Marthette vultures update: From mediapost.com today, we learn more about the previously blogged Marthette vulturezine from Hachette:

Hachette President and CEO Jack Kliger was pleased to land the popular designer, who had been among several personalities being mentioned as candidates to launch a magazine, particularly with Martha Stewart Living suffering an ad drought since Stewart was implicated in a stock scandal that eventually led to her prison sentence.

So I guess this means, well, Candice Olson has been voted off the island (following quote from September, 2004):

“Now, just as Stewart prepares to head to jail for five months, Hachette Filipacchi has made a move that could possibly contribute to establishing the next Martha, as they have hired Home and Garden Television personality and interior designer Candice Olson as a contributing editor for both Woman’s Day and Home magazine. Olson hosts the popular “Divine Design with Candice Olson,” on HGTV, which features a drab room or space being transformed into something more contemporary….It will be interesting to see how Hachette will use Olson’s brand image and influence if this new content is received well, given that Stewart is out of the public eye for several months. Martha Stewart Living has lost advertisers and readers steadily since her demise, and some of her ex-readers may be seeking home advice elsewhere.

(Previous “Marthette vultures updates” can be found here and here and here and here and here and here and here and I’m sure other places, as well.)

By the way, the Reuters article previoiusly blogged said the name of the magazine would be, “Chris Madden.” As MediaPost says it is not named, here’s my suggestion: Mad(den) Magazine. Also, would it not have more more timely had this magazine been launced at the depths of Miss Stewart’s fortunes. The magazine will now be launched smack dab in the middle of her triumphal redemption, already predicted to be the media circus of the year.

No comment: Actually, I’ve already commented on this vaporzine news way too much. “Blogzine”? Ugh. Psycho, indeed.

Age zero? On the vaporzine news front, Disney Publishing Worldwide, publisher of Family Fun and Disney Adventures, is preparing to launch a new quarterly title in 2006 named Wondertime. The magazine will be targeted to Moms with children ages 0 to 6, focusing on early childhood learning. (source: MediaPost.com)

More of Time’s Wal-Mart strategy? On the vaporzine front, next year Time Inc. will publish two issues of Racing Fan, a magazine about NASCAR, according to Advertising Age. (source: Crain’s New York Business)

Long shot? The anonymous vaporzine scout is gloating over scooping me on news about the upcoming launch of All In Magazine that appeared in Paul Colford’s column (although, I note that the rexblog beat Colford by several weeks on that item (scroll down) regarding Wired Test). Here are some classic start-up quotes from the founder of All In:

“We expect to be the fastest-growing magazine in 2005,” he told the Daily News yesterday, saying he’ll guarantee advertisers a circulation of 150,000 by February. “We believe we’ll reach more than 500,000 copies next year, in terms of acquiring new subscriptions,” he added. ( Bhu) Srinivasan is counting on the surge in poker-playing shows on TV, starting with the Bravo channel’s “Celebrity Poker Showdown,” to help boost interest in his mag.

If any of this post rings a bell with longtime rexblog readers (now there’s an oxymoron for you: longtime rexblog readers), it’s because one of the classic vaporzines (besides Radar) I have blogged for years is the long-ago announced gambling concept magazine called (and I’d like to thank them for leaving a memorial website) JAQK.

News from the wrecksblog: The anonymous vaporzine scout just alerted me to next February’s launch of the magazine Collision Repair Product News (CRPN) from Cygnus Business Media.

The magazine will (mail) to 60,000 body shop owners, technicians and PBE distributors. CRPN is the only product-based publication reaching the industry with a complete focus on PBE tools, equipment and supplies. The magazine will be modeled after Professional Tool & Equipment News (PTEN) which is the only publication focused on tools & equipment serving the automotive aftermarket with over 106,000 subscribers.

With the exception of not knowing what PBE tools are, I think I followed most of that.

Vaporzine update: TechTarget announced today that it is launching a monthly magazine targeted to Chief Information Officers (CIOs) and other senior-level IT executives in midmarket enterprises. Beginning in April 2005, TechTarget will distribute CIO Decisions to a qualified, controlled circulation of 60,000 CIOs and senior IT executives involved in setting their organizations’ IT budgets and priorities.

(via PaidMediaContent.org)

Vaporzine rumors: This isn’t really a vaporzine. It’s a rumor of a vaporzine.

Quote:

A little over a month after G+J USA Publishing closed YM and sold its assets to Condé Nast (the company) is said to now be developing yet another young women’s magazine….The move is a curious one since G+J USA CEO Russell Denson this past summer had disbanded the company’s editorial development team headed by Susan Toepfer, which had been developing Gala, among other titles.

(mediaweek.com via: mediapost.com)

Vaporpolitan: In vaporzine news, The Pittsburgh Metropolitan, a monthly glossy dedicated to “fashion, culture, dining and lifestyle” will debut in January, according to the Pittsburgh Business Times.

Quote:

The publication is the brainchild of Tara Rieland, the corporate director of marketing for the Oxford Development Co., one of the city’s largest development firms. While continuing to work with Oxford on a reduced schedule, Ms. Rieland will serve as the publication’s editor-in-chief. It will publish on a monthly basis 10 times a year, with double issues scheduled for January/February and June/July. Ms. Rieland plans to launch the magazine with an initial print run of 20,000. She plans to build a high-income readership by mailing 16,000 copies of the first issue to residents throughout the region who have a household income of more than $100,000. The remaining copies will be sold on newsstands and offered at Downtown condominiums and other area businesses.

Yet another magazine targeting the nouveau niche.

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.

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.)

End of a vaporzine: One of the unanticipated consequences of blogging about vaporzines is that once in a while, a few weeks or months after blogging it, I receive in the mail a premiere copy of a magazine and a note from its founder. Usually the note says something like, “Vaporzine this, a-hole.” But today, I received a premiere issue and a much nicer kind of note from one of the two founding editors of the magazine, Worthwhile, who had actually read the link to the vaporzine definition and knew it wasn’t a derogatory term. (However, I will admit being overly snippy with an early mention of the publication.)

Despite the publicity others are trying to generate for being the first weblog to become a magazine, I believe Worthwhile has a fairly convincing stake to that claim as it launched in the spring as a group weblog with contributions from some blogging luminaries. Note, I didn’t say it was the first online property or website to become a magazine — that’s been done many times — rather, if they want to make the claim, I think they can wear the “weblog to magazine” mantle.

However, I think the magazine underplays its association with the weblog other than prominently featuring articles from the A-List bloggers who also contribute to the group blog. Because of those involved, I think the magazine has an opportunity to explore the role of print in a conversational-centric brand. The editors do a much better job than I could to describe their position and mission, so I won’t try. There are aspects of the magazine that remind me of the early days of Fast Company, back when it was good. It definitely addresses issues confronting all those of us who are passionate about both personal and business pursuits.

Another thing. As this whole web thing is about “linkages” — or at least that’s what one of your contributing author-bloggers has written about for the past decade — wouldn’t it be more link-friendly if the magazine appeared on the website in a form one could link to and blog about rather than as PDF files? Not criticizing, just wondering.

Congratulations on graduating from vaporzineness.

Abundantly clear: Rather than actually blog this, I decided I’d be environmentally conscious and merely recycle what Michael Shields reports in a trade version of a “How magazines get started (continued)” feature story.

Quote:

Plenty will launch with an impressive array of advertisers for an independent startup, including Benjamin Moore, British Airways, L.L. Bean, Sierra Club, Stonyfield Farms, the State of Maine, and White Wave. The magazine will publish six times in 2005 at a rate base of 100,000, with distribution centered in upscale bookstores, airports, and college campuses. Spellun says that the enthusiasm for Plenty has made this launch go more smoothly than expected. “People have responded so well,” he said. “I had the idea for this magazine in January, and we will be on the newsstand in November

I could recycle some old comments I’ve blogged about first issues — like “paid” advertising and “an impressive array of advertisers” are not always the same thing, but I don’t want to poke a hole in the vaporzine layer.

Vaporzine Hall of Fame inductee: Radar, the inspiration for the whole concept of vaporzines and surely the most blogged-about vaporzine in the history of the rexblog is once more getting publicity for being a vaporzine, unfortunately the story is at adage.com and I can’t remember my password and don’t have time to mess with it.

Update I: Due to travel conditions (this is probably the only post of the day) that are challenging my patience and skill sets, other than point you to the NYT story regarding Mort Zuckerman’s involvement. I don’t have the time or bandwidth to link back to the historic posts on the rexblog in which Radar was first announced by the NYT and I warned not to confuse publicity with success, nor to the posts regarding the failure of the magazine and the founder’s amazement that it failed despite being, “the only independent magazine ever to be announced in the NY Times.” For the record, while the “Mort Zuckerman” brand is strong (as is his cash), however, it is not a guarantee. But I love someone who never gives up. So, I’ll be purchasing a subscription for sentimental reasons.

(via iwantmedia.com)

Dejazine update: More on the launch of the Redux Herring in today’s SF Business Times.

rexblog bumper music:
Let’s do it Again (The Fatback Band)