I don't get it. I mean, it's a funny cartoon, playing off the news that a cat at a nursing home was always able to figure out which resident was next to die and it would spend time with them, presumably comforting them. (Then again, it's a cat, so it might have been awaiting dinner.)
But this is why I am so gobsmacked: This cartoon (first published here on August 3, 2007) is the single most-viewed item on this blog. It's also the single most-viewed image from my main web site, which hosts cartoonist Lyle Lahey's political cartoons (see it here).
Over the past couple years, tens of thousands of people have accessed this cartoon and viewed it. That makes it far and away the most popular cartoon or post or article I've ever posted on any of my web sites or blogs.
The Advocate, a gay news and features magazine that switched from semi-monthly frequency to monthly not long ago, has combined its June and July issues into a double issue. It's part of a trend, of course. Playboy is combining its July and August issues (with, reportedly, two centerfolds just to keep up the annual total). My own magazine is combining July and August issues, though without a centerfold. Others have already done so or will in the near term, as advertisers decide whether to return to their pages.
This is all part of the urgent need by publishers to cut costs. Printing and mailing each issue of a magazine is terrifically expensive, so merging two into one can help plug large budget holes, even if the "double issue" has more pages than a normal issue of the magazine. It'll be interesting to find out if newsstand magazines get overall higher per-issue sales figures, because the issue will be on the stands longer. I'm also curious whether all of the magazines that are combining issues and calling them "double issues" will actually have more pages in them than their typical issues. (Yes, my mag will be doing that, and the double Advocate is a satisfying 124 pages, including covers; we'll wait to see about Playboy.) Usually, there are extra pages, but almost never are they double the normal page count. (See a short note on the subject from FAT magazine.) It may not matter; readers don't always understand what a double issue is anyway.
In these days of Kate Moss-thin magazines, I'm looking forward to a few that are thicker than normal and filled with stuff that takes more than 10 minutes to read. But if this recession deepens, maybe we'll see triple issues in the not-too-distant future ...
Film industry billionaire David Geffen wants to buy The New York Times. Not a copy here or there; not subscribe so it’ll be delivered to his doorstep every morning. No, Geffen wants to buy The New York Times Company.
That may seem like an odd thing for a successful businessman to desire. With print news organizations suffering from a mix of economic crisis, the loss of their cash-cow classified advertising business, and some poor decision-making, we’ve already seen some major changes in the newspaper landscape in this country, and we can expect to see some more. The Tribune Company, owners of the Chicago Tribune and more recently (and controversially) of the Los Angeles Times, filed for bankruptcy after it was bought in a debt-laden deal by real estate billionaire Sam Zell. The San Francisco Chronicle reportedly just barely escaped being closed or sold for parts, and the Boston Globe is losing more than $80 million a year.
Huge debt overloads, depressed advertising revenue, and still largely unproven online revenue models have driven a number of papers to the brink of insolvency. Newspapers were traditionally very profitable ventures, and in turn they play crucial roles in informing, uncovering, entertaining, and occasionally provoking citizens. Is the for-profit life of papers over? Can citizens get the news and critical information they need from the new wave of journalism ventures?
One such is the brand new East Bay Citizen, a news blog created and just launched by Steven Tavares. It takes its inspiration from the idea that hyperlocal news is not covered well by the aging and money-losing giant news organizations. Tavares predicts the growth of many very localized news sources to fill in the gap.
But Times is a different animal, a local newspaper that has become a national and even international news brand. What can be done with it?
Geffen is planning to turn The New York Times into a nonprofit news organization, according to a report in Newsweek. The idea has been implemented elsewhere, such as the St. Petersburg Times in Florida, which has been run by a nonprofit for decades. Newsweek says that its sources tell it that Geffen "envisions himself as the next Nelson Poynter, the late proprietor of the St. Petersburg Times and a legend in journalistic circles for his fierce independence. The Florida newspaper ... is the widely recognized prototype of the nonprofit structure that is now generating growing interest in some quarters of an industry facing an existential crisis. Poynter, who died in 1978, willed his control to the nonprofit and highly influential Poynter Institute, viewing the mechanism as the optimal way of preserving the St. Petersburg Times' independence and local ownership. Today, under the complex ownership structure, the St. Petersburg Times operates in many respects like a for-profit newspaper."
Would it work for The New York Times? First of all, Geffen's not even assured of gaining control. He failed in a bid to buy a minority interest in the company. And The Financial Times' John Gapper urgesThe New York Times' Ochs-Sulzberger family, which controls ownership of the firm, not to sell until they've returned it to profitability. A May 16 profile in Financial Times suggests that Geffen's outlook and unlikely success just might make the Ochs-Sulzberger clan look kindly upon him.
But the effort is likely to be watched intently, including by northern Californians.
"Here in the Bay Area, a group led by investor Warren Hellman and attorney Bill Coblentz has been discussing how to preserve the Chronicle by changing its business model," Commonwealth Club President and CEO Dr. Gloria Duffy wrote in her May 2009 InSight column in The Commonwealth magazine. "Active consideration has been taking place in the philanthropic community about what donors can do to help preserve media capabilities to inform the public about important societal issues."
"I would make an appeal, to every philanthropy at all levels, and lay it all on the line," journalism legend Jim Lehrer told Duffy during an April 5, 2009, Commonwealth Club program in Lafayette. "This is important. And I would try to figure out a way to create a serious nonprofit major news-gathering organization for everybody. In other words, you would do the Walter Reed [Army Hospital] story, but you wouldn't do it just for the Washington Post -- anybody could run it." He went on to describe a news service that would be available to everybody at no cost. It would have to be constructed in a way that "it has the trust of everybody. But it would have to be serious; you'd have to be willing to break some china every once in a while. Or otherwise, forget it."
Perhaps Geffen and Lehrer will sit down together to discuss the future of news. In the meantime, you can watch the entire Lehrer-Duffy conversation here:
Phil Kim is clarifying earlier reports that he won a "summary judgement" in his -- let's just say "interesting" -- legal battle with Ray Ferry over the rights to the legendary Famous Monsters of Filmland title. On his web site, he writes that the judge handed out a "temporary injunction," not a summary judgement.
He adds that he, Ferry, and Connie Beane came up with their own mutual agreement to settle the matter. Kim writes that "at the request of all parties involved," he is clarifying the earlier report. Sounds like legal hell to me, but hey, a clarification's a clarification.
Good Housekeeping is going to increase the physical dimensions of its magazine (its trim size, in industry lingo) and increase its cover price, reports Folio:. Its January 2010 issue will be the first to sport a size of 8.25 x 10.875 inches (up from its current 7.875 x 10.5 inches). Cover price will increase 99 cents from $2.50 to $3.49 (still very cheap by magazine standards).
Bravo! I think one of the worst things magazines do is reduce, reduce, reduce in attempts to save money and cut costs. (ahem, Rolling Stone.) Magazines become thinner, smaller, print on cheaper paper, and include less content, and their costs still usually increase.
It's like the 1970s all over again. That was a decade in which everything got more expensive, smaller, and worse. Candy bars (okay, I was a child in the 1970s, so my perspective wasn't really on Rolling Stone and Good Housekeeping) got smaller and they cost more and there were fewer types of them.
Let's see innovation and growth instead. If I'm paying money for a magazine, I'll pay another dollar or two for one I want, if I get more for it. Since Playboy is reportedly considering raising prices, which I think is a good move, they should also consider increasing the trim size of the mag. After all, even many foreign editions of Playboy sport larger sizes (see the German edition, for example). Make the magazine stand out on the newsstands, and send the message that the magazine -- whatever magazine it is -- is confident enough in what it has to sell that it's willing to be bold, demand fair payment from customers, and escape from the path of ever-smaller, ever -thinner, ever-worse.
Wired and GQ magazines both were handsomely rewarded last week for being handsome at the Society of Publication Designers awards ceremony. Blogger Stephanie reports on MediaBistro's Unbeige blog that GQ took home 11 awards, Wired eight.
The Chicago Tribune follows up its report on upcoming major changes at Playboy magazine with some comments from PEI interim CEO/Chairman Jerome Kern: "I envision having a magazine. ... I don’t want a magazine that’s ... in intensive care. I want a magazine that stands for the brand [and] is out with the public, but isn't going to eat us alive. That's what we're trying to figure out." So that could be good; that could mean they're looking for a path to producing a quality magazine without busting the budget. My broken-record advice is to focus on great articles; the photos aren't going to sell long-time readers.
By the time you read this, PEI might have already appointed a permanent CEO. I'm figuring it'll be someone hispanic and female. Oh, wait, that's the Supreme Court justice...
And, just for the hell of it, former Partridge Family star Shirley Jones is being touted (by her husband) as a Playboy model. I don't makes them up; I just reports them.
The news that publisher Mavety Media Group is putting to sleep its entire line of gay skin mags has rocketed around the blogosphere. Tim1965 provides a rundown of the state of the genre publishing field.
Meanwhile, Back2Stonewall.com offers an elegy for Mavety's titles.
Made in Brazil thinks Conde Nast's Men's Vogue is a waste.
Big Dumb Object -- which I think is just a damn great title for a blog or a band -- has some thoughts on Wired mag, and a reader even mentions one of my favorite oldies: Future Life magazine.
It's not often that a magazine really impresses me with big name after big name in its pages. I think you'd have to go back to the old Playboys of the late 1960s, early 1970s when sitting U.S. Supreme Court justices would write articles in the same issues where you'd find also find contributions from the biggest authors, entertainers, U.S. senators, and even philosophers and clergy in the country. So let me put forth the latest magazine that really impressed me: The 30th anniversary issue of horror film bible Fangoria.
As I paged through the 100-page special issue, I kept getting surprised by each new name I saw, either someone interviewed or even the authors of articles. There's director Joe Dante writing a tribute to Italian film master Mario Bava. John Landis (John Landis!) writing an appreciation of Jamie Lee Curtis. Director Mick Garris does the honors for Stephen King, Roger Corman does Vincent Price, Virginia Madsen does Christopher Walken, and on and on and on. And then there are the people who were either interviewed about themselves or who wrote about themselves for the magazine: Bill Paxton, Udo Kier, Tobe Hooper, Peter Jackson, David Cronenberg, Bruce Campbell, and of course on and on. There are also personal anecdotes by or about the people who have built the magazine over the years, including former publisher Kerry O'Quinn, former editor Ed Naha (also a former editor of the long-defunct Future Life from the same publishing house), former editors Bob Martin and David McDonnell (who's also the longtime editor of Starlog), and others. Oh, heck, there's even an original cover painting by Clive Barker.
When I've written on this blog before about my impatience with magazines that don't appear to even be trying, this is the antidote. Fangoria ("Fango" to the faithful) has really flexed its muscles with this issue, showing why horror fans need to pay attention to it. That's a successful effort. Congrats -- on the anniversary issue and on the three decades.
Folio: has more background info on the expected cuts in circulation, frequency, and rate base at Playboy magazine. I'm pleased to see that, as I implored here yesterday, price increases are considered for part of the solution.
It still remains to be seen if the content of the magazine will be gutted or debased. One is seldom optimistic when it's being determined by corporate board types. But interim Chairman and CEO Jerome Kern comes across as a bit more positive in the Folio: article than he did in the Chicago Tribune article I quoted yesterday. Folio: quotes him saying, "Despite a first quarter that was weaker than last year … we believe the magazine's bottom line will improve in 2009 versus last year. This performance is still not acceptable, however, and we expect to continue making changes that will lead to further improvements in the magazine's financial results."
Can't say I am surprised. Can't say it'll make much difference in the publishing world. Can't say they'll be much missed, probably even by their regular readers. But Matthew Rettenmund blogs that Mavety Media Group canceled all of its gay magazine titles earlier today. And "gay magazine titles" here means magazines that were made up of nude pictures of men, erotic fiction, and porn ads ad nauseum. And that's it.
So the publishing world has lost such venerable titles as Mandate, Inches, Playguy, Honcho, and Torso. But before you sit shiva for these magazines, just think that they didn't really have anything to offer. As nothing more than porn mags, they really lacked anything with which to combat all of the free online porn out there. Rettenmund, who besides being a very readable blogger and the author of Boy Culture and Blind Items: A Novel is also a veteran of the Mavety publishing world. He provides interesting background both on life inside the Mavety publishing family (such as the Christian ad sales rep) and on the gay magazine industry. It's almost enough to make one sorry to see these magazines go ... but no. They were a disappointment for anyone who's interested in what magazines can be when they really try.
But now everyone can trade up and subscribe to Winq, so there's an upside.
