BoSacks Readers Speak Out:ONB Hudson News, Gourmet Mag, and Compugraphic

This is from Hudson News

We sell magazines.
We love magazines.
And they perform exceptionally well in our business.
Recent chatter mixed up our company name with a different business. It happens. But let’s clear up the confusion.
As a travel retail operator, we understand and see firsthand what travelers like, and magazines continue to win in airport environments.
From entertainment and puzzles to business magazines and fast-growing special-interest titles, magazines remain a powerful, profitable category.
Magazines are travel essentials.
No battery required.

(Submitted by Hudson News at LinkedIn)

https://www.linkedin.com/company/hudson-group/posts/

RE: That magazine looms so large’: food writers on Gourmet’s comeback after 16 years

Gourmet magazine is a culinary gold standard and staple on our food pantry literacy newsstands and food bank culinary job training programs at magliteracy.org. Passionate foodies donate entire pristine lifelong collections to our Magazine Literacy Bank - sometimes driving long distances, like this wonderful couple who filled the back of their Prius in Minneapolis for delivery in Ohio. https://magliteracy.org/blog/literacy-on-a-roll/

RE: A Forgotten Machine and its Lessons for AI in Newsrooms Today

Hi Bo, I joined the publishing industry in the compugraphic era, but we used a typesetter, we did not have our own machine. With linotype, you were making the plates at the printer. With desktop, you could send the files to the printer electronically (though there was a bunch of sneaker-net mailing of disks at the beginning.) But in the compugraphic era, you could make the boards yourself but you had to send those to the printer. (Unless you were going to film them and strip them yourself, God help you.) That distance from the printer resulted in lots of late-night high-speed drives to the airport to catch the last Fed Ex plane. That’s what I remember most about that era. Also cutting in tiny type corrections that should have been caught in proofing much earlier.

(Submitted by a Publisher)

RE: A Forgotten Machine and its Lessons for AI in Newsrooms Today

Gosh, that was a sporty spin down memory lane. At Challenge Publications in the 1970s, we called helping the typesetters load discarded type into a truck and raw material back to typography "pumping lead." Claimed it stimulated "pumping lede." By the early '80s, I was in a Compugraphic world, one where I learned that occupying a warehouse with Linotype lead might have something to do with my hypertension. Incidentally, there were still hot-type vestiges around at Rodale in the early '90s.

(Submitted by a Marketing person)

Hey Bob, It’s been awhile since I’ve touched base. Your memories of Compugraphic typesetting combined with the Charlottesville dateline brought back a flood of memories to me. Working on the Cavalier Daily at UVA in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s meant using Compuedit terminals creating punch tapes for the Computape typesetter.

Changing the fonts meant grabbing a different strip of film off the hook and putting it on the drum inside the typesetter. The smell I remember most, though, is the hot wax we used to manually piece together the pages.

It’s actually pretty amazing how advanced we were back then. The year before college, I remember visiting the NY Times and seeing the old lead type and their pre-built obits of still-living big names. After graduating, I began my career at Fairchild Publications and discovered they were still using typewriters and faxing the copy to the various printers for typesetting and the building of pages.

It’s pretty amazing how programs like QuarkXpress and Pagemaker changed this whole world.

(Submitted by an Industry Consultant)

Re: BREAKING NEWS - Publishers panic that Hudson News could stop carrying their mags

Bo- While this is bad for publishers, especially if other airport operators follow suit, future lost sales are not the worst part. The damaging part are the slotting fees publishers pay Hudson

in advance that are now write-offs and yield zero sales for the next 6 months (read: CFO's currently calculating losses). Additionally, unpaid past sales and no credit for past returns is the immediate hit. Those 2 things are a multi-million dollar hit for the big 3 publishers.

Lost future sales can be dealt with (although not easily). At the least in the future, liability for NY airport sales is $0.

(Submitted by a Former Newsstand and Subscription Executive)

RE: 98.8% say AI can’t replace journalists. New study reveals why that matters now

A study that I bet most money people in the organizations won’t pay attention because their interest is different than that of the audiences.

(Submitted by a freelance writer)

Re: BoSacks Speaks Out: An open letter to Congress about AI

Hi Bo, it seems ironic to me that now, when I begin to write a response, the first thing that pops up is a request for me to use AI to help write my response. Oh, well, guess I'm still old fashioned.

While I do ramble on, I wanted to take a few moments to collect my thoughts about your article about "AI Shockwave". Here goes!

I have for a long time considered how business and the Graphic Arts / Publishing Industry has morphed over time, and having been involved as an employee and owner has I think given me a perspective of that evolution. As you know, I began in 1959 at a Photo Engraving shop working for my father as a "go fer" and moved to Sales and Management when he sold the business in 1969. From then on I learned, and was fortunately mentored by many who helped me succeed in my tasks that eventually led to me becoming a partner and President of the company.

With that as a background, I focus on a period of time in the 1980's and after that I believe transformed how business was managed and conducted. Seems to me that at that time, many business leaders and academia were focused on encouraging people to seek an MBA to help advance their careers. I also thought it helpful to learn more about the way businesses should be run that aimed at better efficiency, effectiveness and profit. Kind of the teachings of Drucker. Well, as I see it, the result was that businesses began to be run not by the "inventors, or sales / marketing leaders, but by financial types (CFO's and their like). The attention became the bottom line which led to spread sheets calculated to aim at whatever it took to improve profit margins. This, in my opinion, led in many ways to reduction of staff and pricing competition for the sole purpose of increasing profits. No longer were leaders concerned about their employees and, I think, with their clients. Greed seems to have been the motivation for conducting business, as in the 1987 movie "Wall Street". Anyway, that goal, which seems to separate upper management from their responsibilities to the employees, led to more unhappiness and loss of trust between those two groups.

I must say that I wasn't opposed to technology and, along with many of my peers, enjoyed the capabilities of new technology and its ability to do more and enhance our services to our clients. The days of "Scitex" and its ilk were pretty wonderful, though expensive solutions that were somewhat short lived. Apple and desktop computing soon changed how we served our clients and created a significant change which I presume similarly to other industries. Of course, the Publishing Industry felt that impact the same way and the glory days of unlimited expense accounts were quickly a thing of the past. Wow, did I enjoy those days as a supplier to Hearst and Conde Nast, but we also valued the personal relationships and friends we made with those clients. Times did change, but never to the extreme that I see with the advent of AI.

Now as we jump forward to the evolution of AI, it seems that those who embrace the technology laud its capabilities ---- but maybe aren't fully understanding the impact it is and will have on people and the nature of business. In my view, while making money or increasing profits may be desirable, we also have to consider the cost and impact it has on society. After all, how much is ever enough and to what cost of achieving that is reasonable, moral or ethical.

Sadly, our members of Congress, as you so well stated, move at a snail's pace while all around them is moving at light speed. I do have my personal concerns about how we educate our young people and subsequently train and employ our adults, but that's only part of the matter. It is certainly difficult to keep abreast of technology, at the same time, we rely on those who should consider its impact in current and also future consequences. Short term planning may seem the convenient way to manage the matter, but will fall far short of dealing with the consequences of our decisions. As we enter the age of trillionaires, I recall fondly and with no regret the effort in days past to just add a zero to my annual income. Today, is not a good time for our children or grandchildren!

I think I've rambled on enough and seem to drift away from focusing on the subject. So I'll end this for now. Hope to see you soon, let me know if you're planning to attend or speak at any upcoming events when we can enjoy a cocktail or at least a coffee.

(Submitted by an Industry Supplier)