2008 ode to the magazine....

You only need to look as far as last week's post to realize that I am a fan of the magazine, but if you've been here before, you may also have me pegged as one of those 'digital influencer' types. A new article from Michael Bush for AdAge entitled "'Digital Influencers' Get Info from Magazines, TV First," confirms that my normal mode of discovering things of interest through traditional media (magazines, newspapers, TV, radio) is pretty widespread among us passionistas. So with the magazine industry in enough of a spiral descent to provide writer, singer, entertainer and 'cinemasoloist' Bill Dyszel with dozens of newly dead major titles to humorously pine-for in his very creative American Society of Journalists and Authors presentation below, I wanted to share some encouraging words on the future of magazine publishing.


Thanks to Ann Marie Kerwin for the heads-up on this in her 12/16 AdAge Adages item, and for letting us know, though Mr. Dyszel's performance seems to indicate otherwise, happily, Harper's is still kicking.

According to MediaFinder.com, over the past three years, an average of 384 new magazines have launched. Matthew Flamm of Crain's New York Business wrote on this subject today, reporting that the numbers are down for 2008 by 13%, that the trend is toward focused, niche titles, and citing these words from Trish Hagood, president of Oxbridge Communications and owner of MediaFinder: "You still get bigger ad dollars from print than from online. If publishers can find subjects that truly interest people, then they can find the advertising." That's what I wanted to share. For more inspiration, check out Business Week's ongoing series profiling fresh entrepreneurial startups from across the country. And remember, as marketing industry pundit Jack Myers has pointed out, "The Chinese word for crisis is composed of two characters: one for danger and the other for opportunity."