Clinton Hits All the Right Notes in Berlin Wall Anniversary Speech

Great speech by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in Berlin for the commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the opening of the Berlin Wall. The UK newspaper Telegraph quotes her as saying, "We owe it to ourselves and to those who yearn for the same freedoms that are enjoyed and even taken for granted in Berlin today.... And we need to form an even stronger partnership to bring down the walls of the 21st century and to confront those who hide behind them: the suicide bombers, those who murder and maim girls whose only wish is to go to school.... In place of these new walls, we must renew the trans-Atlantic alliance as a cornerstone of a global architecture of co-operation." Best of all, she cited German Chancellor Angela Merkel's wonderful speech before a joint session of the U.S. Congress last week, which didn't get nearly as much attention as it deserved. A very good political move. (Also, check out the Time magazine cover story on Clinton.)

 For more on the Berlin Wall anniversary celebrations, see Deutsche Welle's comprehensive reporting. (See short DW German-language report.) For German-readers, Der Spiegel has a great report (as usual). And any subscribers to the German edition of Playboy should check out its report on Mikhail Gorbachov, the somewhat tragic figure of this whole enterprise.

And the always-disturbing Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is nostalgic for the former GDR. By now, we all know that UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was about 45 years behind the times with her bitter opposition to German reunification, but, as The New York Times reports, most of the naysayers were brought around. They realized that Germany in 1989 (or 2009) was not Germany of 1933 or 1945.

Happy anniversary.

The Party Line

A Little (Starlog) Background Music, Please

Ha. Just a day after I noted that the background on the Starlog.com web site was really a Fangoria background and not a Starlog background, well, there's a whole new background and even a bit of a web site redesign for the Starloggers. (I know, I know, it had nothing to do with what I wrote; after all, you don't redesign a commercial web site in less than 24 hours. But I like the coincidence.)

Comic-Con Founder Shel Dorf, RIP

Shel Dorf, who founded the giant Comic Con comics convention in San Diego nearly 40 years ago, has died at the age of 76, Chicago Tribune reports. The first convention was attended by only 300 people; today, the Comic-Cons attract well over 100,000 people a year. Also: Comic-Con's tribute to Dorf.

Media Roundup: Levi Johnston, redux; Creepy wait; Funding Bookstores; Oprah and Ellen

The latest from the worlds of media:

•  Esquire's at it again: Supposedly, there will be 3-D something-or-other on the cover of the December issue of the magazine. I haven't received my subscription copy yet, but I hope it helps sales. That said, when was the last time you read about or heard someone talk about an article they read in Esquire? When was the last time you heard or read about some gimmick in Esquire? I suspect, for most of us, the latter is more recent (and frequent) than the former.
  
• There's been lots of are-they-or-aren't-they and finger-pointing concerning the reported plans to cease publication of long-running gay news magazine The Advocate. Gay blog Towleroad recently reported about a blistering attack on the magazine written by a former Advocate editor, but today the blogger says that the editor didn't mean to be so, well, mean. What's up here? There have also been denials that the magazine's going to be canceled (and turned into a 32-page insert into sister mag Out). Is this just a case of people trying not to burn bridges they might need someday, or is the final decision (and the resulting fallout) not yet final after all?
• The Daily Beast carries an article this morning by Jacob Bernstein on how Playgirl magazine is being reinvented and relaunched one year after it ceased print publication and went online-only. The high-profile figure involved in this is, of course, Levi Johnston, the father of right-wing Republican "author" Sarah Palin's grandchild. As has been reported everywhere, Johnston is going to pose nude for Playgirl. Originally, it was assumed this was going to be an online exercise, but the Beast's Bernstein profiles the man who's helping to bring the magazine back as a print product, though it's not yet decided if it'll be bimonthly or quarterly.
• In one of my earlier roundups, I included a note about how much I liked the new comics-sized version of the (formerly magazine-sized) legendary horror comic Creepy. The first issue really was wonderful, capturing the spirit and the look of the iconic Warren magazine while still updating it and not be too imitative. The release of the second issue of this (sadly only quarterly) comic was announced for October. Now well into November, I checked publisher Dark Horse Comics' web site and see the release date has been set at November 25. Production delay? I don't know the reason. My desire is definitely to see this comic go monthly, but if they're having delays producing it on a quarterly schedule, monthly might not be in the offing.
• United Business Media reported earnings in line with expectations, but it is expected to close more magazines, on top of the 15 it closed earlier this year, reports Folio:. I hope the UBM folks I know are doing okay.
  
• No hard-hitting reporting here (okay, not that my Creepy item will win a Pulitzer), but I enjoyed this post by Starlog editor David McDonnell about feeling required to buy something when you enter a bookstore. As you can tell from my response on that page, I feel much the same, and I'm often pleased with what I end up buying. Other times, I head home and I'm already regretting what I paid for. Do I really need to own a copy of ESPN magazine? Why am I buying the newest issue of Der Spiegel when I haven't even started my previous issue? Alas. It keeps the economy moving! (A side note: Is anyone else bothered that the background of the Starlog web site features images from sister magazine Fangoria, but not Starlog? Mistake? Marketing decision for their recent Las Vegas convention? Who knows?)
• And, finally, one of my favorite TV personalities/comedians, Ellen Degeneres, appears on the December cover of Oprah Winfrey's O magazine. When two TV talk giants combine, you can expect a media publicity overdose, and sure enough, you're getting it. There are video segments covering the photo shoot, reader polls (there are two versions of the cover), and much hooplah.
  

My previous media roundup.

Not Much New in Latest Playboy Restructuring Plans

You won't find much new in the latest Folio: report on the restructuring at Playboy Enterprises. Yet again, the magazine is struggling. Yet again, the licensing division is quite profitable. Yet again, there are no specifics from CEO Scott Flanders about what type of "bolder steps" are needed to fix things at the flagship magazine.

Might I suggest quality? I'm a broken record. But still, they can't cut their way to a new business model at the magazine. They need to rethink what makes people read the magazine, and what will attract advertisers in a big way.

Nothing new.

100 New Magazines Launched in October? How Many Are Worth Keeping?

Mr. Magazine, aka Samir Husni, writes that he notes 100 new magazine titles were on the stands in the month of October. From the sampling posted on his blog, I'm amused by some of these magazines. Does the world really need Angels and Miracles? or Men Fetish? Couldn't those two titles have been combined into a new-age evangelical gay leather magazine? After all, it's all about niche marketing these days, isn't it?

Anyway, Herr Zeitschriften says there are two interesting things about this avalanche of launches: There are lots of one-shot magazines, and the cover prices are somewhat hefty (a rough average of $8.66). He makes a good case that one-shots are not going to save the magazine industry, but I'm not sure that's necessarily so. Some one-shots are indeed produced simply to soak up newsstand space, or to steal the thunder from a market niche rival. But other one-shots are test magazines, and if they're successful, they can go on to long, happy periodical lives. Starlog magazine started life as a one-shot dedicated to Star Trek; when the distributor wasn't interested, it was bulked up with other science fiction articles and it went on to be a science-fiction media behemoth for three decades and the flagship of an enterprising (forgive the term) magazine company. That same company relaunched Comics Scene in the mid-1980s as a one-shot; it did so well, it was launched as a quarterly (that became a bimonthly that grew to a nine-times-a-year frequency) and lasted something like eight years.

So I welcome a one-shot publication. If it's well done, and it doesn't look like a cheap knockoff (such as, oh, a hastily assembled "tribute" to a recently deceased celebrity, for example), then I think it actually boosts the claim of magazines as a viable market where ideas can be floated, launched, retooled, and enjoyed.

As far as the high cover prices, I'm actually all for that, as long as we get our money's worth. That's been a theme of this blog for some months, in fact. I've urged a number of publications to take that route, as part of a way of freeing themselves from the addiction to the fickle (and shackling) advertising dollar. If you have a weak editorial product and you're third in your market niche, then this strategy won't work. If you're already a second- or third-buy decision for your potential reader, then boosting your cover price from $6.50 to $8.99 is going to give those people several incentives not to purchase it. But if you're the market leader or a strong second in your niche, a higher price that comes with quality and quantity -- more pages, added investigative or long-form journalism, new columnists, a beautiful redesign -- then you might just save your magazine in the long run.

Think about it. Playboy is still charging just a couple dollars more an issue (by cover price) than it did a quarter century ago, and its subscription price is pretty much the same (and even less, in some of its offers). Yet it just cut its rate base by nearly 40 percent. If they know they're going to be losing readers, why not boost the cover price a couple dollars -- yes, a couple whole dollars -- and deliver more and better editorial in the process. Their readers, in particular, will reward them; Playboy has famously loyal readers.

Starlog could relaunch at $9.99 an issue and boost the page count from what it was in its late run (around 84, including covers). After all, the science fiction media magazine field is no longer dominated by American publishers selling $7.00 or $8.00 magazines. American publishers are barely visible in the SF media magazine field these days; it's dominated by UK publishers, whose magazines sell for $9.99 or even $11.99 -- and deliver a lot more pages and editorial content. Those are the new competition, and there's no need to try to undersell them. They've raised the bar, so compete with them head-on.

On Sunday, I bought two magazines, neither of which is a regular buy for me but instead an occasional buy: Empire and SFX magazines. The cover price of both of them was $9.99, and each had more than 145 pages of full-color content. Why did I buy them? Well, I wouldn't buy an American mainstream film magazine because I find them to be boring and unimaginatively written, but Empire has spirit and great reach into the industry and a vast array of content. As for SFX, I would buy an American competitor if there was one out there worth reading. But with Starlog out of print (along with fellow casualties such as Cinefantastique), I've finally given up looking for an SF magazine not published by Titan magazines or Future, both from the UK. (Hmm, maybe this is the magazine I should be trying to launch ....)

But the $9.99 cover price didn't scare me off, and neither magazine shows any sign of imminent death. So how long will it take for magazine publishers in the United States to stop trying to do cheap-and-weak magazines and start doing pricey-but-quality magazines? If Samir Husni's blog is any indication, we might be headed in that direction at long last.

The Return of Advertisers: December Magazines Plump Up

Blog Magazine comments on an Advertising Age report that the December issues of some leading titles are actually up in advertising pages, and others are down less than they were last year.

Glamour, for example, is up 5 percent over last year, says Advertising Age. Other titles, such as Wired, are dealing with smaller drops in advertising than they did last December.

The industry magazine adds some caution, however, quoting Carol Smith, senior VP and chief brand officer at Elle, thusly: "December was terrific .... I believe it's largely a result of extra year-end budget money -- that is, companies that spent conservatively throughout the year had some leftover dollars to invest."

We know we're not out of the woods yet, but we now know there is an end to the forest.

What Were You Doing When the Berlin Wall Fell?

What were you doing when the Berlin Wall fell 20 years ago and Germany zoomed toward reunification?

I saw that question asked (in slightly more boring wording) somewhere on the internet yesterday. But as Germany celebrates the momentous events of two decades ago and fetes the three big world leaders who made it happen -- West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, American President George "I'm not my son" Bush, and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev -- it does bring back memories of where I was, what I was doing, and even why newspapers are such a wonderful thing.

I was a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison at the time. I was also an editor of the independent daily student newspaper, the Badger Herald. A group of my fellow editors and friends from the Herald headed over to the main student union on campus (the one in a beautiful old building on the lake) for breakfast, and we each brough a different paper from somewhere else in the country. The scrambled eggs, bacon, and English muffins were delicious. And there we sat, at a big round table, eating breakfast and trading facts and comments we gleaned from the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, Milwaukee Journal, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Wisconsin State Journal, and probably a few other papers. Considering the high level of un-checked flotsam and jetsam that passes for breaking news and information on the internet, I don't think we'd have been better informed if the web had been in wide popularity back then.

Perhaps the best part of that memory is that I was with other people who understood what an exciting time in history that was. Everyone knew something big happened, that the world in which we'd grown up was changing significantly and -- thank god -- for the better. No one thought it was insignificant; nobody preferred to chat about whatever the Britnet Spears of the day was. We talked Cold War and the end of communism and people being handed copies of Der Spiegel (or was it Stern?) as they crossed the border into West Berlin and whether the Soviet Union itself would fall in our lifetimes.

It was a great time to realize that sometimes huge, life-changing events happen that are beyond our control but that are nonetheless good. And having a stack of that morning's daily papers gave us the fuel for wonder and argument and astonishment. A great time.

And the Latest in the Sucks-to-Be-You Series of Layoff Announcements: Time Warner Plans Big

Time Warner is announcing a $100 million charge it's prepared to take next week to cover the costs associated with a round of layoffs, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The Journal says the layoffs will affect about 6 percent of Time's total workforce, "a similar percentage to job cuts last year, as part of a broad reorganization of Time Inc. Time Warner took a charge of $119 million in the fourth quarter of 2008 to reflect severance and other costs from the restructuring." That seems like a lot of money, but when you figure that approximately 3 billion people are directly employed by the sprawling Time Warner colossus, it's probably a small amount then. It's good to have things in perspective.

Seriously, though, despite news that the recession officially ended in the July-to-September third quarter of 2009, the layoffs in the magazine media industry seem to be coming more frequently. And the announcements these days are coming from the big guys -- Time Warner, Forbes, Condé Nast, etc. I suspect that's because the smaller companies never staffed-up as much as they could have in the good times, and they pared costs more quickly as the bad times set in. The behemoths move slowly. But this seems like an odd time for the big guys to be slicing staff. If things are improving, they're going to be without experienced staff, and when content is what counts, they're going to be scrambling to provide high-quality content from freelancers and junior staffers. After all, magazine readership has risen -- yes, risen -- in the past decade, not fallen off a cliff, so this seems a bit odd. But maybe that's how MBAs think.