Blog Magazine

National Magazine Award Nominations Somewhat Predictable

Each year when the American Society of Magazine Editors announces their nominees for their National Magazine Awards we expect magazines like the New Yorker and National Geographic to rack up the most nominations. 

So we weren't really surprised (not that we were disappointed) that when ASME announced the 2010 finalists earlier this week that New York magazine, the New Yorker and National Geographic had the most nominations.

We are however, happy that there are some never-before-nominated magazine titles like Architect, The Boston Globe Magazine, The Boston Review, Garden & Gun magazine, Military History, Orion and Out in the mix. Also nominated is Food Network Magazine, which launched last year.

As for the rest of the 51 magazines nominated, the list is somewhat predictable but stellar nonetheless. It includes Men's Health, Wired, Parents magazine, Vanity Fair and Vogue magazine. For a complete list of categories and nominees go here.

ASME will present the National Magazine Awards, known in the magazine industry as the Ellies, at a gala in New York City on April 22. More than 300 magazines participated in the National Magazine Awards this year, submitting 1,758 entries.

Country Living Magazine Makes Changes

Issues of Country Living magazine will get thicker this fall. Its bigger size (known as the trim size in the magazine industry) is just one of the many changes the magazine plans to make in an effort to broaden its appeal to more advertisers. The shelter magazine will also cut its publishing frequency by two issues, for a total of 10 per year, and increase its cover price from $3.99 to $4.50, reports MediaWeek.

Additionally, Country Living magazine is also taking steps to align itself with the green movement. Earlier this week, Hearst Magazines and New World Home, a developer of sustainable housing, announced a partnership for the Country Living Collection of historically inspired "country" modular homes that will be LEED-certified. The homes range in size from 1,100 to 2,300 square feet and in price from $165,000 to $460,000.

City and Regional Magazines to be Honored

Earlier this week the City and Regional Magazine Association announced the finalists for its 25th annual National City and Regional magazine competition. Magazines of varying circulations compete in 29 categories, including editorial, design, online and ancillary publications, according to the official press release.

Among the most-nominated magazines with 10 nominations each are Texas Monthly, Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia magazines. Magazines with at least five nominations include 5280 (Denver), Atlanta, Berkshire Living, Boston, Cincinnati and Seattle Metropolitan.

This year’s editorial nominees covered a wide variety of topics including high unemployment, crime and the ultimate economic collapse of a small southern town and what it took for a blind man to hike the 2,175-mile Appalachian Trail.

More than 75 judges from many popular magazines like Esquire, Body+Soul, Sports Illustrated magazine, Good Housekeeping, Glamour, Taste of Home, Men’s Journal magazine, Budget Travel magazine and journalism professors from the Missouri School of Journalism selected the finalists.The winners will be announced June 5-7 in Providence, Rhode Island.

Do you have a favorite city or regional magazine?

Deen Brothers Launch New Cooking Magazine for Men

With bestselling cookbooks and a Food Network show of their own, Jamie and Bobby Deen, have been following in the footsteps of their famous mom for awhile. And like their celebrity-chef mom, they are hoping to follow up their successful cookbooks and TV show with a cooking magazine.

This month the Deen Brothers launched Deen Bros Good Cooking magazine, a new quarterly special-interest magazine from Hoffman Media, publisher of Cooking with Paula Deen, Victoria magazine, Southern Lady magazine and other niche magazines.

Deen Brothers Good Cooking magazine is aimed at men with its grilling recipes, cooking tips and easy-to-read format. The magazine also features "everything from cocktails to cookies" including breakfast and dessert recipes. Hoffman Media plans to publish six issues per year by 2011.

Bobby and Jamie Deen have appeared on multiple episodes of their mother's Food Network series and specials. They launched their own Food Network show, Road Tasted, in 2006. The brothers also run their mother's well-known Savannah eatery, The Lady & Sons.

Magazine News Round-Up

Folio magazine interviewed Hearst Corp. executive vice president and publishing director Michael Clinton, regarding last week's launch of the multi-magazine publisher "Power of Print" ad campaign. Clinton discusses the misconceptions of the print medium.

Today Min Online kicked off its annual coverage of the best and worst-selling weekly and bi-weekly magazines. First up, a comparison of the top five best-selling Michael Jackson covers of 2009. 

Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia will rename and rebrand its Body + Soul magazine with its June issue. The new brand and name will be Whole Living magazine, which will reflect the magazine’s web site and “Whole Living” daily satellite radio show on Sirius XM.

My Favorite Magazine

Today we continue our series, "My Favorite Magazine," in which we talk to a magazine reader that is passionate about a particular magazine. With the Oscars airing Sunday we've already got movies and entertainment on our minds so we're excited that this month's reader, Amy, coincidentally picked Entertainment Weekly magazine as her favorite magazine.

A little bit about Entertainment Weekly magazine: First published in 1990, Entertainment Weekly is a standout in its category, providing a comprehensive rundown of news,reviews, features and previews from the entertainment industry including movies, television, music and books.

1.       Tell us who you, what you do and what you are passionate about.
I’m Amy Dabbs. I’m the web content coordinator for Children’s Health System in Birmingham, Alabama. I am crazy obsessive and passionate about music, TV and University of Alabama football. I love going to concerts and movies, writing and hanging out with family and friends.

2.       When did you start reading magazines? 
The summer that I was 10, I spent afternoons at my Dad’s office. One day one of his coworkers asked what music I liked and what TV shows I watched.  I eagerly shared my passion for New Kids on the Block and my undying love for Uncle Jesse on Full House. The next day she bought me a Bop magazine. I was enthralled. The glossy pages! The pictures of the New Kids! The interviews, the articles, the quizzes! All of this in a little package that I could keep forever. And I would never be the same again. (And yes, I still have a few copies of those. What can I say? I’m nostalgic).

3.       What is your favorite magazine?
As you can probably guess from reading my bio and my first experience with magazines, I’ve grown into quite the pop culture junkie, so Entertainment Weekly magazine is my favorite magazine. Southern Living magazine is a very close second.

4.       When and why did you start reading Entertainment Weekly magazine?
I discovered Entertainment Weekly when I was in college. I started reading it because it covers everything I love in one magazine – music, TV, film, books, theater, pop culture, etc.
 
5.       What are your magazine-reading rituals?
This is a pretty weird habit, but I always scan the entire magazine first. If I run across something that I deem is a must-read, I’ll stop and read it. When I get to the end, I’ll go back to the front, read the letters to the editor and then proceed page by page.
 
6.       What is your favorite column or who is your favorite writer in the magazine?
I love Michael Ausiello’s TV column. He’s snarky and tends to like the same shows I do. I also love Stephen King’s monthly column. “Uncle Stevie” is always spot on with recommendations for everything from TV to music and of course, books. For the most part, their writers seem to each have their own personal passion and it comes across in their articles. I may not be an “Idol Loonie” like Michael Slezak calls himself, but I certainly appreciate and enjoy reading “Doc” Jensen’s “Lost” theories. If the writer is excited about the piece, then chances are I will be, too.

7.       What do you think about the future of reading magazines on e-readers?
I really love technology, but I love holding an actual, paper magazine in my hands more. I feel the same way about books. I spend enough hours of the day looking at a computer or a Blackberry screen. I’m not too thrilled about having another electronic device to have to haul around just so I can read my magazines.

I hope there is a happy medium for the printed word and electronic media. What I love about Entertainment Weekly is that they have recognized that the web piece of their magazine is just as critical as the printed magazine. Reading both gives me that old school satisfaction of holding a magazine while reading their site (or in the future, their content on an e-reader) gives me up-to-the-minute, current content.

I can tell you this, though, if I’m paying a subscription for a magazine, it better come to me in the mail and not on my phone, e-reader, or whatever the next craze is. I mean, come on, you know you want to have that Ryan Reynolds cover stacked on your coffee table for your friends to see, right? Well, maybe that’s just me.

Sign of the Times: Fortune Magazine Redesigns

With its April issue out next week, Fortune magazine will keep its name but will reveal editorial and design changes that better reflect the current economic time of well, less fortune.

New sections like "Career and Venture" will offer advice for these uncertain economic times. "Leisure Pursuits" will take the place of "Life at the Top," a lifestyle section that was launched when luxury spending was commonplace. Also, according to Mediaweek, the magazine will feature fewer CEOs on its cover; strangely, it will at the same time aim for a more high-end feel, with a switch to heavier paper. Fortune magazine's changes come as the business magazine lowers its frequency from 25 issues to 18 issues.

It's no secret that the business magazine category has been one of the hardest hit categories in the struggling magazine industry so it will be interesting to see if these changes make any difference.

What do you think? Is Fortune magazine on the right track with its changes?
 

Magazine Publishers Should Fight for the Good Stuff

Monday we mentioned briefly in our weekly magazine news round-up series that five top magazine publishers Time Inc., Hearst, Condé Nast, Wenner Media and Meredith have joined forces in a multi-million dollar ad campaign preaching, "The Power of Print."

The campaign, which has the support of the Magazine Publishers of America, targets advertisers, shareholders and magazine industry influencers, and according to the press release, “seeks to reshape the broader conversation about magazines, challenge misperceptions about the medium's relevancy and longevity, and reinforce magazines' important cultural role.”

As much as we are excited about this campaign—and we are because we are a part of the magazine industry and want magazine publishers to speak up--we’re a little disappointed. We feel the campaign misses the point.

Aside from the irony that the leaders of the aforementioned magazine publishers chose to make their case that print is still relevant in today's Internet-focused world by making a video and putting it on Internet, we feel it’s not the medium/format publishers should be fighting so hard for.

Instead, we think they should be making a stand for the good stuff in magazines. The stuff that makes magazine readers anticipate each new issue, the stuff that inspires us, the stuff that changes our lives, the stuff that informs us—the stuff that advertisers want to put ads next to—not the format that the stuff is delivered in.

You know, the good stuff. The stories. The keen observations communicated by people that carefully choose words to form sentences.  It’s the stuff that can—and should—exist in any and all available formats including the Internet. 

Yes, we love our print magazines. We could go on and on as to why we prefer to get our good stuff in the format of pages made out of paper to the format of a computer, even if it is hand-held and the latest technology marvel.

But we disagree with the magazine publishers’ goal to “challenge misperceptions about the medium's relevancy and longevity, and reinforce magazines' important cultural role.”

Instead, we want magazine publishers to argue even fight the current misconception that the good stuff and the people who create it are unworthy of our time and our money. We want them to fight for the good stuff’s relevancy, longevity and importance in our culture, on paper and on the Internet.

Columbia Journalism Review Releases Research on Magazines and Their Websites

Yesterday, the Columbia Journalism Review magazine released the results of a recent survey and report on magazines' websites. The purpose of the research, which surveyed 665 consumer magazines on the practices and profitability of their websites, was "to identify some best (and worst) practices; clarify journalistic standards for new media; and guide journalists and media companies towards a business model that allow revenues not only to be allocated more efficiently, but also channeled back into the kind of news-gathering operations that are essential for democracy."

The conclusion of the research project, Victor Navasky, chairman of Columbia Journalism Review magazine, stated in a recent New York Times article, "There’s chaos out there.”

Among the topics in the project is one of the hottest topics in the magazine industry: content. We weren't surprised to read among the results that CJR found more than half the magazines put their entire print editions online for free. A small four percent of magazines put all or almost all print content behind a pay wall and 10 percent put some of it behind a pay wall. Still, the rest post only some of their print output online, but all of it free.

However, we were surprised to read that fact-checking and copy-editing practices were less strict at a lot of the magazines. Navasky concluded in The New York Times, that speed of posting the content--to get traffic--is a higher priority than copy-editing.

Magazine News Round-Up: The Power of Print

Usually, magazine publishers decide to cut circulation guarantee to advertisers when the going gets tough. MediaWeek reports that OK! magazine will break from this tradition and reduce its newsstand presence and lean more on subscriptions. While newsstand magazine sales remain important, magazine readers are turning away from the newsstand and to discount magazine subscriptions or magazine websites in the down economy. Thus, relying on newsstand sales isn't as certain a practice as it once was.

Condé Nast is moving forward with its magazine plans for Apple's iPad tablet. The publisher will create iPad versions of Wired magazine, GQ magazine, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and Glamour. The New York Times reports that GQ magazine will have a tablet version of its April issue ready. Vanity Fair and Wired will follow with June issues, and The New Yorker and Glamour magazine are expected later in the summer.

Last year's best magazine launch, Food Network Magazine, announced today another rate base increase. The food magazine will go to 1.25 million with the July/August issue from 1 million. Food Network Magazine outsold established cooking and food magazines like Bon Appétit magazine and Cooking Light magazine on the newsstand and came close to Every Day with Rachael Ray, reports mediabistro.com.

Ads touting the "power of print" from the joint multi-million-dollar ad campaign by leading magazine publishers Time Inc., Hearst, Condé Nast, Wenner Media and Meredith are slated to appear in May issues of participating magazines including People, Vogue and Ladies' Home Journal.The ads argue that magazines are still effective advertising vehicles even with the Internet. The effort is to be announced today at an industry conference in San Francisco, reports the Wall Street Journal.