It's not what we do in times of peace and tranquility that defines us, it is what we do in times of crisis that makes history and explains us to ourselves and our posterity.
I usually try to avoid politics in these pages, which some have told me they find odd and out of character for an old outspoken hippy who was a twice elected politician and former publisher of several underground/over-ground political publications.
As most of you know I live in Charlottesville, Va. I am an immigrant coming south to live a little over five years ago from upstate New York. I have lived in many places both urban and rural. Charlottesville suits Carol and me, and we love living here. It is a thoughtful, lovely community rich in multiculturalism, arts, music, history and natural beauty. I enjoy living here more than anywhere else I have lived.
Yesterday that peace was temporally blown-up. We were invaded by self-proclaimed Nazis. They came here to disrupt a peaceful community and do as much harm as they could. They came with hate, helmets, shields and weapons. They came to "kill" our unity and ended up killing one of our citizens and grievously wounding dozens of others.
They succeeded in their mission far beyond their expectations. How so? They were endorsed by the President of the United States as co-equals. The Nazis were grossly and intentionally conflated with the peaceful defenders of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all by an ignoramus. I could go into writing pages of my outrage for the infant-king we are now saddled with. I could dissect his every infantile move of the last two years leading up to the recent, but sadly not the last, disgrace. But I won't.
I write this rant to try to reconcile and understand my own feelings and share my disgust. It didn't have to be this way. It doesn't have to be this way. Hate is obviously historic. Was there ever a time when it wasn't present somewhere, in some place or another? It is a sad reminder that with all the progress humanity has made in the last millennium we still have pockets of venom. (For the Complete Article Click Here)
Let's be honest, although many attempt to do so, there is no way to find a positive spin to the data in this or any industry-wide report with magazine ads down another 16%. As an industry, we have seen negative numbers every year for a decade. Were you expecting a change? Newsstand sales of magazines have plummeted at least 50%, and periodicals run through the USPS have dropped 55% and diminish each year. Meanwhile ad sales, as seen in this report, continue on their long decline seeking a yet undiscovered plateau.
We have seen associations use sleight of hand to try to change the subject and use illusory metrics. Has that helped? We have seen pundits declare that all is well and that print will live and be prosperous forever. Neither of those is helpful as a solution nor a recognition of the situation at hand.
While we were discussing this new data my friend Mr. Dead Tree offered this to me in an email yesterday:
"Maybe the message needs to be what AA and the other 12-step groups say: To fix a problem, first you have to acknowledge you have one. On the print side of our industry, there seems to be lots of denial and not much innovation."
My hypothesis is that there is no longer a magazine publishing industry at large as we once understood it. There are however individual sectors that are incorrectly lumped into a total of false equivalency. There are the large publishing houses that have absolutely nothing in common with small niche publishers. Yet somehow, they are deemed to be in the same industry with incorrectly compared metrics. There are regional publishing houses that have little to nothing in common with enthusiast titles, but they are also judged by the same over-all criteria.
Let's be honest, although many attempt to do so, there is no way to find a positive spin to the data in this or any industry-wide report with magazine ads down another 16%. As an industry, we have seen negative numbers every year for a decade. Were you expecting a change? Newsstand sales of magazines have plummeted at least 50%, and periodicals run through the USPS have dropped 55% and diminish each year. Meanwhile ad sales, as seen in this report, continue on their long decline seeking a yet undiscovered plateau.
We have seen associations use sleight of hand to try to change the subject and use illusory metrics. Has that helped? We have seen pundits declare that all is well and that print will live and be prosperous forever. Neither of those is helpful as a solution nor a recognition of the situation at hand.
While we were discussing this new data my friend Mr. Dead Tree offered this to me in an email yesterday:
"Maybe the message needs to be what AA and the other 12-step groups say: To fix a problem, first you have to acknowledge you have one. On the print side of our industry, there seems to be lots of denial and not much innovation."
My hypothesis is that there is no longer a magazine publishing industry at large as we once understood it. There are however individual sectors that are incorrectly lumped into a total of false equivalency. There are the large publishing houses that have absolutely nothing in common with small niche publishers. Yet somehow, they are deemed to be in the same industry with incorrectly compared metrics. There are regional publishing houses that have little to nothing in common with enthusiast titles, but they are also judged by the same over-all criteria. FOR THE COMPLETE ARTICLE CLICK HERE
In an age of abundant fake news, unlimited ad fraud and other nefarious communication systems to defraud both the public and the publishing community, I continue to wonder where fake and even dangerous advertised products fall in the current scheme of publishing things. My question is this: if a publisher knowingly and in the pursuit of profit promotes known or dangerous junk products, is it in any way responsible and/or liable? Forgetting the legal possibilities, is it also contributing to the demise of overall trust in media? I think so.
Last month I vented about two such known opportunists. They were Doctor Oz and Gwyneth Paltrow's yet to be released Goop magazine. I asked, "If we continue to create 'fake or alternative news' or promote 'selling junk health products,' then we have to accept the moniker we deserve. Media is much more about profit then any quaint perception of truth. "
Where do we as an industry draw a line between honor and income? Where does credibility start? I ask because Paltrow's team is in the news again. Who is the complainant this time? Would you believe me if I said it was the National Aeronautics Space Administration (NASA) who called out GOOP for fraudulent claims. Yes, you heard me right, NASA.
The GOOP brand among other insane claims "is now promoting stickers called 'Body Vibes.' The product, which I remind you, is literally a sticker, uses 'NASA space suit material' to 'rebalance the energy frequency in our bodies'."
Ladies and gentleman of the publishing jury, with all the endless impediments to honest journalism that we are currently confronting, are you willing and ready to defend a known charlatan? Is it really worth 30 silver coins to join the pantheon of hucksters?
Am I missing something? What is your opinion?
I have the privilege of attending about 16 publishing media conferences each year. The shows I go to run the gamut of media publishing enterprises. I attend meetings with editors (ASME), circulators (MBR), and production folk (PRIMEX). I meet with various groups of media professionals such as regional publishers (CRMA, IRMA), large publishers (MPA, IMAG), Digital Book Conferences, and International Conferences (FIPP World Conference). It is by attending these broadly different events that I gather my perspectives on media and deliver the opinions that you read each day.
In most of these events there is a discernable pattern. In some spiritual way most of the meetings open up with a similar chant or mantra. The audiences hum to "print is not dead, print is not dead, oh lord please agree that print is not dead." After that apparently mandatory professional obeisance, the conversations are all about digital processes, digital strategies and new digital revenues.
You've heard me say that I live in the future and only come to the present to give lectures about what is ahead for publishers. There is one show that I go to each year that doesn't follow that mantra trend and is as much a part of the future as I am. It is the Digital Innovators Summit hosted by FIPP and held each year in Berlin. It is by far one of my most favorite events. The agenda there is all about successful digital methodologies currently and actively in place. If you work for a company with vision, get them to send you to DIS. It is an event that I would recommend to any company that wants to see the future of our business in action today. FOR THE COMPLETE ARTICLE CLICK HERE
Charles Dickens once penned the now famous line, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." I am going to counter that with a quote from Art Buchwald, "Whether it's the best of times or the worst of times, it's the only time we've got." I bring this up while trying to grapple with advertising and the best/worst of times we now find ourselves in. Here is an open question for us all. In an environment of unlimited content, there is also by default unlimited advertising. What is the revenue destiny of unlimited ads and unlimited content? Do you know the answer?
It's obvious that there is now more complexity going on in our industry than at any other time in media's long history. So much that it is hard to keep up with the constant changes on any meaningful level. Among those changes ad fraud is one of the hottest of topics. What does ad fraud really mean other than the theft of something valuable? What are the far-reaching parameters of ad fraud? What do they include?
Perhaps the obvious place to start is a recent news release from the Association of National Advertisers which proudly boasted that ad fraud will drop 10% this year from 7.2 billion dollars to about 6.5 billion. To that I suggest that all quantifying statements on this topic are at best a guess and at worst an additional fraud.
Ad fraud is not yet a trackable science. There is no benchmark from which to make any kind of all conclusive declarative statement, least of all that it is going down. If there is a known fact anywhere here, it is that the fraudsters are and always have been many steps ahead of the supposed "rule makers." The problem is that you can't track by any means what you don't know. So, any statement that ad fraud is going down is patently absurd. While it might be possible to define in broad terms what ad fraud is, it isn't possible to quantify it now.
Is ad fraud about robots(bots) pretending to be humans clicking on ads? CLICK HERE FOR THE COMPLETE ARTICLE
The following data is new and fresh. There has been no time for proper analysis or deep study. It looks like newsstand sales are down -13.4%, and sell through looks to be down to 24.4%. As noted below this is a limited version of the data. It is worth noting that Hudson Atlas News is not included in these totals nor is Barnes & Nobel. There has been some discussion of the Mary Meeker 2017 data in this newsletter over the past few days, and this new Magnet data does seem to parallel that other data set. But that too is just a set of numbers. Some have said those numbers are biased. I put forth the proposition that all analysis no matter how innocently prepared is to a greater or lesser degree biased. You take what you understand and apply your own real time experience to it for meaningful comprehension.
I have many times and continue to point out that this data and other charts are an aggregate of everyone and, although they might be interesting, averages contain both winners and losers. There has always been death and destruction in the magazine business. But there have also always been winners, and I believe we need to continue to focus on the winners.
I take the position that at our peak of production in the early years of the 21st century, when our competitors were only TV and radio, we had reached a print position of irrational exuberance. We topped out because readers could/would support it. Now as we head into a more digital focused age of media distribution, it is harder, but surely not impossible, to justify an existence for print titles. The bar for success in print is now higher. The readership is now more refined and narrow. Niche enthusiast titles rule the roost and general mass market titles are fewer and fewer. Still, there is plenty of room for print titles and the paper that supports the process.
The days of irrational exuberance in print are over, but we are reaching a point of cogent maturity for publishers, printers and paper manufacturers. Print will be around for quite some time, not as a commodity, but as a luxury item worth paying for. The only catch is that what is printed has to be worthy of the commercial exercise to produce it.
Samir Husni, aka Mr. Magazine, held his annual ACT 7 conference at the University of Mississippi in late April. The program was a good round up of what is going on in publishing, what our hopes and fears, challenges and opportunities are, and what the most forward-looking publishers, large and small, are doing to create success in their businesses. And on the last day, drawing together the threads of what had been discussed and adding fresh thoughts in his usual outspoken way, Bo Sacks gave his take on it all in a presentation entitled "The Truth About Digital Lies."
Some of the current dialog about magazine publishing, Bo believes, stems from simple nostalgia, a yearning for the grand old days of the past. That's all well and good unless, by looking backward, we fail to look forward, and by remembering what once worked - but doesn't any longer - we fail to move past traditional thinking, we fail to break new ground, and we fail to challenge our own long-standing assumptions.
Because, like it or not, most of the reading public is leaving print behind. We spend more time with digital devices, where we get instant access to any and all information, than we spend with the printed word. Time spent on digital has exploded, from less than an hour in 2010 to over five hours in 2016. By 2021, nearly 90% of all internet traffic will come from smartphones.
A corollary to the reality of this shift in attention is this: attention can be monetized, but publishers are failing to monetize it effectively. The companies making money from the changes in audience attention flow are Google and Facebook. Well over half the digital ad spend goes to Google and Facebook, with no other digital publisher enjoying even 4% of the total revenues. CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL ARTICLE
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I have several media conferences that I relish and greatly look forward to each year, and IMAG-MPA is one of the best of them. Imagine what is like for a long-time publishing enthusiast like me to be in a room filled with like-minded entrepreneurs who happen to be in the magazine business. Intoxicating yes? Here we have publishers whose companies range from $5 million to $100 million in revenues, and yet they play very well together regardless of pecking order.
The opening night was a smashing success when we all hopped aboard busses and attended opening night cocktails and dinner at TEN: The Enthusiast Network Headquarters. The TEN building is huge and row upon row of computer work stations almost as far as the eye can see, generating and executing the placement of content in the automotive media sector. TEN covers the automotive in-market and automotive after-market services. Perhaps their most famous tile is Motor Trend, but there are dozens of other media enterprises under the hood at TEN. It was quite a display of energy and success in these troubled media moments.
One of the constant threads of the whole IMAG-MPA event was kicked off by a discussion by Mike Benson, Head of Marketing, Amazon Originals. Right out of the box and continuing for the next few days from many speakers was a conversation about magazine media and video. (I wrote last week that my reaction to the video conversation was that video was of course a revenue thing but not the revenuething for the future of our business depending upon what sector your franchise is in.)
Tuesday morning, Scott Dickey, Chief Executive Officer, TEN: The Enthusiast Network, opened the main part of the conference with an interesting and sober comment. He said, "We know what it's like to be down 21%, but we also know how to survive." Bravo for such honesty in an open forum and, Indeed, TEN is not only thriving but sharing how to do so. Scott suggested that in next few days, "We will share information and we are in some way partners." He went on to say, "This big ideas showcased here is transferable to your businesses." Within reason I think that is correct. Not every idea is transferable to any and all businesses, but with creativity and an entrepreneurial spirit, most good ideas are worth "borrowing" and bending to your own enterprise's needs. CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL ARTICLE
My friend Esther Kezia Thorpe, whom I met in a London rooftop pub a few years ago when she interviewed me, makes some interesting observations here. But I think the survival or death of Airbnb magazine will rise or fall like any other publication: on its excellence or the lack therein and of course the uniqueness of the information provided. There are unlimited travel information opportunities everywhere in print and on-line. What separates success from failure are the rarities and qualities of the information provided combined with the format that the information resides upon. Digital is relatively cheap to produce and to sustain, and it has the advantage of being accessible literally everywhere at any time. Even inferiorly produced printed products, which Airbnb won't be, are quite the opposite as they are relatively expensive to produce and distribute. So, the chance of survivability many times depends upon the expense to produce the product. Hearst is not known for half-way measures, so I expect that Airbnb with have both editorial and production excellence. That doesn't assure success, but it does offer a reasonable chance for one.
Esther states that a possible problem for continued success is the mixed message between the two lead agents in the projects. She points out that: "A far more serious issue at the heart of Airbnb mag is the vast gulf between the two companies' views on the purpose of the magazine. Compare these two statements from Chesky and Coles on how important revenue on the magazine is to them: CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL ARTICLE
