The Business of Magazines

[moussemaker]

But I cannot edit the headline anymore. Maybe one of the mods?

 

[Miss Dalloway]

Well i wont miss CosmoGirl and their god awful covers.

 

[surrealseven]

To tell you the truth, I kinda see it coming when i saw the Scarlett cover .

 

[tigerrouge]

From The Wire section of The Press Gazette (with a link in the text to the original NYT story too

Rolling Stone shrinks with the times

Iconic American music magazine Rolling Stone is shrinking in size to match other magazines on the newsstand, reports The New York Times.

The newspaper-magazine hybrid was first published in 1967 as a tabloid-size newspaper, began printing on a four-color press in 1973 and swapped to magazine-quality paper in 1981, when it also shrank to its recently abandoned 25 cm x 30 cm size.

Rolling Stone said it will add enough pages to each issue to offset the loss of space from switching to the smaller size.

Publisher Will Schenck said: “The size is a nostalgic element but not the iconic part of the magazine. Evolution and change is part of our DNA.”

http://blogs.pressgazette.co.uk/wire/4027

 

[Miss Dalloway]

Oh no, i dont like the sound of that, i love RS as it is.

 

[tigerrouge]

And that esteemed publication, Playgirl, is in print no more, a former editor remembers at Radaronline.com (long article, plus the pictures are half the fun, so here's the link

http://radaronline.com/features/2008/08/playgirl_closing_former_editor_remembers_01.php

Originally dubbed "The Magazine for Women," Playgirl started out confident (dare I say cocksure? You bet I do), and it made perfect sense within the women's lib, consciousness-raising milieu of the 1970s. However, the flagship of women's p*rn*gr*phy went strong only for about the first 10 years; after that it faltered with an identity crisis spanning two decades that was ultimately to prove terminal.

 

[Miss Dalloway]

Aw that is sad, i mean i was never their "reader" , but it was comforting to know that there is a magazine out there for us ladies that is as salacious as PlayBoy.etc

 

[tigerrouge]

My friend ordered a back issue recently because it had an interview with Bret Michaels in it, and she had no idea that it was full of male members standing to attention, and promptly threw it in the bin, cursing it, so I blame her for its closure.

 

[Miss Dalloway]

 

[Style-Addict]

LOL tigerrouge! So funny!

 

[prosperk]

Were they at attention? I thought that it was illegal to show anything other than brewer's droop mode in anything produced outside Scandanavia.

PK

 

[tigerrouge]

Aye, a bit like the Mull of Kintyre test - I would have liked to have inspected the source material to see the veracity of her description, but unfortunately when she threw it away, it got covered in mayonnaise "or else I would have kept it for you," she claimed.

I had to throw out some issues of Dutch magazine when I was moving house a while back, and they had shots of lads at full stretch, arty stuff, with the guy wearing a paper bag on his head but everything else on show.

There used to be a student newsagents up near Queen's Uni which sold heterosexual hard-core action mags on its top shelf in plain sight, and I don't think anyone ever bothered to complain, though it didn't stop the shop from going bust in the end. I used to buy Mirabella from it.

 

[prosperk]

The best issue of Dutch was Vriens' "naked issue", sometime around 1999, I think. All Mull of Kintyre, though, if memory serves me right. But everyone was naked in all of the shoots, with credits included as if they were wearing all the gear. Genius!

Hard core p*rn in students' newsagents? Hmmmmm... I sometimes think old Mary Whitehouse wasn't always wrong, that she had some valid points to make. All of that stuff can easily be located FOC on the web these days, which removes the 'personal responsibility element' of actually having to present yourself in a retail outlet to buy it.

It leaves me 110% cold - I'd probably find it to, um, defy gravity in a butcher's emporium - but I can see that it can brutalise male attitudes to female sexuality and being in cases of excessive indulgence by people (men) of what our parents' generation described as "low moral fibre".

Many fashion shoots pander to these urges. In fact, many fashion shoots pander to altogether darker urges, along David Hamilton lines. But that's another question and probably off-topic here.

Mull of Kintyre...

Oh dear! Hadn't heard that for ages! Thanks for the memory and the grins...

P

 

[youarearockstar]

POP is dead...

Word on the street is that after the December issue, POP Magazine will cease to exist:

Pop, the Question

So everyone knows that Condé Nast UK, whose original plans to acquire Pop from Bauer Media fell through, simply poached the magazine's founder and editor-in-chief, Katie Grand, and her team last week to create a new-and-improved title under their own auspices. The larger, "bespoke"
biannual promises to be an even more experimental and visionary blend of fashion and art. But the question is, what will happen to Pop? We hear that Bauer's initial reaction to keep the style bible alive has hit a snag and that, after twenty glorious issues over eight years, the winter issue will be the last pop. And here's another exclusive. We also hear that the name of Katie Grand and Condé Nast's new baby is, appropriately, LOVE, due to arrive in March. Now that's what we call a love child.

I'm in LOVE with this idea of an even more experiemental medium for Katie Grand and Co. From what I hear the future of Pop is quite uncertain to say the VERY least. Discuss among yourselves...

 

[tigerrouge]

It seems to be the way of most twice-yearly magazines in the UK, the content is OK, but eventually they go under because the parent company pulls the plug, and the staff move on to work on something else. The ones that were on sale five years ago are forgotten today - Pop has had a better (and longer) run than most, but maybe it's the right time for it to take its place in the history books.

 

[Buffalo.boy]

This is not surprising, i mean Katie is POP and POP was katie, who else could step into her Vuitton heels!! her vision and passion is 2nd to none.

 

[MissMagAddict]

I thought this might happen... no great loss... I was never that impressed with POP anyway... and Katie Grand... meh... she's overrated IMO.

Thanks for posting yaars

 

[surrealseven]

LOVE is such an appropriate name, i love what Katie does and I'm sure no one can replicate what she did at POP thats why Bauer decided to end it, probably they felt they couldn't do a good job as Grand.

 

[mikel]

Sad about POP, as the s/s 03 issue was the very first fashionmag I bought, so it kinda feels like the end of an era.

But I'm very excited about Love, Grands new project. I hope it turns out good.

 

[Style-Addict]

I'm really excited about the new project.