A suggestion: MarketWatch’s Jon Friedman has a suggestion for magazines: “Endorse political candidates!”

October surprise? Wait. There’s got to be a catch, here. “Big media” is not supposed to find good economic news in the days running up the election. But the Time Inc.-owned Business 2.0 is pumping out a press release touting the fact that it has found at least 100,000 “high-wage” jobs (higher than the $36,000 nation median) in the pipeline at just (clarification “more than” — which means, what? <200?, <150?) 100 companies. And that’s in addition to tens of thousands of jobs the same companies filled this year, according to the magazine. And that’s just (clarification “more than”) 100 big companies.

However, most “new jobs” (even high-wage ones) in the American economy are created by companies much smaller than those surveyed by Business 2.0. As Virginia Postrel has explained about the challenge of measuring job-creation:

“The Bureau (of Labor Statistics) is good at counting people who work for large organizations in well-defined, long-established occupations. It is much less adept at counting employees in small businesses, simply because there are too many small enterprises to representatively sample them. The bureau’s occupational survey, which might suggest which jobs are growing, doesn’t count self-employed people or partners in unincorporated businesses at all. And many of today’s growing industries, the ones adding jobs even amid the recession, are comprised largely of small companies and self-employed individuals. That is particularly true for aesthetic crafts, from graphic designers and cosmetic dentists to gardeners. These specialists’ skills are in ever greater demand, yet they tend to work for themselves or in partnerships.”

I know who Nashville blogger Bill Hobbs will blame for all this.

Okay, you can stop e-mailing me: Just a note to certain readers of this weblog who know to wear an overcoat into my office, yes, I saw this article about how people who work in cold offices make more mistakes and are less efficient. (via /.)

No-brainer suggestion: The first call I’d make if I ran the Miss America Pageant would be to Mark Burnett. This seems so obvious, I guess the organizers of the event would rather it go away than to do what it needs to do to survive: become entertaining. I’d make Miss America a multi-part series lasting the entire summer and end it on Labor Day weekend. You’ve got 50+ state rounds and countless local ones. Surely there’s some drama in how someone becomes “Miss Congeniality.” What a waste of a category-defining brand.

The hacking of a vapormook: Everytime I don’t link to a story about Make, someone e-mails me there’s a new vaporzine. Now, from Wired.com, I learn it’s not merely a new vaporzine, it’s a trend spotting opportunity. I’m totally sold, and have been since I first blogged it in July.
DIY (oh, “do it yourself”) is right up my alley — or at least wanting
to DIY — and my book shelves groan from stuff I’ve purchased from Make
publisher, O’Reilly. I’m so
pumped to build that $14 steady cam. Really. I’ll probably spend $1,000
on a new camera for it, but the gratification of making that $14 steady
cam will be priceless. I’m currently setting up a home podcasting
studio and am so into doing as much as possible with old Pringle cans
(I feel the need to alert anyone who may stumble onto this with no
context that I’m not really setting up a podcasting studio, nor do I
eat Pringles or use their cans.)

Seriously, though. If I were someone who gives out awards for most notable magazine launches of the year, I would go ahead and pre-award the 2005 “best of show” to Make. And unlike some notable launches, Make magazine will be a huge success: take it to the bank.

Quote from the Make website:

Make
brings the do-it-yourself mindset to all the technology in your life.
Make is loaded with exciting projects that help you make the most of
your technology at home and away from home. This is a magazine that
celebrates your right to tweak, hack, and bend any technology to your
own will.

And another thing: I really like that
they’re defining a new publication category based on a term the
Japanese use to describe a recurring publication package with some of
the conventions of a trade paperback book, a magazine-book hyrid called
a “mook.” I’m thinking of starting a whole new subsidiary at my company that will custom publish these publications just so I can call it Hammook Publishing.

SME? As someone who is somewhat familiar with the B-to-B “small publisher” thing, I’d like to make a request: Don’t use the term “smaller- to mid-sized entrepreneurs” and especially don’t use the acronym SME. “Small publisher” or “independent publisher” is just fine. You won’t hurt my feelings. Otherwise, I look forward to reading the report by Richard Mead from Jordan Edmiston (as reported by MediaPost.com).

A linguistic question for university students: The other day I said I rarely blog magazines by or about students or aimed at the university market, not because I don’t like you (I’ve recently been pleasantly surprised to learn that among the seven readers of this blog, there is a college student or two), but because there is too much to keep up with in this category. I won’t try to reconstruct the history of magazines “targeting college students” (note to journalism major: good paper topic), but can say with some degree of confidence that some variation of everything you can imagine has been attempted before to some variation of success or failure, or both (note to j-major paper writer: here’s a good Google search to begin your paper: “phil moffitt chris whittle”).

But, “it’s been done before” is a phrase never uttered by those wanting to start a magazine (but can be the entire vocabulary of a potential “funding source”). And since the phrase “18-to-24-year-old” is always proceeded by the phrase “hard-to-reach,” there will always be incentive to try-try again with the next “first time it’s been done” idea.

Which brings me back to the question I would like to pose for university students regarding the vaporzine to be called Co-Ed reported a couple days ago in Crain’s NY Business.

Quote:

“There is no one magazine aimed at both sexes, written by students for students,” says publisher David Allen Liebler…. He adds that the magazine will also be available in a digital format through its Web site and will offer advertisers a chance to target the readership through events on campus and during spring break.”

Perhaps it’s my demographic, but my question is this: Doesn’t the term “Co-ed” imply that the magazine is aimed at women students? I know the term also means a school attended by both sexes, but has it lost a meaning it would conjure for a codger like me?

Feel free to use the comment feature to educate me on this linguistic dilemma.

(Thanks to vaporzine scout Eddie Rider.)