It's Tuesday: And The Worker Bees Are At It - Issue #51
Summer is now officially in full swing. The kids are off to summer camp. Vacations are (hopefully) planned and about to happen. Backyard and community pools are full and glistening in the heat. It's cherry season! Carpenter bees are eating the siding. The town I live in has a busy Farmer's Market and last week, the stalls were packed with produce.
If only paper for our magazines were plentiful!
We may find ourselves only halfway through the year, but here in magazine world, we're already in planning mode for the next year. In the past two weeks I've attended numerous meetings to discuss all things 2023: Digital circulation, print circulation, promotions, budgets, newsletters, subscription platforms. Paying me my overdue invoices. You name it.
Summertime and the living is easy? That's a great aspiration.
1___Hyper Local Publisher N2 Rebrands as Stroll and Franchises 592 Different Localities
Local magazine company N2 rebrands to Stroll as revenue tops $131M — www.axios.com "The feedback from our readers is still overwhelming."
Think about that for a moment: 592 unique regional publications. Five Hundred and Ninety-Two.
Let's not poo-poo the content either. No, it may not be some hard hitting investigation into corruption in the alderman's office. Most of these publications are in suburbs and revel in covering local student sports, events at the library, the Memorial Day Parade, graduations. The world needs that type of content and it's important to these communities.
592 regional magazines. Just color me impressed!
2___Cosmo uses the AI DALL-E-2 to Design its "Digital AI" issue cover
The World’s Smartest Artificial Intelligence Just Made Its First Magazine Cover — www.cosmopolitan.com Ever wonder what an artificial intelligence would do if it were in charge? This deep dive into OpenAI's new breakthrough—DALL-E 2—shows how creative AI can be.
Cosmo Let AI Design Its Latest Magazine Cover — www.adweek.com The publication tapped a cutting-edge image generator.
Personally, this is kind of interesting. Cool, in fact. Yet to me it has that 2010 feel of "Tablets are going to save magazine publishing!"
Remember all that hype? Yeah, no. Tablets are still here. Magazines are still here, mostly. Tablets are that thing you use when when you're phone's too small and you don't want to open your laptop.
Honestly, the only thing I really want from AI is for Siri to be a better conversationalists and for Alexa to stop asking me if I knew that she could also...
3___The Advocate and Out Magazine Have New Owners: Pride Media
Pride Media, Home to Out Magazine and The Advocate, Returns to LGBTQ Ownership — www.mediaite.com Pride Media Inc. – which owns some of the most revered brands in LGBTQ media – has new owners and a fresh name, the organization announced on Tuesday. Equal Entertainment Inc., the owner of gossip brand and news program Celebrity Page, earlier this month bought Pride Media, which
Equal Entertainment Acquires Pride Media, Rebrands as Equal Pride – The Hollywood Reporter — www.hollywoodreporter.com Equal Entertainment acquires Pride Media and rebrands as Equal Pride, with the LGBTQ+ media company under queer ownership for the first time.
The acquisitions of these two storied LGBTQ+ magazines includes the re-branding of of the ownership company, Equal Entertainment as Equal Pride. It also solidifies the two magazines as now residing in a company that has majority LGBTQ+ ownership.
Overall, that sounds like a win.
Fun fact: My very first employer was the national magazine distributor for an early version of The Advocate. At the time, the publication was an oversized tabloid. Considering the way things were back then, it was often a very difficult sale and the responses from some of the people I called on left me thunderstruck at the insensitivity and ignorance of people who should have known better.
4___The Atlantic: The Open Secret of Google Search
Is Google Dying? Or Did the Web Grow Up? - The Atlantic — www.theatlantic.com One of the most-used tools on the internet is not what it used to be.
While I don't do a ton of Google searches on my phone, I have noticed a lot more ads and pop ups every time I do a search. I don't focus on the ads because my mind says, "That's an ad, that's not what you're looking for..." But I still see them.
Yes, this isn’t good for publishers. How do you get your articles and sites to rank up higher if all anyone sees at first are a bunch of ads and sponsored links?
5___Fox News Parent Company May Also Be Sued by Dominion Over Election Coverage Defamation
Fox News parent must face defamation lawsuit over election coverage | Reuters — www.reuters.com A Delaware judge said Dominion can sue Fox Corp on a theory it was directly liable for statements on the network.
Does this mean that it will eventually become easier to sue news providers? Should magazine publishers worry?
In this instance, I don't think so. How could both the news organization and the parent company not know what their evening opinion shows were up to?
And For Your Moment of Magazine Zen...
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It's Tuesday. So you're all caught up on that Monday email and ready for whatever fire drill you're going to have to do a deep dive on. Don't forget to drill down!
Have a great week!