Oh, Spare Us the Justification

Sigh. Almost every time a newspaper or magazine does a story on Playboy and/or its editor/founder Hugh Hefner, the writer seems to feel required (by snarky editors? by their own internal anxiety about sexuality? by something else?) to play judge and jury about his lifestyle, and also to issue their half-baked verdicts on his company's future.
So was the case with a new article on Hefner by the Houston Chronicle's Louis B. Parks. Before we can get to the heart of his interview with the 82-year-old editor, we're treated to a smackdown: "Hugh Hefner's once-mighty empire is battered and struggling for relevance. His longtime stature as America's premier self-made hedonist borders on self-inflicted caricature. Playboy magazine and the Playboy brand no longer boast the great wealth, influence and cachet they once enjoyed."
We get more of the same later on, with Parks first telling us that Hefner and Playboy have lost their relevance, then telling us (without apparent acknowledgment of the contradiction) about their continued relevance. A new Playboy Club, a hit TV reality series -- and he didn't even mention a flourishing international publishing empire, a flourishing international brand licensing operation, and much more.
Yes, we know the circulation has dropped from its unsustainable highs in the 1970s. Yes, we know advertisers have been scarce. Yes, we know many people disapprove of Hefner's ideas and his lifestyle.
But would it kill the writers to note the decline of most other big, mainstream magazines? How many times has Life magazine died, been reborn, been re-died, and been reborn only to die again? Didn't Newsweek just lop off 1 million (!) in circulation from its rate base? And didn't the Reagan administration under that noted intellectual, Edwin Meese, wage a well-publicized campaign with the Religious Right to go after Playboy's advertisers and distributors?
It doesn't mean that the writer has to agree with Hefner or like his magazine and media empire. But putting things into context would increase the reader's faith in the writer's understanding of the topic and would deliver an article that has actual worth.

Ads? We Don't Need No Stinking Ads

Oh, to only lose 20 percent of your ads, what a glory that would be! Such must be the thoughts of more than a few publishers, as they reviewed how their magazine's ad pages stacked up against the rest of the industry. Executive summary: It was a very bad quarter.
Magazine industry publication Min Online reports the results of its survey for the first quarter of 2009, and the carnage is widespread (year-to-date 2009 vs. 2008):

Architectural Digest: -46.91
Atlantic Monthly: -18.14
Blender: -60.76
Conde Nast Portfolio: -59.79
Esquire: -25.21
Smithsonian: -32.91
Wired: -56.78

Read the complete results.
There were some gainers, including Successful Farming (up 9.47), Sports Illustrated Kids (29.65), and Family Circle (5.42). But the red ink definitely dominated the scoresheet.

Peanut Butter

Peanut butter, the world's greatest food (or food ingredient; depends on how picky you are), is being pulled off store shelves around the country.
Sure, this country trashed the world economic system, gutted the Constitution, waged (poorly) two foreign wars (one of them on questionable grounds), and debased our political discussion. But peanut butter ... that, sir, is too much!

Magazine Distribution Chaos Continues

The lawsuit by magazine distributor Source Interlink against competing distributors and major publishers has passed its first hurdle. A judge granted a temporary restraining order prohibiting the defendants from withholding their magazines from Source's pipeline, according to Folio:. Source claims the defendants were trying to force it to sell itself at bargain prices to competitors; the whole brouhaha follows a failed attempt by Source and other distributors to raise the fees they receive for distributing the magazines.
Now, whether there was actual collusion going on or whether Source is just playing hardball with the industry, I don't know. That will, with luck, be decided fairly by the courts. But I think this is pointing up the reality that the economic and technological changes we've gone through are less a challenge to publishers (which it is, just relatively speaking here) than to distributors.
I've written before that technology is already doing an end-run around print distribution and its costly model. Print publications can still survive; but they'll be getting their wares to the subscriber or the newsstand seller electronically rather than through delivery trucks and over-printing. (Similar things are happening to movie theaters receiving films to play.)
If Source Interlink wins, its victory might be a useless one in the end.

Magazine Views: Making Good Plans

One of the two oddest moves that Playboy magazine made a decade ago was moving its main editorial office from Chicago to New York when it hired new Editorial Director James Kaminsky. (The other oddest move was hiring James Kaminsky.) The magazine undid one of those moves after a couple years, replacing Kaminsky with Christopher Napolitano. Now, in the midst of an economic downturn that's savaging pretty much every business in every country in the world, Playboy Enterprises is undoing the other move and is moving its offices back to Chicago.
That's a good move. There are too many national magazines that are published out of Gotham, and they tend to take on a similar world view and become less distinctive in the process.
In the process, they're making another change that gives one pause. Napolitano won't be making the trip, reportedly because of family commitments in NYC, but he will be staying on as editor-at-large. One never knows how long those "editor-at-large" gigs last; they're often a way to give someone a place to hang their hat until they find another job. But whatever it is, Napolitano has done a fine job as editorial director for the past six or so years, so one wishes him well.
But the eyebrow-raising move is the handover of the editorial director's title to Jimmy Jellinek, who has been heading up the magazine's digital content and will now oversee both print and online. That combo is being seen elsewhere, too. The question is whether Jellinek -- like Kaminsky, a veteran of crude-boy title Maxim -- is right for Playboy. Forbes raises questions about that, noting his past statements and actions that are more suited to a college humor magazine than a magazine that has housed John Updike and William F. Buckley.

But I'm heartened by Jellinek's stated intention with the magazine. As Forbes reports:

What he plans, he says, is "a return to our golden age," producing a magazine like "the Playboy of the 1960s, which occupied the political and moral high ground." There will be more columnists and the same classic interviews with leading thinkers like economist Paul Krugman, whose interview will appear in a upcoming issue.
Jellinek says his competition is not adult magazines or online porn but the New Yorker and Vanity Fair. "We want to be a magazine of ideas that leads the national conversation."

He's got the right aim, if that's his target. I'd bet that the vast majority of Americans who know anything about Ayn Rand or Sarte can attribute that familiarity to interviews the two thinkers gave to Playboy in the 1960s. A mix of fun and thought -- that's a great combination, and it gives one reason to expect a lively magazine and web site even in these brutal economic times.

Improve the World with Cooler Postage Stamps

This has only tangential relationship to the magazine industry, which is the main focus of this blog. Nonetheless: I ordered some back issues of magazines from Germany, and they arrived wonderfully packaged and with some truly beautiful stamps on them. I'm not a stamp collector, but I thought these stamps were quite interesting, so I'm posting them here. Enjoy.

A Bad Day for Magazines

Magazines that rely on newsstand sales received some pretty depressing news today. Some industries might have leaders who can ignore the news when they want, but from my experience, magazine publishers and editors tend to be news hounds who avidly follow goings-on.
Newsstand sales (single-copy sales) fell by 11 percent in the second half of 2008, reports Reuters. Particularly hard hit were women's and celebrity magazines, such as Life & Style and Us Weekly. (Those magazines apparently didn't learn the lesson to put Barack Obama on the cover as often as possible to boost sales.) Richard Perez-Pena, writing in The New York Times, notes:

In the crowded field of celebrity magazines, In Touch Weekly’s circulation tumbled 29.3 percent, to 899,000, and Life & Style Weekly fell 30.7 percent, to 472,000. Star magazine fell 10.3 percent, to 1.2 million, and the National Enquirer dropped 11.2 percent, to 891,000. OK! Weekly fared better, slipping 2.7 percent, to 910,000.
But sales of People, which only loosely fits the celebrity category, increased 2 percent, to almost 3.7 million, and even single-copy sales rose slightly. Its nearest competitor, Us Weekly, dropped 1.3 percent, to 1.9 million, despite a drop of more than 200,000 in single-copy sales.

News weeklies also were hard hit, but as Perez-Pena notes, some magazines did well. The Economist, The Week, People, and Domino all recorded gains (though Domino was closed in January).

But the bad news doesn't end there. Magazines have been in a death-match squabble with newsstand distribution companies as the distributors have tried to increase the money they get from publishers. And now they've taken their squabble to the American Thunderdome: the courts. Source Interlink, which tried to charge an extra 7 cents per copy to publishers (an action that sparked a revolt among publishers), has given up on the 7-cent extra charge but has decided to sue some distribution competitors and a number of publishers for allegedly conspiring against it; those being sued include Time Inc, Bauer Publications (the folks who bring you -- a dwindling number of you, apparently -- Life & Style and In Touch Weekly), and more.
Who will win? Will anybody win? Will 25-year-old straight guys get their copy of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition? Only time (and probably Time Inc.) will tell.

Neil deGrasse Tyson: Galactic Flip-Flopper on Pluto?

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson spoke at The Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco last night. Following his very entertaining and enlightening discussion of the debate he himself sparked over whether Pluto should be classified as a planet, Tyson was asked by moderator Brian Hackney about a previous book of Tyson's in which he seemed to take the opposite view of Pluto, a view that would have saved him a lot of hate mail from third-graders.
This was a return engagement by Tyson at The Commonwealth Club. As always, he was brilliant, funny, friendly.

Magazine News: Sit Down and Shut Up

The biggest mistake made by people who think magazines should be more like online products is that the things that make a magazine work as a media form do not work well online. The biggest mistake magazine publishers and editors make in responding to the online critics is trying to continue doing in print what works better online, instead of focusing on the strength of a print publication.
In short, no print publication can compete with online sources for immediacy of news and opinion. When big news happens, I don't wait a week for The Economist or Time to report it; I am reading the news on the web sites of The New York Times or Time or CBS News.
But, when I want depth -- either detail and background on a serious issue, or just the detail and style that an in-depth feature article can bring to an issue, serious or entertaining -- then I prefer to read it in a magazine. I want to lie down on the couch or put my feet up on my desk while I read it and think about it.
John Loughlin, executive vice president and general manager of Hearst Magazines, said as much in a speech to Primex 2009 magazine conference. He called magazines a "lean-back" experience, reports Folio:.
Exactly. I'll gladly read short pieces online -- on a web page or in an e-mail newsletter. But for longer pieces, I want to spare my eyes from staring at a bright screen, and I also want the visual experience designed for me by the magazine's staff of professionals.
So, glad to see Loughlin recognizes the strengths. My greater worry is that there are so many people who don't realize what they're losing by not reading a 10,000-word article and instead reading a 600-word summary. I think that the great tragedy of the decline in newspapers is that the papers no longer have the cash to retain expensive investigative reporting teams and publish pages of background and detail. When news becomes bullet points and generalizations, then it's not much different from opinion. We're missing both the hard news and the enjoyment of long-form journalism.

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