When all you have is a hammer...
Plus! Celebrity Magazines! Sort of! Issue #98
I have a theory that governing and conducting business should be incredibly boring. I’m old enough to sort of remember that when I was growing up, the business world did seem like a boring sort of thing. As far as politics goes, I’m unfortunately old enough to remember summer of the Watergate hearings. I’ve often wondered what spurred on Nixon’s paranoia and set in motion much of what we’re now experiencing.
Here in the third decade of the 21st century, it all seems rather “exciting” with constantly moving goal posts and technology changing by the minute. Does it feel hard to catch your breath? Delivering new products to your audience and introducing new technological advances should be exciting and yet it often feels more like a hyped up matter of life and death. I often wish we had the time and distance to sometimes ask: “Should we really embrace this? Have we thought it out? Why is this guy yelling his fool head off about that?”
I mean, when all is said and done, we just want our roads paved. Our schools to have roofs, teachers and educational materials. Railroads cars should stay on their tracks. Public transit should be clean and safe. Water should be drinkable. Air to be breathable. Products to be safe to use because they were tested. Our privacy should be protected. Personal rights and responsibilities to remain enshrined and expanded.
And yet, all of that has somehow become controversial everywhere all the time. There’s a 24 hour news cycle to churn it all up.
I sometimes wonder if our views of the world are still incredibly stuck back in the Victorian era. The lion may be the “king of beasts”, but if the lion eats all the gazelles, he’ll starve. There may be a lot of crocodiles in the Nile, but there are even more fish, frogs and wild mammals. All of those creatures are just as fit and will survive just as well as the lion and the croc.
Enough mulling. Summer’s just a few weeks away. Got your planting in? #justasking
one__Dr. Jen Ashton, ABC Chief Medical Correspondent launches Better Magazine with A360 Media
This is another special from the A360 Media team. Cover priced at $13.99 it will be interesting to see if it makes the conversion to a regular frequency title. Overall, it looks well produced and it doesn’t hurt to have some celebrity heft to it. It will definitely get a nice push on the single copy side, but can they convince the public to pick it up more regularly? Will it be a subscription package?
On the lighter side, this isn’t the first time the name has been used for a magazine. Locally, there was a city/regional title here in the flatlands that got rebranded as “Make it Better” and still operates as “Better” on the web. There was also a literary title in the previous decade that put out some issues and then went on hiatus. While the website is still up, there hasn’t been a new issue in years. And, not surprisingly, there’s a bi-lingual “lads” mag on Instagram that is still visible but hasn’t posted since 2021.
two__Vice failed because of Vice, not private equity…
This is a really interesting take on the issue of publishing and private equity and I’m very glad that I came across it. Not because I’m going to drop some of my concerns about private equity and embrace the author’s opinion, but it does give me something to consider.
Essentially, Donnelly is arguing this:
“I find the last quote rather remarkable. Investors don’t give you anything. They buy something from you. In the case of vice, private equity bought equity in the company. But rather than just buy common shares, it wanted some guarantees. It wanted to know that if it put up hundreds of millions of dollars, that its money would take priority over other investors.
That’s where the liquidation preference comes into play. In exchange for giving $450 million, TPG and Sixth Street wanted to know that it would get a guaranteed return in the event of a liquidation. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
He has a valid point. As you often hear these days, if you hang out with a face eating leopard, there’s a really good chance that it will eat your face. Did Vice need to make the deals it made for financing it expansion? Well, it did, and now the investors want their money.
Likewise, our newspapers could have been better stewards of their businesses and not gotten into the trouble they did twenty or more years ago. But it’s always easy to look back and see what you should have done.
three__Montana bans TikTok
I realize that this is somewhat elderly news, but I’ve included it because I finally took some time to read behind the headlines a bit. Like I pointed out above, there’s a lot happening all at once these days.
Keep up Joe.
After reading this and then a few follow-up pieces, I was reminded of that old statement, “When all you have is a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail.”
This really looks like something performative. Is China an adversary? Yes. Is it possible that they’re using TikTok to spy on us? Maybe. But when you look at what this bill does: Banning app stores from offering TikTok as a download, that’s pretty tame. What if it’s already on your phone or tablet? How are you shutting off the desktop version?
If you’re going to do something, for goodness’ sakes, do it. This strikes me as nothing but half hearted and performative. Prove your case, then do something about it. Otherwise, go away, stop making so much noise, and stop wasting everyone’s time.
four__Fact redesigns magazine, launches art and gaming print edition
This is another great example of how so many small, independent magazines are doing just fine, thank you very much, while the mainstream and traditional ways of reaching your readers are struggling.
Fact bills itself as a “multimedia platform championing the global movement of electronic art.” They offer their audience a print magazine, exhibition program, a/v channel and production studio.
Of serious interest to me, as always, is their method of retail distribution. Nope, you won’t find this on the UK’s high streets or in your local Kroger. They limit their retail distribution to specific markets where the audience is, and sell it in specialty online shops like Boutique Mags and Stack Magazines.
five__Hackaday: Farewell American Computer Magazines (Redux)
I chose this as a bit of a follow-up to a piece I ran last month. Hackaday is an online site with really great computer oriented content. Staff writer Al Williams talks a bit about his own stint working for Dr. Dobbs Journal, probably one of the best and earliest mass market computer magazines.
Williams opines out that a big reason for the ultimate decline of US based computer magazines was the over reliance on advertising revenue. True, but I’d add that in many cases, the audience changed from mass to niche and the preference was for digital over print.
His closing question, will the end of traditional media lead to a new way to fairly compensate creators? Or will the jobs related to creation “dwindle to nothing but volunteers” is well worth considering. As he points out, you used to be able to make a living harvesting ice.
Not exactly your moment of “Magazine Zen” Things Placed in Front of the Magazine Rack, Part Infinity…
I’d also point out, of the approximately 31 magazines on the top shelf, seven were what you’d consider regular frequency publications.
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That’s all I’ve got for you this week. May your meetings be short, your scheduled vacation long, your in-box manageable and your spreadsheets free of clutter.
