Summer Vacay

These past few months have been one of the most exciting times for Ed. He's loved sharing his industry thoughts with you and hopes you gained some valuable insights about all the recent media news. In fact, as a result of writing this blog, Ed sometimes goes off on tangents about the industry during lunch breaks and happy hours. (His coworkers and friends have learned to tolerate the outbursts).

But Ed likes to share the spotlight, so he's taking the summer off to give you a whole new batch of voices to follow. Stay tuned until June 21 to hear how Ed's chosen whippersnappers will pursue their dream job while getting coffee and making copies in the newest edition of The Intern Diaries.

And if you enjoyed the blog and think you have what it takes to discuss media news, email Ed at yelena@ed2010.com.

Bye for now,
Ed

Want To Start Your Own Magazine? Here's How

The famous Mr. Magazine, Samir Husni, who teaches at the University of Mississippi and whose Guide To New Magazines is still selling out on shelves, has three pieces of advice for publishers of new magazines. In an interview with Mediabistro, he said the most important factors are 1) finding a willing audience to come back and read that magazine every month addictively, 2) having a very clear and concise brand, and 3) choosing an easily identifiable magazine name.

Read his valuable quotes after the jump and then let Ed know if you agree!

Have You Ever Been Fired For Freelancing?

A veteran reporter of the Oregonian got canned last week for moonlighting.

Lisa Grace Lednicer, who had been at the Oregonian for 12 years, was let go because she co-wrote an article for Glamour about Diane Downs' mystery daughter. (Downs is the notorious Oregon mother who was charged with shooting her children in 1983.)

Now, Ed is no stranger to freelancing on the side. Almost all of Ed's friends have done it.

The New A-List Cover Girl?

Jacob Bernstein of The Daily Beast noticed that magazine covers are trending away from your traditional mega celebrity.

Glamour's recent cover is not Angelina Jolie or Julia Roberts. It's three relatively unknown models, one of whom is plus size. Vanity Fair has two World Cup athletes.

College Grads Can Start Celebrating Early

Ed has already proposed that rumors of media's death are slowly but surely dying themselves. Ad pages have been increasing, new websites have been launching, and news of layoffs has been few and far between.

minOnline has some good news to corroborate Ed's theory.

Are Women's Magazines Getting Too Sexy Online?

Traditionally conservative magazines like Good Housekeeping, Ladies’ Home Journal and ParentsCosmo have let their hair down online to the point where their web content is more than Delish. Advice on spicing up your sex life has found itself on those magazines’ sites.

On the one hand, this seems like savvy web strategy: everyone from Miley Cyrus to CEOs knows that sex sells. And the success of magazines like Cosmo attests to the fact that women want to find that information from a reliable source. So writing about sex problems and how to solve them will lead to more unique visitors and page views of the site, along with increasing brand awareness. Great, right?

But advertisers would disagree.

Will Newsweek Survive?

2010 seemed to be a bright year for media: magazine foldings have come to a halt, layoffs have decreased, and ad sales are on the upswing. But one niche seems to still be suffering: the national newsweekly.

Last Wednesday, the Washington Post Company announced that they are selling 77-year-old Newsweek magazine. "Despite heroic efforts on the part of Newsweek’s management and staff, we expect it to still lose money in 2010, " explained Washington Post Co. Chairman Donald E. Graham.  On the one hand, Ed isn't too surprised: daily papers and other news organizations have been hit hard by the internet's cheap and fast ability to cover breaking news. On the other, Ed's sad to see such an esteemed and established publication go the way of other popular magazines he grew up reading.

New York Times media columnist David Carr has a number of theories for why Newsweek is being sold. Ed gives you the scoop after the jump!

Would You Pay $9,000 for an Internship?

That's what one person paid to intern at HuffPo for free this summer. Yahoo! News' Michael Calderone reports on all the other high-profile bids for a recently closed auction to support the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights.

minOnline's Best of the Web

While the media industry celebrated its prized reporting, content, and design at the ASME Awards last week, minOnline came out with its own awards for "Best of the Web." Hearst was snubbed in the Digital ASME Awards back in March, and despite inducting Hearst Digital's Chuck Cordray into their Digital Hall of Fame, Time Inc and Conde again seem to overpower their rival.

The Freelancer Dilemma

Many Edsters end up freelancing, whether by circumstance brought on by the job hunt or by choice brought on by dreams of becoming the next Carrie Bradshaw.

But according to a survey released last month by the New York-based Freelancers Union, about 40% of freelancers had trouble getting paid in 2009. The average amount due? $6,000. And with national unemployment still around 9.7%, it's not like freelancers can just fall back on getting a job.

Are You Pleased with the ASME Awards?

The Ellies are in! I doubt many were surprised that New York magazine took home the most awards (4) Thursday night, including victories for general excellence (250,000 to 500,000 circulation), magazine section, personal service and leisure interests.

Si Newhouse must be doing something right, since Condé was the other big winner of the night: Glamour won the top honor, Magazine of the Year, a new category introduced this year that "honors publications that successfully use both print and digital media in fulfilling the editorial mission of the magazine."

Other Condé winners included long-time victors National Geographic (3), The New Yorker (3) and Wired (2).

See the full list of winners after the jump.

What is People StyleWatch's Secret?

Time Inc. has a goldmine on its hands. Surprisingly, the magazine with merchandise on its cover is topping both circ and ad numbers when most of the industry is falling behind. According to the NYT, "in the second half of last year, StyleWatch’s circulation rose 8.6 percent, to about 802,000, as the industry average dropped 2.2 percent. [...] StyleWatch increased its pages by more than 24 percent, to 629 pages. In the first quarter, consumer magazines lost 9.4 percent of their ad pages on average, but StyleWatch’s grew by about 130 percent, and the magazine is profitable."

Ed breaks down the reasons for its success after the jump! 

Will the iPad Save the Magazine Industry?

With its sleek design and cool page-turning features, the iPad has been pegged as possibly saving journalism and publishing in one fell swoop. And by selling an estimated double of the predicted amount last weekend, the iPad seems well on its way.

Many magazines are eager to jump on the bandwagon, with Condé Nast titles like Vanity Fair, Wired, and GQ are rumored to be working on an app, while magazines like Interview, Time, Men's Health, and Popular Science already exist for purchase. But this is where Ed begins to have his doubts.

Are your unpaid interns illegal?

Given the lack of paid internships and the overwhelming amount of aspiring magazine editors, Ed can pretty much bet that every whippersnapper has had at least one unpaid internship. In fact, sometimes it seems that media wouldn't be able to survive without a bevvy of unpaid interns to transcribe, research, report, write, photocopy, and sometimes make a coffee run.

But it turns out unpaid internships may be illegal. According to the NYT, "when the jobs are mostly drudgery, regulators say, it is clearly illegal not to pay interns." States like California and Oregon have already begun fining employers for violating the law. (Ed gave his own two cents on the topic in an Ask Ed years ago). But now the federal government plans on cracking down on what many people consider to be 21st century slave labor. Even internships with college credit are not exempt.

Former Condé Nast EICs Turning to Web

Ed already told you about Brandon Holley's post Condé life as the online editor of Yahoo! Shine. It turns out she's not the only former print EIC to transition to web.

According to the New York Observer, Pilar Guzman—the popular editor of the parenting magazine Cookie (which folded in October), is creating web site momfilter.com—a lifestyle site for the modern mom to be launched in the fall.

Deborah Needleman, the editor of Domino, which folded in January 2009, told the Observer that she’s working on her site with  Ken Lerer, the chairman of the Huffington Post.

“It’s a commerce site—with a Domino-like sensibility—that makes it easy and pleasurable to decorate and shop for a home,” she wrote in an email to the Observer.

And though she doesn't have a site of her own, Ruth Reichl has been actively tweeting since Gourmet folded last October.

But before everyone starts frantically learning how to tweet and code in HTML, you should know that other EICs are taking the traditional route of writing books about their experiences. Reichl is planning to write a memoir of her Condé days, while Dominique Browning, former EIC of House & Garden, published a book about her post-EIC life that's due in May.

Are you surprised by this Edsters? How many of you work in print and how many of you work in online? Do you agree that you need web savvy even for a print job?

Ann Shoket Tells You How To Get a Media Job

Let's get one thing straight: Ann Shoket, EIC of Seventeen, is a fan of web and does not think it's killing the industry, according to Fishbowl NY's Media Beat interview.

"The Web is not eating our lunch. We don't have a readership problem. We are not losing our readership to the Web," Shoket told Fishbowl NY. "Girls love the Internet, absolutely, but the Internet brings us readers. We sold half a million subscriptions to Seventeen magazines online last year."

Shoket added that the Seventeen web-print strategy is to keep "Seventeen everywhere, creating content whenever and wherever our girls are." This includes the usual social mediums like Twitter and Facebook "to keep the brand vital."

In the second installment of the video, Shoket offers advice to whippersnappers looking to break into the industry. "When I'm interviewing new editors, I'm always looking for their ability to think surround — who's your partner outside that's going to help spread your word; how are you going to get your readers' social  networks to spread the word for you on Facebook, YouTube, Myspace; what are we going to do on Seventeen.com; are there other new innovations happening in the world that we need to be paying attention to," Shoket says. "I recognize not everyone has had all the experience in every single form of media, but I'm looking for people who can think like that. Because a magazine story does not resonate if it's just on the page."

Check out her tips for aspiring EICs after the jump.

Are tight budgets actually a good thing?

There's no doubt that the glory days of magazines — complete with limitless expense accounts and personal drivers — are long gone thanks to the recession. The glitz and glamour immortalized in movies like Devil Wears Prada and Confessions of a Shopaholic are more fictional than ever. Brandon Holley, the former editor of Jane, knows this firsthand.

Holley now runs Yahoo's Shine, a rapidly growing website for women, and in a NYT profile, Holley describes all of what she left behind in the ritzy pre-recession magazine world. Some of the best are outlined after the jump.

Would you pay for the news?

Anyone who reads the New York Times on their iPhones or hears the latest news on Twitter has been spoiled — no one has to pay for the news anymore (if you know how to get it for free).

And according to a new survey released by the Pew Foundation's Project for Excellence in Journalism's 2010, they don't plan on it. 82 percent of people with brand favorites said they'd find the news elsewhere if their usual sites start demanding payment. And to make matters worse, if readers are telling the truth, then online advertising is not the solution: 79% of users "rarely if ever clicked on an online ad."

Ed has to admit that he loves his NYT app and being able to read the latest headlines for free, but given that he's been paying anywhere from $10-$50 per year to subscribe to each of his favorite news magazines, paying a similar rate for the daily news doesn't seem so bad. On the other hand, aggregator sites like HuffPo or even link-heavy Gawker will definitely pay for the access and will reprint the main points for free.

What do you think, Edsters? How much (if anything at all) would you shell out to read the Times every day? 

Passed Over for That Promotion? Could be Because You're a Woman

Even though Ed's a guy, he's surrounded by women in this industry.

As anyone who's worked in the gleaming towers of Hearst or Condé knows, women make up a large percentage of the magazine workforce. And as any female who's ever worked in media knows, it's all too easy to find yourself playing one of two stereotypical roles: the office bitch or the office pushover. And there's no in between, according to a NYT article by corporate coach Peggy Claus. Even though last year was a landmark for women — coming the closest they've ever been to having a female president — the state of women in the workplace has not made much progress.

Is the Purported Death of Media Over?

Ed has been noticing a lot of good media news lately. Just in our staff alone, we've had six new full-time hires since December. But don't take our anecdotal evidence for it. Media seems to be reviving itself, as there have been a ton of new magazine and website launches, including Elizabeth Spiers' TheGloss.com and Crushable.com, the Deen Bros' Good Cooking mag, and some as-yet-unannounced "new quality print products" at Condé.

And it seems that advertisers agree.

ASME Goes Digital

The ASME Awards are shaking things up this year. Instead of recognizing digital media in a few awards rolled into the general ceremony, the American Society of Magazine Editors is demonstrating a whole new respect for online journalism.

“For nearly half a century, the National Magazine Awards have celebrated the best magazine journalism in the United States,” Sid Holt, Chief Executive of ASME, said in a press release. “This year for the first time, ASME and the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism will recognize the outstanding work that appears on magazine-branded digital platforms by presenting National Magazine Awards for Digital Media in 12 categories.” 

Of the 118 magazine websites and online-only magazines that were entered, only 37 were nominated. See the top nominees after the jump.

The New Whippersnappers: Unemployed and Tweeting

The Pew Research Center came out with a wide-scale examination of America's newest generation, the 50 million Millennials. Edsters, I think this means most of us.

The good news is that Millennials are way more web savvy than any other age group (even Ed is tweeting!) and we're also set to be the most educated in American History. That's no small feat.

• Three-quarters have created a profile on a social networking site
• One-in-five have posted a video of themselves online
• Millions of 20-somethings are enrolling in graduate schools, colleges or community colleges. Among 18-to-24 year olds, 39.6% were enrolled in college as of 2008, according to census data.

But the downside of being such a talented pool of applicants is that we've also happened to graduate in a recession. The competition among us is so fierce that many of us are unemployed — at an alarmingly high rate.

The death of the permalancer?

Anyone who has looked for a job in media during the past year — one replete with hiring freezes, layoffs, and budget cuts — knows that he or she would be lucky to score any kind of paying job, be it an internship, freelance gig, or the editorial holy grail: a plum position on staff.

And then there are those who fall somewhere in between: the permalancer.

A freelance position with no end date gets all the superficial trappings of a staff job (full-time hours, your own cubicle with a personal computer and phone), but none of the actual benefits: health insurance, job security, sick days, vacation, or unemployment if you're let go. At best, you get to pursue your dream of working in media while honing your skills and earning enough to live in one of the most expensive cities in the world. At worst, you're treated like a glorified intern with your own phone extension. But hey, Ed's not complaining: getting a paid media gig is like scoring a seat on the subway during rush hour. It doesn't happen to most people.

But according to the NYT, even permalance jobs may be harder to come by in the next few years. Due to record budget deficits, federal and state officials are going to start targeting companies that "pass off regular employees as independent contractors."