The Business of Magazines

[Flashbang]

WHAT’S TAKING SO LONG?: Two weeks ago, The New York Times was thought to be close to naming a new editor in chief for T, its Sunday style supplement, which has been editor-less since Stefano Tonchi jumped to W in April. The Times had said it hoped to find a replacement by May 1, and Anne Christensen, the magazine’s women’s fashion director, was considered the frontrunner for the job. But there has yet to be an announcement and, since then, the rumor mill has continued to grind. Among the names being bandied about in media circles — regardless of their basis in reality — are Christensen, as well as GQ’s deputy editor Michael Hainey, the Times’ own Guy Trebay, Kate Betts, Ingrid Sischy and Vogue’s Sally Singer, who is said to have possibly tossed her hat back into the ring (though remaining ambivalent about leaving her high-paying gig, according to sources). As it no doubt is for Singer, money would likely be a sticking point for Hainey, a 10-year veteran of the Condé Nast-owned men’s title. And while insiders say Trebay has been lobbying for the position, he seems an unlikely option, as he lacks the management experience and stronger-than-strong advertiser ties the gig requires. (In addition to his editorial responsibilities, Tonchi acted as a de facto publisher of T). Insiders say Betts is not interested, and with regard to the former Interview editor, a well-placed source said Sischy wouldn’t be interested, either — she is enjoying her freelance writing assignments as well as the large canvas she has as international editor for Vanity Fair’s Italian and Spanish editions, and Russian and German Vogue. One thing the Times has on its side here is time — the next issue of T, the fall women’s fashion issue, does not come out until Aug. 22. Still, all indications are Christensen remains the frontrunner. The Times did not return e-mails seeking comment.

wwd.com

 

[Flashbang]

Given the beleaguered print world these days, more journalists and executives have been hooking their stars to the digital world. Well, Elle and parent company Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S. have reversed the trend — luring someone from the tech sector to succeed Carol Smith, the magazine’s former senior vice president and chief brand officer, who decamped in April to Condé Nast. Effective July 5, Robin Domeniconi, who had been vice president of U.S. advertising sales, marketing and publishing for Microsoft, will step into Smith’s shoes, Alain Lemarchand, Hachette’s U.S. president and chief executive officer, said Friday. “[Robin’s] knowledge of the digital space and her clear ability to grow the business on all platforms will be a great asset to the Elle group,” he said. Lemarchand might also have mentioned that Domeniconi, whose name will also sit atop Margaret Russell’s at Elle Décor, will need to buoy the print side and fast; Elle trailed behind InStyle and Vogue in ad pages during the first half of 2010. (Under Smith, Elle finished 2009 with more ad pages than Vogue — considered a major feat, although their page rates are certainly different.) It makes sense, then, that one of Domeniconi’s first assignments is to hire a vice president, brand publisher, which she told WWD she plans to accomplish in two to four weeks. (In this respect, the company seemingly reworked its initial hiring plan, which was said to involve finding a publisher first and filling the higher-up brand-officer position after that.)

During her year and a half at Microsoft, Domeniconi oversaw sales and marketing for the company’s media properties and partners, such as MSN, Windows Live, Xbox Live, Live Search, Facebook and WSJ Digital. She was also involved in the recent launch of the women’s lifestyle Web site Glo.com — a collaboration between MSN, Hachette and BermanBraun. (Lemarchand said Domeniconi “will continue her strong connection” to Glo.com in her new role at Elle.) Prior to joining Microsoft in November 2008, Domeniconi was a senior adviser at Avista Capital Partners, and, before that, president of Time Inc.’s Media Group and the president and publisher of Real Simple from 1999 to 2005.

“I have such a passion for building brands,” Domeniconi told WWD,” and when I was working on Glo, it ignited my passions again [and made me] want to get back to building brands from a content and an audience perspective — I was missing that at the last several jobs I had.” In terms of new revenue streams, Domeniconi said she was interested in exploring product licensing deals, pointing to Elle’s clothing line at Kohl’s and a new agreement with the chain for an Elle Décor product range as examples. “It could be digital, it could be television shows, it could be product,” she noted. “Basically, wherever we see the brand holding true to its mission and [where it] makes sense on other platforms and in other products,” including on the iPad, online and on mobile devices. (She added, somewhat cryptically, “I already, in my mind, have a place where I think we would like to go first…another area of technology that I don’t think has been exploited yet by brands such as Elle,” though she declined further clarification.)

Like her predecessor, Domeniconi will have oversight of all content, advertising, digital platforms and brand development within the Elle group — which means Elle’s editor in chief, Robbie Myers, will report to Domeniconi just like she did to Smith. However, Domeniconi said she won’t be giving orders but rather will look to Myers as a keeper of the Elle brand — but, then again, she hasn’t taken control yet. “She has a very clear and powerful vision of Elle’s editorial voice on all platforms,” Domeniconi said of Myers, “and while, yes, my name will be above hers on the masthead, she is absolutely the brand steward. She knows, she lives, she breathes this brand...[and] there are a number of ways that we’ll work as partners.” (Smith might not have viewed it that way.)

In the next few months, all eyes will certainly be focused on Elle, as the title looks to its 25th anniversary in the U.S. this fall, leaving little room for a learning curve. Indeed, the debut of Elle’s iPad edition and the release of the Joe Zee-edited coffee-table book, tentatively titled “The Ellements of Style,” are both pegged to the October anniversary issue.

Meanwhile, Anne Welch, who was Smith’s number two and had been acting chief brand officer since Smith’s departure, has been named vice president, brand operations.

wwd.com

 

[Flashbang]

Breaking news!

http://twitter.com/derekblasberg/status/15716347563

 

[mikel]

^that is major!

 

[Flashbang]

June 8, 2010, 12:20 pm
Sally Singer Named Editor of T Magazine
By JOSEPH PLAMBECK

Sally Singer, the fashion news and features director at Vogue, has been named the editor of T: The New York Times Style Magazine.

Ms. Singer, 45, will take over on July 5, according to a note Bill Keller, executive editor of The Times, sent to staff on Tuesday.

The move essentially completes a swap of editors between The Times and Condé Nast, the publisher of Vogue. The T job opened up after its first editor, Stefano Tonchi, moved to another Condé Nast fashion magazine, W, in April.

Ms. Singer worked in a variety of roles for different publications before joining Vogue in 1999. Her stops have included a stint as fashion director at New York Magazine and as an editor at the London Review of Books, and she has written for The Economist and The Atlantic Monthly. She studied at the University of California at Berkeley and Yale.

“As her resume — and her successes at Vogue — will testify, she has the combination of aesthetic sense and intellectual curiosity suited to a style magazine that wears the name of The New York Times,” Mr. Keller said in the note.

T made its debut in 2003, and now comes out 15 times each year, with most issues dedicated to either women’s or men’s fashion, travel or design.

Like other luxury titles (and most magazines in general), it experienced a sharp drop in advertisements last year. Some of those ad pages have returned this year.

The paper had originally said that they hoped to name Mr. Tonchi’s successor by May 1. Mr. Keller said that the paper “considered a wide range of impressive candidates,” both inside and outside The Times.

While an important player at Vogue, Ms. Singer didn’t produce the kind of outsized reputation of other editors there, including Anna Wintour and Andre Leon Talley.

“We were looking for someone with the imagination and taste to envision the next generation of this extraordinary franchise, and the experience to make it happen,” Mr. Keller said.

nytimes.com

 

[Fiercification]

Now that is really interesting...I'm curious to see how the whole magazine will look under Sally.

 

[tarsha]

Another iPad issue : Love Magazine #4

We also hear that the next venture is to make LOVE Magazine issue 4 iPad ready.

ftape.com

 

[Flashbang]

FROM TIMES SQUARE TO THE TIMES: Bye, Anna, hello, Bill. Sally Singer said as much Tuesday morning when The New York Times confirmed the Vogue fashion news/features director would be the next editor in chief of T: The New York Times Style Magazine, effective July 5. The Times’ announcement put an end to weeks of speculation about who would take over the Sunday style supplement, which has been functioning without a chief since late March when founding editor Stefano Tonchi was tapped by Condé Nast to rehabilitate W magazine. The drawn-out and secretive hiring process made for rampant rumors and misconceptions, even from those being considered for the job, such as T’s own Anne Christensen, who in the final last few weeks is said to have believed she had a lock on the job, and Guy Trebay, who sources said also lobbied heavily for the post. In a strange unfolding of events, Christensen was out of the office when the Times staffers were told the news, according to sources. Equally curious, George Gene Gustines, T’s managing editor, wasn’t there either — he was on vacation.

Insiders say Singer, whose candidacy was first reported by WWD, vacillated for some time between taking the plunge and accepting the T gig and staying at the cushier — and probably higher paying — environs of Vogue, her professional home for over a decade. (Prior to joining the title in 1999, she was fashion director at New York magazine and also spent time at Elle and British Vogue.) Her indecision goes some of the way in explaining away the month-long delay in naming a successor for Tonchi — some sources point to possible impending upper-level management changes at the Times Magazine as a contributing factor.

Asked what spurred her move, Singer told WWD, “It seemed like the right time to have a new challenge — and Bill Keller [the Times’ executive editor] is very persuasive,” but noted it was a “wrenching” decision to make. “I’m a very loyal person and I don’t make moves easily,” she said. (Though she declined to discuss salary, Singer emphasized her “deliberations about this job were not about practical terms. It was entirely emotional. It’s going from one job I love to another place that I love but don’t know as well.”) Singer also spoke of the excitement she felt about following in the footsteps of past Times Magazine style editors including Carrie Donovan and her predecessor Tonchi, who expressed a mutual admiration when reached for comment. “I think she’s one of the smartest people in New York,” he said of Singer. “I could not imagine better hands for my T, or a better brain.” (Interestingly, one source said Singer had been up for the T editor in chief gig when it launched in 2003 before Tonchi was chosen.)

For those wondering how the news hit Vogue editor in chief Anna Wintour, by Tuesday afternoon she’d already filled Singer’s slot by promoting Eve MacSweeney and Mark Holgate to features director and fashion news director, respectively. Via her spokesman, Wintour offered: “I am very happy for Sally and I know that she is going to do amazing things at T. I am also looking forward to continuing to work closely with both Eve and Mark, each of whom brings a great deal of talent to Vogue.”

While Singer — considered to be more of an intellectual than a straight fashion person by her colleagues — was mum on her vision for the multisubject T, she did say, “I wasn’t hired by Bill Keller to bring Vogue to T. I was hired by Bill Keller to do T, so it’s a different project.” She later allowed, “I imagine at some point it will naturally evolve into something that reflects more my taste and concerns than those of my predecessor. But hopefully that will be an organic process and not an imposition.” — Nick Axelrod

MORE CHANGES AT W: While Stefano Tonchi’s first few months at the helm of W have been relatively quiet on the h.r. front (most of the cuts of upper-level editors in the Patrick McCarthy era were decided before he came on board), it looks like the next few weeks will be a bit more gruesome, if Tuesday’s round of job cuts is any indication. In all, six staffers were let go, including the magazine’s longtime deputy editor Julie L. Belcove, who is being succeeded by a Tonchi-approved executive editor, Ted Moncreiff. Moncreiff comes to W from Newsweek, where he was executive editor; prior to joining Newsweek, he spent 15 years at Condé Nast Traveler, the last four as executive editor. Tonchi told WWD that Moncreiff, who begins June 21, will oversee features for the magazine, with an emphasis on assigning stories and editing, which is something, Tonchi said, “I value very much.” He added that Moncreiff comes with “a Rolodex of writers that will be very interesting for the new W.” Sources believe there are more layoffs — and, hopefully, a few hires — to come as Tonchi and Co. start in on the hotly anticipated September issue. — N.A.

IT’S A RAID: Stephen Drucker has raided Condé Nast yet again to reinvigorate Town & Country. Hanya Yanagihara, former deputy editor at Condé Nast Traveler, has joined Town & Country as executive editor. She succeeds John Cantrell, who has worked at the Hearst title for the past 25 years and is leaving the publication. Yanagihara’s appointment marks the second time he’s pillaged the hallways of 4 Times Square for talent; a few weeks ago, he tapped William Norwich from Vogue to become special correspondent covering social and cultural trends and oversee the people and parties coverage. — Amy Wicks

wwd.com

 

[Flashbang]

Changes at Vogue
by Nick Axelrod

Posted Tuesday June 8, 2010
From WWD.COM

It didn't take long for Anna Wintour to fill Sally Singer's shoes once news broke of her defection to T: The New York Times Style Magazine Tuesday morning. Within several hours, Wintour promoted two staffers - Eve MacSweeney and Mark Holgate - to succeed Singer, who had been in charge of both fashion news and features at Vogue. MacSweeney, currently associate editor, will become features director; Holgate, currently senior fashion writer, will be bumped to fashion news director.

Patrick O'Connell Says Goodbye to Vogue
by Marc Karimzadeh

Posted Wednesday June 9, 2010
From WWD.COM

After 12 years, Patrick O' Connell, Vogue's director of communications, is leaving the magazine. He handed in his resignation last week, and is expected to stay on until a successor is named.

"It's been an incredible 12 years at the top of the game, and an experience I wouldn't trade for the world," O'Connell said. "It's just simply time for a personal change."

O'Connell has played an instrumental role as a spokesman for the magazine and its editor in chief, Anna Wintour, from the inception of the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund to the Costume Institute benefit, "The September Issue" documentary and thornier moments such as "The Devil Wears Prada" and "Front Row," the unauthorized biography on Wintour.

O' Connell will be looking to stay in communications in areas that encompass community relations, development work and corporate philanthropy.

wwd.com

 

[tarsha]

Some magazine news from Russia.

Elle : the most popular fashion-magazine in Russia

As a result of recent research company TNS Russia monthly audience of the magazine ELLE in Russia reached 730,940 people, which is the highest among audiences of all fashion magazines in Russia (NRS-Russia, December 2009 - April 2010).

Company executives and independent experts have attributed the rapid growth of the audience ELLE with the successful restart of the journal, its quality upgrading, and extensive advertising campaign, which ID HFS / IMG spends the autumn of last year.

"In just eight months the new team was able to completely transform ELLE magazine, make it a truly progressive and trendy, which proves the stable positive dynamics in readership over the past 3-wave measurements - says publishers of ELLE magazine Natalia Shkuleva. - But we're not going complacency. The changes continue to occur each month. Our fashion revolution has just begun! "

Thus, today ELLE was the leading fashion magazines in Moscow and in Russia. Most readers in Moscow (215,970 people). ELLE also prefer other players fashionable segment.

It is important to note that the growth audience ELLE by 19% much faster than the market average segment at 6%. Editorial changes in ELLE allow not only to successfully keep the interest of loyal readers, but also attract the audience before prefer other publications.

Second place : Vogue
Third place : Marie Claire
Fourth place : L'Officiel
Fifth place : Harper's Bazaar

glossy.ru

 

[sethii]

The Guardian
Is this the perfect magazine cover girl?
Glossy magazine editors agonise over who to put on the front. But they all know what really sells best

Imogen Fox
Wednesday 16 June 2010 20.00 BST

The perfect cover girl – Cheryl Cole. Photograph: David Fisher/Rex Features

Could it be that the vision of Cheryl Cole with tawny hair and wearing a pink and not-too-fashiony dress, in possession of a strong yet friendly gaze and medium- sized breasts, makes the most compelling case for a woman to part with £4? And is Victoria Beckham, walking purposefully in a non-black outfit with visible bag and shoes, reason enough to leave a newsagents £1.95 poorer? The editors of Vogue and Grazia respectively would guess as much.

The question as to what makes the perfect cover girl is one over which glossy magazine editors agonise long and hard. Get it right and circulation figures spike; get it wrong and an editor is left nervously twiddling her leopard-print Louis Vuitton scarf for comfort. To help them decide on their ideal cover, they regularly consult focus groups, circulation figures and surveys.

Choosing a cover girl is far from an exact science: what works one month might not the next. Alexandra Shulman, editor of British Vogue, says: "It's difficult to say what will sell. Kate Moss sells well for us but then we tend to play to our strengths and put her on the September cover – it's better to use your ammunition on a big issue rather than battling against a difficult seasonal situation." But even the wide-eyed rock chick from Croydon isn't entirely reliable. The May 2003 issue where Kate was made up to look like David Bowie's iconic Aladdin Sane cover was, according to Shulman, "a complete catastrophe".

To add to the cover conundrum, glossy magazine editors aren't always appealing to their core readers. The thinking is that since loyal readers will buy Vogue anyway, the floating reader needs a very particular type of cover bait. Although Vogue routinely features the most avant-garde of clothes in its shoots, its cover girl is unlikely to be wearing a padded Balenciaga top, "a real thumbs down" according to Shulman. Dirty colours such as mustard and aubergine don't work; even an innocuous green can be tricky. Simple, pretty colours such as pink work best: metallic clothes sell, but black is a no-no.

When it comes to skin colour, the cover girl ideal is shamefully narrow. "The evidence suggests that black cover girls don't sell as well as white cover girls," admits Shulman, depressingly.

Hair is one of the trickiest ingredients, as anyone who remembers the hoo-ha over Sienna Miller's "unruly" (read limp and British) hair in the US Vogue documentary, The September Issue, will attest to. Redheads just don't sell, black hair is "extremely difficult", extreme blonde is risky, while tawny hair gets the newsagents' tills ringing – for Vogue at least.

But not all editors live by such strict cover-hair diktats. Jo Elvin, editor of Glamour, dismisses the theory that tawny hair sells. "If we have a dark-haired girl on the cover, I don't think, 'Oh, we need a blonde.' Our cover sales are driven by a cover star who has something to say." So who has the most sellable opinions? Cheryl Cole being frank about her failed relationship with Ashley. "She's the new Diana in terms of sales," admits Elvin.

Over at weekly title Grazia it is timing that is crucial. Heather Mills worked as a cover girl during her divorce drama, although editor Jane Bruton is keen to stress that she wouldn't work at any other time. Kate Moss can work one week, Lady Gaga another. The celebrity must be moving because it suits the pacy feel of the magazine, ideally wearing something bright, showing a bit of emotion and a lot of handbag. "If there is a beautiful Hollywood blue sky in the background, I cheer inside," says Bruton.

There is a certain amount of cover- girl consensus, however. A trio of women – Cheryl Cole, Alexa Chung and Kate Moss – consistently top the ideal-cover league. If they are wearing something safe, with their hair at its most tawny, then this triumvirate of perfected girls next door – "hometown girls" as Shulman has it – are circulation gold dust.

What does this say about the magazine-buying public? Are we infinitely conservative or just not given much choice? Is the quest for the perfect cover girl in fact a self-perpetuating concept: Moss is put on the biggest-selling issue because she sells well. Surely it can't be as bald and depressing a fact as we simply like seeing Cheryl Cole wearing a pink dress, can it?

guardian.co.uk

 

[iluvjeisa]

^A depressing read.

Things seems to be changing at American Vogue lately...

 

[Flashbang]

W Shakeups: Team Tonchi continued to take shape at W Thursday when the magazine dismissed market director Treena Lombardo and well-respected accessories and jewelry director Brooke Magnaghi, and hired Karla Martinez away from Interview to fill both spots. “I wanted to centralize the way we are covering the fashion market,” new editor in chief Stefano Tonchi said. He added that Martinez will work closely with fashion director Alex White to present a “unity of vision.”

“I think we should be set,” Tonchi said when asked if there would be further staff turnover. Martinez, whose official title will be fashion market director, continues Tonchi’s trend of stocking the editorial pool with familiar faces from his prior post as editor of T: The New York Times Style Magazine. Before joining Interview last August, Martinez served as market director at T. Tonchi previously lured issue editor Armand Limnander and editor at large Lynn Hirschberg away from the Times.

UP A STEP: Teen Vogue has promoted Sabine Feldmann, associate publisher, advertising, to vice president and publisher of the title. Feldmann joined Condé Nast in April from Shape magazine, where she served as chief brand officer, vice president and publisher.

HEADING BACK HOME: Tina Gaudoin, editor in chief of The Wall Street Journal’s glossy luxury play WSJ., is resigning “for personal reasons,” she said, and will return to London at the end of August. While “personal reasons” is often a euphemism for you-know-what, sources said in this case, the statement is accurate and involves family matters. Gaudoin’s husband has been working in London for the last year while she has remained in New York. “It was just not sustainable,” she told WWD. “It’s been a great privilege to work here and it was a hard decision for me.”

Gaudoin, who moved to New York in January 2008, will oversee the supplement’s September and October issues and will help choose her successor (get those résumés out now). She will remain on WSJ.’s masthead as a contributing editor, working with Wall Street Journal Europe editor in chief Patience Wheatcroft contributing articles to the Journal on European fashion and luxury goods.

Despite recent speculation that News Corp. honcho Rupert Murdoch wasn’t that keen on the title, Journal executives insisted the group remains committed to the supplement, a key product as the paper tries to lure more luxury advertisers (well, those that are still advertising). “WSJ. is a phenomenal success, which is why we have increased both the print run and the frequency of the magazine,” said Robert Thomson, the Journal’s managing editor. “Feedback from readers has been very positive and our plan is to continue to increase the frequency in coming years.”

The frequency of the magazine, launched in September 2008, increased by two issues this year — to six — and there have been 193 advertisers since its launch. Circulation in all the Journal’s editions in the U.S., Europe and Asia has risen to 1.6 million from 800,000.

wwd.com

 

[Flashbang]

The last remaining member of the publishing old guard at Condé Nast is days away from leaving 4 Times Square for good. Vogue’s sometimes abrasive, often brash and perennially aggressive Tom Florio, who most recently served as senior vice president and publishing director, was said to be on thin ice for a while and insiders claim he almost was out of a job late last year. Now it seems the parting is amicable and Florio is headed for La La land. Or something like it — he wants to run his own show, and an announcement in the world of entertainment is said to be forthcoming. “I’m just in a position to do something else,” he told WWD, coyly adding, “It could be in TV; it could be on many platforms. It also could be that I will be working closely with Condé Nast. We’ll see.” Incidentally, not long after the formal resignation announcement, Florio was said to have met with executives at IMG.

In his current role, he oversees Vogue, Teen Vogue, Bon Appetit and Condé Nast Traveler. It wasn’t long ago that he lured Carol Smith from Elle to head up the food group. Since joining, insiders say the two have gotten along but after years as fierce competitors, there was a lot of back and forth, described by one as “like a couple bantering.”

Florio, who will leave the company at the end of June after 25 years, is best known as the driving force behind the glory days at Vogue, when the magazine’s heft required two hands and when the fashion title generated more ad pages than any monthly consumer magazine. He launched Vogue.TV and Vogue’s largest issue ever, published in September 2007, which became the subject of RJ Cutler’s documentary, “The September Issue.” But Vogue was hit like every other fashion title by the Great Recession and suffered the ignominy of losing its top perch in ad pages last year to Elle under Smith. In the first half of 2010, Vogue rebounded slightly — but clearly not enough to put Florio back on top — with ad pages up 8 percent to 987, according to Media Industry Newsletter.

Prior to Vogue, Florio was publisher of GQ. During his 25 years at the company, he’s also been president of The New Yorker and was on the launch team of Condé Nast Traveler. So will Florio be replaced in his current role? Not likely. “I would be shocked if they filled it,” said one observer.

wwd.com

 

[missbluejean]

^

Conde Nast not replacing Tom Florio. The publishers that reported to him will now report to Chuck Townsend

twitter/jimshi809

 

[Flashbang]

It's so insane it just might be true! During men's fashion week in Milan, the Principe is buzzing about Anna Dello Russo...and Stefano Tonchi? Yes, really: rumors are running rampant that Tonchi is trying to woo his longtime friend (and fellow Italian magazine editrix) Dello Russo for the fashion director gig at W. Tonchi has said that he's pretty much done with layoffs, but Chic can't imagine that the legendary Alex White will stay on board when she has so many advertising clients (David Yurman) and editorial opportunites to keep her occupied. And Tonchi's W desperately needs some good press, which the international street-style obsession Dello Russo will bring in spades. Also, Dello Russo essentially hires photographers and stylists for Japanese Vogue...which someone's gotta do at W, right? (Without Dennis Freedman, who had twenty-year-old relationships with A-list photogs like Michael Thompson, Mert & Marcus, and Bruce Weber, there's a real void in that category.) It makes sense! (But it's still crazy.) We report, you decide...

dailyfrontrow

 

[MiaMe]

Just had a thought - it would be soooooo amazing if Vogue released a product that let you browse thier entire back catalogue of magazines on line or in pdf form.

I would pay alot of money for that.

p.s. sorry didn't know where else to post this.

 

[softgrey]

mia- i just made a new thread that your post could go in...
http://forums.thefashionspot.com/f1...ting-fashion-industry-105851.html#post7440003

 

[kimair]

interesting read about lonny magazine, which was started by the same folks who did domino:

For Interior Designers, D.I.Y. Philosophy Extends to Web Magazine

By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER


NEW YORK — Die-hard do-it-yourself interior designers spend hours flipping through glossy magazines, carefully tearing out pages showing a pillow or paint color they like and filing them away for future inspiration. What do they do if their favorite print magazine folds?

Michelle Adams, 27, a former market assistant at Domino, and Patrick Cline, 34, a photographer and photo retoucher, were talking about that in May 2009 after Condé Nast closed Domino, its sprightly home magazine. Over dinner at Chili’s, they mourned the loss of the magazine and other design magazines, like Blueprint and House & Garden, and joked that they should start their own.

“People were missing all the magazines that had folded, and it was really disappointing that no one came along” with replacements, said Ms. Adams, who is also a textile designer.

They created Lonny, an online shelter magazine, which put its first issue up in October and immediately caught the attention of design circles as well as advertisers and print publishers.

Lonny looks and acts like a print magazine, not a Web site or a blog. It has pages to turn, a table of contents and full-page ads. But it offers Web-only benefits like zoomable, clickable images, so readers can inspect a lamp displayed in a photograph of someone’s living room and then click to buy it.

Many readers still like to lounge on the couch and flip through glossy pages with big stylish photos, but as mainstays like Domino and Gourmet disappear, readers are forced to look elsewhere. The Web sites of magazines like Lucky, Bon Appétit and Architectural Digest, however, are either underdeveloped or visually different from their print counterparts.

Lonny’s readership is still small — since October, 600,000 people have read it. But the interest that the low-cost magazine has generated among publishers and advertisers has implications for other image-rich print publications covering fashion, travel and food. This is especially true with the promise of new devices like the iPad that make online reading an experience more like reading in print.

On Monday, Lonny, which is based in New York, will announce that it has raised an undisclosed sum from Kristoffer Mack, an investment banker and investor in young Internet companies, and J. Christopher Burch, a venture capitalist and a founder of the fashion label Tory Burch.

“The shelter design industry is incredibly discombobulated,” Mr. Mack said. “There’s a ton of money and it’s completely unprofitable, so it seemed to be a perfect place to find highly disruptive technologies.”

Lonny is published every other month using Issuu, a Web platform where, for $19 a month, anyone can upload a PDF and instantly create an online magazine that looks like a print one.

“A Web site is continuous and constantly changing, whereas a digital publication has a start and finish, a unique purpose for that one goal,” said Astrid Sandoval, chief commercial officer for Issuu. “We want to recreate the best of the print reading experience, where people might spend three full focused hours on that, and enhance it with the digital world.”

For the first issue, Ms. Adams and Mr. Cline roped designers and magazine editors they had met in the industry into letting them photograph their homes. They spent $1,000 of their own money and borrowed Ms. Adams’s parents’ car to drive to shoots. They bartered for free photo-processing and equipment in exchange for ads.

Exhausted and assuming that Lonny would never amount to more than a hobby alongside their day jobs, they went to Paris to vacation and photograph. They woke up from a jetlagged nap to find their in-boxes full of messages from advertisers who wanted to buy ads in the second issue. They hired an ad sales representative, without meeting him in person, the same day.
Ballard Designs, the home furnishings company, was one of the first advertisers to call. It placed an ad similar to those it placed in print magazines, but offered a 15 percent discount for people who clicked on the ad.

“Typically, we have found that online advertising has not been very effective for us, but the click-throughs and the performance of the ad surprised us in the fact that it did quite well,” said James Pope, director for business development and retail at Ballard. “Lonny shows you can be online and still be a very designer-oriented, well-designed, graphical piece.”
Kate Spade, the handbag and home décor designer; Mitchell Gold, the furniture company; and One Kings Lane, the home décor private sales site, have also advertised in Lonny.

With its low-cost operation, Lonny startles people who have worked in the industry. Ms. Adams styles and edits, and Mr. Cline photographs everything. They hired an assistant who attends shoots, taking her own photos so she can learn the sources for items like sofas or chandeliers and link to them in the magazine.

Lonny added how-to videos and search to its site, so readers can search for all the bedrooms it has featured, for instance, and will let people create online scrapbooks, the digital version of the tear sheet collections hidden in design lovers’ closets.
For one of the issues, they shot the upstate New York country home of Eddie Ross, who now runs a design company and was formerly senior style editor of Martha Stewart Living.

A typical shoot for Martha Stewart required seven people and “meetings about Pantone chip colors and meetings about meetings,” Mr. Ross said. “It was just crazy, because who lives like this, in a $300,000 room I put together? I’m sorry, but I can’t relate to a $40,000 mirrored coffee table.”

Lonny displays people’s own décor, instead of shipping in items to redecorate homes, as many magazines do. In the case of Mr. Ross’s home, that meant including lamps found in a Goodwill store.

The technique infuses the magazine with the accessibility that Domino was known for. “It’s not as stiff,” Mr. Cline said. “We’ll leave lamps on and animals walking through shots.” At daylong shoots for print magazines, he used to get four usable photos. At Lonny, he typically gets 27.

No one in the industry is saying that Lonny-type magazines will save publishing. But it does provide an avenue toward electronic reading devices like the iPad. Publications often mimic what came before, said Adam L. Penenberg, a journalism professor at New York University.

But, he said, “you’ll know a new narrative form has emerged when you have to consume a particular story on an iPad to truly understand its content, and reading it on any other platform simply wouldn’t work.”

nytimes.com

 

[tigerrouge]

The Business of Magazines thread seems to have vanished, so I'll put this here (independent.co.uk

Mad about the boys: Why are the glossies all about men?

You have to wonder why Cosmopolitan felt the need to publish a "sexy" issue this month. Come on – this is a magazine that has built its entire reputation around sex – under it, over it, any way you might possibly want it. It launched in the UK in 1972 on the tsunami of the so-called sexual revolution. It is renowned for emblazoning the word on its covers. Sex is Cosmo's nuts and bolts, its bedrock, its DNA. Did the editor think not enough attention was being paid to nookie?

"It's not a 'sex' issue. It's a 'sex-y' issue," points out Louise Court, who has edited the title for three and a half years. "We thought it was fun. And Cosmo isn't just about sex, even though lots of people think it is." What else is it about? "It's about celebrating life, enjoying yourself, being a good friend and not living in a cocoon," she says.

It is also about men. Much has been made of Cosmo's critical role in sex education back when nice girls wouldn't dream of discussing anal sex over their own dead bodies, never mind tea and biscuits. But decades after Cosmo set out to emancipate bored women, it is still focused on men – and is as full of them as it ever has been: there were its infamous naked centrefold shoots; now there's also a dedicated 'Man Manual' section, to instruct readers in the art of deciphering "what's really on his mind"; and this month 'The Sex and the Single Girl' and 'Sex and the Not So Single Girl' columns have been expanded to a full page each, and readers can learn that men everywhere have the same three things on their minds: Wayne Rooney, barbecues and boobs.

Cosmopolitan is widely considered to be the original women's magazine, and is the second best selling in its market, behind its closest rival (much to Court's chagrin) Glamour, which launched in the UK in 2001 and is edited by Jo Elvin. So isn't it rather dispiriting to the modern woman that it is so retrograde in its agenda? And it's not just Cosmo: in its wake, other glossies have embraced this prototype. The July issue of Glamour boasts cover lines including: 'Men's all new sex wish list', and 'Lily in Love' – as the chosen angle for its lead interview with the multi-award winning, global pop phenomenon that is Lily Allen. Company magazine's cover shouts 'OMG – Britain's sexiest men!' and More! reveals why the prodigiously successful pop star Rihanna "believes in love again".

So has feminism failed? As women still struggle to gain equal pay and equal representation in parliament, while faced with mass-market soft p*rn on the covers of glossy men's magazines, are Cosmo et al really suggesting that women should be so focused on men, on how to get one and then how keep him happy?

While Cosmopolitan, Company, Glamour and More! are high on the man factor, elsewhere women's magazines seem to have moved on: there are fashion magazines like Vogue and Elle, the gossip and fashion combos like Grazia and Stylist, and fitness magazines like Zest. Red and Psychologies very successfully plug into a renewed vigour for self-help-style emotional and mental wellbeing articles. Yet this focus was what changed Cosmo's fortunes in the first place. The magazine's winning formula, really, is that regardless of any revamp it has always stuck to the plan envisaged by its American founding editor, Helen Gurley Brown, in 1965. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

"What is extraordinary about Helen," says Court, "is that more than 40 years ago she came up with this blueprint for a magazine which is not trend-driven. She totally got what women would always want to know about." At its launch in the United States in 1886, Cosmopolitan was a very different beast; it ran award-winning fiction and, later, investigative pieces, and remained hugely popular until the Fifties, when the magazine market turned away from general interest titles and sales slumped. It was not until 1965 that Helen Gurley Brown (widely credited as being the original Carrie Bradshaw) arrived to shake things up. She brought her editorial recipe to the UK in the early Seventies, and in time would launch almost 60 other international editions – over which she still presides at the age of 88.

Before Cosmo, Gurley Brown had written Sex and the Single Girl (hence the Carrie comparison), an advice book that encouraged financial independence and said it was OK to have sex before marriage. She also worked as a secretary in an advertising firm until she had proved herself as one of the best copywriters in the business. This gave her first-hand experience of working in the very worst of men's worlds, and makes her sound rather like Mad Men's Peggy Olsen.

Court thinks we've come a long way since the days of Mad Men. "If you're in your early twenties now compared to in the Sixties or Seventies, although women are still paid less overall than men, they totally think they can get to the top. In the Seventies it was just, "Oh, you'll be a secretary." The challenges of sexism haven't been won, but they've moved on."

Carrie and Peggy can be construed as inspirational in different ways, but ultimately both characters wanted one thing: a man. And there lies the uncomfortable dichotomy. Elsewhere, single women are depicted as desperate (Bridget Jones), predatory (Sex and the City's Samantha Jones), or doomed to singledom (Jennifer Aniston) – but in Cosmo they are celebrated.

Gurley Brown's Sex and the Single Girl sold 2 million copies in three weeks in 1962. By today's standards it might sell even more: there are twice the number of single women in the UK than there were 30 years ago. Accordingly, Cosmo's sales are healthy: the last circulation figures (new ones are due in July) showed it was shifting 430,353 copies – despite a £3.40 cover price that is around 70 per cent higher than its £2 competitors – and the website has 618,000 unique users. In the same market, Glamour sells 515,281 copies a month and Company, Cosmo's other close rival, 240,035. The concept of these magazines may – to many modern women – seem to conflict with feminism. But someone is buying them.

All magazines pride themselves on engagement with readers, but Cosmo particularly so. Before the women's magazine market diversified independent young women might have defined themselves as "Cosmo Girls", and they still write in to the magazine in their thousands; and the chat forums on Cosmo's website are always buzzing. Many women credit Cosmo with giving them their first inkling of what sex was all about.

Court won't be drawn when I ask whether the magazine should have a lower age limit, but says firmly, "Sex is for grown-ups. We're talking to women in their twenties, and the important thing is the message: when we talk about sex we say it's something where you should feel in control and never to do something that doesn't feel right to you. Cosmo has a valid role in sex education, but that isn't our job. We're sending an empowering message to women."

Empowerment does not necessarily mean feminism – which remains a dirty word over at Cosmo, no doubt because it is too often, unfortunately, associated with hackneyed caricatures of the bra-burning feminist. The readers, when polled, said they didn't feel it described them, even though they believe in equality. Could it be that they think the word 'feminism' isn't man-friendly?