Pick yourself up, dust your self off, and sue all over again: Remember that lady (bottom item) who got crushed by all the Wal-mart shoppers trying to get one of those $29 DVD players? It seems she’s really a very unlucky shopper as this is the 16th time she claims to have been injured in businesses where she worked or shopped. What an amazing coincidence. I guess her theme song should be Chumbawamba’s Tubthumping.

43% of my time is spent ranting at research: Doc Searls points to a story on netimperative.com regarding a study that shows Europeans now spend more time online than they do reading magazines, according to the latest research commissioned by European Interactive Advertising Association (EIAA). (But then, wouldn’t one expect a study from them to show that?)

Quote:

The study, which was carried out by research agency Millward Brown, shows that the internet represents 10% of European’s media consumption, overtaking magazines at 8%, and just behind newspapers at 13%. Television continues to capture the largest share of people’s media time at 41%, with radio in second place at 28%. However, 43% of people who use the internet say that are spending less time watching TV.

Because the employees of Hammock Publishing have been subjected to enough ranting (via e-mail) today regarding another set of statistics that were equally ridiculous, I’ll skip my standard warning against allowing reporters to have access to research.

However, I must agree with Doc Searls clarification that the Internet is not a medium. (It’s at least an extra large.) He uses the metaphors of “place” or “environment” to describe it. I think of it more in Mcluhanesque fashion as an extenion of ones central nervous system (bottom paragraph). Whatever it is, an association that exists to promote advertising on the Internet is doing disservice to its mission by cooking up bogus comparisons. Why bogus? How much of the time spent on the Internet is engaged in “consuming” advertising sponsored bytes vs. off-line advertising sponsored atoms? What about time spent shopping online or IMing or engaged in collaborative activities or research? Was that time included in the research?

My passion for magazines is evident for all who visit this weblog, yet I spend hours more each week “on” the Internet than engaged in reading magazines. So what? I also spend more time on the Internet than I do eating, but I manage to eat more than enough (okay, way more than enough). I spend more time on the Internet than I do reading books, but there are 35 books listed on my “read recently, 2003″ list. I spend more time on the Internet than I do watching TV, but I, wait, I don’t watch hardly any TV. I spend more time on the Internet than I do with my family, but I just spent the last three hours joyfully supporting my 13-year-olds musical passions.

So what does a comparison mean of how much time one spends using the Internet to how much time one spends reading a magazine? Nothing.

Get Real: Breaking vaporzine news, this afternoon. “REAL Magazine, The Girlfriend’s Guide to living with Passion, Grace and Style - with an intimate look at the practical issues real women face every day,” has issued a press release saying it will debut in April of 2004.

Quote:

“REAL Magazine will fill an important niche in the lives of busy readers who have many publication options but limited time to pursue them: by combining current popular genres (lifestyle, health, personal growth, beauty and entertainment) to give readers the more complete value of several publications in one,” says REAL editor-in-chief Mary Monroe.

According to the press release, the magazine will launch in April of 2004. (However, according to the website (flash warning), the magazine will launch during the summer of 2004 (screen grab). Since it is being published in Park City, Utah, I assume that the flexibility in the launch date has something to do with how good the skiing is between now and then.)

(Note to would-be magazine entrepreneurs: Combining genres is rarely the path to a second issue. Don’t look for the five most over-saturated magazine categories dominated by the world’s richest media conglomerates and convince yourself there is room in the marketplace for a magazine that dabbles in each category yet dominates none. I don’t want to single out those who issued this press release (floating a vaporzine concept is something I applaud), but how many women’s magazine start-ups have to fail before it becomes apparent that the grass is greener (wait, the ski slopes are whiter) in some other category?)

Think nationally, act regionally: MediaPost’s Larry Dobrow profiles the magazine SchoolSports. Sounds to me like a great idea that, more importantly, is being executed with success. The six-year-old title covers high school sports with regionalized editions and national advertising, a winning combination.

(Note to would-be magazine entrepreneurs: Like the jock-jams standard goes, “This is how you do it.” The key: national advertisers, unique distribution and six years of proving a concept works. Note to someone I blogged about Sunday (2nd item): Sell out to these guys.)

Puddle jumping: Over the past two years, I’ve made this discovery: when you say you don’t blog about a topic in one post, you run across something on that topic immediately that you must link to. That is happening now, as the previous post mentions my reluctance to post news about non-U.S. magazines.

So, here’s a link to a story announcing the UK’s consumer magazine association, the Periodical Publishers Association (PPA) is about to launch a major marketing drive to “hammer home the effectiveness of consumer magazine advertising.”

According to this article on the UK website, Mediaweek Online, “Instead of forming a dedicated agency to market magazines, however, PPA Marketing, as the initiative will be known, will focus on training magazine sales forces and striving for closer links with agencies and clients.”