High Holy Mass of Contradictions

I’ve seen some cool wordles, but it wasn’t until a friend posted one she created using a recent research paper that I got inspired to create one of my own. This wordle uses my “manifesto,” which was a 37-page, 6,889-word document outlining a proposed strategy for how we at Magazines.com interact with our customers to optimize lifetime value.

No surprise that “email” and “customers” are the prominent words for a visualization of a document describing, essentially, how best to communicate with our customers.

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Originally published at The Bee Hive. You can comment here or there.

• Can A New Netflix-Like Service Save Magazine Industry? - Media Money with Julia Boorstin - CNBC.com

  “I can imagine using it– I like not being locked into any commitments and it could be fun to try out magazines that are hard to find in ordinary airport newsstands. […] While working on home construction I’d sign up for all interior design magazines.”

  (tags: maghound magazines)

• Kevin Allman: Desperate times in the newspaper & magazine industries

  “The whole point of magazine subscriptions is the set-it-and-forget-it model, which is why they always try to entice readers with steeply discounted 2- and 3-year plans.”

  (tags: maghound magazines)

• Your choice of magazines « Lou Heldman on the News Media

  “Some major challenges would seem to be: Rising paper and postal costs. The magazine industry’s traditionally slow execution starting new subscriptions. More and more magazine content being accessed on the Web.”

  (tags: maghound magazines)

• Finally! Mix-and-match magazine subscriptions : Carolyn Erickson

  “I’ve been waiting for this. While I hate to pay the newstand price for magazines, I often do. Why do I pay $4.95 for a single issue when I could subscribe for about $15 per year?”

  (tags: maghound magazines)

• Maghound Sniffing for Long Tail | Media Industry Blog | BNET

  “But, unless I’m missing something, we have a small problem here, and it has to do with the length of the magazine-lover’s best-friend’s tail. The company says it has 280 magazines signed up so far, and hopes to have 300 by launch.”

  (tags: maghound magazines)

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Originally published at The Bee Hive. You can comment here or there.

We’ve just launched a promotion on Magazines.com that spotlights titles printed on recycled or sustainably harvested paper. Earth Day wasn’t originally on our seasonal marketing calendar (silly oversight) so we pulled this together on very short notice, and I’m proud of us for making the effort.

http://www.magazines.com/ncom/mag/main/earth_day

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Originally published at The Bee Hive. You can comment here or there.

One of the things that intrigues me about magazines is that, taken as a set, the magazines you bother to subscribe to have an awful lot to say about who you are and what you're passionate about. Of course, not all of our passions have publications dedicated to them, but you might be surprised how many do.

For example, I just stumbled across two magazines I didn't know existed and now I'm really psyched about: Birds & Blooms, which "celebrates the joys of attracting birds and tending to beautiful backyard flower gardens" and Wild Bird, which provides "fascinating information about birds and birding from your own backyard to touring hotspots in the field."

Did I subscribe? Oh heck yes, I most definitely subscribed. OK, I don't know that I'm quite enough of a bird lover to get into the whole "touring hotspots in the field" thing, but I'm definitely excited about bird-attracting gardens. And yes, I already have subscriptions to a bunch of gardening-related magazines, and occasionally they have articles about attracting birds and butterflies, but these! These are dedicated to attracting and admiring birds. Hee! I'm actually giddy about it. (Don't tell Karsten, though. He'll roll his eyes about me signing up for yet more magazines.)

Now the trick is to actually find the time to read the magazines. Because see, that's the other interesting thing about magazines. They seem to represent our best selves: what we, in an ideal world, would be paying attention to. Instead of leaving to pile up in a corner.

I kid! I really do read my magazines. Most of them. Most of the time. OK, sometimes. But I mean to read them! What kind of obsessive nut would sign up for a whole bunch of stuff she knows she isn't going to have time to read? What? Why are you looking at me like that?

Originally published at The Bee Hive. Please leave any comments there.

theogeo critiques a new magazine called Skirt! (yes, the banger is part of the title) with which she is obliquely associated:

Tell me you’ve got a publication for strong, successful women and I’ll usually be all, “Okay, right on,” thinking we’ve got a political-minded, informative, thoughtful outlet on our hands. Tell me it’s called “Skirt!” and my brain will start shutting down. Suddenly you’ve introduced fashion and feminine markers into the premise. Not to mention the secondary verbal definition of “skirt,” which means to avoid or work around. It’s indirect; it’s passive.

The whole premise is bewilderingly patronizing. And it’s not like I don’t subscribe to fashion magazines — I do! several! — but I subscribe to them to follow fashion and admire clothing design. I know what I’m getting into when I open a copy of InStyle, and believe me, I don’t read it expecting to encounter thoughtful essays written from a feminist perspective. Those types of publications simply have no credibility with me for that sort of content. But when I want those feminist essays (Bust, perhaps, or Off Our Backs? I admit I don’t subscribe to either — blogs provide me with ample content), I don’t expect to be condescended to with fashion and beauty advice. And here the credibility issue works basically in reverse: include fashion and beauty advice in your progressive women’s publication, and, for me, you cease to be a progressive women’s publication.

This sort of mental partitioning may be uncommon, but I sort of doubt it. That’s not to say that a cross-market magazine (or even cross-cross-market, if you think fashion-feminist-local) can’t work, but this appears to be the reason to undertake such a venture with extreme caution.

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theogeo critiques a new magazine called Skirt! (yes, the banger is part of the title) with which she is obliquely associated:

Tell me you've got a publication for strong, successful women and I'll usually be all, "Okay, right on," thinking we've got a
political-minded, informative, thoughtful outlet on our hands. Tell me
it's called "Skirt!" and my brain will start shutting down.
Suddenly you've introduced fashion and feminine markers into the
premise. Not to mention the secondary verbal definition of "skirt,"
which means to avoid or work around. It's indirect; it's passive.

The whole premise is bewilderingly patronizing. And it's not like I don't subscribe to fashion magazines -- I do! several! -- but I subscribe to them to follow fashion and admire clothing design. I know what I'm getting into when I open a copy of InStyle, and believe me, I don't read it expecting to encounter thoughtful essays written from a feminist perspective. Those types of publications simply have no credibility with me for that sort of content. But when I want those feminist essays (Bust, perhaps, or Off Our Backs? I admit I don't subscribe to either -- blogs provide me with ample content), I don't expect to be condescended to with fashion and beauty advice. And here the credibility issue works basically in reverse: include fashion and beauty advice in your progressive women's publication, and, for me, you cease to be a progressive women's publication.

This sort of mental partitioning may be uncommon, but I sort of doubt it. That's not to say that a cross-market magazine (or even cross-cross-market, if you think fashion-feminist-local) can't work, but this appears to be the reason to undertake such a venture with extreme caution.

Someone on my Friends list (maybe Vito?) linked to a web page some time back that showed a model before and after being Photoshopped like crazy. Along those same lines, Dove's new commercial shows a woman being made over for a photo shoot and then Photoshopped almost beyond recognizability as the same woman. The tag line is "no wonder our beauty standards are so distorted."

Adrants has a link to the commercial and some questions about the value or wrongness of doing this in advertising.

[...] in one sense, it nets out to the importance of reflecting reality versus the importance of presenting something, however unreal and unattainable, toward which people can reach.

I don't even think it's so much the unattainability of it that's bizarre and questionable, although that's a fair point, and I don't know how valuable it is to give people something like that to "reach" for. I just think there's a freakin' huge spectrum of possible beauty, and the tastemakers (such as those in advertising) are only presenting us with a sliver of it.

Your thoughts?

I love this: Showtime is using a marijuana scent-strip to promote the show "Weeds" in Rolling Stone magazine. Oddly, despite not having a TV, I've actually seen several episodes of this show, and I thought it was pretty good. But even if I hated it, I'd love this gimmick. One source says the scent is more like patchouli than marijuana. I'm going to have to set up a reminder to check out the August 24th issue of Rolling Stone.

Paste magazine published its list of 100 best living songwriters, and Robin Hilton on NPR's Mixed Signals followed with a rewritten version of the 10 best living songwriters. It seems to me that the Paste list skews a bit older and hippier, whereas the NPR list skews a bit younger and edgier.

Compare Paste's top 10:

1. Bob Dylan
2. Neil Young (Buffalo Sprinfield, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
3. Bruce Springsteen
4. Tom Waits & Kathleen Brennan
5. Paul McCartney (The Beatles, Wings)
6. Leonard Cohen
7. Brian Wilson (The Beach Boys)
8. Elvis Costello
9. Joni Mitchell
10. Prince


with NPR's:
1. Bob Dylan
2. Tom Waits & Kathleen Brennan
3. Paul McCartney (The Beatles, Wings)
4. Bruce Springsteen
5. Vic Chestnutt
6. Stephin Merritt
7. Sufjan Stevens
8. Aimee Mann
9. PJ Harvey
10. David Dondero

Personally, there are points on both lists I agree and disagree with: "Joni Mitchell feels like a token pick"? Huh? But the inclusion of Aimee Mann in the top 10 feels right to me, so maybe we're even on that one.

And it's unclear what some of the criteria for inclusion on either list are. In the NPR list, the notes on PJ Harvey include "Anyway, I really think if she were a man she'd get a lot more credit than she does. She plays guitar and rocks better than most. And her sound is so distinctive. Listen to the crunch of the opening guitar in 'One Time Too Many'." Are we still talking about songwriting? There's surely a blurry line between songwriting and instrumental performance for singer-songwriters who use their primary instrument to convey melody and message, but a good chunk of that spills over into musicianship, arrangement, and production rather than songwriting, per se.

Anyway, I'm very happy to see some of my absolute favorite songwriters represented in the Paste list, like Bob Dylan (#1), Elvis Costello (#8), Joni Mitchell (#9), Paul Simon (#13), Holland-Dozier-Holland (#17), Lou Reed (#21), Elton John & Bernie Taupin (#23), Tom Petty (#29), Kris Kristofferson (#38), Ryan Adams (#43), David Byrne (#46), James Taylor (#53), Aimee Mann (#54), Morrissey (#57), Conor Oberst (#67), and Lyle Lovett (#87).

Though honestly, I've been influenced at some level by almost every single name on that list.

And to that list, I would add at least the following, if not a few more (though I'd have a tough time deciding who would get cut to make room):

Daryl Hall (& John Oates sometimes & Sara Allen sometimes) on the incredible merit of songs like "Dreamtime" and "She's Gone" alone, if not the entire balance of the H&O catalog.

Tori Amos for the sweet melancholy and plaintive lyrics of "Sleeps With Butterflies," "Tear In Your Hand," "1000 Oceans," and so many others. She's every bit the songwriter anyone else on this list is.

Don Schlitz for sincere, down-to-earth songs like "The Gambler" and "When You Say Nothing At All."


What about you? Who would you add? Who are you especially glad to see represented?