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Yankee Magazine Celebrates 75th Anniversary Yankee Magazine celebrates its 75th anniversary with its September/October 2010 issuee. Included in the collector's edition is a special anniversary section featuring "The Ultimate Yankee Quiz" and "75 Things Every New Englander Should Do." Author, educator, and environmentalist Bill McKibben wraps up his four-part series called "How New England Can Change the World" with an article on how small-town banks in Massachusetts' Berkshire Hills are printing their own regional currency. The issue also names name the top 25 foliage towns in New England. Also included in the issue are Yankee's best recipes from the past 75 years and editor-in-chief Judson D. Hale Sr. reminiscing about his first day at Yankee, more than 50 years ago.
"Robb Sagendorph, Yankee Magazine's founder, created something unique in 1935," says editor Mel Allen. "He created a magazine that held the voices of a region within its bound pages. And as New England changed and evolved, so too did the magazine; the voices may be different today, but they still come from the same place. This issue is our roadmap to the fun and pride we feel about belonging to New England. Enjoy the trip!" Posted on August 24, 2010 Permalink | | | Comments (View) |  AOL has launched its 100th Patch site, Morristown Patch. Patch is AOL's hyper-local news service. AOL announced that it plans to expand Patch to more than 500 U.S. neighborhoods in 20 states by the end of 2010. AOL also says it has over 500 journalists still to be hired. Patch claims it will be the largest hirer of full-time journalists in the U.S. this year. Each Patch site has one professional editor working with a group of freelancers.
Warren Webster, President, Patch Media, said. "We believe Patch is a revolutionary and efficient approach to producing relevant, quality local journalism at scale, and we couldn't be more excited about expanding into hundreds of new communities across America this year." Posted on August 20, 2010 Permalink | | | Comments (View) | Time Warner Zaps Bed Bugs  Bed bugs are a growing problem in Manhattan. Several retailers had to shut in order to remove them. Bergdorf Goodman is even patrolling its stores with beagles. Smart Money reports that Time Warner's headquarters were infested, so they called in professionals.
Time Warner said, "As part of a routine cleaning and preventive process, it was discovered that there were bed bugs present in a small contained area within Time Warner's offices. The problem was treated by professionals and is no longer an issue." Posted on August 16, 2010 Permalink | | | Comments (View) |  Gifts & Decorative Accessories and Playthings magazines have merged. The magazines are both published by Sandow Media LLC. Nancy Wolkow, Publisher, Gifts & Decorative Accessories explains the merger in an article published here on giftsanddec.com.
So, starting with the September/October 2010 print issue, Gifts & Decorative Accessories will include a dedicated section within the magazine called Playthings. It will open with its own heavier stock cover and contain all of the regular Playthings content. We will follow the industry with the same insight and expertise that our readers have learned to expect. We will flag the new section on the cover of Gifts & Decorative Accessories, just to make sure every reader understands where to find the toy industry coverage. The new combined publication will boast a circulation of over 26,000.The playthings.com website becomes a secton of giftsanddec.com. The magazines will be combined and published under the Gifts & Decorative Accessories name. Posted on August 13, 2010 Permalink | | | Comments (View) | Montreal Gazette Ends Print Edition of Sunday Paper The Montreal Gazette has announced it is ending the Sunday Gazette. The Sunday version of the paper will go web-only. The Gazette will cease publishing a print version of the paper on Sundays as of Aug. 8. In its 22-year existence, the Sunday Gazette has struggled to find significant advertising support to cover the costs of printing and distribution. Subscription rates and single-copy sales cover only a small percentage of total costs; therefore, The Gazette has decided to focus its resources on the six remaining print editions and on the Web.Newspapers cutting back on Sunday issues has become a major in the industry as the newspaper publishing industry continues its slow migration to become an all-digital industry. Posted on July 27, 2010 Permalink | | | Comments (View) | Forbes to Launch Middle East Publication  Forbes has signed an agreement to launch Forbes Middle East in partnership with Arab Publisher House. The magazine will be based in Dubai, UAE. The launch will be held in Dubai, with the first issue slated to be published in October 2010. Forbes Middle East will have an initial circulation of 25,000, rising to 30,000 within six months. Arab Publisher House also plans to bring ForbesWoman, ForbesLife and other magazines to the Middle East.
Dr. Nasser Al Tayyar, President of Arab Publisher House, said, "I want to thank Forbes Media for the confidence and trust it has placed in Arab Publisher House by choosing us out of 20 publishers who bid for this license. We believe in the Forbes brand, the most trusted business brand in the world, and Arab Publisher House will invest extensively in positioning the brand in the Middle East. We have a very strong multinational, multilingual team with a passion for editorial excellence, and we will uphold Forbes standards and quality." Posted on July 22, 2010 Permalink | | | Comments (View) | Sam Zell Sees a PDF Newspaper Future Reuters reports that Sam Zell, Chairman and Chief Executive of Tribune Company, see PDF replacing the home delivery of newspapers. "Going forward it's going to require all kinds of different approaches, including, probably the most significant, the elimination of home delivery and the replacement of it with PDFs. The iPad is the real example of almost replicating a newspaper on an instrument. I think that is only the beginning of how that is all going to evolve."Newspapers print will be replaced, but PDF does not seem like a good choice. People need to be able to search for what they want from newspapers on the Internet with a browser. Keeping the newspaper format the same and just dumping it out as a PDF file is not going to solve the problem. The content of a newspaper has to be broken apart to be useful with today's technology. Posted on July 14, 2010 Permalink | | | Comments (View) |  Borders Group has entered into an agreement to sell Paperchase Products Limited to Primary Capital Limited, a private equity firm. Paperchase is a retailer of stationery, cards and gifts based in the U.K. Most Borders stores nationwide feature Paperchase gifts and stationery products. Under the agreement, Borders Group will continue to purchase and carry products designed and sourced by Paperchase in its U.S. stores.
The company will receive proceeds of approximately $31 million upon closing, which is expected within the next week. The company is required to use $25 million of the proceeds to reduce the amount outstanding under its $90 million term loan credit facility. "The sale of our Paperchase business is another major step in strengthening our balance sheet - and enables us to place an even greater focus on our financial and strategic initiatives, which are vital to a Borders turnaround and revitalization of the brand," said Mike Edwards, President of Borders Group, Inc. "We look forward to continuing our strong relationship with the Paperchase team to provide our customers with the wide array of fashionable gift and stationery products they've come to expect from Borders." Posted on July 13, 2010 Permalink | | | Comments (View) | Conde Nast Lowers Price of Wired iPad App  PadGadget repots that Conde Nast has already lowered the price for its Wired iPad app. The price for the June and July issues in $3.99.
Another move by Conde Nast was to drop the price of the current issue compared to last month. The July issue is a dollar cheaper, which means you can purchase the issue for $3.99. We don’t know if this will be the official price going forward, or if the price will be reduced even more. Magazine representatives have mentioned the recent price cut is associated with their investigation of different business models.When the Wired iPad app first launched it costs $4.99. It will be interesting to see if Wired sticks with the lower price for the rest of the year. Posted on July 12, 2010 Permalink | | | Comments (View) | Conde Nast to Try Newsstand Specials Conde Nast is going to make the plunge into newsstand specials. Magazines that will participate include The New Yorker, GQ, Glamour, Bon Appetit and Vogue. Crain's New York reports that Conde Nast has been resisting the move to newstand specials because of its belief that they could cheap the brands. Newsstand specials, which do not depend heavily on advertising, are part of the revenue mix at virtually every other magazine publisher, but at Conde Nast they fell into the category of moves that were believed to risk cheapening the brandsCrain's gives one example of the newsstand specials we can expect from Conde Nast: Glamour's "Do's and Don'ts." Posted on July 8, 2010 Permalink | | | Comments (View) | Harlequin Launches Digital Imprint Called Carina Press  Harlequin Enterprises Limited has launched a digital imprint called Carina Press. The books in the imprint will be published first as ebooks and will be sold directly to consumers through the Carina Press website and third-party websites. Carina Press will begin by publishing 37 books in its first month—approximately 10 books a week—across a broad range of fiction with an emphasis on romance and its subgenres, including science fiction, fantasy, erotica, gay/lesbian, mystery, suspense and thriller. Carina Press ebooks vary in price from $2.99 to $6.99 depending on the length of the work, which can range from 20,000 to more than 100,000 words.
"As a digital-first publisher Carina Press is a natural extension to our business; it builds on our digital strength and leadership position. It gives us greater flexibility in the type of editorial we can accept from authors and offer to readers. As such, we expect to discover new authors and unique voices," said Donna Hayes, CEO and Publisher of Harlequin. "As well, we hope to reach a new group of readers with niche editorial." Carina Press is currently accepting submissions in all genres. Carina Press will consider shorter length stories, genre novels from 50,000 to more than 100,000 words and complex narratives of over 100,000 words. Carina Press says it will also acquire books that have been previously released in print form, but for which the author has either retained digital rights or had digital rights revert to them. "More and more readers are migrating to the digital world," said Angela James, Executive Editor of Carina Press. "They're as interested in refreshingly original stories, told by authors with truly distinct perspectives, as they are compelled by the immediacy of digital publishing. With a click they can have the book right in front of them on their computer or portable device. There's no waiting for a book to arrive and it's never out of stock." Posted on June 12, 2010 Permalink | | | Comments (View) | Reader's Digest Cutting 270 Jobs  Mediaweek reports that the Reader’s Digest Association is going to cut 10% of its worldwide workforce.
In an internal announcement, president/CEO Mary Berner said the cuts were aimed at ensuring the company's healthy financial future.Folio says the cuts amount to around 270 employees. The company emerged from bankruptcy earlier this year. Posted on June 10, 2010 Permalink | | | Comments (View) | French newspaper Le Monde Up For Sale  The AFP reports that Le Monde, a leading French newspaper is up for sale. Reuters reports that five companies are bidding on the French newspaper.
Among the candidates are French weekly magazine le Nouvel Observateur and its director Claude Perdriel, who is a board member at le Monde. Spanish media group Prisa, publisher of Spain's daily El Pais, and the Swiss media group Ringier, publisher of daily Le Temps are also said to be interested.Le Monde has been struggling like most newspapers during the recession and the new Internet economy. The New York Times says the newspaper has struggled to make money from its website. Le Monde's website can be found at lemonde.fr. Posted on June 4, 2010 Permalink | | | Comments (View) | CNN Turns 30  CNN turned 30 on June 1st. The network transformed news coverage with its 24-hour news service that launched on June 1st, 1980. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has a good article about CNN's 30th birthday. It may have sagging ratings, but CNN remains a very strong brand.
The revolution Ted Turner launched on June 1, 1980 -- by turning on round-the-clock news for everyone everywhere, then never turning it off again -- keeps trying to make CNN feel older than it is. Sagging ratings, scrappy social-media kids threatening to run rings around it and all.The Wrap lists several events that CNN covered that helped make it the go-to news channel. Among the events that helped to cement CNN's presence in the minds of the American public: the Jan. 28, 1986, Challenger disaster; 1987's around-the-clock coverage of the rescue of "Baby Jessica," a toddler who fell into a well in Midland, Texas; the first Gulf War in 1991, with Peter Arnett reporting live as bombs exploded behind him in Baghdad; and even the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a story that was broken by CNN.Today CNN has its website with breaking news and video at CNN.com. CNN is also active on Twitter, where its @cnnbrk Twitter has almost twice as many followers ad MSNBC owned @breakingnews. Posted on June 2, 2010 Permalink | | | Comments (View) | Haute Living Launches Blogs for Eight New Markets  Haute Living Magazine has added eight new markets to its online division: Hawaii, London, Atlanta, Las Vegas, Chicago, Dallas, Phoenix/Scottsdale, and Dubai. This brings the total number of markets that Haute Living covers to twelve. The first four markets eastablished include Miami, New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco,
Each of these new markets has a dedicated home page that can be accessed via hauteliving.com. The individual city sites feature coverage of the market's luxury lifestyle in a blog that is updated throughout the day. The city sites also include articles from Haute Living's print editions. Posted on May 30, 2010 Permalink | | | Comments (View) | |
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