Flash in the vaporzine pan: I’ve coined this phrase, vaprozine, that refers to magazine concepts announced in trial balloon-fashion, like vaporware in the software world. For a good example of what happens to most vaporzines, see this story from Media Week regarding G+J’s post-Rosie start-up non-starter. I blogged the magazine called Flash last November. Perhaps the German company should consider buying American Magazine. I hear they’re in Wal-Mart. (via iwantmedia.com.)

Tongue twister: David Pecker pays a pile for publishing’s priestess of puff-loids, reports David Carr.

Entrepreneur vs. entrpreneur: In what has to be one of the longest-running lawsuits I can think of (no, wait, I just thought of another one), a judge has ruled in favor of the folks at Entrepreneur Magazine and against the folks at Entrepreneur PR. According to the Sacramento Bee, the judge ordered Entrepreneur PR to pay Entrepreneur Media $669,656 in damages and interest, plus yet-to-be-determined legal costs. (The following is an editorial comment by this weblog: Entrepreneurs, why can’t we all just get along?)

American dream: As the start-up spin of American Magazine captures so much of what I blog about here: small business entrepreneur, Wal-Mart, magazine publishing and Tennessee, I can’t help but pull for its founders. My warning to the publishers, however, is simple: Don’t believe the hype. You’ve got a great story that fits perfectly into bigger currents going on in the world, especially the Wal-Mart-”racy magazine” faux controversy. The Wal-Mart angle can get you only so far. There are laws of magazine economics that are greater, even, than Wal-Mart. And as thousands of former Wal-Mart suppliers can tell you, Wal-Mart giveth and Wal-Mart taketh away. As much as this hurts me to suggest, if you get any feelers from a mega-magazine company, don’t think twice. Take the offer. Quickly. Call Jake Winebaum and ask him how he did it with Family Fun (but don’t ask him about what he did after that).

Everyday prison food: Sorry, I couldn’t help myself. The business for which Martha Stewart serves as creative director has announced it is going to continue publishing Everyday Food, a magazine it has tested in recent months.

Disconvergence: In a question that sounds like it was posed five years ago, Editor & Publisher asks, “Will convergence live up to the hype?” I think the answer to that is much shorter than the article devotes: “No.” Of special note is an insight in the article attributed to a “Nashville media analyst.” As I did not know there was such, I’d like to quote the article’s reference to a home boy:

Frank S. Gristina (of investment bank Avondale Partners) noted companies may feel pressure, if only from within, to diversify to grow their local ad share. And over time, if owning multimedia fulfills its potential by growing incremental revenue and audience share -resulting in profit margin and share price growth — those companies may become more attractive to investors than pure-play newspaper companies, he says.

As I “go way back” with others in his firm, I note that Frank works incrementally close, geographically, to me, fufilling the potential of us being pure-play neighbors.