Magnifying the Magazine

On a report from Folio Magazine Online, titled "Folio: Show Keynote Roundup: Meredith Corp., Time Inc. Executives Weigh-In on State of the Industry," Meredith Corporation’s Editorial Director Mike Lafavore weighed in, admitting that, while he cannot properly predict the future of the magazine industry, he still believes the reader is in charge.

Stilll, Lafavore was willing to admit the danger that the Internet poses to the industry:

"On average, consumers spend about two and a half hours a day online,” he said, “and 34 minutes a day reading magazines. We’re not in the printing words on paper business anymore, we’re in the information business.”

None of this should come as a surprise. It tends to be common knowledge that Americans are going online more than, well... not. I do like his phrashing regarding the transition from the magazine world out of the "printing words on paper business." I just wonder what specific reactions the magazine world will take. If I were to guess, I would say readers will see a lot more content that is featured partially in the magazine's print edition and online. Other than that? Let's hope that they can figure out a way to remove the cardboard subscription teasers that fall out of the pages in droves. Just a thought.

Black and White and Red (Blue, green, yellow, orange and turquoise) all over...

This week, on AdAge, I stumbled onto a story about a new approach being taken by the once aesthetically dreary Wall Street Journal. Due to a drop in advertising revenue, the publication has decided to add color. The undertaking was no easy -- or cheap -- feat. Consider this quote from L. Gordon Crovitz regarding the transition:

"We project rapid growth in color demand in excess of current Journal capabilities," said L. Gordon Crovitz, exec VP, Dow Jones & Co., and publisher, The Wall Street Journal. The $30 million project will boost the color pages available to advertisers by 17% to 168 pages a week.

But what of the Journal's traditional content-heavy style of news delivery? Was the mere need to amp up ad revunue all it took to ditch one of the main traits of this paper? I know this is one thing I always recognized (and respected) about the paper. The Journal always seemed to be brimming from margin to margin with newsworthy content. Will an onslaught of housing ads and used car flyers make this paper blend in with all the others on the market?

Oprah gets to the bottom of things.

I'm trying to decide my take on this posting. I'm trying to give Oprah credit. She tackled a tough issue on her Oct. 12th showing. Still, when I looked through her site trying to find the archived episode, I had to sift through "Are you wearing the right bra?," "Answers to your embarassing health questions," and "Oprah and Gayle's road trip" before I could find her meatier topic from the week before. Needless to say, I got a bit side-tracked.
My original intent for visiting her site was to look over the notes from her episode in which she interviewed New York Times columnist Frank Rich. During his interview, Oprah grilled him on the media's role in Iraq. Observe a portion of the transcript:

In his book, Frank Rich asks, how did the media play a role in going to war in Iraq?

He responds: I think the media, after 9/11…we're human. Journalists are human. We were shocked and horrified and we rallied around our president. Ninety percent of the country supported the president after 9/11, and we had a human reaction. … Then it's 2002, into 2002, when they started rolling out this evidence of supposed weapons of mass destruction. We should have been more skeptical. It lasted too long for the media. …

Oprah: You say ironically that it was The Daily Show, Jon Stewart's fake news program on Comedy Central, that really consistently asked the tough questions. … So what does that tell us?

Frank: … I think people somehow knew they were being handed a line and were desperate to find some source of truth even if it came in the form of jokes and comedy, which it did.

So here's the deal. The war in Iraq. Fair and balanced coverage. The preference for comedic news. I give Oprah credit for highlighting some major media issues that are prevalent and need to be brought out to the open forum -- even if this open forum is just as content discussing bra fits and embarassing health matters just days later. But can one episode successfully tackle this massive media issues?

Not in MY memory...Should Journalists Fear Computer Seizures?

In an article I found on the Editor and Publisher Web site, a Pennsylvania court ruled in favor of The Intelligencer Journal after questions were brought up regarding the newspaper's access into county coroner reports. Here's what happened, according to the article;

Investigators for (Pennsylvania) Attorney General Tom Corbett seized four newsroom computers earlier this year. When the attorney general this summer obtained a subpoena to seize two more computers, the newspaper refused to abide by the order and was found in contempt, providing grounds for an appeal to the Supreme Court.

Here's how the case turned out:

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justices reached a ruling declaring "unduly intrusive" the government's attempt to seize the computers belonging to ...the Intelligencer Journal...

The opinion by Justice Thomas Saylor also noted the "potential chilling effect" taking reporters' computers could have on sources providing confidential information.

This article made me think of two questions that I am still pondering; First of all, were the reporters guilty of the unlawful access? If so, what does this have to say of the integrity of the paper to begin with. As a naive and young journalist, I'm going to do my best to hold the opinion that there was not unlawful conduct, and, if so (and even if not), there's certainly another question here....

Is the government beginning to consider the seizure of computers more often in cases of journalistic dispute? If so, this is certainly frightening given the vast amount of information that could be at mercy in the information age, compared to "the old days" when the fear was more of the seizure of singular documents, not entire databases.

One thing is for sure, and has remained a constant; as long as journalism continues to keep tabs on the legitimacy of government dealings, so will the government keep its watchful eye on the press.

Media Mongrels, Welcome to the World of Common Sense

Check out I Want Media this week. One of the headlines talks of the utter common sense that media leaders are exhibiting in the sprawling, all-encompassing internet age that is upon us. The article, Newspapers, Magazines Face Challenges In Internet Age, But Will Survive, tells of the epiphanies of the internet counterparts to popular media outlets, more specifically the realization that consumers don't want to pay for content they are used to getting for free.

Gerard Broussard, senior partner and director of media analytics at GroupM Interaction, is open about his confusion regarding the current state of internet media, and the capapbilities of advertising to cover the cost issues in the future.

"A lot of it is because it's free," Broussard said. "Ultimately, there are going to have to be pay models."

But, as the author of the article, David Goetzl, says,

"that could be a challenge, since the younger audiences some advertisers covet--those younger than 25 who like their content gratis--will one day make up the bulk of print consumers."


Let me just say that I enjoy the article so much because it presents a full-circle irony. The bigwigs of media conglomeration have gotten by so long by the mantra of
"profit motive, profit motive, profit motive" (and I won't even start on the sacrifice in content made as a result) while meanwhile, a gen-x subculture of media consumers was creating itself, based on the premise that information access should be free and open. Ah, irony.