The Business of Magazines

[Marushenka]

Russian media group ACMG is closing Numero Russia and another magazine SNC. As far as I understood from russian articles (sorry, could not find anything in English) Numero russia will be now published as an album version, but the whole team with an editor-in-chief will leave company. Same with SNC team leaving the office as ACMG could not provide good working conditions (magazine will be digital only). ACMG also owns Lofficiel Russia and Forbes and they already had problems with not paying Forbes team salary and blocking editors to access the website to publish.

L’officiel russia is also closing down - there is no money left to support magazine.

 

[caioherrero]

Anyone knows about vogue greek?

 

[8eight]

Lucinda Chambers has done an interview on the business of fashion podcast.
Fwd to 37mins and she is asked about METOO etc... she says that she was once on set where she felt very compromised and she 'wrapped it up' quickly. and has never worked with that photographer ever again. and that photographer hasn't been outed yet.

 

[8eight]

The Kevyn Auction documentary is now on UK iTunes.

 

[Benn98]

GQ Australia Announces Special Issue Of GQ Style

By B&T MAGAZINE

POSTED 15 AUGUST, 2018

News Prestige Network’s editorial director of GQAustralia Edwina McCann has announced that the brand will produce a special issue of GQ Style to be published in September as part of GQAustralia’s 20th anniversary celebrations.

McCann said: “While GQ Australia covers everything from food and drink, to cars, fitness and long-form features, this GQ Style special issue will meet the growing demand in the Australian market for a comprehensive guide to all the latest trends and trendsetters that are shaping the future of men’s fashion. Importantly, it will champion Australian style, and how significant an impact that is now having globally.”

GQ Style will be a stand-alone luxury men’s fashion magazine that complements the existing GQ Australia brand. With a focus on high-end fashion, the issue will offer an international perspective on the world of menswear, with editorial shoots featuring some of the most acclaimed fashion brands of the moment.

GQ Australia editor Mike Christensen said: “Never has the Aussie gent been more invested, interested and knowledgeable about luxury fashion. The market in this country for luxury fashion has grown exponentially over recent years and we’ve seen the evolution of men’s attitude to style, to the point where we are spending more online for clothes than women*. So the timing is perfect for this title.

“In GQ Style, we aim to illustrate the growing influence international luxury fashion is having on Australian trends and vice versa, championing local brands making it on the global scene while delving deeper into how luxury houses have reimagined Australia’s fashion landscape. There really has never been a more exciting time for menswear fashion.”

Source: Bandt.com.au

 

[MissMagAddict]

Interview Magazine Sold Back to Peter Brant
Through Brant's legal maneuvering, Interview is set to relaunch under the same ownership and leadership after filing for liquidation.

by Kali Hays | August 29, 2018


Interview April 2018 | Gregory Harris

It’s official. Peter Brant is once again the sole owner of Interview magazine, which he put into liquidation just over three months ago.

A New York bankruptcy court on Tuesday approved Brant’s $1.5 million offer, made through a holding company he owns, to purchase Interview’s assets out of bankruptcy. But considering he’s buying the assets from himself, he’s essentially getting the magazine back for free.

So why did Brant, a wealthy art collector and former newsprint magnate, even bother going through a bankruptcy liquidation at all? Well, by making that move in late May, he was able to wipe out $3.3 million in debts owed to hundreds of former employees, freelancers and agencies. And that appears to have been the only motive, as within a week of filing bankruptcy, Brant’s daughter Kelly Brant, who had been Interview’s president and responsible for its operations for the last several years, was already set to relaunch the title under most of the same leadership and a new holding company, Crystal Ball Media, according to a memo. The memo also made note of how much publicity the bankruptcy had gotten for Interview, highlighting a spike in new Instagram followers and being on the minds of a “whole new audience of young people.”

Brant basically maintained control of the sale process as well, because he was the sole secured creditor of Interview and held a claim in excess of $8 million. There had been talk of outside interest in the magazine, including from Fabien Baron, who quit as Interview’s editorial director in April after 10 years over being owed about $600,000 for his work, as well as the couple Philip Colbert, a British contemporary artist, and Charlotte Colbert, a photographer and filmmaker. But with Brant’s claim, the purchase price would have hovered around $10 million for an outsider. That seems to have been too steep a price for a title that has little in the way of real assets or intellectual property.

A spokesman for Baron declined to comment and representatives of Interview and the Colberts could not be reached.

The sale to Brant is set to close by Friday, leaving Interview free to release a new issue, which WWD learned has already been produced and features transgender model Hari Neff on the cover, a signal that Brant had no doubt his bankruptcy play would be successful. Mel Ottenberg, best-known as the stylist to Rihanna, has also signed on as creative director, a role formerly held by Karl Templer for a decade until he left earlier this year, also stemming from lack of payment. What’s unclear is which and how many other photographers, writers and editorial staffers are willing to go to work for Interview, knowing its leadership has a spotty history with employee payment.

source | wwd

 

[MissMagAddict]

Purple’s L.A. Times
The French independent biannual magazine dedicated to fashion, art and culture has themed its latest issue around Los Angeles, its new Stateside base.
by Katya Foreman



Trystin Valentino in Ermenegildo Zegna Couture on one of the Purple covers. Vava Ribeiro

If L.A. is having a moment, Purple is basking in the haze with its latest issue dedicated to the city’s vibrant creative landscape. Personalities featured range from Arrow de Wilde, frontwoman of local glam-punk band Starcrawler, to David Hockney and Kenneth Anger. (Purple cofounder Olivier Zahm tried to get an interview with Elon Musk, but it didn’t work out.)

Personalities featured on the issue’s 12 covers include Kyle MacLachlan in Calvin Klein; Chloë Sevigny in Miu Miu; Dree Hemingway in Armani; Caroline Vreeland in Balmain; Karen Elson in Givenchy, and Trystin Valentino posing with a surfboard in Ermenegildo Zegna Couture.



The Chloë Sevigny cover of Purple’s latest issue. Hans Feurer

Zahm over the past few years has been exploring the cultural variety of L.A.’s neighborhoods, led by his girlfriend, art director and artist Amanda Wall, who introduced him to the city’s east side and Downtown L.A.

“It’s a scene that is changing drastically these days, with a good energy. People feel free in L.A., it’s a natural context for Purple,” said Zahm, who recently set up his new Stateside base in the art district in Downtown L.A. (The editor closed his New York office — a loft untouched since the Seventies next to Grace Church on 12th Street and Broadway that Andy Warhol used to store his furniture collection in — around two years ago after the landlord doubled the rent. He now divides his time between Paris, the magazine’s main base, and L.A.)

It’s all cause for celebration, hence a dinner taking place tonight at Wes Avila’s Guerrilla Tacos in the art district, cohosted by Dover Street Market, which is expected to open a store in the neighborhood soon.

Zahm, who also plans to open a gallery and store in the district early next year with an undisclosed partner, sees it as a new chapter for Purple, which marked its 25th anniversary last year. He acknowledged most people will have to take their car to get there. “You have to drive, take the freeway, it’s an effort to go, but I will do my best to give people a reason to go there. And also tourists — the art district is fun, there are great restaurants, it’s beautiful visually, a lot of tech companies are setting up there,” he said.

He has big ambitions for the space, which he hopes “will be sort of a new Colette, in L.A.” The aim, he added, is to “reinvent the culture of shopping” with a new type of retail experience based on variety and novelty, including exclusive products and collaborations between artists and brands. But Zahm also wants to keep things spontaneous, including the idea of creating an open space for designers and brands from Europe looking to do a presentation in L.A.

Zahm, who carved out a career as a respected art critic and curator before launching Purple in 1992 with Elein Fleiss, is not new to retail. He opened a Purple concept store in the mid-Nineties on Canal Saint-Martin in Paris — “maybe the first concept store in Paris, where we did shows, exhibitions, parties, etc.” — and had a store in Tokyo. He was also the first art director of now-shuttered cult concept store Colette.

“This is the next step for Purple: going back into a physical space to counter-attack the dissolution of fashion in the virtual space and social media, which is not a space for creativity and real communities to exist; it’s a space for commerce and narcissism,” he said.

“This is the future of my magazine, too. I think it’s interesting to combine a biannual magazine with a physical magazine where everything featured in the magazine will find a live dimension. People who read Purple can also experience in real life what we do on the pages,” added Zahm. “It will be real content to experience, original product and original ideas — a Purple see-now-buy-now.”

Certain products may be available online, depending on the quantities, according to Zahm, who is also fascinated by the “vision of the future” that L.A. offers, with the scientific research around areas including artificial intelligence, DNA and space programs. “The future of humanity is robots, it’s already here.”

For Zahm, everything he loved about New York is in L.A. now. “The optimism, a certain innocence, an ambition, a feeling of freedom and experimentation. New communities, and also the beginning of an interesting political activism which is not just fighting against the [Donald] Trump administration,” he said. “It’s more about developing communities and being independent.”

source | wwd

 

[honeycombchild]

This was quite interesting.

'This is an unprecedented moment'

I hadn't thought about it as a whole rather than on a magazine-by-magazine basis, but September was finally a really strong month for diversity across the magazine world.

 

[axiomatic]

From the WWD article posted by MissMagAddict

The memo also made note of how much publicity the bankruptcy had gotten for Interview, highlighting a spike in new Instagram followers and being on the minds of a “whole new audience of young people.”

Wow, imagine being so awful

 

[MissMagAddict]

What to Watch: What’s the Role of Today’s Magazines Editors?
The one-time gatekeepers of consumer culture are less powerful as magazines struggle, but different levers of influence are out there.

Kali Hays | August 31, 2018

Not so long ago, fashion and beauty editors at glossy magazines were the arbiters of taste, the gatekeepers between brands and consumers.

Not anymore.

With the rapid rise of influencers and social media platforms, where billions of one-time and would-be magazine readers have flocked in less than a decade, editors and the magazines where they work have seen their influence wane — and the trend continues.

Brands began looking in earnest at alternative advertising methods in the wake of the Great Recession and found that, not only were more people looking at Facebook and Google for recommendations on what to buy, but those platforms could offer them much more detail on who was looking at their ads and if they turned into sales, insights magazines have never been able to give. Then came Instagram in 2010, which Facebook bought for a cool $1 billion within two years of its launch, and which shined up the magazine equation of beautiful people and goods for sale by adding interactive capability.

Advertisers have hardly looked back and in 2017, overall digital ad spend in the U.S. hit a record $88 billion, according to research from the Interactive Advertising Bureau, with $22.2 billion going to social media and $40.6 billion going to search, the two biggest pieces of the total. During its second quarter, Google pulled in $28 billion for its advertising services alone and Facebook tallied about $13 billion, with about half estimated to come through Instagram — double-digit percentage increases for all of the platforms. Meanwhile, print ad spending by the 50 biggest advertisers fell to $6.1 billion, according to data from the MPA-Association for Magazine Media.

As a result, magazines have gone from picking and choosing what’s what in consumer culture to giving advertisers more control than ever over their pages and what is featured in them, not to mention celebrities featured on covers are more often than not pushing the brand(s) they have their own lucrative deals with. The chances of a non-Instagram famous model gracing the cover of American Vogue at all, in a cropped Christian Lacroix jacket and Guess jeans no less — as was the case with Anna Wintour’s first cover 30 years ago — are slim. It seems to be full designer looks or nothing these days, and of course, extreme fame is a requirement.

So, with magazines and their editors appearing to kowtow to advertisers more than ever that can easily go elsewhere and working out covers that are much more about multipronged promotion than presenting what’s new and advancing taste, what is the power and role of a typical editor these days?

It’s apparently not a subject too many current and former editors want to discuss, as more than a dozen contacted for this article declined to comment. Some, after initially expressing interest or agreeing to speak, even backed out.

One still working industry veteran, who requested anonymity, speculated that a lot of editors currently working are simply glad to have jobs and see no reward for rocking the boat. This person added most of her peers are very aware of the trend, particularly within Conde Nast, of full-time fashion and beauty editors being forced to go on contract, meaning no benefits and usually lower pay.

Anja Cronberg, a fellow at London College of Fashion and the founder of online fashion journal Vestoj, said the question of editors’ modern role is “complex,” but admitted their power is “partially eroded because brands can now reach consumers without them.”

“Partial” is the operative word with Cronberg. She sees individual editors, especially those at the top of fashion and lifestyle magazines, almost morphing into something closer to “opinion leaders” within the industry, as opposed to power brokers between brands and consumers.

“If you’re a designer, you need consumers, but you also want approval among those whom you consider equals, and fashion editors often fill that role today,” Cronberg said.

While she admitted that editors do not have the same reach and influence that they used to, Cronberg argued that brands and consumers, whether they know it or not, can still end up being influenced by an editor’s decisions, through something of a trickle down theory of taste.

“I know a lot of fashion critics, editors who feel like, ‘What difference does it make what I write? What role do I have now? Who listens to what I have to say?’…but even if an editor in her 60s doesn’t directly influence a consumer in her 20s, she still influences another fashion editor or photographer or a journalist, and all of those people together are still holding, even if it’s waning, the most power in the industry,” Cronberg said.

Looking forward, Cronberg speculated that the industry, as it grows increasingly fractured with niche brands, magazines and individuals flourishing online without need of the old guard, will follow. “Instead of a few names dictating everything…there will be more names who build more trust with smaller groups of people.”

Brian Phillips, founder of public relations firm Black Frame and creative director of the biannual Garage magazine, seems to agree that there is still a place for editors, but only a relatively few seem to be pushing boundaries as they once did, “not just following the commercial interests of the publication” they work for. And for him, a genuine investment in images that can be remembered for decades is the one aspect of magazines that looks to be outside the grip of social media and something editors should capitalize on.

“That doesn’t happen on social media really — it’s a quick instantaneous medium where you don’t have a lot of premeditation or construction around what am image can be,” Phillips said.

It seems that magazine editors should be moving on from being the arbiters of taste and telling people what they should want to buy, and becoming editors of pop culture at large and heightening its depiction. Phillips suggested that the new wave of editors should also exhibit a “quiet power” that manifests not in covers with influencers and ingenues, but in high-profile rarities and surprises that put relationships a the forefront of their titles.

“Maybe that’s what the new era of power in media looks like — someone that’s incredibly savvy about how they’re going to leverage the relationships they have access to for the benefit of the magazine…as opposed to reiterating something you’ve seen a million times.”

Maybe that’s the way it has to be, too, considering the new wave of magazine editors is unlikely to ever reach the level of cross pollinated influence in fashion, society, celebrity and politics once held by, say, an Anna Wintour, Tina Brown, John B. Fairchild or Graydon Carter. Although Phillips argued that generally, magazines and their editors by proxy still do “exert a lot of force” in consumer and celebrity culture, he couldn’t help but concede that it seems less all the time.

“Maybe the next magazine should be about remembering old magazines,” Phillips joked wryly. “There’s probably an Instagram already dedicated to it.”

source | wwd

 

[tigerrouge]

a genuine investment in images that can be remembered for decades is the one aspect of magazines that looks to be outside the grip of social media and something editors should capitalize on.

I've often thought this myself... except the time has passed when magazines were capable of producing such content, and the people chosen to run magazines these days do not have the grounding in what made print magazines 'good'.

As an aside, I was thinking the other day, if I were to make a Vogue Italia story, it would be someone looking through a magazine... except the magazine they're looking through in the pictures is one created for that editorial... so you have two layers in the editorial, the clothes you see in the magazine, and the clothes you see on the person reading the magazine. I originally imagined a model checking out their work in print, but now it could be a magazine obsessive sitting amid their precious horde. I certainly wouldn't know anything about that.

 

[Fiercification]

^ Totally agree with you. Phillips has such a good point in the above article, but I don't know...everyone seems so passed cultivating something that has lasting power in print. It's just all headless chicken territory at the moment, at least from my POV.

Thanks as ever MMA .

 

[MissMagAddict]

source | attitude september 2018 | mydigitalcopy

 

[reesewu]

Not Magazine-related but I'm sure anyone here has heard that The Village Voice has ceased its publication?

It's so sad to think that New York is no longer the touchstone of cultural criticism it used to be with both its icons (Interview and the aforementioned Village Voice) being shut down.

 

[mepps]

Not Magazine-related but I'm sure anyone here has heard that The Village Voice has ceased its publication?

It's so sad to think that New York is no longer the touchstone of cultural criticism it used to be with both its icons (Interview and the aforementioned Village Voice) being shut down.

The Voice ceased printing 2 years ago. It's been solely digital ever since, and that is what finally ended the other day.
It's sad indeed. I grew up reading the Voice since I was a kid in the 80's. It was the heart and soul of New York It's absence is another death blow to this city.

 

[MissMagAddict]

Elle Italy Becomes Weekly
The former monthly fashion magazine will hit newsstands every week beginning in November.
by Allessandra Turra



MILAN — Elle Italy is becoming a weekly.

Publishing company Hearst Italia said Monday that beginning in November the former monthly fashion magazine, launched in 1987, will hit newsstands every week, as does Elle France.

Maria Elena Viola, editor in chief of Hearst Italia’s Gioia magazine, will cover the same role at Elle, while former Marie Claire editor in chief Antonella Antonelli will become Elle’s creative director.

“Elle becomes a weekly magazine because we strongly believe that quality of the content, a strong international brand and consistent positioning among print, digital and social can attract readers, provide an effective media for advertising customers and grow revenues. Rhythm and contents of a weekly fashion magazine — and its web site — allow more growth potential than a monthly,” said Giacomo Moletto, Hearst Italy and Western Europe chief executive officer. “Moreover, the historical success of the French edition confirms that Elle knows how to combine the DNA of a weekly magazine with the high-end fashion image, also helped by the collaboration with photographers and models who usually favor monthly fashion bibles. In addition, thanks to the global network, our partners will have the opportunity to develop international multimedia communication projects.”

In order to meet the editorial needs of a weekly magazine, the existing Elle staff will be supported by the whole team of Gioia.

There are 45 editions of Elle around the world — all monthlies, except for the French and now Italian books.
source | wwd

 

[tigerrouge]

I like hearing about a print magazine rising up to meet the challenge, instead of running scared and dwindling away to a digital ghost.

And if the Italian market can support a weekly Vanity Fair, why not try the same approach with its Elle?

 

[Rigida]

Selby Drummond is leaving Vogue as well

 

[axiomatic]

Selby Drummond is leaving Vogue as well

Vogue’s Selby Drummond Is Heading to Snapchat

Selby Drummond — a longtime American Vogue editor and its current accessories and special projects director — is leaving the magazine to join Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, where she will head fashion and beauty partnerships in a newly created role.

In recent years, social media platforms have poached fashion insiders to liaise with the industry on their behalf. They cultivate relationships with brands and celebrities, help them create direct relationships with audiences and, hopefully, encourage them to spend more money on advertising.

Instagram’s Eva Chen, head of fashion partnerships for the image and video sharing app, took up this kind of role when she joined the app in 2015 shortly after leaving Condé Nast’s now-defunct Lucky magazine, where she had been editor-in-chief. In June 2018, YouTube hired writer and CNN Style host Derek Blasberg to also lead a newly formed fashion and beauty content partnerships division.

Starting in mid-October, Drummond will report to Snap’s head of talent partnerships Lauren Gallo, who joined the company in March from Apple, where she was the senior brand and marketing strategy lead.

"We are thrilled to welcome Selby Drummond to the Snap family as our first-ever head of fashion and beauty partnerships,” said Snap’s vice president of content, Nick Bell, in a statement. “Selby will lead all strategy and outreach efforts to support fashion designers, creators and influencers in those spaces, and will work closely with Snap's advertising and business solutions teams. She will also lead Snap's engagement efforts around major events in the fashion and beauty worlds.”

In her seven years at Vogue, Drummond became a public-facing ambassador for the magazine, especially through her work overseeing Vogue’s role in the annual CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund and guiding the designer finalists throughout the five-month competition. While at the magazine, she also worked on product collaborations on behalf of Vogue with Off-White, Kith and other brands.

While sources say Drummond will be replaced, a representative for Vogue said her responsibilities will be redistributed among the Vogue market team by fashion director Virginia Smith. Market editors Alexandra Michler, Willow Lindley and Grace Givens will expand their remits and Michler will now oversee the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund.

Drummond’s departure from the publisher follows that of another young leader, Phillip Picardi. The chief content officer of both Teen Vogue and Them announced in August that he is leaving to become editor-in-chief of Out Magazine. Meanwhile, Condé Nast is trying to cut losses and diversify its revenue streams as media consumption moves online and demand from print advertisers continues to decline.


Snapchat has had a challenging year, especially after a February redesign alienated some users. In the second quarter of 2018, Snap's daily active users (188 million) were up 8 percent year over year, but down 2 percent from the first quarter of 2018.

The company has charged forward with new initiatives to generate more advertising revenue and shore up its fiercely, loyal and younger audience in the face of increased competition from Instagram, which released its own version of Snapchat’s core functionality with Instagram Stories in August 2016.

In 2018, Snap has started to share more audience data with its most popular and prominent users and brands, offering native e-commerce functionalities that allow users to make purchases through ads, augmented reality lenses, celebrity accounts and Snapchat shows. Last week, for example, the app partnered with Adidas and fulfilment company Darkstore to pre-release a new style of the Adidas Originals Falcon W sneaker during a new Snapchat show called Fashion 5 Ways. The launch sold out in six hours.

In addition, Snapchat continues to create content for the fashion industry’s biggest moments, such as the Met Gala and fashion month, and has partnered with Virgil Abloh, Jeremy Scott and other designers on custom lens and stickers.

 

[axiomatic]

https://nypost.com/2018/09/04/hearsts-new-president-has-already-fired-2-executives/

Hearst Magazines’ new president, Troy Young, started his shakeup by giving the old heave-ho in recent days to two executives hired by the previous regime, Media Ink has learned.

Jon Gluck, executive director of editorial talent, development and special projects, is out. He only joined in September 2017, recruited by the now former chief content officer, Joanna Coles.

He came from Condé Nast, where he had been the managing editor of Vogue.

At the time, his appointment was seen as a way for Coles to recruit talent but also push into new businesses in areas such as Airbnbmag and TV shows without butting heads with Young. All digital editors reported to Young, who was president of Hearst Magazines Digital Media until his elevation in late July to replace David Carey as the head of magazines.

Also out in recent days is Flavie Lemarchand-Wood, vice president of communications for Hearst Magazines, who also joined the company in September 2017, from Priceline.

The staffers let go appear to have been loyalists to Coles, who announced her exit days after Young was elevated over her.

Print editors are said to be worried, but one knowledgeable insider said the editorial hubs that Coles started in recent years to cut costs on the print side will be the first to go in a restructuring.

Holly Whidden, the head of the talent and entertainment hub and co-executive producer of The Bold Type on Disney’s Freeform channel, is another Coles appointee who is rumored to be on the way out.

The other heads of centralized hubs in fashion, beauty and photos are also vulnerable, insiders say.

Editor-in-chief changes may be further down the road in October or November as Young tries to put his stamp on Hearst, said a source who is close to the company. “The pattern isn’t about individual EICs right now,” said the source. “It’s about the structure Joanna Coles created.”

While print editors are worried, digital editors are expected to advance. The buzz is that Cosmo.com editor Jessica Pels is already destined for a big new appointment in the days ahead.

Kate Lewis, who was editorial director of digital media and like Young once worked at the turbulent Say Media, was elevated on Aug. 8 to Coles’ old position, becoming only the second person in corporate history to hold the title.