Hayseeding: David Carr interviews several magazine editors in this strange piece of New Yorkcentricity.

Helpful type jamming tips, but don’t tell any editors: Pariah S. Burke at the magazine design weblog provides lots of tips for jamming more copy into a tight spot but warns, “Never tell an editor or non-creative supervisor about the following tips! If you do, you’ll be expected to employ them on every project, thus eliminating their utility to help you out of long-copy/short-space jams.” So, if you’re an editor or other non-creative supervisor, you didn’t hear this from me.

More on Vogue’s shoppertainment extra: The WP follows up the NYT’s story about Vogue’s online “Shop September” addendum to its September issue. Buried in the story is the real news:

Quote:

Powering the site is software from a small Atlanta firm called Active8media. It uses patented technology for making digital replicas of print pages clickable online and giving advertisers a self-service system for editing the Web versions.

“We take consumers from the point of inspiration to the point of purchase,” proclaimed Lee Davis, chief executive of Active8media.

Vogue’s site is the latest in a series of attempts — mostly ill-fated — to allow advertisers to link their messages in print with Web sites. Two expensive flops that launched four years ago required consumers to hook up small scanners to their computers to read special codes or watermarks imprinted in magazines and newspapers.

If Vogue’s simpler experiment succeeds, Active8media’s technology likely will be welcomed by publishers eager to find ways to give advertisers more information about how print ads perform. That, after all, is part of the appeal of Internet advertising; it typically tells advertisers which part of their ads draws the most response from viewers when they click to get information. Active8media’s software collects detailed click-through data, allowing Alberta Ferretti, for example, to learn whether more people seemed interested in its green satin mini-skirt, lapin fur jacket or pink silk chiffon blouse worn by the model in its Vogue ad. For its part, Vogue has hired an outside firm to analyze all the data.

Okay. I will go on record. As I am noted for scoffing at technologies that on the surface appear awfully close to what’s going on here, notably the “CueCat” and “digital editions” of magazines, I would like to express what may be an unexpected thumbs up to the Vogue experiment. It works. I highly recommend magazine publishers go click around the site. It’s a helpful extension of the magazine…yet is a unique online experience as well. It is not goofy like the CueCat or clueless like I believe may be the case with PDF-ish digital replicas of print publications.

(via paidcontent.org and others.)

How magazines get started (continued): Central Minnesota has become a hotbed for the creation of new magazines.

Quote:

Cleo Nistler watched a variety of publications start up during her 22 years in printing sales. “I always knew I could do one better,” the St. Cloud woman said. So in December, she launched a magazine called The Bright Side of 50 and joined a growing list of new local publishers.

(An explanation of the feature “How magazines get started (continued)” can be found here.)

Back from Atlanta: Just got back to Nashville from Atlanta. Thanks to the Magazine Association of the Southeast (especially rexblog reader Amy) for inviting me to speak…my talk was about what maintaining this blog has taught me about magazines…and about blogging. Now, I’m digging through voice- & e-mail for the rest of the afternoon.