Since I already drilled a nerve with What Newspapers Still Don’t Understand About The Web, which is on its way to becoming one of my most linked posts ever — and since everyone loves a sequel — I thought I would do a follow up for magazines. The lessons, of course, apply to every [...]

It’s really stunning how the more things change the more they stay the same in media. Blogs, perhaps the archetypal new medium, are showcasing their feed subscriber numbers, which turn out to be potentially rife with garbage, just like magazine subscriber lists. What’s worse, just like the magazines that pile up unread in people’s homes, [...]

Business 2.0 has had another trend defining staff departure, following the departure of blogger Om Malik last year to launch his own media company. Now, the news is that Business 2.0 editor Owen Thomas will be the new editor of Valleywag, the tech gossip blog run by gossip monger Nick Denton.
What I find interesting about [...]

Magazines are trying to evolve into digital media brands to stay relevant and vibrant in a digital media world. This evolution in many case includes online video, which is a lot easier said than done — producing video content that creates unique value for readers is not part of the traditional magazine’s core competency.
One [...]

I’ve been pondering this quote from Time Warner CEO Dick Parsons, dismissing rumors that Time Warner is considering selling off Time Inc.:
“I like our publishing business, I like the magazine business and I like the fact that it’s portable and can be moved into digital,” he said. “I am not an advocate of selling Time [...]

Here are some watershed moments that mark the radical transformation of the publishing industry to a non-print-centric business:
1. New York Times becomes an aggregator
The New York Times, paper of record and one of the last great bastions of the belief that one entity can create all the content that anyone needs, has finally capitulated to [...]

It has been confirmed (by Rafat) that InfoWorld will cease to publish in print. Colin Crawford at IDG foreshadowed this rapid transformation. The news about InfoWorld is extremely significant for two reasons.
First, if InfoWorld can make the transition from print publishing to online publishing without going out of business, without diminishing its value to readers, [...]

The death of print publishing is coming, it’s just a matter of whether it happens in 5 years, 10 years, or 15 years. I’m betting it happens sooner than anyone expects. Colin Crawford, the SVP of online for IDG, posted some stunning figures:
Today the absolute dollar growth of our online revenues now exceeds the decline [...]

Business 2.0 editor Josh Quittner pushes back on Chris Anderson’s treatise on “radical transparency” in magazine publishing:
I don’t mean to be too much of an old-media-reactionary running dog. And some of the things he says make immediate sense. In fact, I asked all my writers and editors to start blogging a few months ago. (See [...]

Unbowed by its failed magazine print ad program, Google has cut a deal with 50 major newspapers to sell remnant print ad space to its enormous roster of AdWords advertisers. Here’s the upside and downside for Google and the newspaper industry:

Upside
Google — Even if newspaper print advertising continues to decline, Google’s share will be greater [...]

I thought it was some kind of late summer April Fool’s joke — MySpace is looking into starting a print magazine. That’s right, a PRINT magazine. Other commentators have already made the obligatory comparisons to bubble era magazines from Yahoo, Ebay, and infamously from Pets.com, and they’ve observed how increasingly Old Media MySpace’s strategy seems [...]

A eulogy is a speech of praise, typically — although not necessarily — for the dead, which seems fitting for a post about the lingering charms and strengths of Old Media.
According to a recent survey, New Media still has a long way to go to earn the public’s trust, at least in the UK:
Respondents were [...]

As usual, Google watchers miss the forest for the trees when it comes to Google’s intersection with traditional media. Google announced the launch of Google Co-op, which clearly has one strategic purpose — destroy the opportunity that magazines and other niche media believe they have to compete with Google by creating vertical searches.
Here are [...]

Conde Nast has a problem unique among Old Media companies — they’re out of ad space — “premium” ad space that is:
As much as that might sound like closeout-sale speak, it’s actually a positive sign, and an indication that the company’s $3.5 million marketing campaign might have been worth the investment. “Out of inventory” supposedly [...]

Old Media executives have been stepping forward lately to assert their will to survive — even thrive — in a New Media world. Only time will tell whether Old Media brands can indeed survive, but there is ample evidence of forward thinking and emerging digital strategy.
From Time Inc. president Ann Moore:
We will continue to look [...]

It’s now conventional wisdom that the future of media is digital and on-demand — content creators no longer own the distribution channels. But the economic center of gravity in media has not shifted to reflect this change. The laws of media dynamics will force the center to shift — advertising dollars always follow the audience, [...]

There have always been generation gaps, especially when it comes to politics, but if you believe the latest hype about the Digital Generation (such as this Times article), the new generation gap is more like a gapping chasm. The argument goes that the Digital Generation doesn’t just consume media differently, they also think different:
“What’s hard [...]

The problem with the current debate over Old Media vs. New Media is that most people see it in binary terms — either Old Media dies and the web becomes a completely open marketplace of commoditized content (as Jeff Jarvis and countless others have argued), or consumers rebel and cling to the structures of Old [...]

You can’t blame print publishers for having a bad case of cognitive dissonance as they try to figure out the future of their business. Try digesting this:
From BusinessWeek, January 9, 2006, page 29 (for those of you following in print), Call it Gutenberg’s Revenge:
Upstart Internet publishers, helped by low costs that go with signing [...]