From MINOnline

Domino Tops ‘Most Missed’ Magazine Poll

Steve Smith

Well, you guys really, really miss your Domino magazine. In last week’s wildly popular minonline poll that asked “Which Magazine Do You Miss the Most?” the style and décor book that we last saw over a year ago topped the voting. With 1,238 votes counted across 10 choices, a remarkable third (33%) most missed their Domino.

“I still thumb through old, dog-eared copies,” says one comment in the poll. And she is not alone among collectors of the book. “Every time I look at my old issues I can't believe there won't be any more coming in the mail,” says one longing reader. “Bring back Domino,” say another. We contacted publisher Condé Nast about the prospects of reviving their defunct and apparently beloved title, and they declined to comment.

But former Domino editor-in-chief Deborah Needleman did tell minonline, “So nice if you have to be gone, not to be forgotten also!” And former publisher Beth Brenner, now at Traditional Home, tells us, “Not a day passes when I don’t encounter a former Domino reader lamenting its passing — literally, not a day. No other media property has taken its place in their hearts — or their lives — so it is touching, but not surprising, that we would be the most missed.”

By the way, for fans who want to wax nostalgic, Domino’s Facebook page is still available. The most recent post was titled “farewell” on Jan. 30, 2009. It garnered 231 comments.

Our second most-missed title, Spy magazine (28.7%) brought forth some of the most enthusiastic commentary. One of the satire magazine’s biggest fans was philosophical about the book, however. “I kept all my 1986-89 copies of Spy; more than twenty years on. The sheer volume of ideas and creativity is astounding. Perhaps even more than most defunct magazines, though, Spy had a time and place — it withered and died for a reason, and a revival would likely just be sad.”

Gourmet, Life and Metropolitan Home rounded out the top five most missed magazines. But our comments board was filled with others we didn’t nominate. The brainy Lingua Franca was mentioned more than once as was Sassy. Budget Living, Grand Street, I.D. and Cookie also got write-ins.

Actually in lieu of bringing back any or all of these magazines, we wonder if their publishers would be willing to put the back catalog into Google’s Books project where scores of new and old titles are available for searching and viewing. The full polls results are below.


Which Magazine Do You Miss Most

A former staff writer, Dennis Romero, gives a first-person account of what is wrong with Entrepreneur Magazine, focusing primarily on the editorial and personnel issues dogging the business magazine. The author's account seems pretty believable to me but it is fair to point out that there are oftentimes two sides to stories like this. At a minimum, Romero's blog offers some insight into some of the things I always wonder about with magazines like Entrepreneur, such as: how much do they cater the editorial in an effort to attract specific advertisers. (Romero's answer: quite a bit)

Full blog here.

Here is a taste:

"So, essentially, Entrepreneur is hostile to journalism because it costs money and requires tolerance of diverse, smart, and educated people. At the same time, there’s a sleight of hand: Entrepreneur’s owners crave those advertisers that crave educated, savvy and demanding readers. How they connect the dots between dumbed-down “take-away” stories for people who haven’t the slightest notion of business, and a moneyed advertising base keen on the educated and affluent, is pure salesmanship."

I am now convinced that the root of the problem with most print publications is that they are owned by companies that really don't care, or understand enough, to try to do anything to solve the problems they have to address to remain viable business enterprises. 

Yesterday, Business Week, owned by McGraw-Hill, announced it was seeking a buyer.  The article in the Wall Street Journal points out how advertising revenue has fallen consistently for the past eight years, with 2009 shaping up to be a particularly disastrous year. "Like many news magazines, BusinessWeek has struggled as car companies and other big marketers have curtailed advertising. Weekly circulation of 936,000 has held steady from a decade ago, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, but advertising has declined for seven of the last eight years."

So it isn't as though Business Week did not see this coming. I think it is fair to assume that if the average person owned Business Week, they would have been concerned 8 years ago about the direction of the business and that would have meant trying to do something about it. But Business Week really did nothing. I know, they redesigned their pages and they are really pretty now. And I know that they probably did enormous campaigns to keep circulation at its 2000 level.

But when it comes down to what really matters, advertising revenue - they did nothing other than make more phone calls and ask people if they wanted to buy an ad.

The way you buy ads today from Business Week is the same way that you bought  them 30 years ago. You call up, you hope that you get the right salesperson on the phone because only the salesperson who handles your "territory" can give you prices and then you make your decision and then call back to place the order. Basically, they are the equivalent of travel agents in the age of Expedia, Travelocity and PriceLine. As a Business Week advertiser you are supposed to feel honored that they will take your ad. Forget about the fact that the same advertisers can use Google, Yahoo or MSN, place ads whenever they want and see real time data on response.

And that is really their mortal sin, Business Week has absolutely no regard for the success or failure of your ad. They want you (the advertiser) to believe that results are entirely your problem. As long as you get the creative to them on time and pay the bill, they are done with you, until the time comes for them to try to get you to spend more money.It doesn't have to be that way, just because ads appear in print.

I know this is self-serving - since this is exactly the problem that Mediabids.com solves. (We have been buying and selling print ad space using a marketplace system for more than 10 years.) But I am not even saying that Business Week had to use Mediabids and was stupid not to (ok, maybe I would like to say that). What is particularly troubling is that they didn't do anything. They made no effort to make ad buying easier and to show advertisers that ads in Business Week actually work.

If they could not continue to be successful doing, essentially, exactly what they had always done, they just didn't want to play anymore. Which is not how anyone who truly cares about the business they own, or work for, behaves.

No doubt business magazines have pressures today that did not exist 10 years ago. No doubt advertising is harder to come by. But is there really so little creativity in the ranks of people who run Business Week that they could not come up with any solutions to the real problems in the last 8 years? Maybe they would not have worked and they would have been in this situation anyway but if it were your business wouldn't you have tried something? Anything?

A full run down on magazine advertising closings and launches in the second quarter of 2009, by MediaFinder, reveals 77 magazines have launched and 184 have stopped printing.

Not that surprisingly: "Regional Interest magazines, which traditionally comprise a large percentage of new and closing magazines, took a big nosedive in the first half of 2009, with 27 titles folding, including Denver Living and Florida Inside Out. Other magazine categories that declined in the first half of 2009 include construction, with 18 ceased titles; lifestyle with 14 ceased titles and business with 10 ceased titles."

 Somewhat surprisingly: "At the same time as losing a significant number of titles, the regional interest category also saw the most new launches, with 12 new titles, including 360 West and Somerville Scout. Health & fitness had the second-highest number of new titles (11), including Scottsdale Health and SFA Fitness. Other popular magazine categories for new launches were family, food and home, with nine titles each in the first half of 2009."

Full story here.