Timing is Everything
Paging Captain Kirk!
Yes, you’re right! It is not Tuesday. Every now and then here at this bog standard newsletter I will miss the publish deadline. If you were looking for this yesterday, please accept my apologies. And, if the appearance of this newsletter in your in-box today surprised you, well, I can apologize for that too.
But I do hope that as we get into serious wind-down mode for this year, that the week is proving itself productive and that you’ll be able to do some serious winding down next week and enjoy the slow season around the Christmas and New Years holidays.
In the meantime, check this out:
So timing is, in fact, everything. Fortunately, the switch to Substack from Revue was incredibly easy to do. They made it possible for me to move all of my Revue and WordPress content over to this site with the push of the “return” button. I literally included a link on a web page and a few minutes later, everything I had ever written or posted showed up.
Sadly, one of the things that I had liked about Revue was how easy it was to write a newsletter and include links, photos and videos. Editing was also incredibly simple. So out of curiosity, I decided to click on the link to get instructions on how to download all of my work because having a backup can’t hurt, right? And then this happened:
No doubt, the Captain Kirk of the original series could have figured out a way to get the Revue computers to open up and let me download the database.
Oh well. Looks like Web 3.0 is going to be seriously fun! Fun, like the latest Outlook update fun…
Here’s some things I’ve been following that I hope will help you out this week:
1___AAM & BPA agree to merge
This came in over the email transom just this morning and just in time for a meeting with some clients about the auditing process. Timing, really is everything!
A few people have already reached out and pointed to this merger as just another sign of the shrinking importance of the magazine media. The list of publications that are being audited is smaller than it was a decade ago, they say (And “they” have a point). There seems to be fewer advertisers who need or want magazine media to be audited, they say (And “they” have a point).
Yes, it could be that advertisers no longer care about audience auditing if you consider the amount of money that is pumped into digital advertising that then winds up in the digital advertising fraud funnel.
That said, I like to know that what I am buying will actually get me what I am supposed to be buying. Maybe I’m just an old fashioned dinosaur.
But I think melding BPA with AAM could be a good thing and might reinvigorate the case that magazine media advertising is a safe investment regardless the platform. Plus the bringing together what is mostly a consumer auditing operation with a more business to business auditing operation may be a good thing for the marketplace.
Over the years that I’ve worked in magazine media, I’ve had numerous interactions with AAM (Formerly ABC) and a few with BPA. All of my recent interactions have been with the AAM team and I’ve always found them to be very professional, very helpful and earnestly working to make the data they work with modern, important and impactful.
2___Zelensky is Time Magazine’s “Person of The Year”
This is not really very surprising. It’s also not surprising that this is a really great magazine cover (in print or digital) and it’s also a great read.
3___GE buys out the print edition of The NY Times
So the glib person who lives inside of me initially quipped, “Does that mean that The NY Times, the paper or record, is the newsprint equivalent of a SIP or Special Issue?
As it turns out, this was a pretty big deal. GE did buy out the print edition, but they also got a lot of premiere digital space for the buy. Check out the Axios article. This is kind of a big sea change for the “Gray Lady”.
4___Penske Media acquires Artforum Magazine, sister title Bookforum to cease publication
One of the things I find interesting about the Penske company is its dedication to its print titles and acquisitions. From my own experience, this is a different experience from other digital first companies that acquire print brands.
This particular acquisition will mean that Penske now publishes three of the major art publications (ArtNews, Artforum, Art in America). Meanwhile, the sister title to Artforum, Bookforum, has announced that it will cease publication at the end of the year. This is the loss of another literary oriented title.
The Penske footprint is pretty extensive: Rolling Stone, Variety, Robb Report, Deadline Hollywood, the Fairchild titles, and wide variety of other entertainment and fashion oriented sites.
5___The Professional Bull Riding Association launches a print magazine
No, I’m not kidding.
Its name will be “Gold Buckle”. It will be a semi-annual and cover priced at $13.99 and it will actually be on newsstands.
Your Moment of Magazine Zen…
That’s all I have for you this week. I hope you enjoyed this newsletter. If you did, please give it a boost by clicking “Like” and then subscribe. You’ll get a brand new release in your email in-box every Tuesday (Or sometimes Wednesday if things get a little crazy around here). Sometimes I even have some “bonus” content for you.
If you’ve got a question or comment, please drop me a line. You can always reach me at joe.berger@newsstandpros.com.
Yep, I’m still on Twitter? You can still find me here. For the moment.
My Instagram link is here.
Every now and then I put on a suit and tie and even come my hair. Here’s my LinkedIn profile.
The end of the year is just around the corner! I hope you have a good week, a nice slowdown as we approach all of that.