Martha gets sliced: The NY Times reports that Martha Stewart Living Magazine is cutting its advertising rate base from 2.3 million to 1.8 million. Buried deep within the story is the news-nugget that the cost-per-thousand will increase. Despite my recurring predictions of the magazine’s survival, I may be looking up some recipies for baked crow in the coming months.

From the archives: Rafe Needleman has a new weekly column on the self-described blog-like site with the counter intuitive URL, Always-On. His first column is devoted to the topic of KeepMedia.com. His bottom line: KeepMedia has little chance of getting people to spend $50 a year to access back-issues of magazine articles, but is is a useful service to magazine publishers and their readers, “so it seems like a nice service business.” (rexblog flashbacks: Always On; Keep Media)

Monthly maganomics lesson: In other industries, when revenues are up, but the amount of inventory necessary to generate those revenues are down, it is called “an increase in productivity” or “improving margins.” However, in the magazine industry,such a phenomenon results in reports that “advertising pages are slumping.” Again, class, this means, can I be more clear on this (anybody?, anybody?), that last year, magazines were giving away advertising pages; that the goat ate the rate card. This year, well, only pages that are being sold are appearing — pages are not appearing if they are not generating revenue. (Maybe I’m revealing a trade secret here, or something.) I’m sure I’ll be explaining this again next month.

Later: Larry Dobrow of Mediapost continues to flunk maganomics.

Terminated: I personally don’t want to say anything bad about a certain search company’s advertising program as I’ve heard that if one does, then he or she will be excluded from such program. Therefore, let’s just say “a friend” of mine this afternoon received an e-mail from that company saying that since “my friend” had not responded to their previous two requests to get his or her website in compliance with the ad program’s terms of usage, that his or her ad program account had been “permanently disabled.”

My friend then checked his or her spam filtered e-mail and, sure enough, he (oops, did I leave out “she”) had received two previous warnings for including a sentence in a long-ago web post that had, in a humorous way, encouraged visitors to click on the ad program ad. By a strange coincidence, the rexblog had a very similar post to the one “my friend” had that was in voilation. As you can see, I gladly removed my out-of-compliance sentence. (Note: Please do not let the fact that you no longer see any search engine ad program ads on the bottom of this page cause you to jump to the conclusion that “my friend” and I are the same person, because that would be way too weasely on my part.)

Again, let this in no way be construed as a complaint about Googl* Ads*ns*, I mean, “a search company” as I would never, ever want to personally say anything negative about them, however, my friend says they are a bunch of jackasses.

Later: My friend e-mailed me to say the search company didn’t like the friendly jabs he was making about them. “I didn’t say they are a bunch of jackasses,” he says, “I said they were a bunch of jack-booted Nazis.” I am happy to make this correction.

Neighborly correction: Actor Val Kilmer says he didn’t tell the Rolling Stone Magazine that the New Mexico county he lives in is filled with homicidal drunks. I hope he’s telling the truth as why would one go out of their way to tick off the neighbors in a county like that? Rolling Stone editors say they stand by the article. But that’s easy for them: they live in New York, far away from homicidal drunks.

Prized nobel: Whenever it’s Nobel Prize giving season, I can’t help but remember this classic from The Onion.

Resume blogs: I am anticipating an avalanche of blogs from magazine writer wannabes after the appearance of this article in today’s Chicago Tribune. (via mediabistro.com)

Topics I don’t blog: There are several magazine-related topics the rexblog rarely covers: Local magazines covering high school sports. Articles about the selling, buying or closing of magazines. Personnel stories unless they involve Pete Sampras. And fashion magazine stuff like this story. Oh, yes, and articles about anything related to NY Magazine. So, if you’re looking for those kinds of stories, sorry.

Another reason for the American Revolution: Recall the AJR managing editor who devoted 1,365 words to complaining about how much puffy coverage Krispy Kreme gets? Well, according to this story on Tech Central Station (which I found via Nashville blogger Bill Hobbs) the folks from KK are not getting such a positive welcome from the UK press. This is folly on the part of the British media, however. I predict that within a month, Queen Elizabeth will be sending a courier out each afternoon to pick up a dozen hot glazed ones to serve with tea.

Lost in translation: Here’s an article about the french socialist who owns and runs a failed magazine’s re-launched website about American capitalism. I link to it as an update to previous vaporzine rumors regarding the brand’s future print plans. According to the acticle in the San Jose Mercury (or as some say, “Murky”) News, “Red Herring will remain solely online until September 2004 because Time Warner bought the old magazine’s subscriber list on the condition there wouldn’t be a print edition until then.”

glitch: In one of those “it takes a villiage” reminders, I discovered this morning that the .mac-hosted images on the rexblog were not being displayed (including those I posted last night). It appears today is my renewal day and the credit card number the fine folks at apple had has not been updated. This reminds me once more that I’m dependent on at least four server sources for the basic rexblog shell page: one of which is a free service that I still don’t know why I’m allowed to use so freely. (Maybe I shouldn’t admit that.)