Magazine Publishers of America names three senior execs to serve changing needs of members

The Magazine Publishers of America (MPA) has named three executive vice-presidents in what appears to be a major reorganization to reflect the challenges and opportunities facing its members in such things as digital publishing.  Francis R. Costello was named executive vice president and general manager, Andrew Jung was named EVP and CMO, and Christopher Kevorkian was appointed EVP of digital. In a release on its website, the association said

“The additions are intended to more effectively serve the changing needs of its members as well as help them capitalize on advances in technology that have presented new opportunities for magazine media companies.”

Just last year, battered by the recession, MPA laid off 14% of its staff. It's not known how many, if any, layoffs are associated with this consolidation of senior executive positions.

20 tweetable truths about magazines -- the video

As a way of responding to too-ready "print is dead" proclamations, The Magazine Publishers of America (MPA) produced a list of The Twenty Tweetable Truths about Magazines, first as a printed list and now as a snappy video presentation.

MPA cancels annual conference

The Magazine Publishers of America (MPA), reeling from membership defections by some of its key members, is reported by Folio: (via Mediaweek) to be cancelling its annual conference. The American Magazine Conference is usually a big event at a glitzy resort; this year it was to be in Boca Raton, Florida. MPA president Nina Link (herself the focus of some controversy over her large salary) says in a statement:

“The cancellation of this year’s AMC is in response to the difficult economic climate facing all businesses, including the magazine industry,” MPA president Nina Link said in a statement. “We recognize that this year our members are looking at a variety of ways to achieve savings, which would include curtailing certain discretionary travel and hotel expenses. We hope to resume the AMC next year in the city of Chicago.”

The separate MPA-associated U.S. National Magazine Awards are expected to go ahead as planned.

Publishers in U.S. seen weighing benefits of their association

Just when you'd think that magazine publishers would ramp up their cooperation and pull together in the face of hard times, the decision by Hachette Filippachi (publishers of Elle and Car & Driver among others) to pull out of the Magazine Publishers of America (MPA) has caused talk. Tony Silber at Folio: predicted that Hachette would not be the last big publisher to become a dropout.

The reason, according to AdAge, may have been to save the dues money, with Hachette deciding the annual cost wasn't commensurate with the annual benefits, though there may be more to it.

Jeff Bercovici of Portfolio reported that Hachette was saving $1 million a year. He also published a back-of-the-envelope calculation that Time Inc. pays nearly $3.25 million, Condé Nast (which publishes Portfolio) $2.75 million and Hearst $2 million. The MPA responded that dues are based on circulation and ad revenues and that the numbers cited were "highly overstated".
[Bercovici published a correction:
Correction: Since I published the initial version of this item, it has become clear to me that the $1 million figure cited by my source as Hachette's annual MPA dues was substantially exaggerated. The other figures were all extrapolated, via back-of-the-envelope calculation, from my source's figure; thus, they all represent inflated estimates as well.]

There is no indication that similar defections are being seen in Canada at the MPA's counterpart, Magazines Canada. Large publishers tend to see having a national lobbying organization to speak with one voice on postal and funding issues as a vital cost of doing business; smaller members agree, but tend to find that the services such as MagsCan's distribution business, make membership worth the price.

[Disclosure: I sometimes do contract work for Magazines Canada and it is an advertiser on this blog.]

U.S. magazine website traffic up 8.5% in second quarter

Traffic is up 8.5% for the most recent quarter on the 314 consumer magazine websites tracked by the Magazine Publishers of America (MPA). The total was an average 69.7 million unique monthly visitors over 64.2 million during the same period last year, according to the most recent figures from the MPA.

Magazine Web site users accounted for an average of 462.8 million "sessions" per month during the second quarter this year, an increase of 9.9 percent. Visitors spent an average of 2.05 billion minutes per month during the second quarter, up 21.5 percent from the same period last year...Second quarter monthly reach for magazine sites grew 42.2 percent of the total U.S. Internet population, the MPA said, posting a 4.3 percent gain over the same period in 2007.

The results have to be seen with some caution, since other media websites have done equally well or better.

Compare the 317 magazine websites with the results of CBS Corporation, which had web traffic of 48.2 million unique vistors in July, up more than 130% from June. Or The New York Times which had 43.85 million unique visitors in July.

Digital initiatives by magazines increase by a third

Digital initiatives by magazines -- at least in the U.S. -- have increased 33% over the past year, according to a tally maintained by the Magazine Publishers of America (MPA). A full tally by year for the past couple of years is offered on the MPA website.

207 initiatives were announced in 2007, compared with 155 in 2006. The tally has to be viewed in context: the MPA represents consumer magazines and bigger titles mostly. But there is no reason to doubt that the useful compilation represents the growing, unstoppable integration of web and print in magazine publishing generally.

And readers may not be regarded as readers anymore. As Matthew Nelson points out on the blog ClickZ:

Howard Polskin, MPA's senior vice president/communications & events, told me he started a file some year ago to save and monitor digital initiatives which grew into the results he announced today, and that the move for magazines into digital video, blog, podcasts and other content is to be expected in 2008.

"[Magazines] are using whatever platform they can to touch their. . . and I'm not going to use the word 'readers. . . to touch their users 24-7," he said. "The people that used to consume magazine content used to be readers and now there is the subtle shift that it's more important to call them users."

U.S. Publishers Information Bureau cuts back reporting of ad pages and revenue

For 25 years, American magazine publishers have received monthly reports on ad pages and dollars booked in consumer magazines. Now, in what it has spun as an effort to provide "broader context", the Publishers Information Bureau (PIB), a division of the Magazine Publishers of America (MPA) is cutting back to quarterly reporting, effective the first quarter of 2007.

"[The] move is the latest in a pattern of similar moves by other media trade groups over the past several years that appears to be suppressing, not enhancing the flow of information about the advertising performance of their member media companies," says the story in MediaDaily News.

The PIB data has always been subject to criticism because it is based on data reported voluntarily by magazine publishers and the dollar amounts are calculated based on rate cards, which means that no account is taken of ubiquitous discounting. However, it allowed apples-to-apples tracking of trends on a year-to-date basis. There is no equivalent Canadian data, something many Canadian publishers lament. (The only source in Canada is Statistics Canada, which for more than a decade provided a detailed and comprehensive "census" every two to three years of magazine revenues and costs; last year it announced it was discontinuing the process in favour of a random sample which will contain much less detailed information.)

The timing of the PIB's move is interesting [the story said] because it coincides with a relatively flat period for print advertising growth--something some observers might see as a move to squelch potential downward trends,

"I'm disheartened to hear that it might be perceived as a lack of transparency, because that's not what it's about," said Ellen Oppenheim, chief marketing officer of the MPA. "We're hoping to provide more information and a broader perspective than one month can provide."

An especially vexing issue for the MPA's members was that people might draw significant trends from the monthly statistics that were mere anomalies in publishers' or category results.

"One of the things that we've noticed is if you index something off a small base versus a big base things become magnified," she explained. "We were finding that people were looking at month-to-month trends as meaningful, and we felt they needed a larger context. We don't want it to be less transparent. We want it to be a stronger perspective."