The Business of Magazines

[tigerrouge]

An art critic at The Guardian ponders...

Farewell, Art World magazine

The possible closure of one of the big glossy art periodicals raises the question of whether there is an audience for them out there at all.

Rumour has it that Art World magazine is to close for financial reasons. I picked on Art World (among others) a while ago, mainly because of its name, only to meet some of its very sincere and keen staff shortly afterwards. While I hope everyone who wrote for Art World finds another outlet immediately, I can't say the magazine's closure is a great loss.

Just take that name! It seemed to typify a moment when perfectly nice and reasonable art-loving types became drugged by the myths of money and glamour that circulate around contemporary art. Like other magazines, including Art Review and Modern Painters, Art World slapped artists on its cover as if they were film stars, apparently hoping to reach a public that wants to know about art in the same way it wants to know about Jamie Oliver.

But does such a readership really exist? Apparently not, if the demise of this magazine (and the dwindling circulation of its peers) is anything to go by. Yes, art magazines have an appeal for those involved with art, but that appeal is mainly down to their reviews – they cover more contemporary exhibitions than any newspaper is likely to, and from what is supposedly an insider perspective. Traditionally they cater to aficionados, gallerists and artists themselves – a specialist audience. And despite their ambitions, unlike music, film or lifestyle mags, they have never had vast sales. One revered glossy art mag I once worked for sold just 2,000 copies per quarter – and that was one of the success stories.

Many are, in reality, vanity publications underwritten by wealthy art lovers or publishing enthusiasts. Which is fine – they do, after all, provide a service. What has been ridiculous recently, though, is the sight of these magazines pursuing a fantasy public with an egregious, star-struck approach that has only helped to debase art.

 

[MissMagAddict]

source | wwd.com

A SINGULAR WOMAN: Could Carine Roitfeld be the next fashion figure to segue into filmmaking? In an interview with the French weekly Le Journal du Dimanche on Sunday, the editor in chief of Paris Vogue said if she were to leave the magazine, she would like to do “a well-made film about fashion. It’s a world that’s a lot more fun than the one Robert Altman painted in ‘Prêt-à-Porter.’” As for the endless speculation that she could one day succeed Anna Wintour at the head of American Vogue, Roitfeld replied: “I would be flattered [by an offer], I would consider it, but I think I would refuse it. I’m not sure I have her strength. And also, I love fashion a lot. French Vogue is like ‘Babette’s Feast.’ Everything is important. Anna Wintour shows fashion and the collections. She sees everything and imposes her choices. Myself, I leave room for a lot of points of view.”

 

[Miss Dalloway]

^ Thats true what she said about Wintours Vogue and comparison to her own, and she would never work for US Vogue, glad she knows that.

 

[McQueezy]

^ I love Carine's little dig at Anna
So true what she said. I hope she never goes to US Vogue.

 

[BerlinRocks]

thought that could fit there ...

September 14, 2009
Young Bloggers Have Ear of Fashion Heavyweights

By ALICE PFEIFFER
PARIS — At first glance, Dirrty Glam resembles any trendy online magazine. It features famous faces like Lilly Allen and Sienna Miller on its cover, and combines fashion, film and music reviews with celebrity interviews.
There is just one thing: Dirrty Glam’s entire team, from editor in chief to public relations manager, is between 19 and 22 years old. The magazine, based in Paris, was started three years ago by Alie Suvelor, then 18 and now editor in chief.
“We’re young but this isn’t a hobby, this is our full-time job,” said Ms. Suvelor, who also serves as stylist and writes for the magazine, which is in its 24th issue and has an English-language version.
The magazine and other fashion blogs and blog networks are helping to give young entrepreneurs an early entry into journalism and winning some of them a place in the notoriously competitive fashion industry. Other sites include TeenUgly, an American-based blog network; the blogs Susie Bubble, based in London, and Childhood Flames, from the United States; and Cherry Blossom Girl, a blogger and designer from London.
“Traditional fashion publications are all learning to adapt to this new force,” said Géraldine Dormoy, the online fashion editor for the French magazine L’Express.
Ms. Dormoy, who is in her 30s, has been on both ends of the fashion media continuum. She created the blog Café Mode five years ago and was later offered a fashion position at L’Express, a widely read weekly. She continues to produce her blog.
That a younger crowd is making its mark in online journalism should not come as a surprise. Tools available on the Web — in addition to the proclivity of younger people to adapt to them — has made it easier to create a Web site, blog or network.
“Today’s teenagers never had to discover the Internet,” said Tomas Gonsorcik, head of intelligence at the social media consultancy Interaction London. They were “almost predetermined to master the new means of media and communication in a way that is qualitatively much richer than the older generation.”
Mr. Gonsorcik said the online projects presented many advantages. Blogging tools offer simple layouts that resemble Web sites, making the blogs and other projects almost indistinguishable from traditional online media, he said.
At the same time, Mr. Gonsorcik said, they “reach out a demographic beyond their own by the very ability to sit side-by-side their older competitors in the search engine result.”
And they have been received and recognized by the fashion industry in part because of the value it places on self-training.
“Fashion is one of the few fields which accepts people with little formal training,” Ms. Dormoy said. “Through these blogs, these young girls show their ability to work as stylists or photographers.”

Some of the efforts are attracting advertisers. DirrtyGlam has ads from the clothing retailer Miss Sixty. The online luxury boutique Net-à-Porter has partnerships with DirrtyGlam and Red Carpet Fashion Awards, a blog that comments and rates celebrities’ red carpet outfits.
Alison Loehnis, vice president for sales and marketing at Net-à-Porter, said the new generation of fashion blogs was attractive because it had “a wonderful viral capability” and allowed the company “to connect and interact more closely the potential future audience.”
American Apparel, the sportswear brand, advertises on all the major fashion blogs, like Teen Vogue; and Childhood Flame, produced by a 15-year-old from Portland, Ore., Camille Rushanaedy; or Fashion Toast, by Rumi Neely of San Francisco. It also created a personalized ad for the online fashion journalist Alix Bancourt, the Paris-based creator of the Cherry Blossom Girl blog.
For Chictopia, with more than five million unique visitors a month, the reward has come in the recognition. The fashion-blog network introduced TeenUgly in 2008, which is produced by high school fashion enthusiasts and features offers to share and comment on outfit snapshots.
TeenUgly rapidly met such popularity that the editors, ages 14 and 16, were invited to New York Fashion week in February and reviewed several shows for Chictopia.
Sea of Shoes, a blog from Jane Aldridge, 17, of Dallas, gained such a following that she was asked, in June, to design her own line of shoes for Urban Outfitters.
Similarly, the British blogger Susanna Lau, better known as Susie Bubble, and her blog Style Bubble, has just designed her own line of clothes, produced and sold by the online retailer Urban Collection. Last May, Ms. Lau, 24, was also made commissioning editor for the online edition of the British fashion magazine Dazed and Confused.
Some say that making the move from amateur entrepreneur to worldwide recognition highlights the intuitive aspect of fashion.
“Fashion is subjective,” says Keith Pollock, executive online editor of Brant Publications, which publishes art magazines and Interview, the pop culture magazine founded by Andy Warhol. “There are very respected fashion journalists that can evaluate the state of the market. However I don’t see how a fashion editor’s perspective on a Prada shoe is more valid than that of a teen blogger in Evanston, Illinois.”

NY Times

 

[tigerrouge]

UK Vogue editor, Alexandra Shulman, is interviewed by The Guardian about weight, racism and the recession:

Vogue's Alexandra Shulman: LFW designers ignore size-zero problem

'I don't expect to see particularly larger clothes at London Fashion Week,' says Vogue editor and anti-size zero campaigner Alexandra Shulman.

13 Sep 2009

Walking into the offices of Vogue, I expect to be greeted by a scene of high fashion histrionics. There will, I have no doubt, be hissy fits, Louboutin heels flying across the room, and a spiky editor glaring at a teary assistant who has called in the wrong Chanel dress for the front cover.

Essentially, I am expecting a scene from The Devil Wears Prada or Ugly Betty, the fictional portrayals of fashionistas that have fed our imagination about the day-to-day high drama of fashion magazines. Clips from The September Issue, the new documentary film about the fearsome rule of Anna Wintour, editor of American Vogue, only feeds the imagination further.

The smiling editor and aura of calm that instead greet me at Vogue's sleek white offices in central London are unnerving. Laughing at my obvious surprise – and slight disappointment – Alexandra Shulman, editor of British Vogue for 17 years, confesses that despite their best efforts, Channel 4 were recently forced to abandon a similar attempt at documenting her magazine when they failed to find the dirt they were digging for.

"We started on a television documentary about Vogue and they stopped after about three months because, after poking around, they couldn't find any trouble," she says, ushering me into her office.

"I think this [The September Issue] shows that you can make a film about the reality of fashion, without having people flouncing out in floods of tears. What's nice about people who work on a magazine like this is to see that the film reflects the passion and creativity that goes into it. Most things I've seen about the fashion industry have just struck me as cartoons, whereas this was so realistic that I came away from watching it with a tension headache as if I'd done a really hard day's work, because it was like my life was on screen."

Shulman says she is hugely optimistic about London Fashion Week, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this week with a move to Somerset House and the return of fashion houses including Burberry, Matthew Williamson and Pringle.

Back in February, the event was something of a damp squib, with big name designers abandoning the catwalks in search of cheaper ways to show their collections. "A year ago I was concerned about what this fashion week was going to look like. The world as we know it was collapsing around our ears, but I think this one is really special because it's 25 years and it's a moment for people to focus on London. Because of the recession, young designers need all the help they can get, so the more people we can drive into London the better.

"I'm not just saying it because I edit British Vogue, but for the last few years, the talent coming through here has been really good. You've got a new generation of already established designers like Richard Nicoll, Marios Schwab and Christopher Kane, and underneath them there is new talent coming through like Peter Pilotto, Meadham Kirchhoff and Mark Fast. It's very exciting to see, and I do feel that London continues to be a more creative and adventurous centre for fashion than Paris, Milan or New York."

Yet despite the wealth of new talent, Shulman feels the fashion industry still has a raw deal. "It is kind of underfunded and undervalued, still, compared with something like the film industry which really now gets quite a lot of government help and grants. We're still not taken as seriously."

Dressed in a polka dot Graham & Spencer shift dress and Sergio Rossi heels, Shulman seems less scary than her American and French counterparts. Yet Stephen Quinn, the publishing director of Condé Nast, says: "I always tease her that her staff are more scared of her than mine are of me. She has that grand authority."

But unlike the stick-thin, immaculately coiffed Wintour, who is said to rise every day at 5am to have her hair professionally blow-dried, and French Vogue's Carine Roitfeld, who wears spray-on leather leggings to the office, Shulman, 51, looks chic but real.

A curvy size 12 on a good day, and 14 on a bad one, her chestnut hair is threaded with grey, and she eats, smokes, sunbathes and drinks without obsessing about the impact on her appearance. In fact, her Hollywood-white teeth are the only visible signs of vanity. "People still say to me, you don't look like the editor of Vogue, and I say, well, I am, and this is what the editor of Vogue looks like!" she says laughing.

While Shulman may not fret over her own weight, she does have concerns about designers' determination to use super-skinny models in shows and magazines. In June, a copy of an angry letter she wrote to designers including Karl Lagerfeld, Stella McCartney, John Galliano, Alexander McQueen and designers at Prada, Versace and Yves Saint Laurent was leaked.

In it, she accused designers of supplying magazines with such "minuscule" garments for their photoshoots that they were forced to use models with "jutting bones and no breasts or hips" to fit the clothes.

"We have now reached the point where many of the sample sizes don't comfortably fit the established star models," she wrote, adding that the Vogue was now having to "retouch" the models to make them look larger.

It was an unprecedented stand on the "size zero" issue from someone in her position, where keeping designers happy in return for precious advertising revenue is all important. Why rock the boat?

"I wrote it because it was something I'd been thinking about for quite a long time," she explains. "And there was one incident which happened in the magazine – it was something that I wanted to shoot on somebody and I wasn't able to because they couldn't fit the dress and they were really quite a small person. I just thought, this is insane.

"That was the trigger that really made me think about trying to talk to the designers about it but it was also a way of addressing the issue that was something very specific, because I think that everyone just saying, oh well, we want to see fatter models isn't a particularly constructive or helpful way to address the issue.

"One of the things I felt I could do was try and affect the people we could photograph in the magazine. My job is to show fashion in this magazine, and if I can't show people in the clothes, then that limits the amount of people I can feature. So it seemed to me to be one way of trying to raise the issue."

Despite such a sharp shot across the boughs, Shulman admits that most designers are reluctant to admit there is a problem. "A couple of people have said yes you're right, we're going to do something about it, but I wouldn't say, in the main, that's been the response.

"Most people have thought about it and on the whole don't feel that the sample sizes they produce are too small – they feel that they are reasonable for the job they are meant to do."

Shulman pauses, then sighs when I ask her if she thinks the designers will be sending Vogue larger sample sizes for photoshoots for next season's collections. "No. I don't expect in the next season I'm going to see anything particularly huger.

"I do think the fashion industry is a little bit out of touch at the moment with this. There is a real feeling that an appreciation of more diverse shapes is what people want. Cookie-cutter is less appealing than it used to be in all kinds of ways, whether that be in ethnicity or physiognomy or what people weigh. So just to have one uniform norm is a bit of an old-fashioned concept. I think it will change, but slower than I would like to see it change."

The fashion industry's other bugbear continues to be the issue of race, with Naomi Campbell, who has graced the cover of Vogue considerably less than her fellow fair-skinned supermodels, repeatedly accusing the industry of racism and magazines of "sidelining black beauty".

Vivienne Westwood, the grand dame of British fashion, has also called the industry "racist" singling out magazines as particularly culpable. Dame Vivienne believes magazines should be forced to use a certain proportion of black and Asian models on their pages, even if its hits their circulation.

Shulman, though keen to feature more diversity in her magazine, thinks that is unrealistic. "We live in a primarily Caucasian country in terms of skin colouring and on the whole, people buy magazines that seem to be about people like themselves, admittedly an enhanced version of themselves.

"That is a reality and I don't think you're ever going to get 50 per cent of the cover girls being black or Asian, but certainly there should be more. But I don't like tokenism. There is a danger that if you do one thing and it's all about fat people or its all about black people, you do one issue and that's dealing with the problem. Well, it's not, and I just think that what everyone has to do is to try and filter in more diversity bit by bit. We should all be doing it."

Unlike Wintour, who admits it was her lifelong ambition to edit Vogue, Shulman, whose parents were both journalists, never envisaged herself ending up with one of the most influential jobs in fashion. "I think its absolutely unbelievable, I mean literally incredible. It seems very strange still to me that this is what happened."

After studying social anthropology at Sussex University, Shulman was fired from two jobs in the music industry, before joining Over-21 magazine. Jobs at Tatler, The Sunday Telegraph and GQ followed, before she took the helm at Vogue in 1992. In 2005, she was awarded an OBE for her services to the magazine industry.

"I came through journalism, I didn't come through fashion, so fashion was something I had to learn about," she says, which may explain why she naively gave no thought to what she would wear to her first collections, oblivious to the fact that everyone on the front rows would be scrutinising her outfits.

A divorcee, she lives in Queen's Park with her partner, the journalist David Jenkins, and Sam, her 14-year-old son from her marriage to the author Paul Spike. At weekends, she sheds the fashion editor mantle in favour of a QPR shirt for football matches with Sam, and unwinds during the week by cooking for friends.

"I do a lot of entertaining, have people round and cook supper," she says. "Because it's a way of not worrying about things to do with work – if you're thinking about other people and making a meal, you can't be thinking about the fact you haven't got a cover for the next issue."

Shulman believes that fashion is even more important in tough times, and that the high fashion and steep prices featured in Vogue provide a "escapism" for women. "I think in general in times of hardship people care terribly about their appearance – it's a basic impulse. For a lot of people, there's a need for escapism, a need to bring lightness into their life, whatever way that might be, whether that's looking at fashion or a beautiful magazine."

But the magazine has not entirely ignored the recession, resurrecting the "More Dash than Cash" pages for tips on belt-tightening styles. "It's about what you can do with what you already have and what you can do to make things look better. In April we did tips for fabulous frugality, which had lots of advice on really cheap things to zhoozh up your life."
Shulman is particularly proud of the November issue, which is entirely dedicated to the More Dash than Cash way of dressing.

"It's fantastic. They've got the most amazing fashion shoots which are so inventive, showing make do and mend tips and affordable styles. It really is quite incredible what you can do with a jay cloth and bin liner."

 

[mikel]

That is an interesting interview. Thanks for posting.

 

[MissMagAddict]

source | style.com

In Conversation With The Journal’s Michael Nevin

When Michael Nevin launched The Journal ten years ago, the magazine was a skinny black-and-white zine dedicated to all things skate and snowboard. A decade later, the issue of The Journal that comes out tomorrow comprises, among other features, new work by Jonathan Meese in memorial to Dash Snow, semi-destroyed photographs of Kate Moss and Mario Sorrenti taken from photographer Glen Luchford’s archives, a lengthy interview with Walter Pfeiffer, and a supplement dedicated to William Eggleston. The Journal is glossy now, and hard-bound, and printed in color; there’s a gallery in Williamsburg attached to it, too. Contributions from the likes of Juergen Teller, Helmut Lang, Mark Gonzales, and Miranda July fill The Journal archives. Not bad for a magazine first stapled together at a highway-side Kinko’s in New England by a kid who was all of 19. Now, more transformations are afoot. The tenth anniversary issue of The Journal is physically larger than the previous one, it’s been given an engaging redesign by Peter Miles, and it includes the magazine’s first-ever fashion spread, starring Jamie Bochert. And yet, for all that, The Journal has changed less than it might appear. “The magazine has always been—and I hope will always be—an honest reflection of my interests,” explains Nevin. “It’s just that those interests have shifted over time.” Here, Nevin talks to Style.com about dialing up the Internet, cold-calling art stars, and texting Rodarte.


This is going to sound like a snotty question, but—why launch a magazine? This is the digital age, or hadn’t you heard?
When I first started The Journal, “online” wasn’t really a thing yet. I mean, I can remember signing up for my first e-mail account after I published the first issue of The Journal. I just wasn’t looking for the things that interested me on the Web. At the time, I was looking at magazines. Really looking—I mean, I grew up in Vermont, and there weren’t too many progressive publications around, so I’d have to work to cobble together bits and pieces of what interested me from the mainstream stuff I had access to. I’d spend hours in the bookstore, poring over magazines. And there was nothing out there covering this whole creative universe that derives from skateboarding and snowboarding. I wanted to read about that, and having just come off a year entering pro contests as a snowboarder, I felt like starting a magazine was a way to continue being a part of something I’d loved.

In other words, magazine-ness—print—runs deep in you.
Yeah, it does. But for reasons that are more than sentimental. I think they’re more than sentimental, anyway. I love the printed image, I love being able to open up the magazine and flip through the pages, I love being able to give a copy to somebody, I love seeing it in stores. I love what it represents. It’s essentially my curation in those pages, and to send the magazine overseas, and know that what I’ve worked on is being looked at, in the same material way, is really fantastic.

The Journal has changed a lot over the years. Was there one particular moment when you thought to yourself, it’s time to evolve?
There have been a few of those moments. When I first moved to the city, five or six years ago, I wound up in this gigantic space in the East Village. Which is how we wound up with the gallery, by the way—it was sort of an accident of having that space. And moving to color and to bound copies, that happened because, I mean, I was working on The Journal with one other guy, we had 3,000 square feet in Manhattan and dial-up Internet, because we were trying to save money. We’d literally be unplugging the cord and handing it to each other anytime one of us needed to get online. And there was some moment when it became clear that we had to make a change, go bigger, or else it was always going to be like that. Later, as I was feeling ready to steer the magazine away from the skateboard/snowboard focus, I managed to get Mark Gonzales, who is both an amazing skateboarder and an amazing artist, to guest-edit an issue. He was a longtime hero of mine, and that issue definitely felt like an inflection point. This new issue feels that way, too—the change in format, the redesign.

I’ll come back to the redesign and other new changes, but since you bring up Mark Gonzales, I have to ask: How have you managed to pull all these VIP contributors into The Journal’s wheelhouse? You consistently punch above your level.
I think on the one hand, it’s that they see the magazine, they see what we’ve done, and they identify with our spirit. And on the other hand, it’s amazing what you’ll get if you just ask. Pick up the phone, you know?

That’s how you got William Eggleston in the new issue, you picked up the phone?
That is literally what happened. I mean, the catalyst was that I’d heard he was making drawings—and I like drawings a lot, I like their quickness. I feel like you can learn a ton about a person’s work from their drawings. So I called his son, who heads the Eggleston Trust, and then a while later I was on a plane to Tennesssee to meet William Eggleston. He showed me this one piece of his, and I was like—”Wow, that’s exactly what I’ve been looking for.” And he said, “Well, I’m glad you found it.” It was very cool.

You shot his portrait for the supplement. Was that intimidating?
Yes. At first it was, and then it wasn’t. Obviously, I mean, I studied photography at school, and what art student isn’t inspired by William Eggleston? So it was weird to be taking his picture, sure. But then he grabbed my camera and started shooting with it, and after that I wasn’t intimidated anymore. He made it easy for me to let my guard down.

This whole “pick up the phone thing”—has there ever been a hard sell? Name names, please.
Honestly…I can’t think of anyone. It’s kind of like, if it’s a hard sell, then it’s probably not the right thing. I only want to work with people who are enthusiastic.

Back to the redesign, etc. Do these changes signify a new era at The Journal? And if so, what’s happening? Where are you headed? Is fashion now a priority?
It was just time for a change. A magazine requires a lot of people and a lot of elements, and for a while now, I’ve felt like the design, the thing that ties all that stuff together, needed to be stronger. I feel really lucky that Peter [Miles], who is my dream design director, agreed to take this on. As for the fashion, that just feels like a natural development. It does to me, at least. What’s funny is that friends of mine, people who have been reading the magazine for a long time, when they find out that we have a fashion spread in this issue, they seem sort of…disappointed. But that shoot came about the same way a lot of work makes its way into the magazine—I’m friends with someone, I respect his or her work, I want to make a space for it somehow. And I have so many friends, at this point, who are involved in fashion, it felt more unnatural to keep it out of The Journal.

You’re actually launching the issue at the Rodarte show, correct? Attendees are going to find the new issue waiting for them at their seats.
Yeah. Kate’s a good friend of mine, so…

How did you meet?
Well, before we actually met, she and Laura contributed something to the magazine, part of a Miranda July piece called “Learning to Love You More.” And then Kate and I somehow wound up text pen pals. It’s strange, I can’t even remember the first time we met face-to-face. But now we talk all the time.

Do you ever imagine turning The Journal into a monthly, or going bigger in some other way?
I think a monthly would drive me crazy. Bigger otherwise—yes and no. I’d like the business to be successful enough that I don’t have to spend so much time thinking about the business, and I believe in what we’re creating, so obviously I’d like it to reach as many people as possible. But ultimately, my heart is in the magazine itself, and as long as I can keep doing it the way I want to do it, that’s really all I want. I like being accessible. It’s like, we have this gallery space, and the nice thing about that is that people come through all the time; readers stop by to ask questions or drop off submissions, and I actually get to meet them. I like having that feedback. I like face-to-face. I mean, the first issue of the magazine, a friend and I drove down to an art opening in New York and handed out copies outside the gallery.

Not something you can do with a blog, really.
No. I mean, isn’t there some stuff you just want to hold in your hand?

 

[MissMagAddict]

source | wwd.com

WHAT’S COMING? As Condé Nast editors have left their offices to man the front rows at New York Fashion Week, so, too, have the consultants at McKinsey & Co. The outside analysts the company hired in July to, as chief executive officer Charles Townsend described, “develop new perspectives on optimizing our approach to business, growing revenues and enhancing our brand assets,” have finished their observations within 4 Times Square, where they completed a deep analysis of operations at Vogue and Condé Nast Traveler and used both titles as a model to apply to other magazines at the company. The consultants are continuing to meet with Condé Nast executives, however, and are expected to have a finalized report by next week.

But before any recommendations from McKinsey even arrive, editors and publishers are this week receiving word from chief operating officer John Bellando that their budgets for next year will be significantly reduced. According to insiders, the company aims to cut 20 to 30 percent from each title’s 2010 budget, with the individual editors and publishers tasked to trim those numbers by reducing headcount, expenses, travel and other expenditures. Such cuts will follow a 5 percent reduction in headcount and spending in November, but since that time, Condé Nast has lost a third of its ad paging in the crippling ad recession.

Condé Nast employees are understandably anxious to find out how the budget cuts will be made. Most speculate a number of magazines will change their frequencies; for example, by dropping to 10 issues a year from 12. As for closures, chatter of the fate of several of the poorer-performing magazines has quieted down. Just another angst-filled two weeks left until October, when insiders expect Condé Nast top brass to begin implementing the changes. A Condé Nast spokeswoman declined to comment.

 

[Miss Dalloway]

^ Reading that sort of puts that Michelle Williams "on the budget" looking spread in perspective, thanks for posting hun.

 

[tigerrouge]

PR Week reports:

The down-to-earth British fashion bible

18 September 2009

To celebrate London Fashion Week (18-23 September), which starts today, Elle magazine has thrown down the gauntlet to rival Vogue with a series of initiatives to showcase the best of British. These include posters on the London Underground and a selection of front covers - including one featuring Mayor of London Boris Johnson.

'We are the pivotal fashion magazine for London,' proclaims editor-in-chief Lorraine Candy, who moved to Elle from Cosmopolitan in 2004 and set about showcasing less eye-wateringly expensive pieces. 'We are more modern and less designer-led than Vogue and Harper's Bazaar.'

In the UK Vogue still outstrips Elle, selling 210,435 in the latest round of ABCs, compared with Elle's 195,192. But Candy says worldwide, Elle's 41 editions sell 6.2 million, more than Vogue's.

Candy claims the magazine has a more attainable approach to fashion than its rivals. 'Elle aims to be the magazine you can shop from. It inspires you to wear high street with designer.' Julian Vogel, MD of fashion agency Modus, says: 'We target it for clients from Calvin Klein to Uniqlo.'

Joss Rankin, account director at consumer agency MCG PR, says Elle has an edge on the newsstand: 'It allows itself to appear risque, but still maintains its A-list heritage.' While she feels it would take a lot for Elle to steal Vogue's crown, she adds: 'It stands out in its own way.'

The magazine aims to reflect the British approach to fashion, which is more democratic than in other countries and incorporates a fair degree of high street. But Candy feels the craze for cheap designer knock-offs has passed: 'Women want to spend their money thoughtfully.' The title will consider pieces from Primark if they fit with the theme of a shoot, but it has a strict no-fur policy.

Cover stars tend to be A-list celebrities. A recent cover featuring troubled Hollywood star Lindsay Lohan and shot by legendary photographer Rankin proved particularly popular. Candy says readers enjoy the re-invention of a star.

With the Johnson cover, Candy is breaking new ground. This is the first time a man has appeared alone on the front cover of Elle and Candy feels the magazine has the gravitas to pull off the unusual move. 'If Cosmopolitan tried to do this, it would have to put him on it naked,' she says.

The size zero debate that has dogged the fashion world in recent years has not escaped Elle. The magazine will not include models who look ill. 'Nobody wants to see clothes on girls who are too thin,' asserts Candy.

The magazine does, however, continue to airbrush photographs. 'No matter what people on the street say, they would not buy the magazine if the cover star was not airbrushed,' says Candy.

 

[tigerrouge]

The Observer Magazine looks at the ethics of paper:

Did this page come from a sustainable source?

Surprisingly, recycling isn't always the best option for printing a magazine responsibly. Lucy Siegle gets on the paper trail.

20 September 2009

This is the age of the tree hugger. We have an unprecedented knowledge of environmental catastrophe and propensity to buy earth-friendly goods, from pyjamas to cauliflowers. It begs the question: why do so many actual trees continue to be felled on our watch? Forests are being destroyed at the rate of 13m hectares a year. Given that we collectively use 1m tonnes of paper every day (a fourfold increase in four decades), it is high time that we address our forestry footprint, and yes, I should address mine.

I had always assumed that magazine paper was, like our newspaper, recycled. But magazines are a different breed. For starters, they require higher-grade paper. And so the trees felled for this magazine came from sustainably managed forests in Scandinavia. Those trees are then processed in local forest mills. Even if it were possible to use some recycled content, that would mean carting old newspapers to these forest mills, a logistical problem that adds up to a carbon insult.

In short, we need virgin fibre. Acquiring this ethically is all about proactive sourcing. As Mandy Haggith, author of the compelling and terrifying Paper Trails: From Trees to Trash - The True Cost of Paper, tells us: "The paper industry exploits forests all over the world, in the tropics, in temperate zones of both the northern and southern hemisphere, and in the vast snowy north, known as the boreal region. Far too much of this exploitation is unsustainable and not welcomed by the local people." See as evidence the way the global paper trade has pushed through China and is now annexing the great Russian boreal forests. In common with other commodities, if you ask no questions, you end up buying into precisely this ecological and social time bomb.

Fortunately the paper people here tend to ask more questions than you would think existed. Consequently, 99.91% of the paper used in this magazine is certified virgin fibre. Everything to do with the fibre used to make these pages - from growing the tree to felling, milling and printing - has been certified by the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification schemes (PEFC). It is the only programme that certifies right the way through the chain, and that's not easy to do. Fewer than 5% of the world's forests are covered by any certification scheme, and only a few of these produce trees for paper, so finding the right growers and mills is a challenge in the first place. In fact, we're the first newspaper publisher to get this chain of custody from the PEFC.

If you're wondering where to go next with this, then bear in mind that less than half the paper consumed in the world is recycled after disposal, and in the UK 5m tonnes of paper goes to landfill every year. So - after you've finished reading, of course - it's off to the recycling bin so that this magazine can in effect become the paper. Think of it as a form of tree hugging.

 

[tigerrouge]

An old snippet of information from Print Week probably explains why the Swarovski cover wasn't seen everywhere. I don't know why they've put the word 'girls' in quotes, it's usually simpler to say 'people', unless they want us to imagine it was an assembly line of transvestites:

I noticed an edition of Harper’s Bazaar in the shops recently that had sort of fake diamonds somehow stuck onto its front. I am intrigued to know how this was done.
Sue Barton
Via email

What you saw was a special edition of the British Harper’s Bazaar to commemorate the fact it has finally adopted the fashion title’s international logo. Each of the 400pp specials was adorned with 200 Swarovski crystal studs along the letters of its masthead. Very bling and very this season darling!

Wyndeham Heron, which prints the NatMags magazine, outsourced the time-consuming job to Tilbury-based Bizzypack Finishers, which used 30 ‘girls’ to hand-finish the 45,000 run after its five-day turnaround turned into three.

Swarovski mailed 45,000 prepared transfers from the US, with the crystals aligned in the correct position on a double-sided adhesive sheet. The girls had to place the sheets onto the glossy covers and press down hard before peeling off the top layer to reveal the crystals in the correct position.

With a 1mm leeway from the template, the girls had to concentrate hard, but managing director Nick Sizer said it was worth it – they were more proud of this job than any they had done previously.

Finally, to ensure the kind of perfection the grandmaster of fashion Giovanni Valentino would insist on, supervisers took over from the girls when packing the magazines to double check each one.

 

[MissMagAddict]

source | wwd.com

NOT SO FAST: Though speculation about imminent magazine closures has quieted at Condé Nast Publications now that McKinsey & Co. has finished its consulting duties within 4 Times Square, that doesn’t mean they still couldn’t happen. According to several well-placed insiders, top management is considering closing some titles by the end of the year — a decision that is likely to be finalized after the current sessions on 2010 budgets. In meetings with Condé Nast chief operating officer John Bellando that started last week and are ongoing, editors and publishers are being given their budget targets for 2010 — with most being asked to cut them by an average of 25 percent. Each title also received packets of general cost-cutting recommendations from McKinsey, and now editors and publishers are strategizing about how to meet their new numbers, with everything from employee head count, freelance budgets, publishing schedules, travel and expenses, photo shoots and administrative costs being scrutinized. The process is not simply trimming large salaries from the mastheads — “they’re looking at rebuilding [their budgets] from scratch instead of [just] cutting it from the top,” said one source.

And even once titles submit their cost-cutting plans, sources said, that doesn’t mean all is complete. Top executives at the company could still decide to close titles as opposed to endure budget cuts so extreme that production quality would be jeopardized or advertising and circulation growth would be too difficult. Or, as earlier chatter indicated, management could opt for no closures at all and tough it out until the economy recovers. Regardless, the final plan for 2010 is expected to be decided upon within the next few weeks. A Condé Nast spokeswoman did not return an e-mail seeking comment.

 

[tigerrouge]

Marketing Vox reports:

Ad Retouching Gets Legal Once-Over in UK and France

Sep 28

Hoping to improve self-esteem problems experienced by girls and women that feel pressure to live up to images of digitally altered counterparts, British and French lawmakers are pushing for laws that force advertisers to disclose when retouching is used on models.

"When teenagers and women look at these pictures in magazines, they end up feeling unhappy with themselves," said British Parliament member Jo Swinson of the Liberal Democratic Party (via The New York Times).

Swinson proposed an ad labeling system, which this month was fast adopted by the Liberal Democrats, the third-largest party in Britain. In addition to disclaimers on retouched images of models, the group hopes to ban altered photos in ads aimed at youth under 16.

Last week, lawmaker Valerie Boyer introduced a similar bill in the French National Assembly, the lower house of Parliament.

Boyer's bill not only demands warning labels on retouched photos for ads, but those published for editorial purposes as well. Violators could face fines totaling 37,500 euros, the equivalent of $55,000 — or, alternatively, up to 50% of the cost of an ad.

Altered images undermine young women's ability to control their destinies, Boyer argued. "These photos can lead people to believe in realities that, very often, do not exist."

France is particularly concerned about the growing number of women with eating disorders. Last year Boyer witnessed the approval of another bill she championed: one that bans websites that appear to encourage anorexia and bulimia. Little has happened to ensure the law was enacted, however.

For flaws large and small, whatever the country, retouching has become a natural part of the process of developing an image for publication. Common photo programs, such as Apple's iPhoto, even let ordinary users retouch blemishes on personal photos.

And while the process in ads has generally been frowned upon, there are arguments for the necessity of retouching to improve the fidelity of an image. Small changes — such as color correction or textural smoothing — are made even in news photos, according to Paris-based photographer Derek Hudson.

"I have never yet seen, and you probably never will see, a fashion or beauty picture that hasn't been retouched," he said.

The problem lies in altering the natural proportions of a model, lending an unrealistic sense of how skinny women must get to remain attractive. For example, a 2003 cover of GQ in Britain depicted actress Kate Winslet several sizes smaller than her actual figure.

And last year, a series of before/after shots were released of a Campari ad shoot featuring Jessica Alba. The Campari team significantly reduced the girth of the actress, who'd recently had a child.

The images quickly circulated around the blogosphere, whose opinions alternated between a blasé attitude about the prevalence of image retouching, and full-on criticism for Campari.

Still, some magazine editors argue that the trend of stick-thinness is effectively over. "I spent the first 10 years of my career making girls look thinner," stated CD Robin Derrick of British Vogue to The Times of London. "I've spent the last 10 making them look larger."

For her part, Swinson acknowledges a little retouching is "necessary to make a good photo." Her proposal includes a scale: photos can be rated from 1 to 4, depending on how much retouching has occurs. A 1 may represent just altered lighting; a 4 may insinuate digital cosmetic surgery. The label would also have to explain the changes.

"If people knew they had to describe what they had altered, it might make them less likely to do it," she said.

 

[mikel]

^Pure nonsense.

Thanks for posting.

 

[PoppyAzura]

NYTimes on Conde Nast cuts

Cuts Meet a Culture of Spending at Condé Nast
By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD

At Condé Nast, it is consultants versus car service.

A three-month McKinsey & Company project advising the publisher how to reduce costs is drawing to a close, and several magazines have been told to cut about 25 percent from their budgets. The company’s editors and publishers have already been under pressure to reduce costs this year, as advertising has plunged, and Condé Nast has closed two magazines in 2009, Domino and Condé Nast Portfolio.

But cost-cutting at Condé Nast is not quite like cost-cutting at other publishers. For example, on Oct. 13, the men’s magazine GQ will host a party in Washington to promote its list of powerful capital players, to appear in its November issue. The party is upscale: it will be held at the 701 Restaurant, known for its caviar and live piano music.

That is not the only expense involved. Several editorial employees will travel from New York for the evening. And they received an e-mail message recently reminding them to limit their expenses for the night — to $1,000 a person.

That culture of spending at Condé Nast explains some of the fascination with the place, which incites a mix of envy and scorn among employees at other magazines. Condé Nast’s top editors and publishers have drivers on call, staff members can be reimbursed for $15 a day for lunches they order in, and even freelance writers stay at hotels like the W when they are on assignment.

Those perks would be unremarkable at any investment bank or law firm, at least before the recession. But magazine companies other than Condé Nast have become grim places to work in recent years.

Time Inc. outlined layoffs of 600 employees last October, almost all of which were completed by the end of last year, Dawn Bridges, a spokeswoman for Time Inc., said in an e-mail message. The company has also put strict limits on expense accounts.

Hearst laid off some employees at the end of last year. And BusinessWeek, as it tries to find a buyer, has proposed a 20 percent staff layoff, along with cutting costs on art and illustrations, research, marketing and events.

Now Condé Nast is finally making some serious changes to its business, and life inside the 4 Times Square headquarters is about to change — a little.

“They’ve been shielded a little bit,” said Audrey Siegel, executive vice president and director of client services at the media firm TargetCast tcm. “But I think Condé Nast will feel it now.”

Teams of McKinsey consultants have been in the Condé Nast headquarters for the last three months, meeting with editors, publishers and other executives to review how they spend their money. Their recommendations are in: In addition to the overall cost cuts of about 25 percent, budgets for 2010 must assume that sales will be flat, said several executives, who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to discuss the issue. The magnitude of the cuts was first reported in The New York Observer.

Some magazines are subject to different rules, including The New Yorker, where the editorial side is exempt from cutbacks.

It is up to the publishers and editors how to reduce their budgets. It is unlikely that prominent editors like Anna Wintour of Vogue or Graydon Carter of Vanity Fair will cancel their town-car service: their magazines sell luxury, and Ms. Wintour’s swiping her 30-day MetroCard and jostling with Times Square commuters would hardly enhance that position.

Executives said there were some obvious places where they could cut, like contracts with contributors. (That is one explanation for the company’s letting details of the McKinsey process leak, one executive suggested — it allows Condé Nast to blame the consultants for budget reductions and renegotiate contracts with well-known photographers, writers and stylists without alienating them.)

Other cuts executives mentioned included magazine promotional items, photo shoots that stretch for several days, the high “kill fees” paid for completed photographs that do not make it into the magazines and the near-daily lunch orders from Balthazar. Another obvious way to cut costs is through layoffs. While Condé Nast has been in a virtual hiring freeze for about a year, with most magazines declining to fill empty positions, no widespread layoffs have been announced.

Some magazines are considering reducing their frequency. However, Ms. Siegel cautioned, this could have long-term effects. “There are very few advertisers that buy 12 issues of a monthly, so does it matter to me that it might be 10? Not in the short term, but it might matter if it affects the overall readership,” for instance, if readers cancel subscriptions because they receive fewer issues, or if measures of readers’ interest in the magazines decline. Condé Nast is a private company and does not publicly report financial results. Maurie Perl, a Condé Nast spokeswoman, declined to comment on the reports.

But a look at some measures suggests how hard the company has been hit.

For instance, while Condé Nast has been moving away from its dependence on newsstand sales, the high-price newsstand copies still bring in significant revenue. But Condé Nast’s newsstand sales brought in $2 million less in the first six months of this year than they did a year earlier, according to Audit Bureau of Circulations data.

That revenue is shared with distributors, and the drop was calculated using newsstand prices for the most recent period. However, every Condé Nast magazine except Bon Appétit increased its subscriptions in the same period.

Still, advertising, where Condé Nast makes most of its money, has been hammered. Condé Nast magazines have lost about 8,000 ad pages through the October issues compared with last year, according to Media Industry Newsletter. Those figures exclude the company’s bridal magazines. That is a decline of about one-third.

Ms. Siegel said some cost controls were appropriate but she hoped they would not affect the quality of the magazines.

“I love their magazines — I think they’re pretty, I like the way they feel, and I think the reproduction is lovely,” she said. “That’s why I would hope that one of the things their consultants will not tell them is to, in any way, diminish the quality of what they’re offering, because that is something that makes those titles valuable.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/28/business/media/28conde.html

 

[tigerrouge]

The Sunday Business Post looked at the Irish magazine sector:

Publish and be damned

September 20, 2009

The recent departure of Gloss magazine from the news stands and its move into the Irish Times, where it now appears as a monthly supplement, ostensibly means one fewer competitor for other Irish titles.

But the move is indicative of the struggle that Ireland’s stable of women’s magazines has endured over the past 12 months to raise advertising revenue during a global recession - and in a fiercely competitive market.

Getting an up-to-date picture on ad spend for Irish magazines is difficult, as revenue figures are published on an annual basis at the end of the calendar year. Last year’s advertising revenue figure, published by Magazines Ireland, was down by €24 million to €215 million compared to the previous year.

Magazines Ireland represents 43 Irish publishers which produce more than 200 magazines between them. The annual spend figures for 2009, which will be published next January, are likely to be considerably lower again.

According to Philip McGaley, joint managing director of Dyflin, which publishes Prudence and Confetti magazines, the past year has been ‘‘incredibly turbulent’’ for the sector. But he believes things have begun to settle down.

‘‘Many advertisers stayed out of the market over the past year for their own bottom-line reasons, but they’re starting to realise that they need to have a presence in the market,” he said. ‘We’re seeing advertisers returning to the market after a ten to 14-month absence.”

According to McGaley, retail sales of both of his firm’s magazines are marginally up. ‘‘For some reason, recessionary periods encourage couples to tie the knot. The latest CSO figures, published last November, suggested that there would be about 30,000 weddings on the island of Ireland this year. There were just over 22,000 marriages in the 26 counties in 2006, so Confetti is selling well,” he said.

‘‘Similarly, Prudence, which has a value-for-money ethos, is doing well retail-wise. As the title would suggest, it is a magazine for our times, and probably has more resonance today than it did when we first launched it in November 2004.”

Richard Power, managing director of Image magazine, painted a similarly bleak picture in terms of ad revenue for the last year. ‘‘Our last ABC sales figures were at about 27,000, but everyone is taking hits. Nama and the Lisbon Treaty could affect foreign investment and advertising in the Irish market,” he said.

‘‘Most foreign fashion houses don’t have an agency in Ireland - we have to go to them and bring in the money. There has been a slight increase in activity in the ad market since June, but the next few months will depend on the perception of our market overseas, and whether or not Ireland is still considered a luxury goods market.”

Norah Casey is head of Harmonia, the country’s largest consumer magazine publisher, which publishes Irish Tatler and U magazine. ‘‘Ireland is a niche market,” she said.

‘‘Our market is one-tenth the size of Britain, yet we have to compete with British titles, which account for about 80 per cent of the glossy magazines on shop shelves. Our magazines have to look the same as our competitors, and have the same production, feature and photography standards and values.

‘‘It’s a testament to the people that work in our magazines that we succeed in that respect, but we have a small circulation and we survive on advertising, rather than through cover sales.

‘‘Big fashion houses feel they have covered the Irish market by taking out advertising in British titles that appear on Irish newsstands, so we have to fight for our share of the cake every year. All the big beauty brands are looking at cutting costs and, unfortunately, we’re often seen as being part of the regional British magazine market.”

Casey expects an advertising spike this quarter. ‘‘I think people held on to their money waiting to see what kind of summer we’d have. We had a bad one, but now I think people have a little spend to release, and they’ll want to get their figures up for the last quarter of the year. Whether or not it will carry us to January remains to be seen,” she said.

‘‘Irish Tatler will be 110 years old next year, and U magazine has been published for more than 30 years. This isn’t the first recession that these magazines have been through.”

Predictably, there have been job losses at most women’s magazines at this stage. ‘‘We’ve had to look at staffing levels across the board,” said McGaley. ‘‘There were a number of redundancies and cutbacks. It’s the most unpalatable part of this business but, unfortunately, it is necessary in the current climate.”

Image magazine’s Richard Power said: ‘‘I’ve been asked can I guarantee that there won’t be any redundancies at Image in the next six months. I can’t - everyone has had cutbacks. Staffing is one of our most expensive outlays, and we continue to look at staff numbers. We’re not replacing staff that leave. I think people have to upskill themselves and be able to work on both online and print production.”

Harmonia decided late last year to move away from the raft of contract publications that it produces, to concentrate on its own titles. ‘‘It’s very difficult to raise advertising spend for those magazines in a recession,” said Casey. ‘‘We had to cut staff numbers at the beginning of the year after downsizing our contract publishing sector. There’s no point having a suite of titles in the market right now.”

Casey said Harmonia’s Food & Wine magazine now had sales of almost 9,000 copies every month. Ireland of the Welcomes, its subscription based US publication, is also bucking the industry trend, with a circulation of almost 84,000. An Australian version of the magazine will be launched in January.

All three publishing companies have invested in an online presence, and Richard Power believes that the internet is only a threat if magazines don’t develop their own websites.

Harmonia launched iVenus.com in 2000 and revamped it earlier this year. ‘‘Online is not the easiest place to create wealth,” said Casey. ‘‘iVenus has a thriving life of its own, but people still prefer to read a glossy magazine. ‘‘Glossies have longevity - people don’t tend to keep supplement magazines, but they do hold onto glossy publications.

Look at all the homes, salons and doctors’ surgeries that keep back issues. In that respect, an ad is not for a day, it’s for a month, and often more.”

 

[MissMagAddict]

source | nytimes.com

October 5, 2009

Condé Nast to Close Gourmet, Cookie, Elegant Bride & Modern Bride

Condé Nast plans to announce this morning that it will close Gourmet magazine, a magazine of almost biblical status in the food world; it has been published since December 1940.
The magazine has sustained a severe decline in ad pages, but the cut still comes as a shock. There was speculation that Condé Nast would close one of its food titles — Gourmet or Bon Appétit — but most bets were on the latter. Gourmet has a richer history than Bon Appétit, and its editor, Ruth Reichl, is powerful in the food world.
In addition to Gourmet, Condé Nast plans to announce it will also close Cookie, Modern Bride and Elegant Bride. Cookie is a relatively new introduction, started in 2005, while the bridal magazines were seen as offshoots of the bigger Brides magazine, which Condé Nast also owns.
The cuts come at the conclusion of a three-month study by McKinsey & Company, which conducted analysis of Condé Nast’s costs, and told several magazines to cut about 25 percent from their budgets. These are the first closings announced by the company since the McKinsey study.
The moves are significant for the publisher. It has never been quick to close titles, and in the last year or so has closed only newer titles, Condé Nast Portfolio and Domino, along with folding Men’s Vogue into Vogue.
Condé Nast tends to hold tight to its prestigious titles, making the Gourmet closing all the more startling. In an interview in February, even Paul Jowdy, publisher of the in-house rival Bon Appétit, said that such a closing was unlikely. (To be fair to Mr. Jowdy, the economy has plummeted, and Condé Nast has been hit particularly hard since then. Its magazines have lost more than 8,000 ad pages, excluding its bridal titles, so far this year.)
“They would never do that,” Mr. Jowdy said in February. “They’re both very important magazines in the culinary world, and they’re very different magazines, and they’re both very healthy. So there’s all these rumors that are just ridiculous. I try not to pay attention to them, but you have to know — if you think of two of the most prestigious, credible, trusted magazines in the industry, you’re going to say Bon Appétit and Gourmet.”

So not Allure as was rumored... not yet anyway...

 

[MissMagAddict]

source | nytimes.com

October 5, 2009, 12:56 pm
Condé Nast’s Executive on Why the Company Closed Four Magazines

In an interview at Condé Nast headquarters Monday morning, the chief executive Charles H. Townsend explained why he had made the cuts he had. The simple answer: the magazines were losing money.
“We will not be in that position after today — we won’t have businesses that don’t make a contribution.”
None of the about 180 employees of the magazines, including the Gourmet editor-in-chief, Ruth Reichl, are expected to stay with the company, Mr. Townsend said. The employees will receive severance packages this week and be out by the end of the week.
Other layoffs may be in the works. Mr. Townsend has asked editors and publishers of each magazine to meet certain budgets, and the executives can choose whether to lay off staff members to get there. The executives’ plans are due in 10 days, Mr. Townsend said, and all layoffs should be completed by the end of the year.
This is it for magazine closings, he said, although he said three or four magazines were considering reducing their frequency.
The November issues of Gourmet and Cookie, which are already being printed, will be the final issues. The issues of the bridal magazines on newsstands now, October/November for Modern Bride and Fall for Elegant Bride, will be their final issues.
“These businesses should be 25 percent net margin businesses,” he said. “We have had some underperformers, but not businesses that have cost us money to run except for launches and businesses like Gourmet that, with the economy, have slipped into the red.”
Versus Gourmet, which has a circulation of about 978,000, Bon Appétit was much bigger, at 1.352 million, he said. And the company made higher margins off of the Bon Appétit circulation.
“Bon Appétit is a very, very big, broad and powerful circulation machine. It is quite different than many of the properties here,” he said. “We generate a very, very high circulation margin.” In fact, Mr. Townsend added that Bon Appétit was “one of the most successful” magazines in terms of circulation margin at the company.
Condé Nast also shut Cookie, the parenting magazine it started in 2005. Cookie joins Condé Nast Portfolio and Domino on the list of newish magazines the company has shut down this year.
“Cookie was a tragedy of the economy — what else can you say?” Mr. Townsend said. “I think it was a wonderful business in the making, but in this economy we don’t have the luxury to fund launches.”
Given the economy in which it was started, Cookie was about 60 months away from profitability, he said, adding that it never would it have reached profitability in this economy.
The company did not consider selling Cookie. “It’s very difficult to sell a launch, because launches cost money,” he said.
Details, another title that had been considered troubled, was spared. “Details will be profitable when we’re done,” Mr. Townsend said, pointing out that it was profitable in 2007 and marginally profitable in 2008.
The company will focus its bridal publishing on Brides, which it is increasing in frequency to 12 times a year, and will invest more heavily in Brides.com to compete with the Web site TheKnot.com.