Category — Publishing

Left for dead in 2009, Esquire magazine in 2012 is "killing it," reports David Carr in the New York Times (1/23/12). Just three years ago, Esquire’s editor-in-chief, David Granger, was firing staff and cutting editorial pages, having been "beaten up by a crop of lad magazines … then hammered by the flight of advertisers and readers to the web." Advertising pages were down 24.3 percent and the magazine made a list of "twelve major brands" that would be gone in a year.

Instead, in 2011 "Esquire was up 13.5 percent in ad pages from the previous year," and Hearst, its publisher, says it "was No. 1 in year-over-year performance." Esquire’s journey back from the brink "is complicated," but started with keeping its "seasoned writers and editors" versus dumping them in favor of "shiny faces with reduced price tags." David Granger also "departed from standard design templates and modernized the front of the magazine to reflect the growing interest in marginalia and small laughs, with goofy asides and in-jokes."

The net effect is that of a magazine that "looks and feels like something a bunch of guys put together for a bunch of other guys, not a glossy widget produced by a big corporation." Esquire also experimented with QR codes on its cover, calling up a video with Robert Downey Jr., for instance. Its iPad app similarly adopted a multimedia approach, and its website attracted more than "two million visitors in December," up from just 300,000 in 2009. David says he thinks "well-turned print products" are too often given short-shrift these days. "There’s nothing wrong with the magazine form that constant diligence won’t fix," he says.

Small-run, handmade magazines — zines — are making a comeback as an antidote to internet overload, reports Jenna Wortham in the New York Times (10/23/11). "People are drawn to the experiences of creating and collecting these physical objects," says Karen Gisonny, a librarian who has been "collecting and cataloging periodicals for the last 25 years." She says the last ten years has seen "a flowering of print." Some zine publishers say it’s simply about the satisfaction of creating a tangible product.

"In 2011, it feels like a rare pleasure to hold up a bunch of pieces of paper that are bound together and read them, instead of reading off a screen," says a blogger known only as David, who says he’s printing 500 copies of his creation, The World’s First Perfect Zine. It will feature "a collection of art and prose by people who make a living as musicians or writers." Barbara Frankie Ryan, 19, says she’s been creating zines since she was 15, and recently "curated an exhibition of zines" at Tatty Devine, a London boutique.

For her, creating zines not only provides an outlet for "her drawings and innermost musings on popular culture and romantic crushes," but affords a certain privacy that online publishing can’t match. She compares making a zine to making a scarf for a friend. "I like the idea that I’ve only made 40 copies, and only 40 people will see it," she says. "It’s really easy to reveal a lot about yourself, and so this is a way of getting control back, and I find that quite comforting." Zines actually date back to the 1930s. They originally were known as fanzines and focused on science fiction.

A team of journalists and computer scientists are teaching computers to write newspaper stories, reports Steve Lohr in the New York Times (9/11/11). Their company is called Narrative Science and their invention is a software program that “takes data, like that from sports statistics, company financial reports and housing starts and sales, and turns it into articles.” This might sound like old news, except that, unlike previous attempts at robo-journalism, this program writes like a human. “Composition is a key concept,” says Kris Hammond, a company co-founder. “This is not just taking data and spilling it over into text.”

For sports reporting, "the software learns concepts for articles like ‘individual effort,’ ‘team effort,’ ‘come from behind,’ ‘back and forth,’ ‘season high’, ‘player’s streak’ and ‘rankings for the team.’ Then the software decides what element is most important for that game, and it becomes the lead for the article … The data also determines vocabulary selection. A lopsided score may well be termed a ‘rout’ rather than a ‘win’." Big Ten Network began using the software for its updates last fall, and says the resulting stories increased its site traffic by 40 percent — a result of posting stories that otherwise would have been too expensive to produce.

The cost is about $10 for a 500-word article, which is “far less … than the average cost per article of online local news ventures like AOL’s Patch, or answer sites, like those run by Demand Media." The costs are also expected to come down over time. However, the software’s creators see it as a supplement to human journalism, not a replacement for it. Kris Hammond also sees opportunities to combine the "writing engine and data mining" to explore "correlations that you do not expect," ala Freakonomics. And he has a prediction: "In five years," he says, "a computer program will win a Pulitzer Prize — and I’ll be damned if it’s not our technology."

"Small-town journalism is where most of the profession’s quirky grandeur lies," writes Daniel Akst in a Wall Street Journal review of Emus Loose in Egnar by Judy Muller. The book, according to Judy, "is about a different kind of bottom line … one that lives in the hearts of weekly newspaper editors and reporters who keep churning out news for the corniest of reasons — the belief that our freedom depends on it." It’s about "the passionate lunatics who … labor to keep politicians honest while coping with anger, threats, pleading, exhaustion, poverty, and often, instead of gratitude, the cold shoulders from neighbors at the checkout line at IGA."

"It’s about people like Bruce Anderson, owner of the Anderson Valley Advertiser, "who routinely takes on the powers that be" and "does so with pitbull tenacity, exposing official abuse and garden-variety idiocy with equal relish." It’s about publishers like the Gish Family, who publish "Appalachia’s legendary Mountain Eagle’." This can more dangerous than it sounds: After writing a series of editorials criticizing the local police department, the paper’s offices were torched "by a cop who received only a suspended sentence and later drove around town with vanity license plates that said ‘Eagleburner.’"

Of course, there’s the lighter side, otherwise known as the Police Blotter. One paper reported a call from a man who needed help "getting his overweight dog up the basement steps." Another reported that "someone swerving all over the road near Romero’s Fruit Stand was eating tamales while driving." The book’s title is itself based on a police blotter report about "emus that escaped from a local farm." Small-town papers is a place where, as one editor put it, "the future of print is print"… although it’s hard to imagine that America’s 8,000 newspaper weeklies won’t "have to adapt to the digital revolution like everyone else."

Momofuku celebrity chef David Chang is doing a reverse commute by creating a print magazine to go along with an iPad app, reports Kimberly Chou in the Wall Street Journal (6/14/11). Perhaps even more surprising, David’s new-media excursion comes at the expense of doing his own television show, the usual route for celebrity chefs. That’s because the television-show offers were all premised on his being an "angry" chef. He wanted to do a television show "only if it could be … educational and if it could fund research and development for his restaurants."

Since that wasn’t happening, David turned to Zero Point Zero executive producer Chris Collins, who pointed him toward the iPad. Chris says the iPad enables the expression of ideas in a "non-linear" way that television doesn’t, necessarily. "Food is the entry point to a bigger story" he says. "It’s much richer than just the stand-and-stir." A quarterly print magazine via niche-publisher McSweeney’s was added because, as David explains: "We wanted to capture things in writing that wouldn’t be able to make it on an iPad five-minute video."

The app and magazine are called Lucky Peach, the English translation of Momofuku. Where the print version "features an as-told-to-essay by chef Harold McGee," the app version has him "sitting at a teacher’s desk that appears to be flying through space." Chris Ying of McSweeney’s comments: "Our general thought on print versus app or print versus television that there’s not really a sort of dichotomy that people assign to it … There are things that both in video and digitally, and in print, don’t necessarily cross over. One form does something better than another."

A pair of writers is making the web safe for long-form journalism, reports David Carr in the New York Times (3/28/11). Evan Ratliff and Nicholas Thompson, who worked together at Wired, are fans of the kind of "deeply reported journalism" that is not necessarily compatible with the sound-bite nature of digital media. But together with Jefferson Rabb, a programmer and web designer, they’ve come up with an app for the iPad, iPhone, Kindle and Nook that makes "the web a friend, not an enemy of the articles they like to work on and read."

The result of their collaboration is The Atavist, a publishing venture that brings "all the richness of the web — links to more information, video … in an app displaying an article, but with a swipe of the finger, the presentation reverts to clean text that can be scrolled by merely tilting the device." The app also lets readers "toggle to an audio version" so they can listen to the piece while driving to work, for example. And there’s "a place for comments that mimics the notes that people put in the margins of complicated, interesting pieces."

Evan wrote one of the first pieces, a 13,000-word story about "an immense heist at a Swedish cash repository." It opens with "an actual video taken by the security cameras," followed by the text. Other pieces feature photography or audio, all of which is uploaded by the writer via a content-management system. Writers are paid a fee to cover their writing expenses, and then they split revenues with the Atavist. So far, the app has attracted 40,000 downloads at $2.99 each for the iPad/iPhone and $1.99 for Kindle or Nook. Various publishers are now negotiating with the Atavist to use the app for books.

The late Frank Griffin didn’t use e-mail or a computer, but his newspaper defined "hyperlocal" before it was "a journalism buzzword," reports Liz Robbins in the New York Times (3/28/11). Frank was publisher of The Home Reporter and Sunset News, covering Brooklyn, which he founded in 1952 (The Sunset News merger followed in 1962). Before that, he earned a journalism degree at Fordham University, and worked for both The World Telegram and The New York Enquirer, which is now the National Enquirer.

By most accounts, Frank was quiet, dignified guy, who was almost never seen without a dress shirt and tie. But his editorial style clearly owed something to his days at the Enquirer. When a car crashed into a bar, his headline was, "Another Wallbanger, Please!" And when a local man tripped on a sidewalk, it was front-page news: "Man Hurt in Fall From Curb." The Home Reporter "mixed murder and mayhem with wedding anniversaries and political gossip." It was also packed with classified ads.

Sara Otey, his companion and managing editor, says Frank was "unorthodox" as a publisher, but that he was also "involved … and instinctive, and he was old-fashioned in his ideas of a weekly newspaper." And for Frank, this meant repeatedly declining opportunities to put the Home Reporter and Sunset News online. However, this past January, while on a Caribbean cruise, Frank "matter-of-factly" told Sara he had sold the paper to the Queens Courier chain. After returning from the cruise, Frank fell ill, and six days after being diagnosed with lymphoma, he died, at 83.

The future of newspapers — as retail — could be taking shape in the unlikely environs of Torrington, Connecticut, reports Peter Applebome in the New York Times (12/17/10). The newspaper is the Register Citizen, which has been in business since 1874 but whose circulation has plummeted from a high of 21,000 in the late 1980s to just 8,000 today. But its owner, the Journal Register Company, is trying to breathe new life into the old rag by moving it to a renovated factory and inviting its readers in for coffee, muffins and conversation.

"A building with open doors, with no walls, is the brick-and-mortar metaphor for how the web works, says Journal Register chief John Paton. That’s why he went for an open office design. But there’s also a sign out front inviting the public to visit the "Newsroom Cafe," not only to use the wifi and have cup, but also to "participate in the 4 p.m. story conference. Residents are free to stroll through the newsroom as reporters peck out their stories." The paper’s archives are open to all, and the paper "will host courses on blogging and journalism" to encourage citizen journalism.

The medium of this retail experience, meanwhile, is primarily digital: "At the beginning of the year, the Register Citizen’s digital sales made up four percent of advertising revenues. Now they are 17 percent," which is "twice as large as the industry’s, and the company’s digital revenue has grown from negligible to 11 percent of ad revenue in less than a year." The paper also now "has six times the readership online that it has in print." John Paton expects that the rest of the Journal Register’s "more than 300 print and online products in 10 states" will follow this model and "tear down the walls between journalists and the communities they serve."

The nexus of newspapers and art is being explored via live newsrooms at the New Museum, reports Kristin M. Jones in the Wall Street Journal (12/16/10). The exhibit is called The Last Newspaper, but “last” could be interpreted as “final” or just “most recent.” It’s a combination of “artworks by 27 artists responding to aspects of news media, as well as interactive projects generated by nine partner organizations.” Various organizations were invited “to set up onsite offices and contribute projects involving information gathering and processing.”

The idea is “to build on the museum’s mission of developing new ways of engaging the public.” For example, “a Barcelona-based curatorial team” called Latitudes “produced a tabloid whose name changed each week. The spirited articles include stories on artists, filmmakers and topics ranging from ProPublica to the history of cast-iron newsstand paperweights … The editors commissioned profiles and interviews related to the show but also solicited story ideas … and other information from the public.”

Another project, “The New City Reader, is a boldly graphic, urban-issues-oriented tabloid,” some of which “have been posted, billboard-style, in Manhattan public spaces.” Meanwhile, the newspaper-inspired artworks date from 1967. These include a self-portrait by Alighiero e Boetti, that incorporates “a news story about an execution.” Then there’s Hans Haacke’s “News,” which used to be a telex machine running on a wire-service feed, but now it spits out some 30 RSS feeds in real-time, potentially at a rate “that could quickly fill the gallery with paper.” The Last Newspaper runs at the New Museum through January 9th.

"… Dowdy old Washington has become a hotbed for publishing innovation and ambition," writes David Carr in the New York Times (9/13/10). The primary insurgent is Politico, an online-only, free publication that upended traditional print publications with its focus on breaking news and analysis. This caught the attention of David G. Bradley, owner of the Atlantic Media Company and publisher of both the National Journal and the Atlantic.

"About 13 months ago, I was flying back from France and began thinking about how effortlessly Politico had wedged itself into the ad market against a very strong group of incumbents," says Bradley. "And I thought that required a radical rethinking of what we had been doing." So, NationalJournal dot-com will soon begin publishing content, for free, from The National Journal, Congress Daily and Hotline, that previously had been available on a paid basis only ($2,000, $4,000 and $6,000 per year, respectively).

The gamble is based on Bradley’s experience with the Atlantic, which had been losing $10 million a year, until it switched to an aggressive digital strategy, ad revenues from which now account for about 40 percent of its total. "I think that Politico’s entrance entirely changed what had been a pretty cozy market with a few incumbents … and kudos to them for that" says Justin B. Smith, who runs the Atlantic. He adds that "deeper analysis" must be coupled with "up-to-the-minute news because that is where much of the conversation is occurring."