TGIO: I’m sorry, Laura. Congratulations, Patrick. Thank god it’s over. No more hearing about the curse of the Bambino. All it took was a total eclipse of the moon.

Yakety Yak: It’s 2004 (not, 1994) and all the big names in consumer magazines are still sitting in a room discussing how they can get their readers to pay for online content. Ann Moore, CEO of Time Inc., says, “Find the market and they’ll pay.” (Huh? Where? Like at Wal-Mart?) And then they discuss how users can renew subscriptions online. I hope these people aren’t as clueless as the story by Jon Friedman of CBS.Marketwatch.com makes them sound. At least, moderator Sam Shepard of BusinessWeek says, “We come here every year and say the same thing.”

How sad is it that a few days after Google announces it generated almost $1 billion in online advertising revenue in one quarter that these guys are talking about renewing subscriptions online?

Okay, everyone, repeat after me: It’s the links, stupid.

(via: iwantmedia.com)

Speaking of PR blogging: How do you get a company to back off — or, uh, clarify — a bone-headed product decision? Inform bloggers of the bone-headed decision.

Quote from Marc Hedlund (at O’Reilly):

In an earlier post this week, I railed against Sprint for disabling the use of Bluetooth on the new Treo 650 for laptop Internet access. Jeff Shafer from Sprint Business Solutions Public Relations contacted me and said the following:

It is important to note that the characterization [in your post] is inaccurate.

Due to some development deadlines, the phone has been launched as described, without the DUN [dial-up networking] capability.  However, as part of a scheduled maintenance release of software (timing pending some testing), the DUN capabilities will be supported.  We also support the functionality in the just released PPC-6601 (Pocket PC device).   In no way is Sprint suppressing the functionality as you describe or with the motivations you assert.

(via: Gizmodo.com)

Dejazine update: According to the SF Chronicle, there has been a sighting of a weekly Redux Herring prototype.

Quote:

This time around, Red Herring won’t have the laserlike focus on venture capitalists and tech startups. “We’re going to be broader to reflect the maturing of the tech industry,” Dreyfus said. “It’s also important to be much more global than it was.” The magazine published a prototype earlier this month, with 8,000 copies going to potential readers and advertisers. In November, it will start bimonthly publication, and in January it goes weekly. The goal is 45,000 paid circulation.

Bimonthly? As in every-other month? So, there will be one issue between now and when it begins as a weekly, right? If it refers to twice each month, I think a better description would be semi-monthly, or every two weeks, fortnightly.

I still stand by my prediction of July 6, however, it appears a lot more money will be spent on the publication before it wraps up.

It’s a small world after all: In remarking on Seth Goden’s warning about CEO blogging, Steve Rubel says some too-kind things about me taking time from my “busy schedule” (okay, I can hear that laughter down the hall, stop) to have a conversation with “worker-bee bloggers” like him. (Yeah, right, worker-bee blogger: Steve gets quoted in the NY Times more than Mayor Bloomberg.) Thanks, Steve.

More coincidentally, Steve also sends a shout-out to Michael Hyatt for his weblog Working Smart, as another good conversational-blogger-COO-type. Michael, it turns out, is also a Nashville blogger: He’s the COO of Thomas Nelson, a big publicly-traded publisher of religious books (one, I’ve blogged about on occasion). I’ve added his blog to my Nashville blogroll in the left column of each page on the rexblog. Please let me know of other Nashville weblogs not listed.

How magazines get started (continued): Writing in the food section of the NY Times, David Carr profiles the new magazine Chow.

Quote:

Most food magazines are the glossy equivalent of an expensive chef knife: gorgeous to behold, and sometimes a bit challenging for the average amateur to use correctly. Chow is more like a Buck knife, utilitarian in the extreme and no-nonsense in approach. And unlike established magazines, Chow is far more irreverent and less bent on establishing foodie credentials….For the time being, Chow is a tidy snack of a magazine, with an initial circulation of 50,000 and a future mostly predicated on high hopes and the kind of optimism that keeps people putting out new magazines even as major publishers struggle against a punishing set of industry economics.

Great article. Can’t wait to see the magazine.

(Explanation: How magazines get started.)

Magazines online: From min online, an overview by Steve Smith of how magazines are doing the web thing in 2004.

(via: PaidContent.org and iwantmedia.com)

Magazine product placement, the real concern: Stories about magazine product placement are bubbling up from the MPA convention in Florida. Don’t have time now to go into it, but the real can of worms that would open up has nothing to do with the Federal Trade Commission, but with the U.S. Postal Service. Will explain later.

Later: Sorry, casual readers of this weblog — the following is over-the-top magazine wonkishness.

For years, I’ve said this is nothing new. (Perhaps the best example of true “product placement” in a consumer magazine (and this is pure product placement) are the sponsors of the idea homes built by Southern Living as described in a WSJ article two years ago.)

My complaint with coverage of this topic, however, is the confusion reporters have in understanding the difference in “product placement” and advertorials and custom publishing. My company publishes several magazines for corporations and national associations and we are considered a “custom publisher.” However, the magazines we publish are all clearly marked and branded by their sponsor — nothing hidden or “placed.” Despite their “branding” and ownership and distribution, these publications adhere to high ethical, editorial and design standards. They are not house organs if that term implies something negative (however, we do produce some newsletters that have as their editorial mission some internal communication challenge). We do not accept “paid placement” in these magazines, but we often review products and services and once-in-a-while, these products may be from advertisers…but they are not paid for or a part of any agreement or placement scheme. If an advertiser sponsors something in the publication other than an ad (an award, for example), it is clearly marked.

So (as implied in the article linked-to today and in posts I’ve made in the past) it is not the “federal trade commission” or even ASME or a group of professors that are my concern when it comes to mixing paid placements with editorial: it’s the US Postal Service who will rain on this parade. As I have the privilege of writing checks to the USPS each year that total, well, you don’t want to know, I have found it of value to have someone on staff who is an accredited expert in all things postal. At times, it has been my honor to have long conference calls with representatives of the fine folks who deliver our mail. I’ve even had breakfast with a Post Master General to discuss how much I appreciate the men and women in blue.

So, I’ve grown to appreciate the can of worms a magazine publisher can open up if he or she starts thinking that a revenue stream can be generated by selling “product placement” space. If he or she does, he or she better download some of these regulatory guidelines from the USPS and be ready to go through his or her magazine page-by-page and discuss “what is an ad” and “what is editorial” and “what is paid” and “what is not” and be ready to pull out the pen and write larger checks.

The ethics and legalities of product placement are, to me, not a concern if the relationship between sponsor and publication is transparent to the reader/consumer. However, the unintended consequence of this practice will be a new and potentially unwelcomed recalibration of USPS guidelines for “what is editorial?” in computing the postal rates a publisher pays.

(Sorry for the mixing of metaphors.)