Monday, June 30, 2014

Mag world view: 3 for the newsstand; empty shelves; Latin Parents; Bauer helps mag students; Sub model optimization?

Quote, unquote: It takes a village; pushing Shameless out the door

It seems only fitting that our first issue of our tenth year of publishing would exemplify both the challenges and the love and community that comes from doing something in such a grassroots way. That’s kind of the nature of an indie magazine — one run entirely on volunteer power — it’s a real team effort (a team that includes a huge community of supporters!). While chaotic at times, I can’t help but feel humbled by and grateful for everybody who makes this possible.
-- Shameless magazine's Sheila Sampath writing about the joys of indie publishing and, in particular, the magazine's Fashion issue. 

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Colour comes to the Briarpatch

Briarpatch magazine has published its first-ever full-colour issue in July/August.The Saskatchewan-based leftish politics and culture bimonthly features the Peoples’ Social Forum, queer mothering, gay sex on public transit, Indigenous land struggles (Tsilhqot’in in B.C. and Mi’kmaq in New Brunswick), Canadian radicals and the Spanish Civil War (with children’s illustrations from the war), and a photo essay on a Burmese migrant village built on a dump in Thailand. Plus there's a book review on solidarity journalism from former editor Dave Oswald Mitchell. 

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Source Interlink newsstand wholesaler files for bankruptcy

Source Home Entertainment, operating as Source Interlink Distribution, until quite recently the second-largest magazine wholesaler in the United States market, has filed for bankruptcy, owing $290 million on assets of $205 million. The company had been losing money on trucking magazines to retailers for years (the bankruptcy does not involve the separate, related publishing company Source Interlink Media which publishes special interest pubs such as Motor Trend, Automobile and Hot Rod.)

According to court documents and reporting by the New York Post, the company -- which is owned largely by a hedge fund -- owes Time Warner Retail Sales $54 million, Curtis Circulation Company $49 million, CoMag Marketing Group (national distributor for Conde Nast and Hearst) $33 million. In addition, there are other claims, some disputed, totalling $40 million. 

The company closed a month ago, putting 6,000 employees out of work, after its biggest client, Time Inc., pulled it titles, saying it hadn't been paid. Bauer Publications had pulled its titles only weeks earlier. Time moved most of its titles to Jimmy Pattison's News Group TNG which, with Hudson News, now remain the last two major single copy wholesalers available to magazine publishers.

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U.S. B2B magazines were up 1.2% in Q1 ad spending

U.S. business to business magazines saw a 1.2% increase in measured ad spending in the first quarter of 2014 (Jan - March), according to data compiled by Kantar Media and reported by Folio:. During the same period, magazine media over all fell 1.6%: consumer magazines fell 2%; Spanish language titles were up by 15.8%; local magazines rose 4.4%; and Sunday magazines declined 5.6%.

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Monday, June 23, 2014

Quote, unquote: The vanishing buccaneer

"He was the perfect representation of the buccaneer spirit which appears to have gone out of magazines."
-- from a tribute to Felix Dennis by David Hepworth in the Guardian. Dennis has died at the age of 67. Among other things, he created Maxim and The Week and was famous as one of the three defendants in the groundbreaking OZ obscenity trial in the '60s. [Guardian obituary.]

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Thursday, June 19, 2014

Spacing magazine to open retail "city store"
in October

Spacing magazine, which has been an innovator in many things, has now officially announced that it is going into the retail business this fall, opening Toronto's first "city store" on the ground floor of 401 Richmond Street. The store -- which is hoping to open October 4, the night of Nuit Blanche, will be offering all kinds of items celebrating Toronto and Canadian cities.
"Spacing‘s new home will be at 401 Richmond, the massive arts and culture cluster near Queen Street West and Spadina that is home to over 140 amazing organizations, galleries, and arts/media-focused businesses," the magazine says in a post on its blog. 
"We believe our new home will let us offer our readers something hardly any other Canadian magazine can: a real retail experience. Our new space will be a storefront, created just for us, with direct access right off of Richmond Street West, between Spadina and Peter. And housed within our store will be the office of our magazine staff."
Spacing has been working with a number of local designers to bring new items to the e-store, which it says will eschew touristy kitsch. But it will have the famous Spacing buttons, depicting subway stops and landmarks from cities across the country.
"While the move is rooted in our philosophy about public space, it’s also a business decision. The way magazines have operated for decades is no longer a model that works in the digital age. By opening up a retail store we are diversifying our potential revenue as well as creating greater awareness of our brand (we’ll stop the biz jargon now)."

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Outdoor Canada magazine wins big in outdoors writers' awards

Hunting editor Ken Bailey
Outdoor Canada magazine has won six Outdoor Writers of Canada national communications awards. It won  first and second for magazine feature fishing, 1st and 2nd for magazine feature hunting and 2nd for magazine columns. Outdoor Canada hunting editor Ken Bailey was presented with the prestigious Pete McGillen Award, named for the famed outdoor writer,  to a member of the Outdoor Writers who best reflects the aims and objectives of the organization.  Here are the winners in magazine-related categories:

Magazine column
1st- Gord Ellis, "Moose Hunting: Understanding the Insanity", Ontario Out of Doors
2nd- Gord Pyzer."Team Canada". Outdoor Canada
3rd- Garry Moore. "Maturity and Guns", Northwoods Sporting Journal

Magazine feature fishing

1st- Ken Bailey. "Is the Sutton the World’s Best Brook Trout River?",  Outdoor Canada
2nd Gord Pyzer, "The Secrets the Pros Never Wanted You to Know", Outdoor Canada
3rd Ken Bailey, "Spin City", Alberta Fishing Guide

Magazine feature hunting
1st- Ken Bailey, "King Can",  Outdoor Canada
2nd- Alan Davy, "Never Miss a Turkey Again", Outdoor Canada
3rd- TJ Schwanky, "Grizzly Encounter", Western Sportsmen

Magazine feature other
1st TJ Schwanky, "Grizzly Attack", Alberta Outdoorsmen
2nd- Duane Radford, " Alberta’s War on Wolves", Alberta Outdoorsmen
3rd Don Meredith, "The Demise of Woodland Caribou in Alberta", Alberta Outdoorsmen

Read more »

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Monday, June 16, 2014

Longform journalism site Byliner reeling from loss of CEO and key editors

Byliner, the longform journalism website, is said to be teetering on the brink of closing, something that would be a crushing blow to those who felt the internet could be harnessed to provide quality, paid-for, journalism. According to a story on Publishing Executive, the site, which charges its subscribers $5.99 a month, is seeing the departure of well-regarded executives and editors, culminating this weekend with the announcement from CEO and co-founder John Tayman that he was leaving. A story in the New York Observer said
The trouble first became evident when co-founder Mark Bryant, formerly an editor at Outside magazine, who had helped attract well-known writers from that world, including Jon Krakauer and Bruce Barcott, announced he was leaving last month. Then executive editor Laura Hohnhold — who came to Outside after the Times shut down its sports-oriented magazine supplement Play, and then joined Mr. Bryant — bailed on Byliner five days ago.
A contributor said
“My assumption is that people are bailing because the monetization model isn’t working, they’re burning through their startup cash, and either paychecks have stopped coming or people can see writing on the wall.”

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Magazines Canada wins international gold research award from FIPP

Magazines Canada has won a gold award at the FIPP Research Awards, presented in Hamburg, Germany, for its "Media Connections Study".  The study looked at  how consumers engage in all forms of media and the report and presentation was shared with marketers and advertisers, telling them how to better connect with consumers through multiple media channels, including magazines.

Fellow gold winner were Gruner + Jahr, Germany, IPC Media, U.K., and the Magazine Publishers of Australia. (Synopses of the shortlist for the awards.) In presenting the awards, FIPP president and CEO Chris Llewellyn said 
“Making the case for the effectiveness of advertising with magazine media has never been more demanding. In a world of big data and ever more granular metrics, the challenge to magazine media researchers and national magazine media associations, is to come up with solutions that cut through the complexity and deliver insightful conclusions that demonstrate the unique qualities of our brands and the medium. FIPP’s Research Awards were designed to recognise such outstanding work which we believe will benefit magazine media groups everywhere.”
The Magazines Canada study was done in collaboration with BrandSpark and a copy of the research is available at http://www.magazinescanada.ca/advertising/research/connections-study 

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Sunday, June 15, 2014

HOLO Toronto launch unveils hard copy extension of art, science and tech site

Yet another example of a hard copy spinoff from a web-based site, this time HOLO, a magazine about emerging convergences of art, science and technology. It is a twice-a-year print extension of the British art, design and technology blog CreativeApplications.net, and the first issue weighs in at a hefty 200 pages. The magazine describes itself as "a periodical about ‘people interrogating technology’, and it focuses on the faces, personalities, and anecdotes behind important work." A single copy is $35; a two-issue subscription is $60. It can be picked up at Art Metropole in Toronto and Librairie Formats in Montreal. The Canadian launch (free) is Wednesday, June 25th from 7-9 p.m. at InterAccess, 9 Ossington Ave., Toronto. 

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Thursday, June 12, 2014

Atlantic Business sells everything, including its editorial, in a good cause

Promo cover
Atlantic Business magazine is selling its entire October 2014 issue -- including its editorial -- in aid of the charity Team Broken Earth and its work in Haiti. 
"We normally do six issues a year," says executive editor Dawn Chafe. "This year, in honour of our 25th anniversary, we decided to create a special bonus issue with all of the proceeds going to support Team Broken Earth – a volunteer task force of physicians, nurses and physiotherapists who are delivering and improving healthcare in Haiti." 
"Content will be prepared by our editorial team working in collaboration with our marketing partners. We expect the entire magazine will be a celebration of business successes, innovation and corporate social responsibility," says publisher Hubert Hutton. 
Both editorial content and advertising space is available for purchase; clients will receive a charitable receipt from Team Broken Earth for 50 per cent of the purchase price.
According to the promotional package for the special issue, a cover story package (one only, first-come-first-served) costs $50,000, a four-page feature story $20,000 and a single-page feature story costs $6,000. A full page of advertising is $5,250. Deadline for  booking editorial space is July 31; for advertising it is August 12.

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Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Internet ad revenue in Canada in 2013 outpaces U.S., overtops television

For the first time in Canada, online advertising revenue has surpassed television, according to the latest Global Entertainment Media Outlook 2014-2018 report from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). In 2013, internet advertising grew by about 16% (the lowest seen in post-recession years) and brought in $3.8 billion, topping $3.6 billion from television. The report says the likely trend is for internet advertising to approach double television by 2018, $7.2 billion versus $4.1 billion. Compare this with the U.S. where television is expected to still be ahead through 2018. According to a story in Media in Canada
This may be because Canada’s projected 13.9% average growth rate for internet advertising over the next five years outpaces the global rate of 10.7%, while our country’s rate of 2.4% for television is less than half the global rate of 5.5%.
The report attributes the internet ad growth to Canadians being some of the most active internet users in the world, the continuing strength of paid search advertising and huge increases in video and mobile advertising. Video ad spending grew by 47.7% in 2013, while paid searches contributed $1.5 billion to the total. 
The second biggest area of advertising growth in Canada last year was in the video game industry, growing by 13.4%. By 2018, revenue from video game advertising is predicted to nearly double from $89 million to $164 million.

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Time Warner considering $2.2 billion investment in Vice Media

Time Warner, which just shucked its Time Inc. magazine division, is in talks to make a major investment in Vice Media. One way the deal might go is for Time Warner to roll HLN, a cable news platform it owns, into Vice Media, in return for a half-interest in the company. The deal is said to be worth roughly $2.2 billion or about 50% more than Vice Media was worth just a year ago.

Other investors in Vice Media, which started as a music street paper in Montreal in 1994 and went on to become a worldwide power in youth-oriented video and other digital media, include 21st Century Fox, which owns about 5% and Raine, a New York-based merchant bank. The original Vice magazine now accounts for only 5% of the company's revenues. 

According to a story on Sky News (UK), 
Shane Smith, the company's Canadian co-founder and chief executive, has repeatedly referred to Vice as "the Time Warner of the street" but has denied any intention of surrendering outright control of the group. 
Vice operates some of Youtube's most popular channels and has content partnerships with a broad range of digital media providers, including Facebook and Twitter.Its digital channels now include The Creators' Project, Motherboard and Noisey, a music discovery platform. 
"I want us to be the next MTV, ESPN and CNN rolled into one - and everyone always rolls their eyes," Mr Smith told a newspaper last year.

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[Updated] English version of Ricardo to launch, again, in September

[This post has been updated] Ricardo Media is launching an English language  version of its magazine Ricardo this September 15.  The new edition will publish three times in 2014 and six in 2015. 
"A national magazine was our dream from day one," explains celebrity chef Ricardo, owner and the man behind the brand [whose full name is Ricardo Larrivée]. "We waited for our company and our team to be ready to go nationwide and the time has come."
[Update: Ricardo once before published an English edition, under the auspices of its publishers at the time Les Editions Gesca of Montreal. It was launched in November 2006 and published six times a year. It was suspended in January 2009.]

It won't be a mere translation of the 12-year-old French-language magazine. Marie-José Desmarais, publisher and director of international development, says
Ricardo
"Of course, our recipes work in both languages but we have also teamed up with A-list contributors from across the country to provide quality content that will appeal to Canadians nationwide."
Ricardo has 742,000 readers and has run a bilingual foodie website ricardocuisine.com for more than 1.8 million unique visitors. A line of kitchen utensils and cookware are sold in over 600 stores from coast to coast and in 2014 Larrivée Vins du Monde, a  new label reflecting Ricardo's personality and taste was launched.

A digital "sneak peek" is available. 

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Canadian Family discontinuing print; moves to digital-only

[This post has been updated]St. Joseph Media announced today that Canadian Family magazine will become digital-only. [The result will be the layoff of seven people, including editor-in-chief Brandi Weikel and art director Colleen Nicholson.]Publication of the print magazine will be suspended following distribution of the summer issue. The company said that while readership is actually higher than it was 5 years ago, "print advertising support has continued to erode to ultimately unsustainable levels". 

The magazine will continue to run its Canadian Family Food Awards and Canadian Family Teacher Awards and will maintain its panel of 20,000 readers in its Family Tested Panel, who provide insights into products and services. The company said in a release
Canadianfamily.ca continues to experience tremendous growth in its digital audience, which is being supported by significant growth from advertisers looking to reach moms seeking family friendly recipes, family tested product reviews and helpful tips on everything from health and wellness to family activities for every season.
Until now, the magazine has been available in both print and digital, 8 issues for $12.95. 

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Monday, June 09, 2014

The Tyee's founding editor David Beers to reliquish day-to-day management

The founding editor of the B.C. online publication The Tyee, David Beers, is stepping away from the day-to-day management, becoming executive editor. He will be concentrating on strategic opportunities for expanding The Tyee and developing other independent media. A new. full-time, editor-in-chief who is to be chosen to replace Beers will run The Tyee's editorial side day to day, according to the job posting on the website. Anticipating that his departure might cause talk, the post said
The Tyee is in excellent financial shape, given the ongoing commitment of our investors, record levels of advertising revenue, and very successful fundraising drives (our Builders program). This is a perfect time to add capacity and skills in house. 
All people currently working so ably on The Tyee's editorial side will remain in place. There's no shake-up underway here. Just a quiver of anticipation at what might be accomplished with new talent aboard!
The Tyee was launched more than 10 years ago and has between 800,000 and a million pageviews each month. More than 60 per cent of readers are from BC and 40% from the greater Vancouver area. The publication is funded by two major investors, from advertising and sponsorship and reader contributions.   

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Mag world view: Glamour made over; Ingrams's enemies; ALM Media bought 2nd time; Authors Guild v. Authors Alliance; post-Snowden

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Friday, June 06, 2014

Cottage Life named magazine of the year in National Magazine Awards

Magazine of the Year
Cottage Life was named magazine of the year at the 37th annual National Magazine Awards in Toronto on Friday night. It was an award the magazine won once before, in 1992. It also won gold medals in the categories how-to and service: personal finance & business and silver in the homes and gardens category. [Full awards results]
Best cover
  • Longtime editor of The New Quarterly, Kim Jernigan, was presented with the Foundation Award for Outstanding Achievement.
  • Magazine website of the year went to Macleans.ca
  • Tablet magazine of the year went to Sportsnet
  • Best new magazine writer went to Catherine McIntyre for her article Clusterf*ck in This Magazine
  • Best magazine cover went to Report on Business for its cover on Larry Fink, with cover photography by Anya Chibis
  • Best complete issue was the 10th anniversary issue of The Walrus, its "Water" issue and which featured cover art by photographer Edward Burtynsky, which also won gold in the Words and Pictures category
  • Writer Curtis Gillespie won a record-tying 2 Gold and 2 Silver from 5 nominations, including a sweep of gold and silver in the essays category. He won golds for “In the Chair” and in arts & entertainment, “Rebel Without Applause” (both in Eighteen Bridges, the magazine he helped to found); a silver in essays, also for Rebel Without Applause; and a silver in travel for “Crash Course” (Western Living)
Among the top winning magazines in various written and visual categories were:

Magazine
Gold
Silver
HM
The Walrus
7
6
22
Maclean’s
4
1
13
Maisonneuve
4
1
9
L’actualité
3
2
18
Report on Business
3
2
16
Cottage Life
3
1
9
Eighteen Bridges
3
1
7
Legion Magazine
2
0
1
Western Living
1
3
4
Sportsnet
1
2
7
enRoute
1
1
1
Toronto Life
0
2
16

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Toronto freepaper To.night quietly closes

To.night, the evening freepaper, has published its last in Toronto. According to a post on blogTO, the 5-year-old paper quietly closed after its May 29th issue. Once a weekday daily , at first handed out by eager newsies at various transit locations, and then in scattered news boxes,  it was sold in January 2013 to Annex Business Media and has since devolved into a weekly with an entirely different staff. At one point it had blogTO as a content partner and in 2012 cut a deal for sports coverage with Rogers Media's Sportsnet magazine. But To.night was underwhelming in a fierce competitive market that included the four Toronto dailies plus Metro and 24 Hours

Cathy Watson of Education Today, named PWAC's editor-of-the-year

Catherine Watson, the editor of Education Today, was named editor of the year by the Professional Writers Association of Canada at an industry event Thursday night. Her nomination said, in part
"As editor of Education Today, the magazine of the Ontario Public School Boards' Association, Cathy has consistently demonstrated a high level of respect for freelance writers. Courtesy, honesty and an up-front style have helped her build exceptionally strong relationships with her contributors, which models the ideal in the writer-editor relationship."

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Benjamin News shocks creditors by saying it can't or won't pay its bills

Benjamin News Inc., the wholesaler which closed in March, has advised its creditors to expect only 25 cents on the dollar, at best, on money the company owes to distributors and, through them, to magazine publishers. In a letter to publishers from Coast to Coast Newsstand Services Partnership's (CTC) CEO Glenn Morgan, he said that when Benjamin closed on April 4 (some 1,400 of its 4,000 retail clients were picked up by Metro News), Paul Benjamin said, in writing that all outstanding payables would be fulfilled in whole. 
"We were, however, advised today by Paul Benjamin, that BNI will now be unable to fulfill its financial obligation to CTC and the other NDs [national distributors] primarily due to BNI being unable to collect all monies owed to it by its customers and many of its jobber delivery agents. In fact, BNI has furnished us with copies of the lawsuits it has filed against all of these parties, but time will tell as to whether any of these lawsuits will produce a successful outcome.... 
"This is new information today, and obviously has come as a great shock.I did want to get something out to all CTC publishers so that you are aware of this sitaution and to advise you that we have flatly refused the proposal and are about to enter a negotiation with the goal of maximizing our recover. We do have some unique leverage in this situation and will do everything in our power to use it to our advantange," the letter said.
It's not known how much money BNI owes, but the announcement will be significant blow. It is known that BNI represented upwards of 18% of CTC's business. 

The intended closure was announced in mid-January. The almost-100-year-old Montreal based magazine and book distributor was founded in 1917 by a blind news vendor who sold newspapers on the street in Montreal. At one point the company handled over 4,000 magazine titles, delivering them to 7,500 retailers in Quebec, New Brunswick and Ontario.

There are now essentially only two English-language wholesalers in a market which 20 years ago had more than 30. At the time of the announcement, arrangements were said to have been made for publishers and retailers previously served by Benjamin News to be served by Metro News, Toronto, and TNG (The News Group), Burlington, Ontario, Socadis, Montreal, Metropolitan Distribution Services, Montreal as well as Les Messageries de Presse Internationale.

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Thursday, June 05, 2014

Getting ready for anti-spam legislation's impact on precious mailing lists

Given that many magazines in Canada are only now getting their heads around their obligations under CASL, the anti-spam legislation, the following might be a helpful example. The Ontario Media Development Corporation (OMDC) has recently sent out the following message to people on their email list, which is similar to the e-newsletter lists that many magazines use to promote their businesses. Come July 1, the names on those lists need to be requalified -- making provision for readers to actively "opt in", it no longer being allowed to assume consent. The wording may not be appropriate in every circumstance, but it's a good start:
Be Part of It. Stay Informed
You currently receive emails from OMDC containing news and information about our programs, services and events for Ontario's creative media industries. Canadian anti-spam legislation, which comes into effect on July 1, 2014, requires us to receive your agreement to continue sending you this information (PLEASE NOTE -- Correspondence related to tax credit and program applications is not affected.) Please click the appropriate button below to indicated whether or not you consent to receiving email communications from OMDC about programs, services and events. You may withdraw your consent at any time either by visiting our website or contacting us at consent@omdc.on.ca.
“I CONSENT”
“I DO NOT CONSENT”

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Wednesday, June 04, 2014

Penny Caldwell named editor of the year at annual CSME Editors' Choice Awards

Penny Caldwell
Penny Caldwell, the editor of Cottage Life magazine, was once again chosen as editor of the year by the Canadian Society of Magazine Editors (CSME) at it annual Editors' Choice Awards in Toronto.  She had been similarly chosen in 2006 and 2010. Cottage Life also won for best medium-circulation magazine (50,000 to 150,000) and for display writing.

Spacing magazine won several awards: small circ magazine (under 50,000); best website; tied for best front-of-book; and this year, for the first time the award has been given, art integration.


Other winners were

  • Runner up website -- Canadian Living.com
  • Runner up small-circ magazine -- Canada's History
  • Medium-circ magazine -- Cottage Life (runner up, Outdoor Canada)
  • Large circ magazine  (150,000+) -- Today's Parent (runner up, Canadian Living)
  • Trade magazine -- Precedent (runners up tied: Today's Trucking and Professionally Speaking
  • Tablet -- Best Health (runner up, Reader's Digest Canada)
  • Jim Cormier Award for display writing -- Cottage Life

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Magazine traditional ad revenues will be flat or declining through 2018, says PwC; but digital growth will help hold the line

A story in Ad Age summarizing some of the implications for the magazine industry of the just-released PwC annual Global Entertainment and Media Outlook 2014-2018 suggests that while traditional advertising revenues will be flat or declining, digital growth will help to hold the line.
Consumer magazine revenue will be essentially flat this year at $24.6 billion compared with 2013, according to the annual Global Entertainment and Media Outlook from PricewaterhouseCoopers, which was released on Tuesday. It will remain at approximately $24.6 billion through 2018, PricewaterhouseCoopers predicted.
According to a report in Publishing Executive,  the big takeaway is that as the entertainment and media industry becomes more digitized, advertising growth is outpacing consumer spending. Unsurprisingly, this reveals that consumers are less inclined to pay for digital content. 
Digital consumer magazine revenue is much larger than digital circulation. Digital consumer magazine advertising revenue will rise by an average of 19.2 percent a year from US$3.15 billion in 2013 to US$7.6 billion in 2018; Digital circulation revenue will be just US$1.45 billion in 2018.

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Best Practices Guide is still there,
awaiting adoption and use

A discussion about the relationships between editors, magazine and freelancers took place on Wednesday morning at the MagNet industry conference. The views expressed led me to believe that some of the people were unaware of the Best Practices Guide, a draft, collaborative industry document that talks about the obligations and expectations of editors, writers and publishers. 
So here are excerpts from the post from May 2012 about the creation of the guide which some of us hoped would be adopted as a sort of industry standard.
A collaboration between the Professional Writers Association of Canada, the Canadian Society of Magazine Editors and Magazines Canada led recently to the creation of a Best Practices Guide for the Canadian magazine industry. (A draft has been released and can now be downloaded here.) 
(I have a particular interest because it was my suggestion originally that we try to capture the various obligations and responsibilities that editors, publishers and freelance contributors have to each other and to the magazines for which they work.)

Part of the reason this document was thought to be a good idea was that there were widespread misunderstandings about what best practices were and how we should behave with and to each other, not least because of disagreements about contracts, rights, payments and working conditions.
 
The draft contains background on how the document was developed, so I won't go into that here, except to say that one of the steps was a comprehensive industry survey entitled Respect and Remuneration: attitudes about editorial working conditions in the Canadian magazine industry . 
Participants in the session at the MagNet industry conference called Yes, We Can All Just Get Along (WR2, Wednesday June 6, [2012] 4:00 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.) have already been sent a link to the draft, which may animate the discussion, and copies will be available to conference attendees at the registration desks for review and comment.

Eventually it is hoped that the guide will be adopted by the various industry associations in much the same way that the advertising-editorial guidelines were.
 
It's not intended to be a prescription or a rigid rulebook, but a set of agreed professional standards for most people, most of the time, in most circumstances. 
Comments about the draft can be made on this blog or can be sent to edickson[at]magazinescanada[dot]ca

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Glenn Morgan of Coast to Coast receives lifetime achievement award from CMC

Glenn Morgan, the president and CEO of Coast to Coast Newsstand Services Partnership, received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the annual ACE Awards of the  Canadian Circulation Management Association (CMC) on Wednesday in Toronto. 

Chatelaine magazine from Rogers Publishing was Magazine of the Year as it completes its 85th anniversary year, during which it enjoyed 68% year-over-year growth in digital subs and single copy sales and a 44% increase in sales driven by a campaign involving 8 different newsstand covers. 
The winners in the audience development awards were:
  • Gold: Sportsnet magazine with its SIP for Canadian Tire called "Why We Play" in conjunction with the Olympics and which, in addition to raising $100,000 for Jumpstart and the Canadian Olympic Committee, sold 1,100 6-month subscriptions with special stickers in the issue.
  • Silver: Legion, for its SIP about the Victoria Cross, which sold on newsstands at a premium $14.95 cover price and saw 8,437 sales, with a 41% sell-through and $126,133 in sales.
  • Bronze: Zoomer magazine, for its 2013 fall direct mail tests to build 2-year subs. 45% of those receiving the DM opted for the 2-year offer, representing and 81% improvement andwith gross and net seeing a 50% increase. 
The 2014 Vendor Award went to Shari Hilliard, senior account manager of client services with CDS Global.
The CMC Scholarship, this year worth $5,000, went to Kathryn Eves, the marketing and public relations manager of Zoomer magazine. (The award was previously called the Caren King Scholarship.)

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Alliance for Audited Media merges with digital auditing firm ImServices

The Alliance for Audited Media (AAM), the well-known audience auditing service previously known as the Audit Bureau of Circulations, has joined forces with the ImServices Group, bringing added horsepower to its technology and advertising audits and information services. Among other outcomes of the merger is that it is launching a new viewable ad impression certification service called Certified View
"The two organizations are merging their skills and expertise to create a leading independent service provider that will help clients address some of the key challenges facing today’s interactive advertising industry, including unseen ads, illegitimate clicks, fraudulent traffic and growing advertiser demand for independent verification services," the company said in a release.... 
“Together, AAM and ImServices have a real opportunity to help advertisers, publishers and technology firms solve some of the more complicated issues that surround interactive advertising,” said Tom Drouillard, AAM’S CEO, president and managing director. “Each organization has complementary strengths and strong industry ties that allow us to take on critical issues like online fraud, ad viewability, mobile metrics and cross-media measurement.”

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Tuesday, June 03, 2014

BCBusiness and Retail News win as magazines of the year in the KRW Awards

BCBusiness magazine (Canada Wide) won the magazine of the year in the professional category of the Kenneth R. Wilson awards, presented on Tuesday evening in Toronto. The magazine of the year in the trade category was Retail News, published by the Canadian Gift Association. The magazine was a finalist for the award in 2011. Website of the year was for ACQ Construire. The awards were highlights of the 22 written, visual and special categories.

Among multiple winners were
  • CA magazine, with three gold and two silver awards; 
  • Canadian Grocer, with two golds and two silvers;
  • Up Here Business with three golds and one silver;
  • Professionally Speaking with one gold and one silver;
  • University Affairs with three silver;
  • Marketing magazine with three silver

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