Magazine Renewal: Fortune vs. Playgirl

Two magazines (among others, I know) have had their revamped editions on the stands this season, and they couldn't be more different -- not just in content, which you'd expect, but in quality, ambition, and integrity.

First, Time, Inc., has released the redesigned Fortune magazine, an old legend in the magazine industry. The redesign is clean and smart. My personal preference would be for the previous iteration of Fortune's design (it had more of an executive look to it), but nonetheless the new design isn't bad. This is still a magazine of content and quality.

Second, there's the release of the new edition of Playgirl, the one featuring Levi Johnston, and it's a huge letdown. Let's be more clear: This is a waste of paper. Not because of the nudity; hey, I'm gay, so print all the naked guys you want. But Playgirl is almost nothing but nude layouts. People buy magazines to read something, so why not a few more actual words of text? This iteration of Playgirl is, simply and brutally, crap crap crap, and the people who put it out are clearly out of their league in the magazine world.

Two new/old magazines. Couldn't be more different.

More Layoffs: It's a Bad Week to Be Working at Forbes

The New York Times reports this morning that business magazine Forbes is going through another round of layoffs. This follows about 100 people who were laid off by the company in the past year. Some, a spokesperson told the paper, were laid off yesterday, but layoffs will continue throughout the week. (Note to HR people: Don't stretch out layoffs. Do them in one batch on one day. Otherwise, people spend the entire week worrying about being laid off. Kills productivity and morale.)

The culprit is advertising – not circulation, which reportedly has held steady even during this deep recession and despite the supposed uber-supremacy of digital media.

So it's a bad week to be working at Forbes -- though I suppose next week will be a good week to be working at Forbes, since that will mean you kept your job. But on an even wider scale, it's been a bad year to be working at business magazines, with Portfolio closing,  BusinessWeek downsizing and being sold, and Fortune reducing frequency.

Does Forbes part-owner Bono know about this?

Now Fortune Magazine Makes Big Cuts, Reduces Frequency by 25 Percent

Business magazine giant Fortune has joined the club of publications making swingeing reductions in output. The Wall Street Journal reports that the magazine will produce 18 issues next year, down from 25.

Nothing new here, at least in the sense that issue reductions have been made at The Advocate, Esquire, Playboy, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and practically everywhere else. I do, however, hope these reductions are only temperary. I suspect, nonetheless, that many of them will be permanent.

For anyone who shares my desires, there are both troubling and promising words in these comments in the WSJ article:

John Huey, a former Fortune editor who now oversees editorial operations at many Time Inc. magazines, said consumers didn't care how often Fortune is published, and that many of them didn't even know Fortune comes out every other week. Executives decided it was more important for Fortune to be more visible on the Web, where the magazine may add staffers. The magazine itself will become more of a lush-looking premium product. Fortune plans to increase the minimum number of editorial pages in each issue. "We're going to be putting out fewer magazines, but we're going to be investing in the print product we have to make them better magazines," Mr. Huey said.

Consumers don't care how often the magazine is published? If that's the case, your readers don't like your product very much. I, personally, hate to see my favorite periodicals come out less often. I want more of the magazines I read, not less.

On the good side, Huey's comments echo what's said elsewhere in the WSJ article, specifically that the magazine will increase its emphasis on quality long-form journalism. Great move. That's what will keep people coming back to even a less-frequent magazine, and it's a far better move to make than what many (most?) magazines have done to respond to competition from the internet, which is to shorten articles, make them "hipper," and dumb-down the content. Score one more point for Bob Guccione Jr.

I guess in today's marketplace (or, more accurately, with today's MBAs who lead many media organizations), we aren't going to get a publication that gives us more issues and more pages and more quality. We only get one, not all.

Changing Logos #2: Fortune

Fortune magazine has changed its logo many times, and the changes have been complete -- no simple evolution here. Not all of the logos are represented here, such as the one-letter-per-box version that I remember when I was in high school in the 1980s. Anyway, their readers are billionaires and I'm not, so what do I know?