Lightbulbs and magazines

These have likely reached some of you via the Internet. But fun for those who may have missed them: Q: How many freelancers does it take to screw in a light bulb?A: No one's sure. The ones who can screw them in, we can't afford, and the ones we CAN afford can't screw in a light bulb. Q: How many production editors does it take to screw in a light bulb? A: Only one, but that's going to cost us

No comfort as Statscan confirms cuts

Statistics Canada, in a survey published today about spending in all relevant departments federally, provincially and municipally, confirmed what the magazine industry already knows about -- major spending cuts -- even as overall spending on culture increased slightly.Federal funding for book and periodical publishers declined 11.6% to $162.1 million between 2002-o3 and 2003-o4. This was

Nice, you won't have to change the monogram

The official rebranding of the Periodical Writers Association of Canada (PWAC) to the Professional Writers Association of Canada (PWAC) comes next May, but the association is rolling it out already and urging its members to use the new name wherever and whenever.This still doesn't make PWAC a trade union with all that entails, but interestingly it has signed a letter of agreement with the the

Comment about charity status

A surprising number of people read the Globe and Mail, and James Adams's piece on Saturday concerning charitable tax status for magazines. If you were not among them, here is the text (please pardon the abnormally long post): We want your tax dollars: 'Idea magazines' claim they stand little chance against the niche-market glossy. Is charity status the only hope for a good Canadian

Oldies but goodies

An interesting article in the New York Times about the broadening sales clout of the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP). It's a lesson in cross-marketing and brand development that ought to be taken seriously particularly by agency people who dismiss anyone over 45 as "wrinklies", not worth paying attention to.Long known for its magazine, which has a huge circulation (AARP has an

New kids on the Maclean's block

Lest you think that Maclean's is to be put out by a skeleton crew after more than a dozen senior people were shown the door, Editor-in-Chief Ken Whyte has made a flurry of announcements about people he has hired: Nicholas Köhler as Associate Editor effective November moving over from the National Post where he has lately been a crime reporterCathy Gulli as Assistant Editor effective October

Is Chatelaine crossing the line?

Media in Canada reports that Baxter's Soups has a campaign running in subsequent issues of Chatelaine, complete with perforated stitch-in recipe cards opposite the full-page ads. So far, no big deal. But the interesting phrase that jumped out of the report (bold-face emphasis added) is the following, quoting Ed Weiss, media director at The Brainstorm Group, the Toronto-based agency behind the

New frontiers in magazine promotion

Zoo magazine has run afoul of the British Advertising Standards Authority for its promotional contest to win breast augmentation for some lucky reader's girlfriend. Read more about it here in The Guardian. Zoo, published by Emap, is one of the many "lad" books flourishing in Britain.

The CapeBretoner gives up the struggle

Blair Oake, the publisher of The CapeBretoner magazine, has announced that the magazine will cease publication effective with a final, December 2005 issue. It's a great loss. The magazine has struggled for 13 years to maintain itself as a publication for people who are Cape Bretoners, or wish they were.Advertising was always a problem, particularly given that more than half the audience was

Now Taking Poetry, Short Stories & Nonfiction for LIT 11

Our fall reading period is now open. Please send all poetry, short stories and non-fiction to:

LIT
The New School Writing Program
66 West 12th St., room 508
New York, NY 1001

Poetry: Please send no more than 5 poems or 10 pages of poetry.
Short Stories/Non-Fiction: No more than 25 pages, double spaced.

What's up with Canada Post and People magazine?

The Oct. 17th issue of People magazine on page 155 had an ad for Canada Post's "Ship-in-a-click" service, an ad we haven't seen in most Canadian magazines. True, People delivers a large Canadian circulation. But doesn't it rankle that the postal monopoly supports Time Inc. rather than titles that invest in Canadian content? On the other hand, it provides leverage and an excuse for Canadian

A copy is a copy is a copy...or is it?

For those of us who have accepted as holy writ that paid, subscriber copies are the gold standard for this business, there are now some fairly heavy duty voices that aim to knock us out of our complacency.Take for instance this startling article by consultant Rebecca McPheters in the October 10 Media Industry Newsletter (subscription required). It argues that advertisers (and, by extension,

Promises of just-in-time readership measure

McPheters and Company, a consultancy in the U.S. has announced the development of a new readership service called readership.com. It is said to give advertisers and agencies up-to-the minute measurement of the circulation and readership of the top 200 titles (by circ) in the States.We shall see if such a system is a) more widely applicable, b) picked up by advertisers and agencies (so far only

Canadian Family gets new publisher, editor

This from Media in Canada: Canadian Family adds two The St. Joseph Media family is growing. The media company has named Carina D'Brass Cassidy as publisher and Lisa Murphy as editor-in-chief of its consumer pub, Canadian Family. D'Brass Cassidy was most recently VP of sales and marketing at Avid Media, overseeing sales, sponsorship, and other brand extension projects for titles

Waiting room yuks

Stitches, the humour magazine aimed at doctors, owned and published by trade publisher CLB Media, announced some time ago that it would launch a spinoff, Stitches for Patients. That was due to roll out this summer, but now expected in January.Stitches itself is funny the way Reader's Digest is funny (in a"Life's Like That" and "Humour in Uniform" way) something that's not always to everyone's

Time wasters of the new century

Get back to work!This, quoted from an item in Advertising Age:U.S. workers in 2005 will waste the equivalent of 551,000 years* reading blogs. About 35 million workers -- one in four people in the labor force -- visit blogs and on average spend 3.5 hours, or 9%, of the work week engaged with them. (*emphasis added)Of course Canadians are so much more sensible.

Nine Lives Q&A

Senior Editor Jeff Goldsmith interviews writer/director Rodrigo Garcia, Producer Julie Lynn and Actress Kathy Baker.

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Dishing from the newsrooms

A new blog that may bear watching: Dirt. Find it here. The anonymous contributor(s) promise lotsa gossip-mongering, but without the $120 a year tha e-Frank costs. That remains to be seen. Curiously, while the contributors stay behind the curtain, they forbid anonymous comments about their items. (Ed.: Shurely not!)

Premium content given a pass at the Globe

Of possible use to publishers who are wrestling with the "free vs. paid" connundrum about their own website content, consider the experience of the Globe and Mail. Last year it launched its Inside Edition, whereby a lot of web content (columnists, financial stuff) was segregated behind a pay wall. Even subscribers to the print product had to pay. And what was the result? According to a recently

The blue glow lingers longer

If you ever wondered why people have less time to read magazines, it's because of a staggering long-term trend in watching television. Seems a commonplace observation, but we were struck by the following table, courtesy of the Center for Media Research, which shows U.S. household and individual television watching trends since 1950. The average household has the TV on more than 8 hours a day and

They're at the post

Canada Post is offering visitors to its website the opportunity to subscribe to magazines. Not just Canadian magazines mind you. When you go to their site, it links you to individual magazine subscription sites, including dozens of members of Magazines Canada. However, click on the Home and Garden category and the very first magazine that pops up is Architectural Digest, from Conde Nast. Still, a

Oh, THAT Saturday night

There, on the CNN website was the news, just minutes after the announcement was made by St. Joseph Media: Saturday night is dead. Wow, this must be a bigger story that we thought!Turns out the item, with eerie coincidence, is about the wasteland that Saturday night television has become in the United States.

Maclean's goes digital

Maclean's has launched a fully digital edition, which you can apparently try free, from Zinio. It seems to be the only Canadian magazine to have taken the plunge into this online system, which has hitherto been heavily weighted with skin books, car books, hobby books, technology and outdoor. To see the Maclean's offering, go here.

Saturday Night -- was this its ninth life?

St. Joseph Media just killed Saturday Night magazine (October issue at right). Faced with the daunting task of weaning it off its controlled distribution through the dwindling National Post (the contract is coming to an end, anyway) and the extraordinarily expensive and difficult prospect of taking it paid, the company decided to discontinue it. This, despite the valiant efforts of Gary Ross and

The good, the bad and the ogle-y

Matt Haber weighs in on the American Society of Magazine Editors' Top 4o magazine covers of all time in the New York Observer and, for good measure, reveals that there was a selection of the 40 worst covers, too. Nice part is that there are links to the offenders. (Remember, these are all American covers; it is never acknowledged that any other country, Canada, U.K, Australia, the European

Loyalty is in the eye of the terminator

Did Maclean's, which has recently had a major purge of more than a dozen long-serving employees, see the irony in their October 19 cover story about loyalty in the workplace? Apparently not.

The Treasury Board made me do it

Today, a packed roomful of concerned individuals, mostly involved in circulation, gathered at the Courtyard Marriott in Toronto to hear about the impact from the Department of Canadian Heritage's decision to cut Publication Assistance Program (PAP) support November 1.While doubtless there will be a fuller report in Masthead and elsewhere, here are some notes jotted down at the time:Michael J. Fox

But what to you REALLY think, George?

George Lois, the man who launched some of the most memorable and (to use an over-used, but apt word, iconic) Esquire covers of the 1960s, ripped into the industry yesterday with a speech deploring the "boring, adoring, butt-kissing magazine covers" of today. Here is the link to the report in Advertising Age (where you can also download the text of Lois's speech.)Above is one of Lois's best-known

Design can't be left to designers

"This is what judging magazines comes down to. Put any sampling of the great and the good together, feed them proper coffee and posh biscuits and they will soon favour the magazine with the most expensive advertising in it."So says David Hepworth in an amusing piece about magazine design and judging, published October 10 in the Guardian. Hepworth who, in addition to being an author (The Secret

Single copy system to get a workover

Andre Prefontaine of Transcontinental is heading up a Magazines Canada task force about single copy sales in this country, according to a report in today's Mastheadonline. Prefontaine says that the situation needs study in depth, which is probably true, but makes it sound like this has never been done. In fact, an excellent and in-depth report was done in 2003 for Canadian Heritage by Abacus

Product placement: view from the dark side

The Canadian Advertising Research Foundation (CARF) is having a breakfast and morning seminar at the Four Seasons Hotel in Toronto on October 26 on the topic "Product Placement: Is it Worth All the Hype?" For editors and publishers who want to know what advertisers and agency people are thinking (as who doesn't?) this might make an interesting opportunity, though you won't have any change from

The apocryphal guidelines

Real Media Riffs from Media Post (you can subscribe, free, here) reports that there were several clauses that did not make the cut when the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) drafted their just-released advertising guidelines:FAJARDO, PUERTO RICO - OCTOBER 18, 2005--The American Society of Magazine Editors has released revised guidelines for editors and publishers of consumer magazines.

Redrawing the "church and state" line

The American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME), basking in the warmth of the American Magazine Conference in the Puerto Rico sun, have unveiled a revised set of guidelines about advertising. It is something of a 10 Commandments, boiled down from a much longer document that used to be used.Like the old guidelines, however, the new ones call for anything that resembles editorial copy to be

People tops the Ad Age polls

People magazine has been named Magazine of the Year by industry bible Advertising Age. Since no magazines from anywhere other than the United States were considered, it is really the American Magazine of the Year.The Top 5 were as follows: People "For first anticipating, then foreshadowing and these days still flourishing amid a celebrity sector that's beginning to looke downright imperial in

Will there be aftershocks from Kraft move?

Many Canadian magazines, particularly in the women's service category, rely heavily on packaged goods advertising. So there are bound to be tremors caused by reports that Kraft Foods Inc. is restructuring its North American operations and having the company's Canadian business answer directly to its Illinois, U.S. headquarters. The move may have significant implications for pages and dollars.

The game's back, where's the magazine?

Leafs Nation, the magazine of the Maple Leafs hockey team fan club, was custom published until it was suspended when the season was suspended last year. Now that the teams are on the ice, is St. Joseph Media going to bring the magazine back? It was a pet project of Greg MacNeil, who has been gone from St. Joe's for a few months now. Perhaps enthusiasm for the project left the building with him.

A History of Violence Q&A

Senior Editor Jeff Goldsmith interviews screenwriter Josh Olson.

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Moving pages

Siemens Corp. announced at a European trade fair this week that it is only two years away from marketing paper-thin TV screens that could be stitched into high end magazines. Probably only affordable at first for high impact ads in upscale publications, the materials now cost about C$70 a square metre, but that is bound to come down. It would allow moving pictures and flash animations on the page

Hurry up and wait

Mastheadonline reports that Federal Finance Minister John McCallum is "still considering" an appeal by The Walrus of its turn-down for charitable status. Publisher Ken Alexander is keeping mum but says he's hoping for something next week. Reading between the lines of McCallum's spokesman, it would seem the government wouldn't actually change the antiquated, impenetrable charity law, but would

"It's stylish and hip"

The era of the branded feature (as what used to be called advertorial has come to be called) is blossoming, judging by an article in Media in Canada about a deal featured in the current issue of 2 magazine. (You'll remember that 2 was one of the magazines started a couple of years ago with a $75,000 cash injection by the Ontario Media Development Corporation.)2 is for young, hip, urban couples.

Quote unquote

Somewhat off topic, but delicious nonetheless, a profile by Rachel Donadio in the New York Times Book Review of October 9 about Joan Didion (sparked by her new book The Year of Magical Thinking) refers to Didion writing essays for the Saturday Evening Post in the late '60s: "It was a great place to work," she said, since it was about to go bankrupt and "you could do anything."

A collector's item, perhaps?

The unhappy denouement of the startup magazine Zi is reported in today's Mastheadonline. It seems the front end costs were so high that the publisher has decided before the first issue comes out that there is not going to be a second. Proof once again that a business plan is the best investment a new publisher can make -- a proper and conservative analysis would have avoided such a nasty, and

Hope springs eternal

There are a number of magazine categories in which, despite many false starts, there is a perennial belief that the problem is simply not finding the right formula. Canada is a hard place to start certain kinds of titles. Sports is one. Men's fashion is another. As Samuel Johnson said of second marriages, it is a triumph of hope over experience. The impending launch of Sir, as a spinoff from

Waiting Q&A

Senior Editor Jeff Goldsmith interviews writer/director Rob McKittrick.

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Well, maybe just one more termination...

It can't be entirely a coincidence that, a few days after Publisher/Editor-in-Chief Ken Whyte assured the Maclean's staff that there would be no more terminations, Deputy Art Director Gary Hall was shown the door. Staffers who remain at the magazine will doubtlessly draw their own conclusions about the value of any future assurances that their Publisher makes.It also can't be entirely a

Coming to final arguments

The case of Robertson versus Thomson, the 10-year marathon legal fight fronted by Heather Robertson against the Globe and Mail concerning digital rights to freelance work, comes before the Supreme Court on December 6.Robertson has sent a letter of information and thanks (for their ongoing support) to the Periodical Writers of Canada (PWAC) inviting Ottawa-area writers to attend as spectators.

It hurts more when it's true

Jon Stewart's recent demolition of a panel of magazine industry stuffed shirts in New York was probably deserved. It was reported by Simon Houpt on Monday in the Globe and Mail (regrettably, subscription required).If you have enjoyed the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, like me your recurring question is why anyone would agree to sit down with him or his team given what invariably happens. Didn't it

Shameless plug III

If you are overcome with the desire to start a magazine, start here or click on the link at the right. This is a reminder about a new course called So You Want to Start a Magazine? It's two days at Ryerson University in Toronto heavy on practical tips, tricks and tools to get that new magazine idea started right. Next session is Friday, November 11 and Saturday, November 12 from 9 to 5 each day.

Are you smart and competitive enough?

Another new quarterly lifestyle mag rides out of the west (Calgary) called Zi, due to be launched later this month. It's the creation of a woman from Calgary called Zinat H. Damji. The publisher says she is a Tanzanian-born entrepreneur who was "the first female in Canada to found a non-depository trust company". The magazine's web page is here. The magazine says it is designed to appeal to

Sell my stuff or I'll kill this magazine

At the egghead end of the magazine and advertising business, it is the done thing to talk in every conversation about "accountability", ROI (return on investment) and ROO (return on objective).Most magazine people are too busy putting out good publications and searching out new readership, but there is an intensifying pressure from agencyland for the medium to prove its claims of effectiveness

A miscellany

Things you can learn from reading of the classified ads: Somebody is planning a new, apparently controlled circ, guidebook for theatre-going in Toronto called Evening Out. It says it is going to be distributed in 370 locations across the Greater Toronto area.Vogel Publishing of Edmonton, which has been struggling to diversify away from its successful but doomed Satellite Guide and similar books