Revamped AMPA website makes resource library available to the public

The Alberta Magazine Publishers Association (AMPA) recently unveiled a spiffy, redesigned web and mobile site. 

"We wanted to give our visitors a clearer understanding of what AMPA does, a better picture of the state of the industry and more regular updates on what our members are up to. They set high standards so we rose to meet them" the announcement said.

Among the new features, funded in part by the Albera Media Fund, the Department of Canadian Heritage are

• a Talent Pool, a  database where networking can be done.
• a job board
• a revitalized monthly newsletter, MagaScene
• a resource library available to the public
• a regular blog series

Rogers's mobile and web redesign is paying off in increased readership

Since rolling out redesigned, tile-based layouts for all of its consumer magazines, with Maclean's being the most recent, Rogers Publishing has seen significant growth in digital readership on both websites and mobile, according to a J-source story. 

Ryan Trotman, senior director and digital publisher is quoted as saying that responsive design -- all content curated and edited the same for various platforms and for all titles -- has proven popular with readers, but engagement is highest on the iPad.  On the app version, readers don't visit as often but when they do, they read more pages and are more likely to read cover-to-cover. Website users tend to visit more often, but only read a few articles at a time. 

Since November 2012, pageviews on mobile have gone up 65% and on the redesigned websites about 35%. (Particularly in mobile, it should be noted that these percentages are from a relatively small base.) 

Deadline looms for Canadian Online Publishing Awards

Only 9 days left to enter the Canadian Online Publishing Awards  (July 19).  There are 15 categories in each of three divisions, including cover design, writing, and packaging, in different digital formats including websites, tablet editions, digital replicas and apps. It's for work published between June 1, 2012 and May 31, 2013:

• Red Division: Digital journalism from consumer, custom, religious, and public association publishers.
• Blue Division: Digital journalism from business-to-business, professional association, farm, and scholarly publishers.
• Plus Green Division: Digital journalism from daily and community newspapers, radio and television. Ethnic media entries are welcome.

Winners will be announced and awards presented in November in Toronto. COPA is produced by Masthead magazine. 

Mobile game from Condé Nast lets players indulge runway fantasies

Condé Nast is launching a mobile game called  Fashion Hazard, debuting next month on the iPhone and iPad, with Android devices to follow. It is a product of the Interactive Product Group (IPG), which creates smaller digital products not tied to CN's individual magazine titles.  

Aimed at teens and young women, Fashion Hazard allows players to live out a runway model fantasy,  choosing one of four different model names and identities, then embarking on a career that takes them through New York, Milan, Paris and London. The game will be available for an as-yet-unannounced fee.

"Advancing through your model career means walking hazardous runways while dodging objects thrown by hostile crowds and playing touch-screen wackamole during “photo ops” as the paparazzi attack," says the Ad Age report.

"In each city, your model avatar (three female models and one male are available) faces unique challenges, all aimed at capturing those escapist model fantasies.

“It’s fun and sassy,” said Juliana Stock, senior director marketing and product development at Condé Nast.

Huffington Post to release weekly roundup of best posts in an iPad magazine

The Huffington Post will soon launch a weekly iPad magazine that will summarize the best of its reporting, blogs and video. According to a story posted by The Economic Times, president and editor-in-chief Arianna Huffington told the Digital Media Summit in Toronto that

"It's just going to be in terms of what is considered the best quality stuff we had that week, not necessarily the most popular stuff we had that week."

It is probable that the new digital weekly will carry material selected from all of its various editions, including the Canadian one. 

Toronto Review of Books brings a new voice to the conversation

Caught up belatedly with a new online literary publication called The Toronto Review of Books, which launched in September with little fanfare. It's the work of a team of volunteers led by editor Jessica Duffin Wolfe (who was for several years the reviews editor of Spacing magazine.) It is doing a good deal of interesting work already with a very Toronto sensibility (but not exclusively Toronto).

" The conversation about the value of reading is happening in the street. We’ll be there from Toronto, scattering what confetti we can in this international thoroughfare," Wolfe says in her first editorial.

The inaugural quarterly issue contains  a review of Twitter in Toronto by Shawn Micallef, a review of reviewing by sociologist Phillipa Chong, and poetry by Damian Rogers and Birgitta Jónsdóttir, the Icelandic MP and former leader in Wikileaks whose subpoenaed Twitter account made headlines last winter.

It has an urban outlook that reflects its name and is launching its own speakers series called City WIDEN (Workshops for Interest, Discussion, Exchange and Novelty). It in turn is built upon the already existing WIDEN series started by Wolfe and which already runs at several Toronto universities and colleges: each event gathers three people from different fields to give short talks on a common theme.

For each City WIDEN, the magazine plans to partner with like-minded organizations and institutions to explore new spaces and ideas. 

It also is offering podcasts, hosted by CBC Radio’s David Michael Lamb, to bring listeners recordings of public lectures and panels in Toronto.

Virgin to announce rival iPad paper to Murdoch's The Daily

Richard Branson, an aggressive entrepreneur on several fronts, has announced that his company Virgin will unveil a custom-built iPad magazine in New York next week. According to a story in the Guardian, the new paper will be more entertainment and less current affairs than the impending launch of the similar iPad paper The Daily being hustled to market by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation (in collaboration with Apple). That venture is said to be costing Murdoch $30 million to launch.

"By announcing further details of his iPad magazine in New York, Branson is making an explicit move of his tanks onto Murdoch's lawn," [the story said]

The new, as yet unnamed, magazine is being led by Branson's 29-year-old daughter Holly and is to be edited by Anthony Noguera, former editor of Arena, Zoo and FHM.

Making magazine websites effective and accessible

Here are some of the things that Rhett Soveran, web editor of Westjet’s up! magazine told an Alberta Magazine Publishers Association digital learning seminar recently about how to make a magazines's website effective:

• a user should be able to go three levels into your site and easily return to the homepage 
• Think of your magazine website as more than just an extension of your magazine, but rather as an entirely separate product
• If it’s your own social media that is driving traffic to your site, maybe it’s worth devoting that extra 30 minutes per day to provide new information to your friends and followers.

Nomad Editions says it will combine virtue of great magazines with multi-platform digital delivery

It was inevitable that someone would seek and find a way to sidestep Apple; it seems that a new subscription-based mobile content provider called Nomad Editions may be showing the way that magazines could reach their readers on iPads and smartphones of all kinds. Or as a new business model for digital media it may eclipse many of them. Nomad is scheduled to launch October 15

The publication (which it is)  is putting an emphasis on quality content and fair payment for contributors. It is being launched by a group led by the former president of Newsweek magazine, Mark M. Edminston (at one time chair of the Magazine Publishers of America) and well-known art director and designer Roger Black. .

The idea is as interesting for its business model as its technology. It puts the emphasis squarely where it should be -- delivering good, focussed content at a fair price, rather than relying entirely on advertising (though advertisers can sponsor editions for $25,000 that involves up to 8 ads for three months.) 

How to deliver paid content and sponsorships has been a real connundrum for magazine publishers, who are also finding it difficult to be delivered as Apple-approved apps through iTunes without losing control of their subscribers. Nomad is showing there's more than one way to do things and is potentially a direct  competitor for subscriptions and advertising that bypasses both Apple and the magazine publishers. 

According to a story in Folio: Jock Spivey, Nomad's vice-president of audience development says

"We're not trading in page views," says Spivey. "This will be more like the magazine world where marketers will be able to talk to subscribers. Much of the design difficulties with regular Web sites have to do with page views and ad placement. Articles get busted up into three or four pages because every time you read a new load, a new ad inventory is served up."

Still, "the heart and soul of this business is subscriptions," Spivey says. "We want to sell as many sponsorships as we can, but it's not what the business is built on. Part of what we're doing here is really old fashioned--the idea that readers should pay for what they're consuming and the people creating what they're consuming should be well compensated."

Here's how it will work, or plans to: 

• Subscriptions to four distinct digital offerings are sold in annual or three-month subscriptions.  An annual sub is $24; a three-month is $6.
• Each is a distinct digital weekly publication that is designed to be read in 20 or 30 minutes on a smartphone or tablet. 
• Because it is web-based it lets users access the same content on  multiple platforms (smartphones, tablets or a desktop). 
• Each edition contains original material, written by staffers and freelancers who will be paid on the traffic their stories attract.
• Prospective readers get a 30-day free trial then pay the equivalent of $6 for each of the modules. 
• The modules so far cover food, web surfing, movies and viral video (with more in development) and each will contain two longer features and five shorter ones.

From a press release in  the Nomad Edition online newsletter:

Nomad Editions Editor in Chief John Benditt says, “A typical Nomad Edition will be lean, but will contain everything the reader needs to know each week. We will offer many of the virtues of great magazines—careful quality control and the ability to complete the experience—with those of a digital medium.” 

Adds Executive Editor Sean Elder: “A Nomad Edition combines the look and narrative feel of a print magazine with the portability and multi-platform capabilities of digital devices. We’re all about stories here.”

A story in the New York Times reported

Aside from about a dozen full-time staff members, Nomad Editions will pull its writers and editors from a growing pool of freelancers [says an article in the New York Times]. “There’s lot of talent out here that’s underemployed or not being fairly paid,” said Mr. Edmiston.

Writers will earn up to 30 percent of subscription revenue per edition per week, while editors will make 5 percent of the same revenue with an additional cut of the advertising dollars. Mr. Edmiston estimates that writers can make anywhere from $50,000 to $60,000 a year if their area of expertise attracts an average of 50,000 readers.

The venture uses Treesaver technology, software developed by Roger Black and Filipe Fortes, a former engineer at Microsoft. The software allows Nomad editions to appear on any mobile device, automatically formatted to the size and shape of the screen. Black says

"This is the most exciting launch I've been part of -- in decades. With the share for contributors, the subscription base, and the new Treesaver platform, Nomad is creating a new model. And it's going to win."

Jailed Cannabis Culture publisher blogs and podcasts to pass the time

If the U.S authorities thought that slapping the former publisher and editor-in-chief of Cannabis Culture magazine in jail would shut him up, they hadn't reckoned with Marc Emery. Formally extradited to the USA on Thursday, May 20th, 2010, Emery appeared in Seattle federal court to enter a (negotiated) guilty plea on May 24. He had surrendered on charges relating to selling marijuana seeds by mail. Sentencing will take place on September 10th. Meanwhile, he is keeping boredom at bay by blogging and podcasting (!) from prison.

As but one example, one of his posts says, in part:

My day is the same thing over & over again each day: I read, I write, I eat poor food, I see no sun and feel no fresh air and can't sleep, its like Groundhog Day (the movie) unless I get stuff in the mail, or photos, or articles, or anything that has some substance that changes my day.

Had a physical exam at the doctor. Then I got interviewed by US Immigration for my return to Canada, whenever that happens. I'm going through media withdrawal, so I hope people send me updates about the outside world. It's very isolating and boring here.(The blog helpfully gives supporters an address where such updates can be sent).

Last year Cannabis Culture ceased its print publication, but carries on online. 

House & Home TV show now to be self-produced online rather than on TV

House and Home Media, the publishers of Canadian House & Home magazine, is switching its House & Home Television programming online, leaving a 12-year relationship with conventional television. It has aired on CTV, Global and HGTV, dating back to 1998, when CTV first launched a new daily show hosted by publisher Lynda Reeves. It was said to be the first of its kind in Canada.

"Much has changed since then," said the company in a release. "The conventional and cable networks are, today, overcrowded with decorating and lifestyle programming, largely reality-based.The decision to move H&H TV online was, in part, a reaction to viewers' appreciation for the high-quality, magazine format of the show. This, plus a determination to keep the program on brand with Canada's premier home design magazine, made the decision to self-produce a natural one."

Shows are filmed both inside the House & Home Media offices in Toronto and on location. Original content is updated weekly, and viewers can subscribe to a custom e-newsletter to receive show updates.The tenth season of H&H Online TV is currently in production, with 50 new shows hosted by Lynda Reeves and H&H Editor Suzanne Dimma. 

Lynda Reeves admits her initial reluctance to switch to an online format. "I was concerned about production values and our ability to make a show as good or better than anything on TV in our category. Now, I'm so proud of our online show that I'm guilty of showing it to anyone who will let me. The production value is fabulous," she says.

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.

U.S. newspaper revenues fell 9.4% in 2007, despite web ad gains

It's official, as if anyone needed a scorecard: newspaper revenues have dropped off a cliff or at least fallen down a very steep and slippery hill. Editor & Publisher has reported the Newspaper Association of America data that total print advertising revenue in 2007 plunged 9.4% to $42 billion compared to 2006 -- the most severe percent decline since the association started measuring advertising expenditures in 1950.

The only glimmer of good news was that internet ad revenue was up in 2007 by 18.8% to $3.2 billion compared to 2006. But even that seems to be slowing down: in 2006, online ad revenue had soared 31.4% to $2.6 billion. In 2005, it jumped 31.4% to $2 billion.

The Economist loses domain fight for "The"

The Economist magazine's website can be reached by going to economist.com. But the international magazine, which has a large distribution in Canada, has lost its attempt to claim the name TheEconomist.com at the World Intellectual Property Organization, according to a story on Folio:. That domain name was and is still registered to Jason Rose, owner of Maryland-based TE Internet Services. Its content has not been updated in six years. The Economist tried to buy the name from him last summer for $500 but Rose said no. The magazine's management was alarmed that so much internet traffic was being diverted to the site, to its disadvantage.

Under WIPO rules, rights to a domain name can only be transferred if the complaining party can prove: that the name is identical or “confusingly similar” to a trademark or service for which it has rights, if the owner has no rights or legitimate interests in the name, and that the name was registered and used in bad faith.

In its decision, the WIPO concluded that, although it was “skeptical,” and “has some doubts,” The Economist magazine failed to prove that Rose and TE Internet Services used the domain name in bad faith. “The only way that Mr. Rose’s assertions can be tested is in litigation where a judge would have proper opportunity of assessing the quality of this evidence. A proceeding under the policy is not the proper forum for determining such a belated issue of fact,” WIPO said in the document.

Print mag and website should play to their respective strengths, says Time M.E.

For those of us who have been counselling magazine editors to seek every opportunity to link the print magazine with the companion website, it is intriguing to read that Time magazine, an aggressive web player, is now downplaying the print-online relationship. According to a story in Folio: Richard Stengel, Time's managing editor, told Direct Marketing Association’s 22nd annual Circulation Day event in New York:

While the two products should be complementary halves, Stengel added that they nevertheless offer two very different perspectives on world news—and lately have been downplaying the opportunities of driving the audience from one platform to the other. Focus groups revealed that readers didn’t necessarily appreciate the callouts in the magazine to go to the Web site to see more information on a particular story, he said. “Why are we doing that? It doesn’t make sense,” said Stengel. “They should be two separate audiences. Someday there will be people who don’t know there’s a print product.”

Stengel's keynote related how, in the last year and a half, the magazine has redesigned, reduced its ratebase, come out on a different day of the week and expanded its website into a separate, 24/7 news source.

Broadly, Stengel said the magazine needed to regain its status as a vital read, in a way that vaguely echoed the luxe leanings of other high-end publications. “We have to become a more premium product with beautiful paper and photography,” he said. “Each medium needs to do what it does best. A magazine should be something you’re addicted to.”

Fast Company magazine launches ambitious business/social network

Fast Company magazine is launching an ambitious social networking site for its business readers. Its an initiative that will doubtless be watched closely by tradtional publishers and competitors, who continue to wonder how to integrate web and print publishing. Edward Sussman, president of Mansueto Digital (a division of Mansueto Ventures, which publishes Fast Company and Inc. magazines) wrote:

"Starting today, we become the first major media website to tackle the following problem: Can a business publication blend journalism and online community to create something better than either by itself? We think so. If done right. That's what we've been thinking about and working on at FastCompany.com for more than a year now.

The site will complement the online video news network launched in March covering business and technology under the direction of Robert Scoble, a leading technology blogger. That network already receives about a million page views a month, according to Mansueto Ventures, which owns Fast Company and Inc. magazines.

Fast Company created a readers' network called Company of Friends back in 1997, and that same name is being used for the new social network, which will make extensive use of user-generated content from some 95,000 business professionals organized into 200 chapters around the world, as well as its own original content, carried on FastCompany.com.

Contributing professionals are to be organized into 200 chapters around the world. Members of the network will be able to maintain their own blogs, answer daily "Fast Talk" questions and engage in online discussions. Each member's contributions will also be displayed in a personalized profile, creating individual portfolios of user-generated content.

Sussman says this is not a pure social networking site like Facebook or MySpace, aggregating people who already know each other.

We're an entirely new community of people brought together because we want to share ideas about business. We like business. We think it's important. Work gives more meaning to our lives. We believe business profoundly helps define our culture.

He also dismisses the idea that the site is the end of professional journalism.

We're still the website of one of the most influential business magazines in the world. Journalists like Robert Safian, Ellen McGirt, Chuck Salter, Linda Tischler, Will Bourne, Charles Fishman, and Adam Penenberg will continue to produce thought-provoking, ground breaking stories.

Sister magazineInc. is launching IncBizNet.com, a sort of social network and user-generated company database for privately held companies, according to a story in MediaDaily News

IncBizNet.com will function as a directory with data updated by the companies themselves, with a press release newswire, blogging functions, local community groups and a marketplace for products and services....The network will be pre-populated with all the companies featured in Inc.'s recent list of the 5,000 fastest-growing privately held companies. However, the magazine is inviting all senior managers from all privately held, U.S.-based companies to participate. This includes PR directors, CMOs, and CEOs. Overall, the site hopes for 1 million company-members.

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."

The online view from Up Here

Up Here magazine, published out of Yellowknife, has launched a new website that the magazine's editors hope will make it the portal for all things northern. Jessa Sinclair, the associate editor, calls the new site "snazzy" and we're inclined to agree.

Along with a 20-year archive and other features, including contests and polls, the new site is carrying daily dispatches from staffer Michael Ganley aboard the Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker Louis St. Laurent as it moves through the Northwest Passage:

On an earlier trip today the chopper flew 30 kilometres into Cambridge Bay to pick up supper for tomorrow night, the last night for most of the scientists onboard: 20 arctic char each in the 10-12 pound range, sixty muskox burgers and a box of char fillets.

“It was the strangest shopping trip I’ve ever been on,” says CP photographer Johnny Hayward, who wrangled his way aboard. “Drop into a little mud town by chopper, go directly to the fish plant, load up with $1,600 worth of fish and muskox, and fly directly back to the mother ship.”

No online slackers allowed, says Time editor

Time magazine is turning up the heat under its writers and columnists to contribute to Time.com as well as the print magazine. The website was re-launched 4 months ago and while editor Richard Stengel says the results have been good, they're not good enough. According to an item carried in Gawker, he sent a memo to all staff that said,in effect,the future of their jobs depended upon it.

As good as TIME.com is, it still needs to be better. And it still needs more content, much more. A number of our best journalists are writing stories and covering their beats for TIME.com and the magazine simultaneously, and it gives me pleasure to single some of them out by name: Joe Klein, Jim Poniewozik, Karen Tumulty, Simon Elegant, Richard Corliss, Alex Perry, Bryan Walsh, Sean Gregory, Bobby Ghosh, Massimo Calabresi, Tim McGirk and Bruce Crumley. As you can see, this list includes many of our best traditional magazine journalists, and that's no accident; if you cover a beat or territory with passion and expertise, you can and should cover it any medium.

That list needs to grow. I sent out a memo last week about evaluations. Let me make this explicit: evaluations of every Time writer, correspondent, and reporter will be based on the quality and quantity of the contributions each of you makes to both the magazine and to TIME.com. TIME.com is a daily responsibility; Time magazine is a weekly responsibility. Time is made up of both.

I suspect that some of you regard writing for TIME.com as an obligation, and not what you came to Time to do. But times have changed, and we have to change with them. If you care about what you do - and I know you do - then you need to display your talent, your expertise, and your dedication online as well as in the magazine.

Quote, unquote: Smithsonian editor on print, web and the future of magazines

I think that magazines will survive as print entities, and I think that there will be a kind of Darwinian fallout. I think the fittest will survive. I think other magazines will migrate to the Web, and we’re certainly investing in and looking at the Web. But I do think that the tactile pleasure of carrying a magazine and reading a magazine and turning the pages will continue for as far as the eye can see. Will there be as many print magazines? Probably not. Will magazines stay the way they are? Probably not, in the same way that television vastly changed radio and any new medium changes the one from which it grew.

-- Carey Winfrey, editor Smithsonian, talking about
the future of magazines