U.S. magazine launches in 2008 were booming...maybe not
[Update: But, according to a story in Folio: the numbers cited for magazine launches are all over the map. And Masthead's Marco Ursi makes a comment to this item that indicates that MediaFinder.com counts two Canadian titles.
The MediaDaily News story noted MediaFinder's figures varied from the 600 tracked between October 2007 and September 2008 by Samir Husni, a journalism professor at the University of Mississippi also known as "Mr. Magazine. And Husni says that magazines with a quarterly frequency or greater represented 191 launches, down from 233 in 2007. (Husni only counts magazine for which he has a hard copy.
And the Magazine Publishers of America said there were 191 starts, down from 271 in 2007. ]
One of the biggest new launches in this category was Spry, a newspaper-distributed magazine from the Publishing Group of America, which debuted with a circulation of 9 million in September. HealthyStyle, a competing newspaper-distributed title from Hearst, launched around the same time. Other big health category launches were Autism Research, Therapy Times and Living Well.
Regional magazines launched this year included Michigan Avenue, Orange Appeal and Mountain Time Magazine. This category, like others, has had its setbacks, including the closing in June of BusinessWeek's experimental Chicago edition, and the shuttering of Atlanta Peach, a luxe title for well-heeled citizens of Atlanta, earlier this month.
Finally, the food category has seen some high-profile launches, including the Food Network Magazine, published by Hearst in conjunction with the popular cable network. It is the latest in a series of magazines developed by Hearst around popular TV brands, including ESPN The Magazine, O, The Oprah Magazine, and the less successful Lifetime, which closed in September 2004.
posted by D. B. Scott at
11:03 am
1 Comments:
I have to question the methodology of MediaFinder.com.
First, their number—as the story points out—is well below Samir Husni's, who, along with the MPA, is usually considered the authority on U.S. launches.
Second, they claim to track Canadian and U.S. launches and to have "the largest online database of U.S. and Canadian publications." When I asked how many Canadian titles they had noted for 2008, they said two.
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