Maybe, Maybe Not

I've decided not to keep posting every possible twist in the is-it-for-sale-or-isn't-it saga of Playboy Enterprises. After Virgin owner Richard Branson was rumored (since he's British, he must have been rumoured) to be interested in buying the venerable media company, Virgin Group issued a statement saying it was not interested in the purchase. Just too many things going on to keep up with it here. And since everyone's denying everything, and since new companies are regularly mentioned as purchasers/investors, we probably won't know anything until Magna is announced as the winning bidder.

Special 200th Blog Post: '77 Movie Trailer

This is the 200th post I've written for this blog, so to celebrate, I'm embedding this video courtesy of the folks at Starlog.com. It's a trailer for an upcoming movie that looks like it's fun, inspiring, funny, touching -- and a reminder of the joys and pains of teenage science fiction geekhood.

You also might want to check out James Zahn's article providing background to the movie and a including a short Q&A with '77 creator Patrick Read Johnson.

Resurrected Magazines

Jason Fell blogs over at Folio: about magazines that died, only to be brought back to life. No, this resurrection story is not an update on my post yesterday about Christian magazines. It's about some mostly small magazines that scrounged up new financing and relaunched their print editions.

Longtime reader(s) of this blog know my favored candidate for resurrection, and my not-favored candidates. But none of that really matters. I'm sure we'll just see another %$@* revival of Radar: The Magazine the Marketplace Could not Kill.

Christianity Today Ends Four Publications

Christianity Today International, a nonprofit religious publisher based in the Chicago suburbs, announced the cancellation of four titles, Folio: reports.

Referring to a "perfect publishing storm," CTI's president and publisher Harold B. Smith announced the closure of Today’s Christian Woman, the Church Office Today newsletter, the Campus Life College Guide, and Glimpses. This follows the closure of two other CTI publications, Ignite Your Faith and Marriage Partnership, in January. Thirty people will be laid off as a result of the latest cancellations.

Smith had kind words for the people being laid off: "The impact on employees who are truly gifted — and the impact on the church as a whole — is a sobering reality for me and the entire CTI team that remains." That might be taken as required corporate-speak coming from most publishers, but I can attest from experience that it's heart-felt coming from CTI. (I had a one-year internship at CTI in the early 1990s, during which I learned that, first of all, I'm not an evangelical, but second, CTI treats its employees -- including interns -- better than any other company for which I've worked; it doesn't pay very well, but it's open, irenic in disagreements, professional in all dealings, encouraging to young staffers, and I think it deserves a lot of publishing respect even from folks who don't agree with its expressed faith.)

CTI was founded in 1956 by Billy Graham and is generally regarded as the leading publisher of mainstream evangelical Christianity in the United States. Its flagship magazine, Christianity Today, has a circulation of about 150,000. In his announcement, Smith noted the continuing strengths of Christianity Today and Leadership (a magazine for church leaders). "These iconic brands, along with the myriad web properties tied to them, will once again point the way for this ministry in the days, months, and years to come," he predicted.

Playboy for Sale? For $300 Million, Perhaps

The New York Post's magazine columnist Keith Kelly reports that the Playboy empire "is quietly being shopped around for $300 million," but there haven't yet been any takers. If Kelly's report (based on his industry sources) is true, then earlier suggestions that all that sale talk wasn't real was itself not real.

Playboy Enterprises Inc. interim Chair/CEO Jerome Kern hasn't, of course, contacted me to buy the company (an oversight, I'm sure) (though, come to think of it, he also didn't contact me about the search for a permanent replacement for former Chair/CEO Christie Hefner; hmmmm...), but there's got to be a buyer out there somewhere for this. (Remember all the interest in acquiring Penthouse from bankruptcy, and that company was a basket case? Playboy's not.) My guess is that the challenge will be finding a buyer or investor who can work the ownership and editorial needs of Hugh Hefner, who still owns most of the voting shares (and whom Kelly says recently lamented taking his company public in the 1970s as his biggest regret).

Update: Playboy spokesperson denies the company's being shopped around, according to Crain's Chicago Business. So are Keith Kelly's sources full of hot air or is Playboy trying to keep it ultra-quiet?

Samir Husni on Old and New Newsweek

Husni, aka "Mr. Magazine," gives some interesting perspective to the newly redesigned Newsweek magazine. In his blog, he compares the redesigned magazine with the original magazine back in 1933, noting similarities in sections, treatment of news, and other things.

BTW, his blog is a great source of expert opinions on the periodicals business. He's the very respected chair of the University of Mississippi's Journalism Department.

Portfolio Reborn Online

Following the death of Condé Nast Portfolio magazine, the company has shifted operations at the former mag's web site and will relaunch it from a separate division, the American City Business Journals. John Koblin reports from the New York Observer that there will be five editorial staffers on the site, at least initially, and the "Condé Nast" will disappear from the name.

The New Newsweek

The redesigned (and redefined?) Newsweek magazine debuted this week, and there are many welcome developments in it.

No longer a Time clone, the revamped magazine also avoids making the mistake of being an Economist clone. That had been one of my big worries when I heard that the magazine was going for a smaller audience and refocusing on being a thought leader, like The Economist. We've already got an Economist; we don't need two of them. Newsweek's traditional strength is as a trusted new source with high standards that gets the inside story. I think they've built on that strength in the redesign, for the most part.

There are a lot of columns -- a bit of overkill, in my opinion, but not fatal. (Let's not bicker about whether "overkill" isn't inherently "fatal," okay?) There are the expected voices of Fareed Zakaria (the man who's single-handedly dedicated to calmly reminding Americans that the rest of the world exists and that it's okay) and George Will (the man who's single-handedly dyspeptic). There's also a religion column that features public relations specialists telling the pope how to improve his street cred; it's a weak article that misses the point of organized religion, as does most religion reporting (and no, I'm not Catholic). More interesting to me was, opposite the religion column, a full-page advertisement from the United Methodist Church. That raises the important question: The Methodist Church has money?

I could have done without four pages devoted to inane chatter with American Idol contestants. Leave that to People or In Touch Weekly. But more welcome (and more useful and important) are a lengthy article on futurist Ray Kurtweil, a profile of a man with Asperger syndrome, and a report on an African warlord. Add to that the expected newsweekly content (a report on George W. Bush returning home after leaving office, an interview with President Barack Obama, in which we learn that he can do the Vulcan hand salute), and you get a magazine worth reading while you put your feet up and dig in.

The editors and publishers of Newsweek have understood the most important thing about revamping a magazine for the internet age: A print publication needs to be wordy; designed for readers, not lookers; provide in-depth material that people are unlikely to read online; be high-value, not cheapened low-value.

I used to do weekly counts on this blog of the numbers of pages in Time, Newsweek, Der Spiegel, and Focus, as a way of noting how few pages and how little substantive content American news magazines were delivering, compared to the thick and substantive German newsweeklies. The new Newsweek doesn't come in at a table-thumping 170-something pages, like Der Spiegel (which is actually a relatively thin issue of Der Spiegel), but at 96 pages (including covers), the May 25, 2009, Newsweek is worth a look.

The Latest Shopping Spree

My stack of partially read periodicals grows, weighted down by my latest trips to the bookstores. At this rate, reading my magazines will become a full-time occupation. Or maybe I just need to start reading thinner magazines ...

Monocle number 23: Everything from kindergarten design to how the Danish navy (they have one?) is busy fighting pirates. Plus a report on terrorist funding methods, some manga, and -- shocker! -- Switzerland has efficient railroads.

The Advocate June/July 2009: Academy Award-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black (Milk) is the coverboy for an issue featuring a profile of him. There's also an extended special section profiling gay leaders under the age of 40. Not to mention lots of travel and some food info, reports on gay pride celebrations around the world, and a look at American Idol's maybe-gay finalist.

Der Spiegel Geschichte: A stunningly beautiful history magazine ("geschichte" is German for "history"), this issue is entirely devoted to the story of the end of the Roman empire and the not-too-minor role played by the Germans in wrapping up that chapter of history. The magazine's written completely in German, but it's almost worth the cover price just for all of the great photos and illustrations for those who don't understand German. Or it's a good incentive to brush up on your high school foreign language. It's published by Der Spiegel, the giant German newsweekly that is a favorite of mine for its high quality, in-depth reports, and lack of cover stories on Britney Spears.

Analog July/August 2009: A special double issue (which is part of its normal print schedule -- Analog publishes two double issues each year -- not a recession-induced doubling of summer issues, about which I wrote earlier), featuring tons of short stories (by Barry B. Longyear, Daniel Hatch, etc.) I hope I have the time to actually read.

Timeto hit the books.

When Is a Magazine not a Magazine?

Setting aside for the moment all of the blowhard arguments about whether and how print magazines should adapt to the internet, the Wall Street Journal today has an interesting article about magazines that seem just a wee bit un-magaziney. For example: A magazine that comes in a sealed can each month, filled with various objects related to that month's topic. Or T-Post, a "multimedia magazine" that is really a t-shirt that bears a true story on the inside and an artist's interpretation of that story on the outside.

And so on. The Journal's story wasn't necessarily an exhortation for all print magazines to follow those, er, leaders. It was more a report on some fringe artists who are stretching the boundaries of what can be called a magazine.

I won't try to play semanticist here. You can call a Ford Thunderbird a magazine if you want and it won't bother me. And while none of the magazines profiled in the Journal article in the least bit interest me as a potential reader (because, frankly, there doesn't seem to be much to read; it's art, not publishing), I do appreciate their willingness to rethink what can be done on an established model.

In less grandiose ways, smart magazines have long done things that went beyond the expectations of their readers. Anyone remember science fiction magazine Starlog including a pull-out modular kit to build a 3-D structure? British magazines, such as music mag Mojo, throw in lots of extras with magazines, including CDs and books. With magazines I've bought on newsstands or received via subscriptions over the years, I've received trading cards, VHS cassettes (for a British science fiction program, so it won't work on my old VCR), DVDs, posters, maps, blueprints, model kits, little action figures, free copies of other magazines, and of course books and CDs.

In general, these things are included to boost newsstand sales or to keep subscribers loyal. That's not quite the same as reinventing or reimagining the very concept of a magazine. But hey, it enlivens the sometimes mundane cycle of producing or consuming a periodical.