Another Flair Magazine Redo Published

Ivy Baer Sherman saw Flair magazine for the first time in 2003 at an exhibit at the Pratt Manhattan Gallery. Six years later, she has started Vintage magazine, a reprisal of the iconic 1950s magazine. Vintage is published twice a year and has the artsy fold-outs and special inserts that made Flair such a fun read.

According to Folio magazine, the magazine’s revenue source is still unclear.

One huge difference between Vintage and its 1950’s inspiration? Vintage is on Facebook and Twitter. Had she had the chance, you can be sure Fleur Cowles—who died earlier this year—would have been a huge online presence.

Flair was published by Des Moines-based Cowles Publishing and lasted exactly a year, 1950. Fleur wa

s married to Gardner (Mike) Cowles, who bankrolled the project, reputedly losing $2.5 million on it. Let’s wish Ms. Sherman better luck.

Flaunt magazine, another Flair look-alike, has embossed, die-cut covers ad lots of production tricks; it has lasted more than 100 issues. The E.T. Center for Magazine Studies at Drake University has a full run of Flair, plus Fleur Cowles’ book, The Best of Flair and a good selection of Flaunt magazines. Or check my book, The Magazine from Cover to Cover, for a history of Flair.

Metropolitan Home to Close

Metropolitan Home magazine, which started life as Better Homes and Gardens Apartment Ideas magazine, is the latest casualty of the recession. It will cease publication with its December issue, according to a Hachette Filipacchi announcement this morning. Met Home has been published under that title for 26 years. Ad pages for the third quarter were down 35.7 percent from the same period of 2008. The company plans to focus its energies on ELLE Decor.

On another blog, I share an article I published in 1995 about the magazine's history. Read it here.

Drake magazine wins another Pacemaker

From a Drake University news release.

The Associated Collegiate Press has awarded Drake University's student-produced Drake Magazine the ACP Pacemaker Award for Magazine Excellence.

In addition, Drake graduate Brittainey Sieren placed third in the magazine spread design category, and current student Danny Akright received honorable mention in the feature photography category.

Winners were announced at the 88th ACP and Annual College Media Association's National Convention in Austin, Texas, on Saturday, Oct. 31.

"The Pacemaker Award is the most prestigious award in student publishing," said Lori Blachford, the Peggy Fisher and Larry Stelter chair of magazine journalism at Drake. "We are competing against schools all across the nation, so to receive recognition as outstanding magazine of the year from that organization is a real honor."

"This is a national award that puts the Drake student magazine at the top of the pack for student publications," said Kathleen Richardson, director of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication. "Almost all of the other finalists were from bigger schools."

The staff of San Francisco's Wired magazine judged the publications in the magazine excellence category on:

• Art, photography, and graphics
  
• Content
  
• Layout and design
  
• Overall concept or theme
  
• Quality of writing and editing

"The students who work on Drake Magazine gain real-life experience in magazine production," Blachford said. "They start each semester with a collection of blank pages and make all the decisions required to arrive at the end of the semester with a magazine that represents their best work."

Tara Richards, a senior magazine major from Indianola, Iowa, served as the publication's 2008-09 editor in chief.

"I loved working for Drake Magazine," Richards said. "The whole staff was extremely dedicated to the project and we gave our all to make sure the publication was the best it could be."

When asked about her future career, Richards said, "I would love to work as an editor for a magazine or Web site. The experiences I've had at Drake have been invaluable in preparing me for the real world of journalism."

Congratulations to Last Year's Drake Magazine Staff!

Alums on camera: Joe Wiesenfelder

It's always a kick when I turn on the TV and see an alum being interviewed as an expert. Tonight, it was Joe Wiesenfelder (89) of cars.com. Joe was interviewed on the CBS Evening News—this is the third time I have seen him there. This time, the story was about Ford's emergence as a serious competitor in the current car market.

Joe said:

"They [Ford] have to convince the consumers that they make good reliable cars and that is, in some ways, harder than making good, reliable cars," said Joe Wiesenfelder with Cars.com. "It takes a long time."

See the entire story here.

Twenty Tweetable Truths About Magazines

Here's a lively pitch for the industry.  It's an emphasis on the positives about magazines:

Readers love them

Teens love them

Advertisers love them

They do good work

Go magazines!

Musings on the Death of Gourmet

My husband loves to cook and is good at it. Our pantry is full of cookbooks and cooking magazines. Taking up increasing amounts of space, though, are loose sheets of paper—recipes he has printed off the Internet. Why dig through a stack of magazines looking for sweet potato enchiladas (yum!) when all he has to do is Google it?

That is one simplistic explanation for the death this week of Gourmet, after 68 years of publishing. (The magazine was even older than me!) Gourmet was a lush publication offering foodies a major shot of recipes, menus, back stories, and escape from normalcy.

Normalcy, though, has become a fight for many Americans. Just keeping up with mortgage, insurance, and day-to-day costs keeps readers in this recession-stunned country focused on more banal issues than lunch at Berkeley, California’s Chez Panisse. We now eat at Chez Ramen Noodles.

The San Jose Mercury News reports that one of the restaurants featured in Gourmet’s October cover story, The French Laundry in Yountville, California http://www.frenchlaundry.com/, will cause serious damage to your budget--$264 for dinner for one, a single drink, and a tip.

Still, 978,000 print readers remained loyal to Gourmet. I would argue that, in this recession, the only access most readers have to such pricey dining is through their magazines. Magazines have long provided a fantasy function for readers.

Why kill a magazine that still has enough readers to create their own sizable city? Advertisers. Conde Nast has lost 8,000 ad pages so far this year.

So, we have several problems here, all part of a cockamamie magazine business model:

1. Publishers remain dependent on advertisers who really could care less about a title beyond its reputed appeal to buyers of their products rather than on readers of the magazine who are committed and loyal.

Early in their history, magazines were supported entirely by readers—advertising was a byproduct of the industrial revolution. Perhaps it is time for more daring publishers to ask readers to pay more, thus allowing them to get off the advertising dole. Well, it’s been time for that for a few decades.

2. Publishers who give away valuable content on the Internet. That cat is so far out of the bag that getting him back is going to cause of few folks to get their editorial hands seriously scratched. It might be time, though, to suffer a few wounds rather than cutting their hands off completely. Check out Gourmet's free recipes online.

3. Out-of-control executive pay and profit margins. As in other industries, the multi-million dollar salaries of CEOs and publishers continues, while the worker bees face job losses and pay cuts.

Update on Jobs

Reports continue to be mixed on the job front. Some magazines and websites are hiring--or at least searching. Some, most recently Conde Nast, are cutting. Those searching include:

Minonline has a couple new editorial jobs open.

As does mediabistro.

And monster.com.

Also, alum Lexi Walters sends word that familyfun.com has relaunched.

Send me your good news. We're all tired of the bad.

Alum Update: Jennie Dorris

Jennie Dorris shares her experience and knowledge about individual health insurance, for Denver's 5280 magazine. It's especially current, given today's health care debate.

Alum Update: Mike Mettler

Earlier this summer, Mike Mettler and his magazine, Sound & Vision, moved across town—from Hachette Filipacci to Bonnier Corporation. As part of the move, he redesigned the magazine, making it perfect-bound and giving it a new logo. Mike talks about the redesign to Folio.

ReadyMade's Take on Apartment Life

Alum Rachel DeSchepper sent me this article on Apartment Life magazine, a wonderful icon of the 1970s. Many of you sat through my discussions of that magazine, so you might be interested in ReadyMade's look back at the publication. And for those of you in Des Moines, stop by the E.T. Meredith Center for Magazine Studies, 111 Meredith Hall on the Drake campus, and look at old copies of Apartment Life, Metropolitan Home, and Mother Earth News.

Drake Magazine Alumni Update: Abbey Klaassen, Kelly Roberson, John August

Abbey Klaassen, digital editor of Ad Age, explains how the PR community can best work with Ad Age.

Kelly Roberson, freelance writer and editor, just sent her son off to kindergarten; her letter to Theo was published on The New York Times' Motherlode blog.

Screenwriter John August is writing the big-screen version of Preacher.  He also gives advice on screening writing on his site,  johnaugust.com.  (Full disclosure:  John graduated from Drake's J-School, but not in magazines.  I list him here because he was editor of Drake magazine.)

Helpful site for freelancers

Freelancers, check out:

AbsoluteWrite, with some good ideas on markets and how to approach them.  It's a handy little site in which freelancers help one another. 

 

Job seekers: Post your resume

Looking for a job?  Post your resume free at:

 Minonline

Mediabistro

Careerbuilder

Monster

Tina Brown: Fear for the future of the content, not just the medium

Tina Brown says our concern should not be just with the future of magazines or newspapers, but the future of journalistic integrity, which is increasingly diminished when content is free.  Brown spoke to Chicago Tribune's Phil Rosenthal. Read it here.