‘Spin’ Magazine Going Bimonthly | Adweek
Several years ago, my magazine ceased printing entirely. We had “right-sized” our publishing venture previously, electing to limit frequency (and increase quality) as we responded to changing consumption habits and harsh advertising realities. The truth that every publisher faces is that there really isn’t much of a need for a monthly print magazine—much less a music one.
So, is Spin’s move a desperate sensible shift based on a changing content landscape or a budget crisis? Probably a bit of both given a 35% ad drop in the previous few years. But I’m not here to be a naysayer or parade rain-uponer. Hell, I subscribe to Spin!
Ultimately, I still believe deeply in print. It’s not going anywhere. Magazines like Spin, if they can reinvent themselves (no small challenge), and put ideas ahead of quickly aging news and reviews, may have a chance even in today’s Flipboard world. Who knows, maybe even URB’s print magazine has a second life somewhere.
Source: adweek.com
Steve Jobs Fortune Magazine Tribute Issue
I’ve been grabbing two copies of every special issue I can covering the fantastic life of Steve Jobs. I even picked up People magazine’s special issue, which I rarely do. TIME, Bloomberg BusinessWeek (here’s a good overview on it) and Fortune have all produced epic compilations—no doubt largely assembled from existing articles and reporting—worthy of any Apple/Jobs/fanboy archive. But I still regret not getting a Los Angeles Times or Wall Street Journal from October 6.
Wow: Macworld cover photographed with an iPhone 4
From the photographer’s blog:
I’ve always thought it would be cool to photograph the cover of Macworld magazine using an iPhone as my camera. When the new iPhone 4 was released with the 5MP camera, the editors at Macworld were excited to see if it could be done. What better way to showcase the phone’s new camera than to have an iPhone take the photo of the iPhone on the cover?
The full Macworld story about their cover shoot
Wired Magazine Arrives on the iPad
To $4.99 or not to $4.99? That is the million dollar question.
Source: Mashable
Camp magazine, produced by URB exclusively for the 2010 Coachella Music & Arts Festival in Indio, California. Camp was 60 pages and 10x12”. The paper was a mix of uncoated and some glossy pages at the center.
Our team worked closely with the festival promoters and Vans (their one sponsor) to ensure a product that had integrity, was beautiful and relevant. And, above all, kept the Coachella campers in mind.
We printed 15,000 copies and they were distributed to the campers as they arrived at the festival. Response was excellent all around and we plan on doing it again next year.
Reach us at media@urb.com for more info on what we do.
This is a recent push by the Magazine Publishers of America, a trade/advocacy group URB was once a member of (before we went mostly digital). But I couldn’t help but view this and cringe a bit. It’s not the defensive and somewhat crotchety posture of these publishers—several of whom I have long respected—but it’s their sameness.
There all white, probably 50+ and clearly wealthy. Oh, and they’re New Yorkers. In fact, I’m sure you could add a few more descriptors to that list without trying too hard. is this the best case the MPA could make for why magazines are still relevant? Because these esteemed folks say so?
For the record, I don’t think print is dead. But the hegemony of these legacy titles is and they clearly know it. I truly hope consumers continue to look to print media with interest and passion—I do. But the dusty and fading argument this campaign tries to prop up isn’t going to win any new fans—assuming any even see this. But the promotion was probably meant for advertising agencies anyway, which might explain the casting.
SMH (Publishers: That’s Web speak for shake my head).
Here’s how to keep all that political ‘news’ in perspective for 2010
Sent to me by my mom this morning:
1. The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country.
2. The Washington Post is read by people who think they run the country.
3. The New York Times is read by people who think they should run the country and who are very good at crossword puzzles.
4. USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country but don’t really understand The New York Times. They do, however, like their statistics shown in pie charts.
5. The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn’t mind running the country, if they could find the time - and if they didn’t have to leave Southern California to do it.
6. The Boston Globe is read by people whose parents used to run the country and did a poor job of it, thank you very much.
7. The New York Daily News is read by people who aren’t too sure who’s running the country and don’t really care as long as they can get a seat on the train.
8. The New York Post is read by people who don’t care who is running the country as long as they do something really scandalous, preferably while intoxicated.
9. The Miami Herald is read by people who are running another country but need the baseball scores.
10. The San Francisco Chronicle is read by people who aren’t sure if there is a country or that anyone is running it; but If so, they oppose all that they stand for. There are occasional exceptions if the leaders are handicapped minority feminist atheist dwarfs who also happen to be illegal aliens from any other country or galaxy, provided of course, that they are not Republicans.
11. The National Enquirer is read by people trapped in line at the grocery store.
12. The Seattle Times is read by people who have recently caught a fish and need something to wrap it in.
13. The Key West Citizen is read by people who escaped from the mainland and could care less who runs the country so long as they have enough booze to keep themselves going.
*Of course, this is for people over 45 who still read the newspaper.
AdweekMedia: Best of the 2000s
Holy expansive media lists, Batman. Get yourself comfortable, we may be here for a while. Start here.
Nine Media Heroes I’m Thankful for this Holiday Season
It’s very easy to dismiss today’s journalists as high maintenance and pampered celebrity pundits, unworthy descendants of their beloved and revered Walter Cronkite. And you’d be right in enough most cases. You can blame it on their network bosses and corporate owners, who have reduced much of the “news” to easily digestible distraction nuggets for a woefully uninformed public.
But as much energy as I spend turning off my TV in disgust these days, I’m equally in awe of those who use the airwaves for good, building our understanding of a topic and sometimes even, sorry, advocacy. Good TV, as rare and oxymoronic as that may sound, can produce some of the best narrative to our world. And no matter how much more I consume online, in magazines or books, I’m still a boob tube kid.
So with the holiday festivities bringing us all around TV sets (ahem, I mean Hulu and video streaming) in the coming weeks, this is a good time to celebrate some of the best and brightest we have at camera one. In no particular order, my 2009 media heroes:
RACHEL MADDOW — Maddow is not a new face to diehard MSNBC viewers, having been a frequent guest before she got her own high profile show. Not allowing a poorly researched or factually porous statement—by the Right or Left—to waft by without getting swatted down, Maddow was a formidable pundit but an unlikely nightly host. But that was then, and with her popularity, original wit and anti-TV persona, she’s making it easy to tune out Olbermann’s sorely repetitive Bush Fox News bashing. A tough lesbian liberal thoughtfully dismantling conservative hypocrisy and dogma during prime time? For the Right, that’s got to sting a bit. (@Maddow)
BILL MOYERS — To me, Moyers epitomizes the journalistic hero who takes his powerful role of informing the public to heart. His gray hair and kindly southern demeanor is comforting and his storyteller style is perfect for his hour-long PBS format of Bill Moyers Journal. I can’t imagine who’d replace him if he decided to retire one day (he’s 75). For a dose of what you get with Moyers, just watch his recent report on the LBJ tapes and escalation of the Vietnam War (hint: here we go again). Clearly with a progressive mindset, Moyers is not shy about where he wants you to end up after he’s finished laying out his impassioned case. But you never get the idea that you’ve been convinced—simply informed and illuminated. (Moyers: To Twitter or not to Twitter)
ARIANNA HUFFINGTON — She’s not technically my boss since she doesn’t pay me, nor does she care if I show up for work each day. But I have been a blogger on the HuffPo since early 2008. If you don’t mind sifting through a ton of daily content, there is no deeper archive of current event news, opinion, aggregated content and citizen journalism around. Decry the titillating nipple slip shots and political star fucking if you want, but AH represents, in many ways, the future of journalism. (@HuffingtonPost)
GWEN IFILL — Although she’s been around in DC circles for a while now, Ifill’s national coming out was during the 2008 vice presidential debate that also introduced the world to the wink and smile of Sarah Palin. As moderator of Washington Week, Ifill conducts a round table discussion with some of the best journalists around. It’s a format that allows the cordial sharing of perspectives and expert opinions on wonky policy matters and political acrobatics. As a woman—not to mention one of color—she’s a rarity in the pantheon of political media power brokers. Personally, I’d like to think Ifill was at least in the running for the recently filled Meet the Press slot, now occupied by MSNBC’s David Gregory. Maybe they’ll let her sub one Sunday. (@WashingtonWeek)
JON STEWART and STEPHEN COLBERT — I could cite Jon Stewart’s genius, but that’s just fact at this point. More importantly to me, if it wasn’t for him, I’d be a depressed mess. I know this. I’ve skipped him for a few days and it isn’t pretty. The daily real news is only digestible so long as there’s a chaser of The Daily Show. There’s no way to survive the daily barrage of bickering, stupid newscaster tricks and 2012-level world problems without a Stewart happy ending. I need fake news because the real stuff is just too damn fucked up sometimes. I can only yell at Wolf Blitzer so much before I need Stewart to do it for me. And with much better funnier results. (@The_Daily_Show)
Stephen Colbert is so good that he invented a replica of Stewart’s show (I know, it’s not the same, but in essence) that is just as indispensable daily viewing. Not an easy task to immediately follow TDS. Colbert, besides having one of the sharpest wits on television, is the pseudo right wing to Stewart’s left. It’s obvious when Stewart tears into Sarah Palin, but when Colbert calls her book a “steaming pile of shit,” it’s like her own party is saying it. Sort of. The very best comedians (think Pryor) get their biggest laughs when they speak the truth. The Colbert Report and the Daily Show might be the truest broadcasts best news we have these days. (@StephenTColbert)
CHARLIE ROSE — Charlie Rose is the Larry King of public television—minus the Ms. U.S.A. pageant winners, reality TV stars and celebrity attorneys. If you have status, you’ve sat with Rose. And while this includes film producers, prime ministers and Wall Street dons, it’s the surprises I like. Such as Jay-Z, who’s guested several times and seems to save his best-face-of-rap-music prose for Mr. Rose. Not everybody at Rose’s big wooden table has me glued to my seat, but it’s must see TV when he spends an hour with folks that might soon discover a cure for AIDS, decipher our financial crisis or invent the next Google. Which is almost nightly. (@CharlieRoseShow)
BILL MAHER — Old schoolers remember Maher from his ABC show Politically Incorrect which lived up to its name until the network fired him over some post 9/11 comments. Maher is still bitter about the incident, but his HBO show allows cursing and he has an often A-list cast of guests, so take that, suits. Maher is brash and fearless when it comes to grabbing an issue by the throat even as his guests sometimes stare in shock. He’s not as funny as Stewart, but just as in your face in an attempt to save the world from idiocy. (@BillMaher)
TAVIS SMILEY — There are a ton of reasons I watch Tavis. For one, it’s rare for a black talk show host to get the face time Smiley does with government officials and other players in foreign and domestic policy. Smiley’s nightly PBS show has been as much about the day’s events as they have about percolating pop culture, which he approaches with the inquisitive depth of Charlie Rose. Even an interview with 50 Cent can be a candor-filled eye opener. Outside of Rose, I don’t know of a more eclectic cast of guests (Israel’s U.S. envoy to drummer Sheila E.). This diversity is part of the show’s strength. Another reason I love Smiley is his clear agenda for discussing more thorny issues race. His book The Covenant with Black America was a clarion call for black responsibility and self reliance and he unabashedly uses his PBS pulpit to carve out related conversations and sidebars wherever they fit in. But even without an overt line of discussion, his mere presence in the national media (recently appearing more frequently on Meet The Press) broadens the public dialogue. (@TavisSmiley)
Worth also mentioning: CNN/Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria; most anything on PBS or NPR; and PBS Frontline narrator Will Lyman because how can you doubt anything that voice declares?
Who are you thankful for?
Reporter receives $500k prize for investigating decades old hate crimes
I just saw this guy on Colbert and probably like the rest of the audience I was humbled by his actions. With all the talk about the loss of reporting, journalism and newspapers (Which I’ve written about before), Jerry Mitchell is the type of investigative journalist we really can’t afford to be without.
Watch the videos for the story of how Mitchell, after becoming inspired by the movie Mississippi Burning (1989) cracked open a long dormant murder case. In 1964 three young civil rights activists were brutally murdered by the Ku Klux Klan and the crime was never solved. But through Mitchell’s tenacity 25 years later, the perpetrators were eventually convicted and sent to jail.
Mitchell’s winning of the $500,000 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship won’t save the jobs of thousands of newspaper reporters, but it will at least draw attention to why, even as we embrace new media, we need to find a way to fund and support serious reporting. It’s simply in society’s interest to.
I am paranoid about the internet. And I would be mad to be anything else
Economist editor John Micklethwait on Charlie Rose
Interview: URB Magazine's Raymond Roker Ditches Print
An interview I did with the LA WEEKLY on the announcement of URB going digital. The writer Dennis Romero has followed our career since our first year, having written a long piece on us for the LA Times circa 1991.
“I don’t have sympathy for those displaced by the media shift, and I’m as much a victim of if as anyone. That’s the cost of freedom: If people want to write long-form about music, they need to cultivate an audience that cares. But no crying.”
Knowing me, Dennis quizzes me about music philosophy, whether I’m as passionate today as in the past and what challenges we’ve had and will have in the future. He definitely hits all angles.
Source: blogs.laweekly.com
Maestro Knows
Had lunch with the future today. My new 23-year-old friend Levi. Last name Maestro (or at least that’s what his grandmother called him when he was a kid). But, wait, he’s still a kid. About as old as I was when I started my then print-only magazine URB. And as we move into almost 100% digital land, a kid like Maestro again reminds me why.
Maestro is a skater, something he wants me to remember—as well as all of his fans. But he also happens to be a self taught (I think) video auteur. He shoots, edits and scripts his own video series (Maestro Knows), traveling around the globe to bring back first hand stories of the freshness. Nike granted him an unprecedented video tour of their headquarters. He just returned from Tokyo, and is heading to New York this week for his next season (he produces episodic vignettes just like television—why not?). From there, who knows.
There’s a lot more than can be written about Maestro, but it’s more fun to feel you know him from his personal vlog and first-person adventuring. He’s defined a new media future with him squarely at center focus. His videos, which feature his road trips, friends and heroes—along with some smart product placement—get anywhere from 20-200k views. Maybe not quite prime time numbers, but in the world of viral clips, totally respectable. And definitely not bad for a self-made millennial. All I can say is watch this space.
Building with Levi late Sunday at Insomniac on Beverly Blvd, LA
Maestro Knows - Episode 9 (Nike Campus) from Maestro Knows on Vimeo.
Source: maestroknows.com
Life After Print: URB 2.0 — Huffington Post
My thoughts and observations on media and my magazine brand’s next evolution. Would love to know what you think. Feel free to leave a comment or email me your thoughts. Cheers.
Going mad digital > Amazon.com: Mad Men: Season 2
I was on the “Mad Men” jock early on and definitely singing its praises pre-hype. But somewhere in to Season 2, my DVR acted up and I got totally behind. In frustration, I just stopped watching it, knowing it’d be hard to catch up.
But now that Season 3 has started, I need to stop bitching and catch up. For efficiency’s sake, I’m going for downloads this time. This is one of the most aesthetically well presented shows on TV so I plan to watch the new episodes on my flat screen, but I’ll be getting through the old ones on a 15-inch MacBook Pro just like those crazy kids do. Must. Catch. Up.
Source: amazon.com
