Revolution 10.0: The iBrett from iDiot is out now! Nice comment from Ahoi Polloi! More also here…

Ten Years in 2 Minutes: Covering the Decade in Magazine Covers. Via

Is this the future of print media? “In the latest example of finding media innovation where you’d least expect it, CBS is embedding a video player in a print ad in Entertainment Weekly that will serve up a buffet of its fall TV lineup”, reports Wired. The CBS foray into a print-digital alliance plays full-motion video at a crisp resolution. The ad, dubbed by CBS and partner Pepsi Max “the first-ever VIP (video-in-print) promotion”, works like one of those audio greeting cards. Opening the page activates the player, which is a quarter-inch–thick screen seen through a cutaway between two pages concealing the larger circuit board underneath.” Via

What does it take for a product to sell? Besides an infinity of things, there two that are most important: need and desire. Another couple of questions: why is mainstream media in so much trouble? Because people don’t need it anymore (there’s a lot of all-you-can-eat-information on the net) and most publications are far from being desirable. The last question: why do independent magazines sell? The answer for this is quite obvious but I would love to read your comments here.

The problem with most newspapers across the globe today is that their editors are too ‘closed minded’ to see past the 70’s. People simply don’t need an ‘old’ newspaper anymore. By the time someone gets out to buy the day’s newspaper all the breaking news have been heard or seen or read on a screen.

Do I believe that this is the end of print age? Not really, not even the end of newspapers. What every newsroom must do (and this is asking a lot) is to find the ‘iphone effect’ on their publication. What must one publish to transform the boring, not-needed, old publication into a desire object? Find this and you’ll be publishing a very successful ‘old medium’.

To start – and you MUST start now – you can see a lot of independent magazines and fanzines. Really see and read them. And then start trying; as design thinking can teach you, this is an on going process, a trial and error curve. It’s a fun path to travel and one every reader will appreciate.

What makes a publication desirable? Creativity! Innovation! What makes Monocle magazine ‘sail’ past this crisis is the fact that; not only it’s beautifully written and designed; but also because every page is full of good ideas, of news that you might not even consider to be interested in before reading it. That’s creativity working on a newsroom, to find the different story, the different approach to an ‘old’ story.

The only way to become the object of desire for an audience is to give them your most, all of your sweat and tears on a daily bases. Desire is having every reader eager for the next issue. That’s our goal – for everybody working on a newsroom – and the public has already told us that what we have been doing so far is not working.

Like Apple going back to the drawing board to reinvent the phone, newsrooms must reinvent communication with an audience. To do so, creativity and innovation are the recipes and everyone’s brilliant minds are the ingredients. Working together for something desirable.

Jeff Jarvis, author of “What Would Google Do?”, media blogger and director of the interactive journalism program at the City University of New York’s new Graduate School of Journalism, wrote an interesting article about magazines:

“A few years ago, I was asked to speak on a panel at a magazine industry meeting. A few days before the event, the organizer called me and said, “Uh, Jeff, are you going to say that magazines are doomed? And if you are, could you not come?” So in a rare moment of preparing for a panel, I actually thought about what I thought and I concluded that magazines weren’t doomed. They have the unique value of slickness and focus that their publishers always brag about. And, I reasoned, magazines already were communities and so they should be perfectly positioned for the community-based internet. Magazines are collections of people who are interested in the same stuff. The challenge for an editor is to figure out ways to enable them to share with each other, to become a platform for that community.

Afraid I was wrong. Or at least, it’s hard to name a magazine that has done a good job becoming that community platform. The problem, as I said of newspapers in relation to GeoCities and MySpace the other day, is that magazines can’t stop thinking of themselves as content. They’re not communities.” Continue here.

Gruner + Jahr, Europe’s biggest magazine publisher, launched a new magazine for parents in Germany: Nido. In these days kind of courageous - also because a similar magazine project from the Süddeutsche Zeitung (”Wir“) was stopped only after the first issue. Chief editor and developer is Timm Klotzek - also the chief editor of the most successful new magazine launch of the last years: “Neon“. His mission: to repeat the track record of “Neon” - and to create sort of a “Post-Neon”-reader, after the happy single life comes the happy family. In a first interview Klotzek spoke about his philosophy: “Nido hält sich fern von Pflege-, Ernährungs- und Erziehungsthemen. Das ist nicht unsere Kompetenz, da können wir anderen Print- und zunehmend auch Internetangeboten, nicht das Wasser reichen. Nido ist eltern-, nicht kindzentriert. Emotionaler Magazin-Journalismus, Unterhaltung und Inspiration. Wie kann ich Familien- und Berufsleben unter einen Hut kriegen? Jetzt ein Haus kaufen oder doch weiter mieten? Wie hat sich mein Sexleben verändert durch das Kinderkriegen?”

The magazine has five department: Society, Psychology, Travel & Cooking, Economy & Money, Fashion & Products - and there is a children’s story that parents can read to their kids, fashion for hip parents, an article about adoption, going on vacation with kids etc. The price will be 3,90 Euro, they want to sell at least 60 000 copies, and after this first dummy the next issue will be out in october. A new sucess story? Spiegel Online doubts: “Wohin das Auge im Heft wandert, es erblickt allzu oft keimzellige Bionade-Bürgerlichkeit, wie sie der Berliner Ex-Szene-Bezirk Prenzlauer Berg die letzten Jahre stilbildend geprägt hat. Wahnsinnig geschmackssicher sieht da alles aus, eine Modestrecke zeigt stylische Eltern, wie sie mit ihren stylischen Kindern zu deren Lieblingssongs abtanzen, eine andere Traum-Kinderzimmer, die wirken, als hätte Pippi Langstrumpf mal fix Innenarchitektur studiert.”

The winner of this year´s Gruner + Jahr creative award (Grüne Wiese) has been announced this week: The first place goes to “BEEF!” - a cooking/lifestyle magazine for men. Btw: The winner from the last competition is “Dogs” - a lifestyle magazine for doglovers. “BEEF!” is about food, kitchen, adventures, technique, gadgets - and a lot of meat. The second place goes to an online project (“My-next-challenge.de”), a personal Online-Coaching for Marathon/Triathlon. And the third place goes to “Businesspunk” - a business magazine concept for alpha animals; the claim was something like “work hard, party hard”, target group were young and trendy trainees, bankers and consultants, on the search for girls, money and coke. Ok, the concept was really ironic, but wasn`t this exactly the attitude of bankers that were responsable for the worldwide financial collaps?

Besides this big corporate award, there are some individuals working on some promising new concepts. For example: Raban Ruddigkeit und Jan Peter are working on a new magazine called “MGZN” - they want to collect the best textes from other magazines and newspapers - and create a “magazine of the magazines”. After 1000 orders they`ll start to produce Mgzn.

And Martin Schmitz Kuhl, Andrea Ruhland and Christian Sälzer are working on a new television and culture magazine: “PROGRAMM”. And yes, it´s true: Not everything on TV is shit - but all TV-magazines are looking like shit. The dummy is online and looks really great - now they are waiting to be discovered by a major publishing house.

Mainstream print media is dying like flies: Yesterday Vanity Fair closed down their german edition. “Conde Nast, publishers of Vanity Fair, said it would stop producing the magazine (est. February 2007) in Germany due to the downturn in the global economy. Circulation has also fallen sharply, from about 500,000 an issue to 120,000 an issue, Deutsche Welle reported Wednesday. Conde Nast Chief Executive Officer Jonathan Newhouse said: “In a normal economic climate, we would have bravely carried on publishing Vanity Fair,” Newhouse said. “In today’s bleak economic climate, it is impossible. We did everything we could. We bought in talented people, invested in content and advertising and committed a significant amount of time, money and energy. But in the end we failed.” Glossy Lifestyle is over! Long live independent and real media!