Why have a recipe magazine when you have a laptop?

The death of gourmet magazine may well have been down to the laptop computer.

That is the conclusion of Susan Currie Sivek writing over at Media Shift.

For foodies, the attraction of thousands of food websites is powerful. Many home cooks now carefully position a laptop in the kitchen, keeping it safe from crumbs and splashes, instead of a magazine recipe. The loss of Gourmet, which was seen as a prestigious title, means that other food magazines may now feel a greater sense of insecurity.

But actually it is a bit more than that.It is time to blame the food bloggers

There's a food blogger for every ethnic specialty, dietary concern or locality. Bloggers offer personal connections, unique voices, and a passion for their subject that print magazines may not provide. Narrow expectations from readers and advertisers can limit print magazine content, while bloggers are more free to explore topics in frequent posts.

New regional lifestyle magazine

News of a magazine launch in the North West via (How do news)

Buzz magazine is

the first regional lifestyle magazine targeted at the woman that wants it all; from an outfit that takes her seamlessly from the office to dinner, to advice on beauty products that do the trick but don't cost the earth.

It will cover the Manchester and Cheshire areas,has an initial print run of 30,000 and will target those in the 25-45 age range.

How Do reports that

Former The Magazine and YQ writer Jenny Boden is in the editorial hot seat for the launch, while Julie Roberts, previously a freelance media sales professional, is the women behind the concept.

Time to invest in the media? Well at least the niche media

for media entrepreneurs there has never been a better time to be taking risks and investing money as today, when the whole media landscape is about to change. In the next two years, "premium" paid-for online content will become the normal business model for media brands. Those leading the way will be niche titles, exactly like Spear's, that provide invaluable specialist information readers cannot get elsewhere.

The words of William Cash who has just bought back the majority holding that he sold two years ago in Spears magazine

In this morning's Independent Cash argues that his magazine will fill a niche market attracting premium subscribers,who are high-net-worth entrepreneurs,

The idea behind Spear's is to turn ourselves into the Michelin guide of wealth management. This is a media sector that has been curiously ignored by the UK for many years but which now, with the credit crunch making many wealthy individuals desperate for independent and objective advice as to how to hang on to their cash, is suddenly booming.

There are so many ready to die-Jeff Jarvis on magazines

We have been led to believe that the magazine sector with its unique selling points may have been more immune to the rampaging changes going on in the newspaper world.

Well think again if Jeff Jarviss has anything to do with it.

Reflecting on the closure of portfolio magazine,he writes that

We’ll see magazines fold and it’s going to be a lot riskier to start new ones to replace them — riskier because, just as on TV and in movies and music, it’s harder to create a blockbuster and consumer magazines depend on the blockbuster economy. Magazines don’t make money until they hit magic numbers of circulation (which comes only after renewals reduce marketing costs) and advertising (which is sold at heavy premiums and that market is bound to suffer both in a recession and against unlimited competition from online).

and he continues

there are so many ready to die. Who needs newsmagazines? Business magazines are suffering the tragic irony of being at the same time more necessary and less supportable because of the financial crisis. Men’s magazines have been folding. Entertainment magazines are dicey. Trade magazines are dropping. And the list goes on and on.

Sports magazine goes under

The demise of another magazine is reported in the FT this morning.

Sports magazine,a free weekly ceased publication after the collapse of Sport Media & Strategie, its French parent.

Sport operated in the men’s lifestyle market and from an advertising perspective competed with FHM, Men’s Health and GQ, which are published by Bauer Media, Natmag and Condé Nast respectively.

A buyer has been sought for the British edition and 24 jobs are currently under threat

Magazine subscriptions-set too low?

An interesting perspective on the price of magazines in the New York Times this morning

Fifty-eight cents

writes Stephanie Clifford

For that, you could get one-eighth of a Starbucks latte.
It is also what subscribers paid, on average, for each issue of Time magazine last year. This is the Time magazine that sends foreign correspondents into Zimbabwe, assigns photographers to capture the war in Afghanistan, and fact-checks and edits every word before issues are printed. And that is before its costs for ink, paper and postage.

It is an defining analogy because it shows just how little we value the instrinic cost of information.

Publishers have long set low subscription prices and have even lost money doing so, assuming that the real money came from ads. Subscription revenue was gravy.

But with advertsing revenues dropping like a stone,magazines need to consider whethedr price elasticity will allow price hikes.

Magzine strategy has been cut prices=increased sunscriptions which means more certain revenue streams.

The question is how much if at all can prices rise without losing subscribers to close the gap made by adverising revenue?

Another magazine graduates to web only

Another example of a magazine graduating to becoming a web only publication comes from the New York Times this morning.

Blender magazine will cease the printed word in April according to its owner the Alpha Media Group

The paper reports that

Blender has been publishing since 2001, featuring music reviews, recurring features like “greatest songs ever,” and articles on Ludacris and Radiohead. It is aimed at young men and its covers have tended to feature female singers, like Fergie and Nicole Scherzinger of the Pussycat Dolls, in come-hither poses.

NME leads the way on twitter followers but a long way to catch up Stephen Fry

Media Uk publishes a list of the top 40 magazine titles based on their twitter followers.

NME leads the way with 4337 followers and tailing in second place 2018 followers.

Looking down the list I was actually surprised at the low numbers of followers across the magazine sector.

Maybe this is an area that the sector needs to be developing a little more?

Arena closure-wrong sector or wrong market

Yesterday's news of the demise of Arena magazine has the commentators saying is this going to be the first of many.

The magazine industry in some ways thinks that it is partially immune to the media downturn.Think of a magazine as a sort of comfort food that will keep people's dreams alive and allow some escape in bad times.

However the sector despite keeping readers will lose that segment of revenue that is critical,advertising.

For Arena it will shut after 22 years after yesterday's announcement by the Bauer group

As Paid Content reports

Arena’s UK circulation for H208 actually increased 16.4 percent year on year to 29,374, according to ABC, but 11,800 of that was “controlled free distribution,” giving it a paid-for circ of just 17,071. And that really is meagre compared to its rivals and even Bauer’s other big men’s titles: FHM sold an average of 272,545 month, while Zoo sells 145,555 a week on average.

Now the bets are on for the next men's magazine to fall.The sector is seen as a declining one after the heyday of Zoo and FHM and is up against changing social perceptions as well as declining revenues.

For a good analysis of the problem at Arena it is worth reading Brian Schofield's piece on media Guardian.He is a contributing editor to Arena and

can easily pinpoint the decision that set in motion the unstoppable slide to doom: the first decision to run an exposed breast.

ie the decision to chase those titles mentioned above.

Food mags reflect changing times

A sign of the times in the world of food magazines.

Gourmet magazine has a feature on what to do with leftovers on its front cover for its March issue.

and as the New York Times reports,

Food & Wine’s March issue includes an essay on buying the cheapest bottle on a wine list. Bon Appétit’s April cover trumpets a “low-cost, big-flavor” pizza party.

The editor of gourmet tells the paper

“People need help learning to cook again, and they need advice on less-expensive ingredients, and we’re trying to give it to them.”

Why have magazines not embraced the web

Interesting piece from CJR who are being given a $230,000 grant from the MacArthur Foundation to investigate why magazines have not made the most of an online presence.

It is a good point and I wonder whether part of the reason is that a unlike a newspaper,mgazines still cherish the relationship between the reader and the turning of pages.

For the magazine industry the whole process of browsing, purchasing and reading is an integral part of the experience.The web may well be seen as an ad hoc process.

Still let's wait for the results.

Ht-journalism.co.uk

A new free magazine for Manchester

The city will get a new free business and lifestyle magazine.

Worklife magazine will launch this week in a bi monthly format and according to How Do News will

will have a circulation of 10,000 print copies across Manchester, bolstered by a further 20,000 digital e-zines, which will be circulated with each new edition.

The rejunenate group is behind the venture and they describe themselves as a

community of ambitious professionals who understand the value of networking and mutually beneficial relationships in the business world.

Standpoint magazine six months on

The Independent reviews thw first sx months of Standpoint magazine.Launched in the summer to a fair amount of hype and published to

defend and celebrate Western civilisation from its apparently multiplying enemies.

it has faced a number of problems both external and internal ones.But its prospects are considered good not least as it is

Funded and published by the Social Affairs Unit (SAU), a think tank, the magazine exists only because of a shipping magnate and metals trader named Alan Bekhor, who helped set up the SAU. In April, the Sunday Times Rich List claimed the 49-year-old is worth at least £120m.

However it sales figures are considered low and it has just 1,000 subscribers.

It will interesting to see how and if it survives and adapts in the next 12 months

Press Gazette Magazine awards

This is the list of the winners of the Press Gazette magazine awards that were held last night.

The highlights,Glossy design and fashion magazine Wallpaper winning three awards including,best-designed circulation magazine of the year and the overall best-designed title of the year.The young designer of the year went to Dominic Bell also at the magazine.

Young Designer of the Year: Dominic Bell, Wallpaper

Best Designed Magazine of the Year - Consumer (Over 40k): Meirion Pritchard, Wallpaper

Best Designed Magazine of the Year: Meirion Pritchard, Wallpaper

Best Designed Features Spread: Grant Bowden, Ritz

Best Use of Typography: Grant Bowden, Ritz

Best New Design/Redesign: Marissa Bourke, Elle

Best Designed Front Cover: Marissa Bourke, Elle

Best Use of Illustration: Tan Parmar, Contact

Best Use of Photography: Dan Delaney, Onelife

Reviewer of the year: Andrew Billen, The London Magazine

Digital Journalist of the Year: Paul Grant, Accountancy Age

Business Reporter of the Year: Stuart MacDonald, Building

Exclusive of the year: Jonathan Green, Live

Feature Writer of the Year: Ariel Leve, The Sunday Times Magazine

Magazine Designer of the Year: Jonathan Gregory, Dirt Magazine

Editor of the Year: David Burton, Camouflage

Best-Designed B2B magazine: Dean Dorat, Contagious

Interviewer of the Year: Lesley White, The Sunday Times Magazine

Best-Designed Customer magazine: Dan Delaney, Onelife

Columnist of the Year: Michael Hodges, Time Out

Production Team of the Year: Esquire

Best Designed Magazine of the Year Consumer (Under 40k): Paul Willoughby & Rob Longworth, Little White Lies

News Reporter of the Year: Sally Gainsbury, Health Service Journal

Is the tide turning on celeb culture?Probably not but at least a start

An interesting piece on the front of the Media Guradin this morning which suggests that the news events of the past few weeks may have been turning our heads away from celebrity.
According to John Harris' article

It seemed as though our obsession with all things celebrity would never ebb - but the rise of more weighty magazines suggests there is a need for understanding in these troubled times

For John those days that

saw the unstoppable slide of cultural standards had only to point to the magazine market for evidence. The freshly launched lads' weeklies were plumbing unimagined depths and attracting thousands of readers, and the sales racked up by Heat and its various clones seemed to confirm the invincible tyranny of celebrity culture. For those who habitually claim the end of civilisation, the story was clear enough: the demise of deep thought, and a populace increasingly uninterested in the machinations of a world that was actually in more ferment than it had been for half a century.

However today the slide in the celeb and trivia magazine sales has been balanced by the rise in sales of the serious magazine

After about four years of consecutive sales hikes, the Spectator was up again, to a creditable circulation of more than 76,000. In keeping with over two decades of steady growth, the Economist's UK edition managed a year-on-year rise of 5.6% and sales of more than 182,000. It now has a global readership of more than 1.3 million. Prospect, the cerebral monthly launched in 1995 and once bought by a mere 5,000 readers, was up by 10.7%, to a once-unthinkable 27,500.

So could the unthinkable be happening."From small shoots?"

What the media commentators are saying.

In the Independent,Stephen Glover questions the BBC's decision to axe What the papers say.For him it is a

clear an indication as you could have that the Corporation is losing sight of its public service remit

and questions why

it has dumped the programme we can only guess. It certainly wasn't because of low ratings. Despite being buried in a dead slot, What the Papers Say usually attracted around a million viewers, about the same as Newsnight, and more than virtually any programme shown on BBC3 or BBC4

Peter Wilby in the Guardian looks at how the media reports on health stories.

newspapers believe health coverage attracts readers

he says adding

At some level, newspaper reports must influence eating, drinking and buying habits, and affect the wellbeing of readers and their families. Yet the press, sceptical about anything politicians say or do, becomes credulous when faced with medicine.

In the same paper Jeff Jarvis takes a look at the social networking site Facebook saying that it

is standing at a critical juncture. If it turns one way, it could reach its grandest ambition - to be the Google of people. If it turns the other way, it risks becoming the next AOL or Yahoo - the next has-been.

Social networking sites are looked at in the Indy as well which asks

Are ads on children's social networking sites harmless child's play or virtual insanity?blockquote> reporting that

with more than 100 youth-focused virtual worlds now either up and running or about to launch – over half of which are aimed at under-sevens, according to one estimate – regulators and parents are struggling to keep up.

Finally staying with the children's market,Alice Wignall asks in the Guardian

The tweenage mag market is growing ever stronger on a diet of princesses, ponies, pals and puzzles. But how long will parents continue to fund the pre-teen boom?

Standpoint launches this week

This morning's Observer reports that a new magazine Standpoint is to launch.

Aimed at the intellectual market it will appear for the first time this week.Its editor is Daniel Johnson and is backed by shipping millionaire Alan Bekhor.Amongst its editorial board are Sir Tom Stoppard ,Frank Field and VS Naipaul -

Its editor gave a recent interview to the New Culture forum in which he said the magazine stands for

starting thinking again about many things: what we stand for, what we are prepared to make sacrifices for, what we are. Standpoint exists to defend and celebrate Western civilisation.

and will cover

the waterfront in politics and culture - everything except the debased celebrity and lifestyle culture that most other magazines are obsessed with.

Seen as a centre right magazine,its immediate competitor will be the Spectator.Johnson hopes that

readers will include anybody with an ounce of intellectual curiosity - and that certainly includes readers of the Spectator. I believe passionately that most people want to go on learning and appreciating new fields all their lives, as lonmg as they are accessible.

Happy Birthday Hello

Yes it's 20 years since the first copy featuring Princess Anne,Bert Reynolds and the Trumps.

John Walsh acknowledges the 20th anniversary of Hello magazine and perhaps hits the nail on the head over its appeal

As stories spread across the tabloids that Amy Winehouse has taken up with young Alex Haines, and that her husband, Blake, has been scheming with an old girlfriend to seize a wedge of Amy's millions and vamoose to the US, all Hello! wishes to report is: "One thing remains clear. Blake Fielder-Civil will fight from behind bars to win back the wife he adores."

The magazine he reminds us has provided

Two decades of celebrity gossip, filth and scandal, without any actual filth or scandal. Two decades of welcoming the reader into the lovely homes of film stars, footballers, TV soap stars, fashion designers, glamour models, Big Brother contestants and girl bands. Twenty years of grovelling indulgence towards people temporarily gilded with stardom or luck or the arrival of a new partner in lurve.

How magazines need to innovate

Press Gazette reports the comments of Mike Soutar, publisher of the mens' freebie magazine Shortlist.

He advocates that the magazine sector needs to increase frequency of publishing in order to innovate.

On top of that he sees magazines entering the ultra local market and becoming more specialised as well as using distribution routes that avoid the supermarkets.

Paul Bradshaw on magazines defence to the web

Paul Bradshaw has posted an interesting piece on the effects of the web on the magazine industry.

Whilst noting that as with other print medium's they have suffered,it seffect has not been so detrimental to the magazine business and has subsequently respondec in diffeent ways

One being

The web allows magazines to cover news online on an ongoing basis - something they were unable to do particularly well in print due to long lead-in times between copy deadlines and printing, and the fact that most magazines were on the shelves for a full four weeks.

He notes that

Magazines have not suffered as much as newspapers - on the whole - because they are not ‘tomorrow’s fish and chip paper’

.

Of cause on ething that the web cannot insulate the sector from is the economy and it is magazines that will suffer as consumer spendiong falls,being seen in some areas as a luxury purchase.