January 28, 2010
Data Privacy Day 
BIRTHDAYS 
Ernst Lubitsch 1892
Barbi Benton 1950
Jermaine Dye & Magglio Ordóñez 1974

Haiti -- Tragedy and Hope

     Time magazine has released an 80-page bookazine that captures the devastation in Haiti after the earthquake.  A share of the proceeds will benefit Haitian relief efforts.  Stunning photographs and stirring prose give the reader a glimpse into Hell.  In these undertain times this handsome edition is a grim reminder of how good life still is in the United States relative to the less fortunate parts of the world.  The final article, "What Haiti Needs" by Bill Clinton, raises the light of hoped in the shadow of tragedy.  For every copy sold, Time will donate one dollar to Haitian relief efforts.  

NEW MAGAZINES
All titles below are new to the store but those with a * are also newly published.

*01/23/10 Miami Heat Yearbook: Good enough ain't enough.
*01/23/10 Tampa Bay Lightning Yearbook: Together we will.
 01/22/10 Muley Crazy: The leading authority in mule deer hunting.
 01/21/10 Shark Diver Magazine: Livin' the dream!
*01/20/10 Cuisine Tonight Menus: 20&30-minute entrees with sides for every night of the week.
*01/20/10 Dallas Mavericks Official Yearbook: Annual.
*01/20/10 San Antonio Spurs Official Yearbook: Annual.
*01/20/10 Starting From Seed: From the publisher of Fine Gardening.
 01/20/10 CED Magazine: The premier magazine of broadband technology.
 01/20/10 Own: New men's originals. HK. 


    
THINGS WE LEARNED FROM READING MAGAZINES TODAY

     Former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich has a dog named Skittles.
--  February Esquire

     Great Sand Dunes National Park is located in Colorado at an elevation of 8,200 feet. 
--  Winter Smithsonian Great Destinations
 

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UNSUSPECTING SPARROW FLIES INTO WOLVERINE ENCLOSURE AT COLUMBUS ZOO

TRANSYLVANIAN CENSUS-TAKER REFUSES TO COUNT DRACULA! 

AVATAR II TO BE RELEASED IN BLACK & WHITE!

MAN FINDS 7" BUTCHER KNIFE IN HIS CHEST & HAS NO IDEA HOW IT GOT THERE! 

SENIOR GROUP DISAPPOINTED THAT THE TOM CRUISE WHO CAME TO SPEAK TO THEM ISN'T THE ONE WHO INVENTED THE HOVEROUND

January 21, 2010
National Hug Day 
BIRTHDAYS 
Benny Hill 1924
Placido Domingo 1941
Geena Davis 1956

How Will Magazines 'Go Widescreen'?

     Last week I wrote:

     Much like the movies which went widescreen after television became popular the magazines that survive will start to incorporate features that can't be properly produced online... 

     Of course now that television has finally gone widescreen, too, the movies are striving to differentiate themselves from TV by using updated 3D technology.  'Avatar' is not the first example but it's perhaps the best example of how well this strategy is working. As anyone who attended this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas knows, TV is quickly catching up to 3D, too, even before the movies have fully implemented it.  Now that print magazines are getting direct competition from emerging technologies -- online magazines, magazine websites, magazines on kindle and Apple's new tablet -- what will publishers do to 'go widescreen'? 

     This question may be based on a false premise.  Publishers are essentially content providers and may be more interested in continuing to provide content using whatever media seem best able to reach consumers than in continuing to provide jobs for printers, distributors, wholesalers and retailers.  Assuming that some publishers will always be willing to make a buck wherever they can find it, let's explore ways that they can make the most of print.

     Some of the features that magazines have incorporated in the past that work better in print than on video screens are fold-out posters, lenticular covers, and clip & keep recipe cards.  Fold-out posters are of a size larger than both a monitor screen or a home printer page and therefore have an advantage over digital technologies.  Lenticular covers are expensive to produce but cool-looking, very collectible, and provoke impulse-buying.  Also collectible are clip & keep recipe cards.  The two desirable qualities we can extract from these examples are Oversized and Collectible.  Both give print advantages over digital.

     So what other features can print incorporate to enhance their collectibilty?  Magazine publishers have long understood the desirability of celebrity covers.  One of the more popular ways currently used to increase newsstand sales is multiple covers.  One of the best of these promotions that I can recall was when TV Guide had four different covers one week, each depicting a different starship captain from the various Start Trek franchises.  In fact it may well behoove the print industry to do all they can to encourage the collecting of magazines. From publishing price guides and sponsoring magazine collector's trade shows, to including articles on magazine collectors in their current publications to starting new publications and websites dedicated to magazine collecting, the print magazine industry ought to do all that it can to grow this pastime as it may hold one of the keys to the survival of print.

     That brings us to Oversized.  Printing magazines at roughly the same dimensions as the paper used in home pc printers is just playing into digital's hands.  Paper dolls could be done online but would be limited by the tyranny of 8½" x 11".  Print can do better than that.  How about celebrity face masks?  8½" x 11" doesn't quite do it in this category but a slightly larger format could provide the proper dimensions for an excellent celebrity face mask.  Aside from being collectible, how cool would a flash mob of 2,000 people wearing Conan O'Brien's face been last week?  The possibilities are intriguing.  Model kits with cardstock cut-out parts -- some of those parts being over 11" long of course -- could provide a competitive advantage over digital.  As long as we're talking about oversized let's put in a plug for undersized as well.  Formats that reduce at least one dimension could make some print publications even more portable than they are today.

     There are a number of features that have yet to be incorporated into print magazines that can improve their viability, for instance, Chicago molecular gastronomist Homaro Cantu has developed a way to make edible ad pages that taste just like the food that they're advertising.  There must be many more that have yet to even be thought of.

     It's time for magazine publishers to start thinking out of the box if they want to save print because if they decide that they're more interested in new technologies they may find themselves losing out to publishers that are using new ways to make print competitive and more profitable than ever.  

NEW MAGAZINES
All titles below are new to the store but those with a * are also newly published.

 01/17/10 National Geographic Traveler China: All travel all the time.
 01/17/10 TrendsTime: China.
 01/16/10 Kaio: The Christian magazine for teens.
 01/16/10 Modern Wedding Flowers: Australia.
 01/13/10 U.S. Catholic: Published by the Claretians.
*01/12/10 Get Money: The magazine of choice for the corporate hustler™.
*01/12/10 Woman's Day Word Finds: Solve and "live well every day"™.
 01/12/10 Bodas USA La Revista: Bimestrales.
 01/12/10 Fast Th!nking: How innovation works. Australian.
 01/12/10 Australian Bella Beauty Magazine: Quarterly.
 01/12/10 Modern Wedding Planner: Australia. 


    
THINGS WE LEARNED FROM READING MAGAZINES TODAY

     Proximity to fruit can endanger the longevity of cut flowers.
--  February Reader's Digest

     40% of the food in America's supply chain is wasted. 
--  February Harper's
 

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INTERNATIONAL COURT REASSIGNS YAHOO.COM TO AUSSIE FUNNYMAN

Hottest Food Trend: DEEP-FRIED SPACE STICKS! 

MANDRILL PROMOTED TO ALPHA MALE AFTER ACCIDENTALLY SITTING IN DAY-GLO PAINT

'KNIGHT AND DAY' IN THE GRAND TRADITION OF 'LEONARD PART 6' 

DISPIRITED, SLOOPY LETS GO

January 15, 2010
Martin Luther King, Jr. Day (traditional) 
BIRTHDAYS 
Gene Krupa 1909
Andrea Martin 1947
Luis Alvarado 1949

2020 Vision

     What surprises does the next decade hold in store for us?  In the great tradition of Criswell, 
I Predict:
 
     By 2020 the hottest pop star of the decade, Lourdes Leon, will already be yesterdays news...

     MP3s will be made obsolete by a new file type with a faster sampling rate so iTunes can sell everything all over again... 
  
     Nightly newscasts in 3D...  

     Staff with genuine people skills will be so rare and prized by employers that universities will start to offer courses in interpersonal skills... 

     Much like the movies which went widescreen after television became popular the magazines that survive will start to incorporate features that can't be properly produced online... 

     And finally, cell phone use will be banned at McDonalds.

NEW MAGAZINES
All titles below are new to the store but those with a * are also newly published.

*01/12/10 Bike Magazine The Bible of Bike Tests: The most comprehensive gear guide ever created.
*01/09/10 Elephant: The art & visual culture magazine.
 01/09/10 Sobefit: Edited by Marta Montenegro.
 01/09/10 Code: Documenting style. Netherlands.
 01/09/10 Kurv: Fashion. Beauty. Culture. Art. Style.
 01/09/10 Barcelonés: Castellano · English · Catalá.
 01/07/10 Flower Magazine: Enriching your life through flowers.
 01/05/10 Urban Garden Magazine: Hydroponics for growing minds.
    
THINGS WE LEARNED FROM READING MAGAZINES TODAY

     Motivational guru Tony Robbins' grandfather wrote the Huckleberry Hound Show.
-- January/February AARP the Magazine

     Gelotophobia is the fear of being laughed at. 
--  Jan-Feb Utne Reader
 

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O POSSUM! MARSUPIAL INVASION MAKES HOMEOWNER SQUIRRELLY!

Expert: MOST GHOSTS ARE TERRIFIED OF THE LIVING! 

MAN FINDS THOUSAND-YEAR-OLD GOLD COIN WITH HIS OWN FACE ON IT!

'KNIGHT AND DAY' NAMED CLEVEREST MOVIE TITLE EVER! 

Making Lemonade... NEW YORK FURRIER HARVESTING RATS!

January 6, 2010
Little Christmas 
BIRTHDAYS 
Danny Thomas 1912
Vic Tayback 1930
Rowan Atkinson 1955

New Year, New Technologies...

     New technologies are impacting our lives every day.  These days a fully-loaded cell phone contains a still camera, a video camera, an mp3 player, internet access, a book reader, a GPS, a keyboard for texting and, oh yeah, a phone.  The beauty of all these emerging technologies is that consumers now have a wide variety of choices.  Take music for instance.  You can go to a concert, play a CD, listen to the radio, stream off the internet, put your iPod on, throw a cassette on in your car, or sit down at a piano and play.  Some people even listen to LPs.  The point I'm trying to make, I guess, is that new technologies don't always replace old ones, they just give us more choices.  I received an Amazon Kindle as a gift last year and I've already read over 20 books on it but I still go to the library for books.  Last week I even bought a bunch of paperbacks at a book store. The printed book is a technology that is hundreds of years old but we still read them.  Radio's heyday was in the 30s and 40s but we still listen to it at work and in the car.  The golden age of Cinema was in the 20s and 30s but even with television, DVDs and Blu-Ray we still go to the movies.  Many predicted that the advent of the personal computer was going to cut paper consumption drastically but instead it's gone up. No one knows what the future of the magazine industry will be like but ten years ago many people were already predicting that it had five more years and then magazines would be gone.  In double that time they weren't even close to right.

NEW MAGAZINES
All titles below are new to the store but those with a * are also newly published.

*01/02/10 Walk It Off: No-fail weight loss.
 01/01/10 Snow: Life | lift | luxury.
 01/01/10 Signature Magazine: L.A. lifestyle.
*12/30/09 Munaluchi Bridal: For the bride who craves culture and style.
 12/29/09 Art Journaling: 50+ tricks, tips & ideas to rev up your journaling.
 12/29/09 Mousse: Contemporary art magazine. Italy.
 
    
THINGS WE LEARNED FROM READING MAGAZINES TODAY

     The opening scene in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" where Indiana Jones runs from the natives to the pontoon plane after stealing the golden idol in the booby-trapped cave was shot not in South America, where it was set, but on the island of Kauai in Hawai'i.
-- February Hawai'i Magazine

     The average German eats 70 lbs. of sausage each year. 
--  February/March German Life
 

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Study: 5 OUT OF 5 GIRAFFES PREFER SPAGHETTI TO MOSTACCIOLI

YOU MAY NOT BELIEVE IN GHOSTS BUT THEY BELIEVE IN YOU! 

NORTH DAKOTA IS STILL THERE!

ZOMBIE DOG SHORTS OUT AN ELECTRIFIED FENCE! 

RARE QUARTER WORTH 26 CENTS!

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