From The Economist - full story here

Newspapers have escaped cataclysm by becoming leaner and more focused

Jun 10th 2010

“PRINT is going to live longer than people think,” asserts Mathias Döpfner, the boss of Axel Springer. Perhaps it will in central Europe. The publisher of Bild and Die Welt recently recorded the most profitable first quarter in its history. The profit margin on its German national newspapers is a startling 27%. The firm is expanding into Poland. If newspapers are in crisis, Mr Döpfner says, he likes crisis.

A year ago the mere survival of many newspapers seemed doubtful. It had become clear that the young, in particular, were getting much of their news online. Readers were flitting from story to story, rarely paying. Advertising too was moving online, but not to newspapers’ websites. Rather, it was being swallowed by search engines. The classified-ad market was ravaged by free listings websites such as Craigslist. A deep recession, received wisdom had it, would surely finish off newspapers, which have high fixed costs in the form of journalists and printing presses.

In some ways the pain proved even greater than analysts expected. The Newspaper Association of America reports that print and online advertising has fallen by 35% since the first quarter of 2008. Circulation has dropped alarmingly too. Yet almost all newspapers have survived, albeit with occasional help from the bankruptcy courts. American newspaper firms like McClatchy stayed mostly profitable even as revenues plunged (see chart). Some companies are now worth ten times as much as in the spring of 2009, although they remain far from pre-recession heights.

Steep cover-price rises have helped. But for the most part newspapers have cut their way out of crisis. In the past year McClatchy reduced payroll costs by 25%. Many publications closed bureaus and forced journalists to take unpaid leave. There have been clever adaptations, too. At Gannett, another American firm, 46 local titles now carry national and international news from USA Today, the firm’s national paper. A group of New Jersey newspapers jointly produces features and editorials. Bob Dickey, who runs Gannett’s community papers, says they have realised there is no need to work out what to say about the Gulf oil leak seven times.

Magazine advertising continues to be a vital ad medium, driving continuous business to companies with every ad they place. If you're going to buy magazine advertising, buy it the easy way. Some things to keep in mind when you're planning your next marketing campaign -

1. Magazine readership has grown over the past five years. (Source: MRI)
2. Average paid subscriptions reached nearly 300 million in 2009.
   (Source: MPA estimates based on ABC first and second half 2009 data)
3. 4 out of 5 adults read magazines. (Source: MRI)
4. Magazines deliver more ad impressions than TV or Web in half-hour period. (Source: McPheters & Company)
5. Magazine readership in the 18 to 34 segment is growing. (Source: MRI)
6. Since Facebook was founded, magazines gained more than one million young adult readers. (Source: MRI)
7. The average reader spends 43 minutes reading each issue. (Source: MRI)
8. Magazines are the No. 1 medium of engagement – across all dimensions measured. Simmons' Multi-Media Engagement Study find magazines continue to score significantly higher than TV or the Internet in ad receptivity and all of the other engagement dimensions, including "trustworthy" and "inspirational." (Source: Simmons Multi-Media Engagement Study)
9. Magazines and magazine ads garner the most attention: BIGresearch studies show that when consumers read magazines they are much less likely to engage with other media or to take part in non-media activities compared to the users of TV, radio or the Internet. (Source: BIGresearch Simultaneous Media Usage Study)
10. Magazines outperform other media in driving positive shifts in purchase consideration/intent. (Source: Dynamic Logic)

Maybe it is just because of where I live (Connecticut) but this is a little bit hard for me to believe, primarily because so many local TV stations do such a poor job reporting the news, it is hard to imagine that consumers of news have an appetite for more. Full story here

Broadcast TV Stations Outpaced Newspapers in Interactive Sales in 2009

NEW YORK, April 20, 2010 -- Web sales growth at broadcast TV stations outpaced newspapers in 2009 as broadcasters gained ground against their principal in-market competitors and posted an 8.7 percent share of all local online advertising, according to a report released today by the Television Bureau of Advertising at a press breakfast at Gannett Broadcasting’s offices in New York. Total online ad revenue for stations hit $1.1 billion last year, a 10% increase over the previous year, and the report forecast that revenues would grow another 21 percent in 2010.

Jack Poor, VP – strategic planning at TVB, said, “In a year where the IAB reported flat internet revenues, the performance of local TV stations is quite stunning.”

“Benchmarking: TV Web Sites Defy Gravity” examines revenue sources, growth rates, site traffic and other interactive issues and offers benchmarking for stations in large, medium and small markets. The research was conducted by Borrell Associates, which tracks interactive advertising for more than 4,400 local websites in the U.S. and Canada through voluntary submission of data. This is the fifth year Borrell has conducted the benchmarking report for TVB. This year’s report focuses on data submitted by 573 TV stations.

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

Despite the lukewarm reviews (see below), Wired's IPad app appears to be doing well:

Wired magazine sold 24,000 copies of its $4.99 app in the first 24 hours of its release, according to a tweet by John Abel, the mag’s NY bureau chief. With the 70 percent revenue split, that means that Conde Nast took away $83,832. It helps that Wired’s tech audience tends to be early adopters, so it remains to be seen if other Conde Nast titles will enjoy that same immediate sales jump.

Not surprising, the Wired app has already shot up to number one among the paid apps, way ahead of Vanity Fair, whose $4.99 app was released two weeks ago and is at number 90. The Wired app number is impressive, especially since Conde Nast has already counted about 63,000 paid app downloads across both the iPhone and iPad since November, all of which go toward its total circ, under the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

The publisher is planning a few additions to drive paid downloads further.  For example, unlike Conde Nast’s GQ app, there’s no automatic subscription notice for the Wired app yet, but execs told paidContent earlier this week that this feature is coming soon.

From paidcontent.org. Full story here

By John Herrman

I'm Still Waiting for a Great iPad Magazine

With the new Wired app, Conde Nast has built, unequivocally, the best magazine for the iPad. And yet I find myself asking, is this it? And will it cost this much?

I love Wired. I love magazines. But with the launch of the magazine app, Wired's much-previewed, profoundly hyped and unexpectedly controversial claim on the future of the magazine, the uneasiness, and the pit in my stomach that I felt during the first wave of iPad magazines—dominated by PopSci's ambitious re-imagining of the title, but comprised mostly of blatant halfassery—has only grown deeper.

Consider the facts:

• Wired's app is $5. I could buy a subscription to the magazine, for a year, for around $10. A year of Wired purchased from the App Store would cost $60. Conde is apparently working on a unified pricing scheme across print and digital for the New Yorker, so maybe it'll filter over to Wired? Who knows. I know it must have cost a ton to develop this thing, but readers don't care about that: They care about the words. These words cost too much. (Also, it's not like this magazine doesn't have ads. It's got a fucking ton of ads.)

• It's over 500MB. Don't get me wrong, the graphics are lovely, and the videos look great. But in the time it took me to download and install this app on my iPad, I was able to walk to a bodega, take out cash at an ATM, get a cup of coffee, come home, and send a few emails. Hell, I could have picked up a copy of Wired while I was out; I spotted a few copies in a stand next to the counter. (Last month's issue, but still.)

• It's still quite obviously a magazine. It may seem like a fine distinction, but with this app Wired hasn't reinvented the magazine, they've just reinvented Wired. Wired's graphic design is legendary, and I'd hate to see it sacrificed for the iPad app. But some of these magazine conventions don't really work—in this app, I never feel like I've truly tucked into an article, as I do with the print edition, or even an Instapaper bookmark. PopSci had this problem, too, and it's worrying that none of the mag world's stars have figured out what to do with it. (Interestingly, the best handling of long-form writing I've seen in an iPad app came from Vanity Fair, which is published by the same company as Wired.)

• The little things! For example, you can't copy and paste, or share an article. (Some of this is coming in the future, apparently.)

And then, well, there's the experience, the look, the feel—there's the app itself. We saw the demos before launch, in Wired Reader, and we gushed. Rightfully! Even watching them now, I'm impressed. But in my hand, it's... emotionally underwhelming? Visually overwhelming? I don't know. It doesn't really click—the layout and design are to my eye impeccable, and the interactive infographics are objectively impressive, but I find myself wishing for a web page, some flat text, or something.

But man, those early demos! Magazines were going to be interactive, y'know? There was much talk of the future, of revolution. And following the buzz, there was execution. This is that app, minus about, dunno, 15 experiential percent?

The video, the diagrams, the interactivity—it's all here, but in my hands, it doesn't capture the magic it had before, on that video, and more importantly, in our eager imaginations. Wired didn't break their promise; we just bought too far into it.

Wired's app is a broad step toward the ideal of an interactive app. Sure, it's a pain to swipe through all those ads—I don't know why digital mags should adhere to the same ad conventions as paper ones—and there's still a lot of tuning to be done, but I guess I see what they're going for, vaguely. It's attractive and flashy, impressive, but expensive. It's aspirational.

The alternative ideal for digital magazines is a stripped-back approach—either scanned PDFs, or near-bare OCR scans of the current issues, more or less like web content. These cost very little to make, so—and this is why I call it an ideal—publishers could give readers their entire archives, on tap, for almost nothing. But that's only attractive for a certain category of readerly, word-heavy magazines, and again, it's unclear how you'd sell that, either: Is it a bonus to the regular mag? A separate subscription?

These aren't new questions—they're the same ones that more cynical observers have been asking since the first eruptions of iPad hype around the press. It's just that with Wired, the uber mag app, they still haven't been answered. [Wired]