided to stop distributing those titles what would replace them on the check out counters? Candy bars or chewing gum? Another sad day in the magazine distribution world.

The first anniversary issue of Good magazine is out and it is a shame that this magazine is only published six times a year. When Good was in its planning stages, I was doubtful of the idea. When it came out they made a believer out of me. It is such a captivating magazine and from the first issue I fell in love. Now issue six is out and here are the three main reasons I love this magazine:

Reason Number One: I love the “journalism that matters” in Good. Whether it is a feature story or a one page comic strip, content matters to this magazine. Below are two examples of such content. The Mormons Are Coming and Tell Me More.

Reason Number Two: I love the info-graphic. They are by far one of the best in the industry. And by best I do not just mean design wise. Talk about delivering more information in less time and less space. Well researched and well executed. The Girl Power and Are You Done In There? are but two examples.

Reason Number Three: I love the design of the magazine. Typography and photography working together to bring the best VIP factor: the visual impact of print. Anyone that doubts the survivability of print need to take a look at this magazine.

So what are you still waiting, run to the nearest newsstand and pick up a copy of Good. If it is not in your area check them on the web here. Keep in mind that Good “is for people who give a damn.”

I am spending this week in Washington, D.C. attending the annual convention of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. On Wed. I was part of a panel on convergence and the future of newspapers in this country. Other panelists included folks from washingtonpost.com, The New York Times and the Honolulu Advertiser. A lot of talk took place on the fact that journalism on the net contains more errors and more mistakes than its counter-part in print. The need to speed to publish was mentioned as one reason and the young age of the medium was another reason. The scary part, at least to me, is that statement which I have now heard for the third time at the last three different conventions I have attended around the country. All what journalists need to do to go online is to have a “good enough” product. I heard the same message preached over and over by all kind of experts who are trying to help newspapers transition themselves from print to the web. For some reason my heart aches every time I hear the phrase “good enough.” What type of future are we heading towards if we are going to settle for “good enough?” I was so thankful to hear Bill Moyers, the convention’s keynote speaker last night, reminding people that “journalism matters.” He repeated it time after time during his address and recited name after name of journalists who were killed in the midst of doing their job of “journalism that matters.” Journalism that matters cannot be journalism that is “good enough.” Please spread the word. “Journalism Matters.” Thank you Mr. Moyers for being the voice of hope and wisdom in the midst of the jungle of “good enough journalism.” Thank you for reminding us that “journalism matters.”