ABC News executives told to avoid
deluxe travel and newspapers.
Perhaps you saw where ABC News has instituted new “guidelines” to “reduce administrative costs” during the slow economy. It includes instructions to cancel subscriptions to print media and to travel more down-scale.
After looking at the guidelines, I’ve decided to jump on board:
I will cancel all of my newspaper subscriptions (oh, wait, I did that years ago).
I will make sure my business travel is “one grade below” anything that ABC news executives have ever experienced. (Note: I am, however, an “A-List” passenger on Southwest — so I paid for that free spot at the front of the line by standing in at least 32 previous lines.)
I will continue to stay at “B” hotels — although I think Hampton Inns are a solid A- for providing me with free wifi.
I will cancel subscriptions to general news magazines — or to those not already cancelled.
I will cancel subscriptions to magazines that are poorly designed and written.
I will cancel subscriptions to magazines that contain NO information or insight critical (or even mildly interesting) to my work or life.
I will cancel subscriptions to magazines that do not feed the passions I believe give my life meaning.
However, for those magazines that do: they are a bargain at any price.
Other things I will do to be more productive during the slow economy: Rather than watch any ABC News programming or visit any website related to ABC News, I will do something that is informative and valuable.
ABOVE: This morning, the New York Times devoted an entire page to a news article suggesting the possibility of Estee Lauder’s influence on editorial decisions at Harper’s Bazaar Magazine. The news article was preceded by Estee Lauder interstitial “pre-roll” advertising and two Estee Lauder ads appear adjacent to the article.
Today the New York Times Style section includes an article (sheepish clarification: it showed up on my RSS feed of “magazine-related” news) that, in a tone of righteous indignation, reported that Harper’s Bazzar was devoting 40 pages of an issue to glamorous fashion photos modeled by four super-models/actresses who regularly appear in and on the cover of the magazine. Except this time, they will be identified as the “stars” of a new fragrance from Estee Lauder instead of, say, the stars of a re-make of Charlie’s Angels.
In the San Francisco Chronicle today, a story appears about the possibility of the FCC tightening the “product placement” rules related to, say, a Coca-cola cup appearing on the table in front of the judges of American Idol.*
As I’ve written before — many, many time — I’m a advocate for transparency in the relationships marketers have with media. I think marketers and media companies should disclose the relationships they have with one another and let the audience decide what is, and is not, ethical. Indeed, I think they should be proud of the relationships.
That said, I must ask: Among the readers of Harper’s Bazaar, are there any who really care where the ads stop and the edit begins? Have you flipped through the September issue of any of fashion magazine? I think most readers would be shocked to learn there is anything in them other than advertising. More than any genre of magazines, fashion magazine advertising is the reason they are purchased.
As for reality programs like American Idol, is the “franchise” of American Idol not a product, itself? Do viewers care that watching the whole show is like watching a commercial for the brand American Idol and all of the performers appearing are also brands?:
When Ryan Seacrest tells viewers they should go download recordings of the evening’s performances on iTunes, are viewers really duped into thinking that was an editorial decision on the part of Ryan rather than a business relationship between the Fox Network and Apple? Do viewers think the Ford music video advertisement is something the contestants do to relax during the week? Do viewers think Coca-Cola is what’s in that cup in front of Paula Abdul?
Are readers and viewers that stupid?
Okay, some are. So perhaps they need some type of explanation or disclaimer below that NYTimes.com advertisement for the product being written about in article next to it. Perhaps they need a big box that includes a warning that, “this article about Estee Lauder’s Senuous is sponsored by Estee Lauder’s Senuous.”
Bottomline: When you attempt to apply the same journalistic and ethical guidelines to entertainment (i.e., fashion magazines and “commercially-sponsored” network reality shows) that you do to news journalism (general or business), you start heading down a slippery slope to school marm silliness that soon makes serious ethical issues seem trite.
*I wrote about American Idol’s creative product placement practices earlier this year.
Four years ago, an article in the Wall Street Journal suggested Internet advertising would match magazine advertising by 2007 and blow past it in 2008. What happened?
The very short version: During 2007, almost $60 billion was spent on advertising that appeared in print while $11.31 billion was spent on advertising that appeared on the Internet.
The very long version: I don’t expect any readers of this weblog to remember a four-year-old rant I wrote (and here) about a Wall Street Journal article appearing in July, 2004. Screen grabbed on the left, the WSJ story carried the headline “Online Ad Dollars Set to Match, Then Go Ahead of Magazines (sub. required).” The article was based on a Jupiter Research report predicting that in 2007, Internet advertising spending would grow to $13.8 billion which, claimed the Wall Street Journal, “would match magazine advertising.”
My rant, which later became an article appearing in Folio: Magazine, was directed more at the Wall Street Journal reporter’s mis-interpretation of the research than it was at the Jupiter Research report. Their prediction was not really a comparison of Internet advertising to magazine advertising, merely their estimate of online advertising spending through 2007 and beyond. It was the Journal reporter who decided to mashup a comparison of future Internet advertising (based on Jupiter’s numbers) and its magazine number estimate.
However — and this was a major focus of my rant — the reporter (and Jupiter) failed to recognize that the Internet advertising prediction included all online advertising while the magazine advertising prediction excluded all business-to-business magazine advertising.
In my response to the article, I suggested that a better prediction of 2007 magazine ad spending would be the 2004 estimate by Veronis Suhler that $28.3 billion would be spent on magazine advertising (consumer and B-to-B) in 2007.
Fast-forward four years. Today, Advertising Age issued a report that included the actual ad spending (split by media) in 2007. As you can see in the Advertising Age pie chart below, $11.31 billion was spent on Internet advertising and $30.33 billion was spent on magazine advertising. Throw in the $28.22 billion spent on newspaper advertising and there was nearly $60 billion spent on print advertising last year.
Let’s break this down a bit. Let’s look at a comparison of the 2004 predictions vs. actual performance from Jupiter Research and Veronis Suhler regarding Internet and magazine advertising. As you can see on my comparison below, Jupiter over-shot their Internet advertising prediction while Veronis-Suhler undershot their magazine advertising prediction.
(Granted, Jupiter Research’s prediction during the most recent four-year span was dramatically better than their 1999-2003 prediction. In 1999, they predicted that online advertising in 2003 would total $11.5 billion compared to the $6.6 billion it actually hit.)
What does this mean? First, it means, (to quote a wonderful headline I saw this morning) “90% of all statistics can be made to say anything 50% of the time.” No doubt, the statistics in today’s report can be spun any way you want. I’ve spun them one way. Most bloggers would spin them in a way that suggests they are another nail in the coffin of the print medium. Frankly, the way headlines and intro paragraphs will be written can make most any statistics imply whatever you want — at least 50% of the time.
As for me, personally: I love Internet advertising. Without a doubt, it’s growing faster than any other form of advertising and I, personally, am benefiting from that. In 15 years, it has grown from zero to $11.3 billion, an amazing feat. However, my complaint is with the misuse of numbers by reporters and tech-oriented analysts — and, to be honest, just about everybody I know — to support a narrative that can be summed up in three words: Print is dead. As much as I love the Internet and all things digital, that narrative is probably not going to be true in the lifetime of anyone making that prediction.
Today’s narrative — as it was back in 2004 and 1999 and 1954 when TV was going to kill print and radio and movies — is that the Internet is going to bury all other forms of media one day. Today’s narrative is that Internet advertising is growing at a far larger percentage (which even a middle-schooler should understand is easier to do when you have a lower base on which to grow). Today’s narrative is that newspapers are going to be dead in, what, a year of so? Certainly, they won’t last for an entire decade, goes the narrative. According to Steve Ballmer, “…there will be no media consumption left in 10 years that is not delivered over an IP network. There will be no newspapers, no magazines that are delivered in paper form. Everything gets delivered in an electronic form.” (He later said he could be off on the number of years, claiming, “…If it’s 14 or if it’s 8, it’s immaterial to my fundamental point . . . “
Of course, he also said the iPhone would flop.
Personally, I am doubtful about the longterm viability of the kind of print product the national chains of newspapers produce. Outside the sports section, I find little of value or interest to me in my hometown daily churned out by one of those national chains. And as I’ve said many times on this blog, I think many business-to-business print publications that focus merely on the transactions of their industries will be replaced by online properties that can provide a better, more timely flow of such information.
So, yes, I do think print will constrict while the Internet grows — over time. But die? Not likely.
Over the years, it’s been fascinating to watch the light turn on for certain people regarding what’s taking place in the marketplace of “content” (excuse me, Doc). For example, today, Paul Krugman writes an “a-ha” piece after using an Amazon Kindle for a couple of months.
Quote:
“Indeed, if e-books become the norm, the publishing industry as we know it may wither away. Books may end up serving mainly as promotional material for authors’ other activities, such as live readings with paid admission. Well, if it was good enough for Charles Dickens, I guess it’s good enough for me.
Whenever I read something like that, I have to take a deep breath and admit to myself that not everyone has spent the past 20 years obsessed with this topic. Whenever I read something like that, I wish I had a place to point people to a few seminal writings that have provided similar a-ha-moments to really geeky folks (like me) — but a long time ago.
If you have some more writings that provided an a-ha moment to you, please add them to the comments.
Here are a few of my go-to ones:
1. The Esther Dyson essay, “Intellectual Value,” written in the July, 1995, issue of Wired magazine. (Krugman quotes Dyson in his piece today, but does not link to it.) Go ahead, commit it to memory. It’s like the Gettysburg Address.
3. While not a specific article, I find myself referring often to the concept Paul Saffo coined “macro-myopia.” It relates to forecasting the impact of new technology and means, roughly, “in the short term we overestimate, in the long term we underestimate” the impact of new technology. This is an idea I’ve written about several times over the years (on the Cluetrain listserv in 2000, here in 2002 and in 2004 when Paul explained his role in adding to a concept developed by Roy Amara, Ev Rogers and others. The importance of the concept today is this: When those of us who are obsessed with technology see something that we know is going to change everything, we delude ourselves into thinking the change will be overnight. Technology adoption has a very predictable cycle and even those technologies that look like instant hits are likely catching a wave that was two-decades in the building.
Two bonus long reads for those who find comfort in realizing all these new ideas have been around a long, long time.:
“If the magazines published two or three years from now aren’t different, we’re in trouble. The current magazine model won’t take us into the next five years, let alone the next 100 years.”
“…being unburdened by print allowed the team at Infoworld the opportunity to focus on the changing needs of their customers and to develop online, event and mobile products.”
“Yes, print is a burden. It’s expensive to produce for it. It’s expensive to manufacture. It’s expensive to deliver. It limits your space. It limits your timing. It’s stale when it’s fresh. It is one-size-fits-all and can’t be adapted to the needs of each user. It comes with no ability to click for more. It has no search. It can’t be forwarded. It has no archive. It kills trees. It uses energy. It usually brings unions. And you really should recycle it. Wow, when you think about it, print sucks.
So what was the theme? Print is a burden. Unfortunately, saying “print is a burden” implies that there are other options out there that are not burdens. Frankly, the web is a burden. Traveling to events IDG puts on is a burden. Trying to synch my phone and computer is a burden. As Scott Karp displayed in a post yesterday, trying to discover which among 2,000 different news stories on the same topic is a burden.
Despite my love (and I use the word love very deliberately) of the magazine medium, I have never been burdened by thinking print is a hammer and every communications or marketing challenge is a nail.
Granted, my company has published magazines since the day it opened 16 years ago. But even back then, we also created lots of “interactive multimedia” (published on CD-ROM). And in those pre-web days, we also managed “forums” on CompuServe. As a custom media creator, I’ve never felt “burdened” by any medium that helps build strong relationships between our clients (associations and companies) and their members or customers. If smoke signals would help forge and sustain those relationships, we’d be all over it.
Those who know me — even through this blog — know I personally agree with Jeff Jarvis on his somewhat satirical indictment of print. I’m about as paper-free as someone can get in their personal and business practices, but I’m no print vegan (did I just create a new buzzterm?). As Jeff is writing a book and writes for newspapers and magazines, it’s not like he’s a print vegan either. But my print aversion is neither “environmental” (as I always say , if paper is the cause of global warming, someone needs to share that inconvenient truth with this guy) nor based on any belief that print is inherently bad. What I find a burden is poorly designed, written and produced print. What I find a burden is the clutter and confusion print and paper often add to my already cluttered life.
Bottomline: Print is not the burden. My time is the burden. If you publish a beautiful magazine with articles that really matter to me — that instruct, inform or celebrate something I feel strongly about, it is no burden on me. If you help me get to the information and insight I need to live a fuller life or conduct business in a more flexible and productive way, your blogging and tweeting and bookmarking does not burden me. Useless, redundant, meaningless, re-shuffled drivel is the burden. It can be delivered via print or on a weblog or a mobile device. Crap is a burden no matter what the medium used to deliver it.
After a weekend of avoiding endless posts by bloggers pointing to the NY Times story on how blogging can kill you, it was nice to learn* that while it may kill you, blogging can also help you land a book deal.
Congratulations to Hugh MacLeod on the news that he has signed a contract with Portfolio Books (a Penguin imprint) to develop into a book his popular “manifesto,” How To Be Creative. Also, this proves another point about the power of Free. One of the ways Penguin knows Hugh’s book will be a success is the popularity of an earlier PDF version available for free.
As Hugh does on his cartoons drawn on the back of business cards (he can boil big thoughts down into small gems), here’s his key to being creative: “Work Hard. Keep at it. Live simply and quietly. Remain humble. Stay positive. Be nice. Be polite.”
And here’s a great side benefit from that advice: It will also help keep blogging from killing you.
*Actually, I learned this last month, but was sworn to secrecy.
I believe I’ve mentioned on this blog before my fascination with Phillip Moffitt. Moffitt, along with Chris Whittle, started a company in the mid-1970s that is no longer around, but the alumni of that company are all over the magazine publishing world — some in very senior business and editorial roles. (Some even read this blog from time-to-time.) When they were business partners, Moffitt and Whittle were perhaps best known for their purchase of Esquire magazine in 1979. In addition to being its CEO, Moffitt served as editor of Esquire for the next few years. I read the magazine fairly closely during his years as editor. Certainly, no one (except, perhaps ad sales people) would call that era the golden age of Esquire (far from it). But for me, it could not have been more compelling. I was around the magazine’s target age and demographic. I was intrigued by Moffitt (and to a lesser degree, Whittle, who I once described on this blog as being to publishing what Tucker was to the automobile) who were six-or-seven years older than me and from Tennessee and were trail-blazing some publishing and marketing trends I thought were both radical and smart — and, indeed they were. Today, those ideas have played-out in all sorts of amazing ways — including some side paths that I have journeyed down myself.
I’ve never met Moffitt, but I recall that in the mid-80s, he wrote an Esquire essay — I believe it was around the time he turned 40 — that was a penetrating, self-reflective piece that pretty much confessed that he believed there was way more to life than what he was experiencing — so much for fame and success and trail-blazing. I would have dismissed the essay as new-age babbling or mid-life crisis (or both) had Moffitt not soon-there-after cashed-out his holdings and, well, here’s an article from today’s San Francisco Chronicle, that picks up his story there.
Quote:
“At the pinnacle of his success as chief executive and editor in chief of Esquire magazine, Phillip Moffitt walked away from it all - the glamour, the accolades, the punishing schedule - and chose instead to wake up each morning and breathe, to explore the mysteries he had always intuited. “I was drawn to a sense that there was a greater meaning to life than getting ahead. It felt intuitively, intrinsically to me as is true for most people, that in the midst of all we know - science - there is a relatedness that’s possible, a mystery; it’s always drawn me.” It was 1987, and Moffitt had no real plan. Married for part of this time, he spent the next several years living in various meditation centers “in rooms so small that [he] could often reach out and touch both walls,” according to his new book.
Over the years, I’ve spoken with many people in the magazine publishing world who worked with Moffitt, some who’ve stayed in contact with him. (They always tell me that most people ask them about Whittle.) They’ve shared with me glimpses of what he’s been doing over the past 20 or so years. Now, he’s written a book on that topic. It comes out in a week or so, and while the topic is outside my typical reading box — "Dancing with Life: Buddhist Insights for Finding Meaning and Joy in the Face of Suffering" — I’ve ordered a copy. If it brings me joy and meaning — or some insights into Moffitt — I’ll review it here.
As usual, Chris Anderson is a voice of reason when he answers a question that implies magazines will be replaced in a decade or so by something digital that is distributed via a new device. Will it happen in a decade? he is asked. “No,” says Chris, “Technology adoption happens slowly. This is the editor of Wired telling you no. Obviously, newspapers are going to be changing dramatically over the next few years, but magazines are not newspapers. And I think magazines 10 years from now are going to look something like they do now.â€
I’ll go further: magazines (like Chris, I won’t extend the following prediction to newspapers) will never be “replaced” by any digital device, especially the device hypothesized in the article:
“…you’ll walk onto a plane, or a subway, or a soon-to-be-invented mode of transport, and you’ll tuck a little electronic book under your arm. Inside that little book, which will be very expensive at first but soon will cost $150, there’ll be a series of mylar “pages,†and there will be small buttons off to the side, and once you hit one of them, whoooosh, words and photos from Vanity Fair will suddenly appear.
The problem with this future-scape is this: The technology/delivery channel being described is not a magazine. It may use the metaphors associated with a print magazine, but it’s not a magazine. It’s another media platform. It’s another distribution channel. And frankly, whenever the device being described breaks the $200 barrier, the last thing people will be doing with it is flipping through a souped-up PDF of Vanity Fair.
Moreover, the media platform being described in the scenario is more likely to replace whatever you’re reading this blog post with than replace the print magazine format.
You see, the device being described is already here — it’s just not the right size yet. For years, I’ve been writing about the device I now call the iPod Touch Book (or Rumor #3). Last year, I even comp’d up an illustration of what it would look like.
The device could be widely available 1-3 years from now. Indeed, today’s announcement about a new Intel chip could have a direct bearing on this new device.
So why won’t this incredible device replace magazines? Well, if you have this device that will provide you access to all the video, audio and digital content there is, will you be using it to flip through a souped up PDF? There’s an easy answer to this question that anyone who has used the Internet can answer: No. You’ll be using it to do the kinds of things you do with your computer. You’ll access all the content published by magazine companies in the form you’re now accessing it via the device you’re using to read this.
When it comes to magazines, you’ll be reading them on paper.
Addendum for those who aren’t familiar with this blog:
As I’m sure there are some who will stumble onto this post and who will be convinced I’m out of my mind, I’ll restate several things that are known by those who read this blog with some regularity (all 12 of you): I own an iPhone and use it all day, everyday. I’m fairly comfortable with my understanding of the incredible potential with that device. I own a Kindle and download and read about 2-3 eBooks a month using it, so I’m fairly comfortable with my understanding of that device. Indeed, I’m a huge fan of the potential of eBook readers — especially if Apple creates the iPod Touch Book.
However, my enthusiasm for such devices does not overwhelm my understanding of the history of media, technology and user adoption. As I’ve said every time I head into one of these magazine apologist rants, the magazine format is not a business model. Business models that depend on magazines — newsstand distributed mass-consumer magazines, for example, or transaction-oriented trade magazines — could one day slide into a Smithsonian Exhibit. However, magazines that support a business model (university development, for example) will likely grow as online strategies strengthen the communities who will want to expand their story-telling to print.
I also refuse to accept the notion that advertisers will leave magazines — or broadcast TV, for that matter. Why? Well, for one thing, the world’s best brand spends only a fraction of its advertising budget online: the majority goes to TV and, wow, magazines, along with a healthy chunk of outdoor spending. If you want to follow the leading brand (that’s what marketers do), you’ll hesitate before shifting all your advertising dollars online — even if it’s distributed on devices created by the world’s best brand.
Later: As often happens, when I write things during flights and that are responding to something that causes me to rant, I write in a way that confuses even me — when I read it later. My point is not to dismiss the appropriateness of digital magazines in certain circumstances. And if you enjoy reading or publishing digital magazines, I am not suggesting you’re wrong — as mentioned, I am currently working on projects that have digital publications as a component and I enjoy reading books on my Kindle. In these rants, I’m merely emphasizing my belief that the roles of print magazines and so-called “digital magazines” are not the same — and that digital magazines may grow in importance and acceptance, but they will not replace print magazines as a medium, even if certain titles “convert” some or all of their circulation to digital products. My second, and perhaps more passionate argument is focused on those who believe the highest and best usage of hand held digital devices is replicating a physical product. My argument is this (and has always been this): New technology enables new experiences and new media — rarely (if ever) is new technology’s ultimate use in replicating old media.
A belated shout-out congratulations to my friend (and fellow business-to-business media veteran) Matt McAlister who’s leaving Yahoo! to join the Guardian, as in, he and his family are moving from San Francisco to London.
Sometimes, great things are going on in your own backyard and you don’t even know about it. Except now I do know about it. For the next couple of days, college student journalists, advisers and faculty members from around the country will be in Nashville to participate in a workshop on using new media tools: audio, video, advanced multimedia, advanced online storytelling. It is being hosted by the Center for Innovation in College Media that is headquartered on the campus of Vanderbilt.
I am very glad such a program has been created to support university journalism programs that are encouraging their students to view themselves as reporters, story-tellers, truth-sharers, analysts — who do not have to limit themselves to words and photos on paper and traditional broadcasting.
A bonus for me: The program is headquartered a few blocks from my office.
I’ll be dropping in and out of today and tomorrow’s workshops and will be posting notes, photos — perhaps some innovative new media — later today.
Later: First, let me send out some major props to Paul Conley, my friend and fellow business media blogger who has been hammering on the topic of j-schools and new media for years. Paul wasn’t actually here at the workshop, but I thought about him so much during the time I was there, that I felt the need to give him a shout-out — Paul, you would have been happy.
The best way I can describe what this workshop is — and a way some of you can replicate it regionally or locally — is to describe it as a Podcamp specifically for college journalists. However, it was highly structured and organized and a little more “officially run” than a true podcamp, the essence of what was covered and how the information flowed was podcamp-like. This workshop — and the incredible new facilities at Vanderbilt where it is being held — may be a little bit more formal than a podcamp, but the idea of using a college facility for a weekend podcamp for student journalists, is an idea that I’m sure someone else must be already doing — if not, why not?
While I’ve met lots of professors and educators through this blog and get a steady stream of email from college students, I haven’t really been on top of this specific topic — college journalism and new media. However, last fall I visiting the City University of New York’s journalism facilities in mid-town where Jeff Jarvis’ interactive journalism program is, and then, today sitting in a half-day with the students and faculty from 40 or so colleges attending this workshop, I can affirm that the evangelism of people like Jeff and Paul and several people I’m now learning about like Bryan Murley at Eastern Illinois University and Ralph Raseth at Ole Miss and an entire community of educators who are very aware of what is taking place — and are now wanting to lead, rather than follow (or worse, merely watch) the parade. I’ll be blogging on this topic more, I’m sure.
Cory Doctorow is reporting that Bertelsmann’s “Random House Audio has announced that it will now allow its audiobooks to be sold without DRM by all of its online retailers.” Already, it sells DRM-free audiobooks through emusic.com. From that experience, Random House Audio has learned that not treating its customers like criminals is a good thing. One would hope such a move by the largest book publisher in the world would lead other publishers to recognize (as I blogged in January) how ridiculous it is to encrypt downloaded versions of audiobooks while the same audiobooks on CDs are not encrypted (i.e., you can go to a public library with your laptop and load up DRM-free audiobooks for free, but you can’t buy the same thing online). As I said then, for the same reason Amazon.com doesn’t sell music downloads that have DRM, it should pressure publishers to allow it to sell DRM-free audiobooks on its new acquisition, Audible.com.
Oh, yeah, and then it should do the same with eBooks for the Kindle.
“…marries the standard text to glossy magazine-style design. Full-color pages are illustrated with a striking combination of news and dramatized photographs: a homeless child wrapped in a sweater on the streets of Bogotá, Colombia, illustrates the book of Job; a man who drowned trying to enter Europe, for Deuteronomy; and models posing in stylized scenes convey joy or despair. Bible passages are pulled out as captions. The publishers wanted to draw new readers by getting rid of what they called “the old heavy book.”
Of course, this makes no sense, for we all know by now: Print is Dead.
Really, why would anyone want a coffee-table Bible when they could read it on their iPhone or Kindle? (Note for those not familiar with my running-commentary on the absurdity of the notion that print is dead - I don’t really believe that digital media is going to die in the next decade or so.)
If the idea of a Bible designed in a magazine format sounds vaguely familiar, it may be that you’re remembering one published in Nashville — one I blogged about five years ago called Revolve, a New Testament for teenage girls designed in the format of a fashion magazine. A couple of years later, a similar one was published for teenage boys — but I can’t find my post to verify my recollection that its design was based on Maxim. (Alright, alright - another joke.)
The video embedded to the left is an amusing “angry man” rant (reminds me a bit of Loren Feldman) in which an actor playing the part of a printer (or maybe it’s a printer who should go into acting [later: see comments to learn who he is]) let’s loose on all the $#x0ons?s who are down on print these days. It’s even funnier knowing that it was produced and posted on YouTube by the Canadian printing company, Pazazz. There are lots of “bleeps” in it, and, again, you’ll want to turn down the volume.
Thanks for the link goes to one of my favorite magazine publishing gadflies, Bo Sacks, who thinks it’s “the best, the funniest, the most poignant video of the printing business that I have ever seen or thought I might see.”
There are a lot of good things David Carr discovered during some recent vacation time. He re-thought the power of media created for ones personal joy. He spent some quality time with family and discovered some fun things one can do with photography that, in the past, would have been impossible without high priced equipment.
But then, Carr slumps into viewing his fun time through the prism that many media pundits do when they discover a new toy: If one medium is ascending, it must be at the expense of another medium. There is some need pundits have to always see the emergence of new media as a zero-sum-game in which all other media stand-still and ultimately die off — which is the premise of the joke in the post immediately preceeding this. Perhaps in college, these pundits skipped Marshall Mcluhan’s warnings against doing this.
Here’s how Carr expresses his notion that if one medium (in his case, personal media like organizing photography), increases, then another one decreases.:
“Is it any wonder that last year had the fewest number of new magazine start-ups in 16 years, according to Samir Husni, a professor at the University of Mississippi who keeps track of such things? Or that publicly traded newspaper companies have lost $23 billion in value in the last four years, according to Alan D. Mutter, a former newsman and currently a managing partner at Tapit Partners?
So, for clarification purposes: Having the means to organize photography and hang out more with ones family and friends in ways that involve media is NOT the reason newspapers and magazines took a hit last year.
Look, I think what David Carr did was great. I do it myself. I’m in the business of creating niche and narrow media and I’m a near zealot in evangelizing the importance of personal media created by and for the few. But the notion that this is what’s killing big media companies is ludicrous. Big media companies are contracting because they are just now understanding what’s taking place and haven’t convinced investors they know how to embrace the tools and approaches Carr outlines.
Chances are, when their employees take off time and start playing with new technology, they will.
I doubt this Simpsons bootleg clip will remain on YouTube for long (it should be on Hulu.com if you have access there), but it’s a rather amusing few seconds:
Later: Sure enough, it was removed from YouTube and now is on Hulu.com, so I’ve changed the clip out below — it looks lots better and is sponsored by Krusty Burger. (Sidenote: A cool feature on Hulu.com is that while I’ve isolated the clip I’m referring to in the embedded video below, you can also watch the entire episode — with limited ads by Krusty Burger — by scrolling back):
The very short version: During 2007, almost $60 billion was spent on advertising that appeared in print while $11.31 billion was spent on advertising that appeared on the Internet.
After a weekend of avoiding endless posts by bloggers pointing to the NY Times story on how 
I believe I’ve mentioned on this blog before my fascination with Phillip Moffitt. Moffitt, along with Chris Whittle, started a company in the mid-1970s that is no longer around, but the alumni of that company are all over the magazine publishing world — some in very senior business and editorial roles. (Some even read this blog from time-to-time.) When they were business partners, Moffitt and Whittle were perhaps best known for their purchase of Esquire magazine in 1979. In addition to being its CEO, Moffitt served as editor of Esquire for the next few years. I read the magazine fairly closely during his years as editor. Certainly, no one (except, perhaps ad sales people) would call that era the golden age of Esquire (far from it). But for me, it could not have been more compelling. I was around the magazine’s target age and demographic. I was intrigued by Moffitt (and to a lesser degree, Whittle, who I 
Check out this 
