Gli editori statunitensi Time inc, Conde Nast e Hearst, secondo le indiscrezioni raccolte dal New York Times, si sarebbero consorziati, formando una società ad hoc con quote paritarie, per lanciare una edicola virtuale.

Il quotidiano d’oltreoceano, citando fonti “bene informate sui fatti”, riporta che il consorzio di editori dovrebbe realizzare un sistema, un software, per la visione degli articoli delle riviste sui diversi supporti digitali quali smartphones ed e- reader.

L’edicola virtuale è stata ribattezzata l’iTunes dell’informazione, si tratterebbe di un marketplace per i singoli contenuti sul quale gli editori dovrebbero avere piena gestione e controllo dei contenuti come il servizio per scaricare le canzoni. L’Observer riporta che con questo sistema sarebbe possibile acquistare anche le edizioni cartacee.

Che la mobilità possa essere il veicolo per riuscire ad ottenere il pagamento delle notizie digitali è l’ ipotesi che attualmente parrebbe più plausibile. Un primo tentativo è stato effettuato all’inizio di questo mese proprio da una delle case editrici che parteciperebbe alla joint venture che ha reso disponibile per iPhone l’edizione integrale di GQ a 2,99 dollari. E’ evidente come il consorzio nascente rappresenti, sotto questo profilo, l’evidenza del timore degli editori di un percorso individuale a rischio di fallimento.

Credo che questo, come altri, siano tentativi, esperimenti, doverosi che consentiranno di comprendere meglio le effettive disponibilità e reazioni dei lettori, ma non penso che siano iniziative di sviluppo e riqualificazione effettiva.

Sono molto scettico sulle effettive possibilità di successo di questa iniziativa essendo assolutamente concorde con quanto afferma l’ottimo Marco Bardazzi.

A consortium of magazine publishers including Time Inc. and Condé Nast are plan to jointly build an online newsstand for publications in multiple digital formats, according to people with knowledge of the plans. The formation of a new company to run the online newsstand — sometimes characterized as an “iTunes for magazines” — may be announced in early December. Time, Condé Nast, Hearst and Meredith all intend to be equity partners in the new company, although the deals have not yet been signed. In the face of slumping print circulations for many magazines, the publishing houses are eager to exert some control over digital readership, said people at the companies, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about the plans. Some newspaper owners have also expressed interest in the joint venture. The new magazine company would, in theory, make it easy to buy print and electronic copies of publications like The New Yorker, Sports Illustrated, Esquire and Better Homes and Gardens from a single Web site. While mostly leaving the hardware to others, the alliance of competing publishers would develop software standards for magazine viewing on iPhones, BlackBerrys, e-book readers and other platforms, people with knowledge of the plans said

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/25/business/media/25mag.html?_r=1&ref=media

The magazine industry’s major players are about to form a new company that would allow them to take the digital future into their own hands.

According to The New York Observer, the company would make up one of the biggest alliances among rival publishers ever formed in print media, with Time Inc., Condé Nast and Hearst all expected to join, houses that together publish more than 50 magazines, including The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Vogue, Time, People, Sports Illustrated, Esquire and O, The Oprah Magazine.

The new venture will be charged with setting up a seamless distribution channel for digital magazines across the iPhone, BlackBerry and other digital devices, creating a standard template for advertisers and readers. The group doesn’t plan to create a single digital e-reader product; instead the publishers want to set up an iTunes-like storefront for magazine content. In addition to electronic versions of mag content, the storefront would also allow for print subscriptions and sales.

I think it would be awesome and so convenient to have just one digital destination for all of these mags but I’m really missing ELLE here!

What do you think? Let me know @twitter.com/HauteCouturista!

What race is Bill White running, exactly?

I produce a podcast for Hearst and the Houston Chronicle called Washington Chronicles. In the latest installment, Washington bureau chief Rick Dunham and reporter Joe Holley discuss the vicious political race-hopping rumors swirling around Houston Mayor Bill White.

Listen to the podcast in its original context at Texas on the Potomac.

There’s undenial appeal in busting myths.

As I write in Getting It Wrong, my forthcoming book on media-driven myths, “Debunking can be an entertaining and even faintly mischievous pursuit.”

A hint of that appeal can be detected in a commentary posted recently at fairfieldweekly.com, the online site of a free weekly newspaper in Connecticut.

The author writes: “In recent weeks, while researching a publishing project on the myths of American history, I have combed through an unending supply of stories that, upon closer scrutiny, simply do not hold, or even add, up.”

He says “the swiftness with which Americans are willing to accept, believe and disseminate myths would be touching if it wasn’t so dangerous.”

To illustrate that point, he cites “the sinking of the battleship Maine, the immediate cause of the Spanish-American War. The explosion was caused by a fire in the ammunition hold, not by Spanish sabotage. Doesn’t matter; we wanted the war, so [William Randolph] Hearst sold the sabotage myth to the American people, they quickly bought it hook, line and sinker, and we ended up an empire.”

Wreckage of the Maine, 1898 (Library of Congress)

In addressing a purported myth, the author indulges in and reiterates another, even more profound myth — that Hearst’s coverage of the Maine’s destruction in Havana harbor in early 1898 was decisive to the U.S. declaration of war against Spain.

It’s a tempting and very tidy explanation about why the United States went to war. But it’s decidedly in error.

As I wrote in Yellow Journalism: Puncturing the Myths, Defining the Legacies (2001),  Hearst and his newspapers are “not to blame for the Spanish-American-War.” They did not force—they could not have forced—the United States into hostilities with Spain over Cuba in 1898.

The destruction of the Maine may have focused American public opinion on Cuba, but it was scarcely the principal reason in the decision to go to war.

Rather, the conflict was result of a convergence of forces that were far beyond the control or influence of Hearst and his papers.

The war with Spain was the consequence of a prolonged, three-sided impasse: Spain, for domestic political reasons, could not agree to grant independence for Cuba. The rebel movement in Cuba, which had been fighting Spanish forces for three years before the United States declared war, would accept nothing less than independence. And the United States, for political and economic reasons, could tolerate no longer the disruption and the human rights abuses caused by Spain’s harsh and ineffective efforts to put down the rebellion.

A Cuban rebel executed by Spanish firing squad, 1897

By early 1898, the Spanish had forced thousands and thousands of Cuban non-combatants — women, children, and old men — into garrison towns, in an attempt to deprive the rebels of support. Many thousands of these civilians died of disease and malnutrition, at what the Spanish called “reconcentration” centers.

This human rights disaster was well-known to, and often a topic of coverage by, U.S. newspapers, including Hearst’s. In many respects, the U.S. war with Spain was a humanitarian crusade, to end the abuses on Cuba.

In addition, there is no agreement among historians that the Maine blew up because of “a fire in the ammunition hold.” A study commissioned by the National Geographic Society and released in 1998 reports that chemical analysis pointed to an external source, such as an underwater mine, as the cause of the deadly explosion that destroyed the battleship.

WJC

Hearst Magazines Digital Media’s portfolio of web sites (including Cosmopolitan.com, Esquire.com, GoodHousekeeping.com, Redbookmag.com, MarieClaire.com, Seventeen.com, RealBeauty.com, TheDailyGreen.com, etc.) seek HTML-savvy interns to assist our content team this spring (Jan-May), in New York City. Applicants for this competitive internship program must be able to receive college credit – the position is unpaid – and be available to intern two or three full days a week. Duties of a web intern vary by site but generally include: producing content, writing content, prize fulfillment, researching special projects, writing headlines, mastering the brand’s voice in social media, cropping photos, tracking web analytics, etc.

If interested, please submit a cover letter noting your HTML/web experience, your preferred web site placement, a link to a piece of online content you love, and a resume. Email to Tammy Tibbetts, ttibbetts@hearst.com.

Editor’s Note:  Are you a NYWICI member looking for interns? Submit your internship posting to nextBLOG! Email a description to nywicinext@gmail.com.

According to Folio, Food Network Magazine came to fruition after the major economic crash of 2008. The magazine launched with a modest circulation of 300,000, focused solely on the customers who count, the reader, rather than counting customers,and soared to new levels of circulation in an atmosphere of continuous declines in circulation. To date, no other magazine launch can match what Food Network did this last year. Within a short period, this magazine’s circ ran to over a million, which took Gourmet by comparison, nearly 74 years to reach.

Today I entered my work in the Hearst Journalism Awards Program. I almost missed the deadline but thanks to overnight shipping it looks as though the DVD’s will make it to California on time. I entered my work in the television features reporting catogory. I entered the Cherry Crusades piece which is displayed on an earlier post and also this Madden Tournament package I created this fall. Check it out!

Mitchell Scherzer

You can learn from Hearst. According to the New York Post, the publishing house for Marie Claire, Esquire and Popular Mechanics, stowed away $1 billion for emergency purposes.

Being that we’re hearing about it now, Hearst has utilized its savings, investing in its new CFO – former Goldman Sachs investment banker and Managing Director of The Silverfern Group – Mitchell Scherzer, who replaces Ronald Doerfler. Luckily the subjugated CFO will retain a job as senior VP of finance and administration.

With the grim outlook of the publishing industry, I’d say that Hearst CEO Frank Bennack, made the all the right moves. Add to that, the debt-free Hearst has $7 billion in revenue (despite the slump in profits this year).

             Hace exactamente una semana, unas extrañas e inéditas ganas por poner orden a un closet confuso y sin lógica me atacaron de un segundo a otro. Creo que desde que esta habitación se convirtió en mi refugio, jamás puse orden a ese armario. Libros amontonándose, revistas, fotocopias, juguetes, baratijas y vinilos se acomodaban como el espacio les permitiera. Pero ya no más. Con un dinamismo que ya me quisiera todos los días, puse orden a ese closet que, para mi gusto, quedó bastante armonioso en sólo unos minutos. Muchas cosas que en su momento guardé como valiosas, lamentablemente terminaron en la basura. Un trabajo sucio pero alguien tenía que hacerlo.

William Randolph Hearst

  Lo urgente de la tarea se debió más que nada a una serie de libros que estaban dando vueltas por varios rincones de mi dormitorio y que era necesario acomodar para por fin tener una biblioteca (bastante timorata comparada con otras que sí son bibliotecas, pero con una muy buena selección, según yo). Así, mezclé viejos títulos como “Mujercitas”, “Oliver Twist” o una selección de Molière, con obras más contemporáneas como “El Libro de los Abrazos”, “La Historia Oculta de la Transición” o “Crónicas Marcianas”. Y para mi regocijo, fueron apareciendo entrañables escritos, que creía olvidados, sobre periodismo y de periodistas: “Memorias de un Reporter”, una selección de enviciantes crónicas de Tito Mundt, Premio Nacional de Periodismo en 1956, un hombre demasiado aventurero (si es que se puede ser demasiado aventurero) que tuvo envidiables tertulias con muchos de los más pulentitos de la historia reciente; también “Crímenes bajo Sospecha”, el trabajo de un queridísimo amigo, que se inmiscuyó en las interrogantes que quedaron dando vueltas en los casos policiales quizás más emblemáticos de la Quinta Región (sí, sí. Crónica roja. ¿Y?); además, un imponente libro con las mejores instantáneas del siglo XX tomadas por la Associated Press, un regalo que otros dos queridísimos amigos me hicieron cuando me entregaron ese cartón al que llaman “título” (“Supongo que, cuando vaya al más allá y me detenga ante la puerta dorada, la primera persona que encuentre será un corresponsal de Associated Press”, dijo alguna vez Gandhi).

            Y entre fotocopias y textos sobre cazadores de noticias, teóricos de la información y filósofos de las comunicaciones, además de trabajos universitarios (para los que saben, apareció “¡Por las barbas de Neptuno!, un clásico), me topé con una anécdota que siempre encendió mi jocosidad, aunque entre líneas mostraba lo crudo que puede llegar a ser la batalla entre los medios y el poco escrupuloso ejercicio del periodismo en tiempos de guerra, contexto en el que a muchos les crecen los colmillos cual jote tras su presa. Además, sus protagonistas fueron unos verdaderos niños taimados, de esos a los que dan ganas de pegarles una buena patada en el culo. Metafóricamente hablando, claro. Y dice:

Joseph Pulitzer

  Cuando en 1898 estalló la guerra entre Estados Unidos y España por la independencia de Cuba, el New York Journal y el New York World, ambos diarios de las tierras del Tío Sam, se peleaban la supremacía por la circulación en el país. El primero, pertenecía a William Randolph Hearst, el magnate de las comunicaciones en el cual está inspirado “El Ciudadano Kane”, y que se mandó la frasesita “usted provea las fotos, que yo proveeré la guerra” cuando uno de sus fotógrafos apostados en La Habana le escribió diciéndole que era bastante improbable que la guerra se desatara. El segundo, era de Joseph Pulitzer que, hasta donde sé, no se mandó una frasesita como ésa para el bronce, pero su encarnizada lucha con Hearst creó lo que se llama la “Prensa Amarilla”, y para muchos, la guerra hispano-estadounidense fue producto del uso de fuentes fraudulentas y de hechos ficticios de estas dos maravillas. Irónicamente, después de la muerte de Pulitzer se crearon los premios que llevan su nombre para premiar las obras de más alta distinción. ¿Qué tal?

            El asunto es que el Journal sospechaba que el World estaba robando sus noticias. Y no encontraron nada mejor que jugarles una pequeña triquiñuela. Inventaron a un oficial español muerto en un bombardeo de nombre Reflipe W. Theneuz. Y como el diario de Hearst no andaba tan perdido, el World obviamente publicó la noticia. Y afírmate los chitecos: el Journal reveló que Reflipe W. leído al revés era “we pilfer” (o sea, “nosotros hurtamos”) y Theneuz vendría siendo “the news” (“las noticias”). Y cual prepúber con su virilidad puesta en duda, Pulitzer devolvió la mano. El World publicó el nombre de otro fiambre ficticio: Lister A. Raah. Como era lógico, el Journal metió mano y también lo público. ¿Quién era ese loquito? Sólo un anagrama para “Hearst a liar” (“Hearst es un mentiroso”).

           Y entre medio, la credulidad de la gente mientras espera ser informada. Qué bonito, ¿no?

The  media-driven myth of William Randolph Hearst’s purported vow to “furnish the war” with Spain is as delicious as it is tenacious.

The myth is cited in the “E-bits” column in the November 2009 issue of The Digital Journalist. The columnist writes: “The godfather of yellow journalism, Hearst purportedly said to an illustrator he sent to cover a revolution that wasn’t happening in 1898, ‘You furnish the pictures, I’ll furnish the war.’”

It’s a story almost too good not to be true, almost too delicious to be false.

But it’s almost certainly apocryphal. As I write in the forthcoming Getting It Wrong,  the story lives on despite a nearly complete absence of supporting documentation. It lives on even though the telegram that supposedly contained Hearst’s vow has never turned up. It lives on even though Hearst denied ever sending such a message.

It lives on despite an irreconcilable internal inconsistency: It would have been absurd for Hearst to vow to “furnish the war” because war—specifically, the Cuban rebellion against Spain’s colonial rule—was the very reason Hearst sent the illustrator, Frederic Remington, to Cuba in the first place. Remington was in Cuba in early 1897, at a time when anyone reading U.S. newspapers would have been well aware that Cuba was a theater of a nasty war. By then, Spain had sent nearly 200,000 soldiers in a failed attempt to put down the rebellion, which in 1898 gave rise to the Spanish-American War.

Hearst’s famous vow has achieved unique status as an all-purpose anecdote, useful in illustrating any number of media sins and shortcomings. It has been invoked to illustrate the media’s willingness to compromise impartiality, promote political agendas, and indulge in sensationalism. It has been used, more broadly, to suggest the media’s capacity to inject malign influence into international affairs.

And it’s as tenacious as any media-driven myth.

WJC

With its circulation falling faster than that of any other major U.S. newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle is determined to set the pace in a flashier way: It’s about to become the first general-interest daily to print its editions on high-quality glossy paper.

The new look, scheduled to debut in Monday’s newspaper, is part of the Chronicle’s effort to create a more visually appealing newspaper as more readers turn to the Internet for free information and entertainment.

The magazine-style glossy paper would make its print edition more pleasing to read and could help the newspaper attract more advertisers looking to make their products shine.

The Chronicle, the largest newspaper in technology-driven northern California, has been hard hit by the migration to the Internet. Its weekday circulation plunged nearly 26 percent from a year ago to an average of 251,782 during the April-September period, more than any other big-city newspaper in the United States.

The decline extended a pattern that has been unfolding throughout the decade. In 2001, the Chronicle’s weekday circulation stood at 527,000.

Despite the latest circulation losses, Chronicle management says the newspaper is in far better financial shape than it was last year when the publication lost about $50 million, prompting its owner, Hearst Corp., to threaten a sale or closure in February. The turnaround since then has been driven by painful cost-cutting that eliminated hundreds of jobs this year and by higher newspaper prices.

The Chronicle now charges $7.75 per week for home delivery, up from $4.75 per week last year, and a $1 on the newsstand, up from 75 cents. That has helped offset some of the industrywide declines in advertising sales—still the main source of newspaper revenue even as readers are asked to foot a larger part of production costs. The Chronicle is now making money in some weeks, something it rarely did in recent years, according to Mark Adkins, the newspaper’s president. The newspaper is taking advantage of its newfound prosperity by making improvements, such as the switch to a slightly thinner type of glossy paper than what is used in magazines. The glossy paper will be used on the Chronicle’s front page as well as the first page of most other sections. It will also show up on some pages inside the newspaper.

Because glossy paper usually is more expensive than traditional newsprint, it’s unlikely the Chronicle would be making such a move without some advertisers already lined up to help foot the bill, said newspaper analyst Ken Doctor of Outsell Inc.

The Chronicle confirmed it has secured some advertising commitments for the new glossy format, but it would not provide details or discuss the paper’s costs.

The switch also is another sign of how newspapers are targeting their print editions at niche markets as their circulation shrinks. In this case, Doctor said the Chronicle seems to be focusing on older, more affluent readers—a demographic more likely to appreciate spiffier paper. It’s also an audience prized by advertisers selling luxury products.

Some trade publications such as Variety and Hollywood Reporter already print on glossy paper.

The Chronicle is sprucing up just as two of the nation’s three largest newspapers are aggressively courting the San Francisco Bay area’s affluent residents and high-end advertisers. The New York Times introduced a special Bay area edition last month and The Wall Street Journal is launching one on Thursday.

Proclaiming itself as “The Voice of The West,” the Chronicle has had a tendency to stand out from other newspapers since its inception 144 years ago. It started to print its sports section on green paper decades ago and has a history of quirky headlines such as “A Great City’s People Forced to Drink Swill” in a story about the quality of coffee in San Francisco restaurants.

The Chronicle began laying the groundwork for the move to glossy paper in July when it closed its own presses and shifted production to a $200 million printing plant run by an outside contractor.

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1004032959

Photo: Getty Images

It’s heartwarming when competitors band together (for the moment) during a time of desperation, which in this case pertains to saving a severely crippled publishing industry. But Hollywood-esque moments aside, business is business and editors are forced out of magazine jobs as often as the drug addicts from my high school back in the day.

Hearst president Cathy Black, Time Inc. chairman Ann Moore and Wenner Media chairman Jann Wenner are said to be in talks for a marketing campaign promoting the publishing industry’s cause in an effort to save face and jobs.

In the meantime, “Time Inc. is quietly leading a charge to create an industry-wide digital storefront to sell magazine editions for future magazine-friendly e-readers. Meredith, Condé Nast and Hearst have been in on the discussions.” [Mediaweek]

Please let this work? I have a little over an year before I’m thrown into the realities of post-college life. I fear a life of vodka and ramen noodles.

Think lavish palaces and imposing bastions are strictly Old World? Think again.

Hearst Castle, San Simeon, CA

In our proudly egalitarian American minds, castles are an aristocratic symbol of Old Europe, or maybe ancient Asia. But there are at least two Old World castles here in the New World — and you won’t need your passport to visit either of them.

One is Hearst Castle in California, a few hours’ drive north of Los Angeles. The other is Morro Castle in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

The first was a monument to one family’s wealth and power. The other was a massive “We ain’t playin’!” fortress with stone walls 18 feet thick.

Hearst Castle overlooks the southern end of state Route 1, aka the Pacific Coast Highway or — as most Californians know it — Highway 1. You’ve seen this stretch of road in at least a few dozen car commercials on TV over the years, but nothing equals seeing it for yourself.

The drive getting there, from north or south, is literally too lovely for words. If you chose to skip the castle entirely and just keep on going, few who’ve ever driven this highway would blame you.

But don’t do that.

You need to see this place — not just to drink in the incredible opulence, but to touch a big piece of modern American history. In their time, the Hearsts weren’t just major figures in the media. They practically were the media.

There are those who believe, with some justification, that they deliberately used their influence to push the United States into an expansionist war with Spain in 1898.

The movie Citizen Kane, widely considered one of the greatest films ever made, all but made a target of the life and deeds of the family patriarch, William Randolph Hearst.

(It also made a legend out of Orson Welles, who wrote, produced, directed and starred in it!)

If you’re one of those who insists that America has never had its own royalty, what you learn here about the Hearst family just might change your mind.

Even in this era of mega-mansions and MTV Cribs, the splendor and comfort in which the Hearsts lived on this mountain is hard to fathom.

(NOTE: If any of you fans of the old Star Trek TV series feel like you’re suddenly having flashbacks, it’s no surprise. The set for the episode involving the Greek god Apollo clearly was inspired by this pool!)

Morro Castle — El Castillo de San Felipe del Morro in Spanish — was designed to make unwanted visitors to San Juan as uncomfortable as possible, and history shows they did a pretty good job of that.

Britain had Gibraltar. Spain had this place — and she needed it.

Madrid was getting rich off her Caribbean colonies — and just about everyone, it seemed, wanted a piece. Over the centuries, the British, Dutch and Americans would all try taking a bite out of Spain’s Caribbean holdings…starting right here.

Some countries even enlisted pirates to plunder Spanish shipping on their behalf. You know, that whole “plausible deniability” thing?

See? They weren’t really pirates. They were “contractors!” Before there was Blackwater, there was Blackbeard!

Bottom line, this part of the world was no place for a pacifist. Morro’s massive cannons fired iron shot the size of bowling balls, and the Spanish soldiers who manned them were cold-blooded professionals who “handled their business” with deadly precision.

These heavy guns defended San Juan from invasion

England’s legendary sea captain, Sir Francis Drake, found out just how precise in 1595.

Drake, a full-time adventurer and part-time slave trader, figured he could force his way into San Juan with a British battle fleet at his back.

It must’ve been a majestic sight — a classic battle line of galleons under billowing sails, blasting away with their rows of guns.

The Morro garrison, apparently, was not as easily impressed as I am. Taking aim at Drake’s famed ship, the Golden Hind, the castle gunners calmly put one of their giant cannonballs right through his cabin.

Sir Francis took his business elsewhere.

The British got a measure of revenge soon after, storming the castle from the land side, only to have their army so ravaged by disease that they withdrew after a mere six weeks.

Today, the castle is listed as a national historic site by the U.S. Park Service and a world heritage site by the United Nations. It draws some 2 million visitors a year — and nobody gets shot!

The one thing Hearst and Morro castles have in common: You can’t actually drive right up to either of them.

You have to leave your car at the bottom of the mountain near San Simeon and take a tour bus up to Hearst Castle. Even if they let you drive up the mountain — which they won’t — there’s no place for you to park up there.

As for Morro Castle, a decision was made about ten years ago to return that area to its natural state. This led the Park Service to tear up the parking lot in front of the gate. So if you visit, be prepared for a little hike over a long gravel path.

Hearst Castle. Morro Castle. One symbolized power. The other projected the real thing. Both are worth a visit.

Hold Esquire’s December issue in front of a webcam, and an on-screen image of the magazine pops to life, letters flying off the cover. Shift and tilt the magazine, and the animation on the screen moves accordingly. Robert Downey Jr. emerges out of the on-screen page in 3-D, offering half-improvised shtick on Esquire’s latest high-tech experiment for keeping print magazines relevant amid the digital onslaught. Esquire’s top editors are clearly enthused about the new technology, called “augmented reality.”

Triggering the animation is a box just below Downey’s cover image, resembling a crossword puzzle and looking a little out of place. The magazine has printed about a half-dozen boxes inside the issue, each calling up a separate interactive feature, plus a couple of ads. The issue will be available nationally by Nov. 16. At a fraught time for the magazine industry, one could draw a lot of conclusions from Esquire’s attempts at innovation: It may be the future of print or just a dying medium’s last desperate grab at attention as the Internet swallows more of peoples’ time.

http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20091029/ap_on_hi_te/us_tec_esquire_augmented_reality

PORTRAIT/PERSONALITY, FEATURE, & “PERSONAL VISION”  CATEGORY

Deadline:  TUESDAY,  November  10,  2009

The following is a digest of requirements for this competition.  Please consult the guidelines (sent to your department in September) for further details.  This competition awards $16,700 in scholarships and matching grants to the top ten ranking students & their schools.  The top winners qualify for the National Photojournalism Championship.  The department receives a $100 stipend just for entering.

PLEASE NOTE:  Students entering the Photojournalism Competitions no longer have to be journalism majors.  They must still be (or have been when the work was produced—see below) undergraduates attending a school with an ACEJMC accredited journalism program.

Entries in this photo competition must have been taken from September 1, 2008, through November 1, 2009, inclusively.  Each entry must consist of five images – two portrait/personality, two features, and one “personal vision.”  Each university may submit up to two entries in this competition, each by a different student. The “personal vision” single image can be (but is not limited to):  pictorial, photo illustration, fine art photography, fashion photography, editorial photography, nature photography, architectural photography.

The selected entrants must be current undergraduates at the time the entry is produced and published.  An exception is made for Spring, Summer or Fall 2009 graduates, allowing them to enter the contests in the 2009-2010 program year.  The entry must have been published, however, before students were graduated.  The Spring or Summer 2009 graduates would NOT be eligible to complete in the 2010 National Championship. The entrant must not have had more than one year total of professional experience at time of entry.

EACH COMPLETED ENTRY MUST CONSIST OF:  Submit entry on a CD with five scanned jpeg images.  Scan the images at 200 dpi resolution, with the longest dimension not exceeding 10 inches.  It is the responsibility of entrant to verify that the images will open and are readable.  Please use a CD with no other images but your Hearst entry. Or entries may be emailed to:  photoawards@hearstfdn.org, and must be sent by 11:59 pm PST on November 10.  It is the responsibility of the sender to verify accurate transmission of email. Entrant name, university name and category must be included with the images.  Please label your files!

Ex:  Smith_SJSU_Feature_1.jpg.  Please print entrant name and university name on the CD as well.

A Photo Entry Blank must be signed & sent via regular mail or faxed or scanned as a PDF and emailed as an attachment.  Fax: 415-243-0760.  Email: jwatten@hearstfdn.org The caption information should be included under the “File info” category in Photoshop.  Four copies of the caption sheet must still be included with the entry and sent via regular mail or faxed or scanned as a PDF and emailed as an attachment.

One of the five photos must have been published during the time period designated in the competition.  One tear sheet of this image – or a copy – must accompany the entry. If the photo was published in an off-campus publication, a letter from the editor is required verifying authorship of the photo.  This letter may be faxed or emailed to us as well.

Late entries will not be accepted. The entry must arrive at the Foundation by the deadline date.

Questions? Check our website, www.hearstawards.org, or call: 1-800-841-7048 ext. 4560.

Send entries to: Hearst Journalism Awards Program, 90 New Montgomery Street 1212, San Francisco, CA 94105

The two-decade erosion in newspaper circulation is looking more like an avalanche, with figures released Monday showing weekday sales down more than 10 percent since last year, depressed by rising Internet readership, price increases, the recession and papers intentionally shedding unprofitable circulation.

In the six months ended Sept. 30, sales fell by 10.6 percent on weekdays and 7.5 percent on Sundays, from the period a year earlier, for several hundred papers reporting to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. That means that the industry sold about 44 million copies a day — fewer than at any time since the 1940s.

The figures join a list of indicators of the industry’s health — like advertising and newsroom headcounts — that, after years of slipping, have accelerated sharply downward, as newspapers face the greatest threats since the Depression. Through the 1990s and into this decade, newspaper circulation was sliding, but by less than 1 percent a year. Then the rate of decline topped 2 percent in 2005, 3 percent in 2007 and 4 percent in 2008.

A driving factor has been the collapse in advertising, with revenue down 16.6 percent last year and about 28 percent so far this year, according to the Newspaper Association of America. The ad slowdown pushed papers to raise prices to make up some of the loss, driving down sales, and it has forced them to consider charging for access online. Less advertising has also persuaded papers to drop delivery to customers who live in outlying areas, are intermittent subscribers or have low incomes.

Industry critics say circulation has also fallen victim to budget cuts that have made newsrooms smaller and papers thinner. “I’ve worried for a long time that they’re losing readers because they’re offering less, and I think we’re seeing the effects of that,” said Alan Mutter, a newspaper consultant who writes a blog about the industry called Reflections of a Newsosaur.

Among the nation’s largest newspapers, The San Francisco Chronicle reported the biggest decline, 25.8 percent on weekdays, to about 252,000 — less than half what it was six years earlier — and 23 percent on Sundays, to about 307,000. For The Star-Ledger of Newark and The Dallas Morning News, circulation dropped more than 22 percent on weekdays, and about 19 percent on Sundays.

“We had to go to a new business model for this newspaper,” said Mark Adkins, president of The Chronicle, whose owner, the Hearst Corporation, has said the paper lost more than $50 million last year. “We have gone from $4.75 a week to $7.75 for home delivery in the last year, and we have dropped way back on discounting. There are places we used to truck it like Modesto, Lake Tahoe, that we don’t, because quite frankly, that’s not a market that local advertisers care about.”

The Los Angeles Times, which dropped 11 percent in weekday sales, has fallen from 1.1 million in early 2000 to 657,000. The New York Daily News fell 14 percent to 544,000 and The New York Post 19 percent to 508,000.

The Internet, where newspapers are generally free, has siphoned off circulation and advertising even as it made papers more widely read than ever before. This year, newspaper sites have had more than 72 million unique visitors a month, compared with 60 million in 2007, according to reports by Nielsen Online for the Newspaper Association.

James M. Moroney III, publisher of The Morning News, said that the printed newspaper was becoming something of a premium product and that too much attention was paid to circulation figures, considering all that has changed. His paper raised its subscription price this year from $21 a month to $30, two years after adopting a policy that it would not deliver the paper outside a 100-mile radius.

“Everybody keeps telling the newspaper industry to evolve, to change, to become digital,” he said. “And when we do that and grow our audience, people focus on these print circulation numbers. We’ve taken the circulation down very deliberately.”

As it had warned, USA Today had a steep drop in circulation, reflecting the slump in the hotel industry, which distributes most of that paper’s copies. USA Today, the Gannett newspaper published only on weekdays, fell from almost 2.3 million to 1.9 million, a 17.1 percent fall, losing the top spot in weekday circulation for the first time since the 1990s, to The Wall Street Journal.

The Journal’s circulation, just over two million, rose 0.6 percent. It is one of a very few papers to sell online subscriptions, which are counted in the circulation total, helping The Journal, which does not publish on Sundays, defy the industry-wide decline. It has more than 400,000 digital-only subscribers, up by more than 100,000 from five years ago.

At The New York Times, which has repeatedly raised its prices in recent years, weekday circulation fell 7.3 percent, to about 928,000, the first time since the 1980s that it has been under one million. As the third-largest paper, it continued to have by far the largest Sunday circulation, at 1.4 million, down 2.7 percent.

Two major papers, The Denver Post and The Seattle Times, reported significant circulation gains after their main competitors, The Rocky Mountain News and The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, stopped publishing. Despite halting home delivery four days of the week earlier this year, The Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News had smaller-than-average circulation declines.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/business/media/27audit.html?_r=1&ref=media

RIDGE SAYS WHITE HOUSE SHOULD IMPROVE TRANSPARENCY

(For use by New York Times News Service clients)

By KASE WICKMAN

c.2009 Hearst Newspapers

WASHINGTON _ Tom Ridge, former White House aide and Cabinet secretary in the Bush administration, told Congress on Thursday that the use of presidential “czars” creates confusion and inefficiency in the government, and said greater transparency was needed.

Ridge, a former czar when President George W. Bush named him the top homeland security adviser following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, said he didn’t testify before Congress when he had that job because Bush had told him not to.

However, Ridge said that better communication and oversight would improve governance.

“Congress was legitimately concerned about my role,” he said. “Coordinating authority is one thing, but was I influencing budgets? I was certainly affecting policy. But where was the transparency? Who was I answering to and who was answering to me?”

Ridge’s comments came in testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that is looking into the Obama administration’s use of senior White House advisors with specific policy focuses but who don’t require Senate confirmation, unlike Cabinet secretaries.

Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, said that though advisors sound toothless because they can’t implement policy, they can affect the president’s day-to-day schedule or the information he gets, and are extremely powerful in that way.

“Let’s not kid ourselves that these unconfirmed folks only have the ability to advise,” Bennett said. “The reality is, the White House is a court. The president is the king. The White House staff are the courtiers, and it is the centuries-long duty of every courtier to keep anybody else from access to the king. And the White House courtiers do a very good job of that regardless of which party is in charge or which president is doing it.’’

Lee Casey, a former advisor in the U.S. Department of Justice, testified that any attempt at regulating Obama’s use of czars would be very difficult to enforce.

“Obviously Congress is free to create offices and vest those offices with whatever power it thinks necessary,” Casey said. “But when you start getting to the point where you’re effectively choosing the president’s advisors…that raises very serious concerns about the separation of powers, simply because you’re purporting to say, ‘This is the person the president has to listen to.’”

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, the top Republican on the Homeland Security Committee, and the five other Republicans on the committee sent Obama a letter last month calling for greater transparency and oversight of the czars.

Some of Obama’s policy czars have a high national profile lately, such as pay czar Kenneth Feinberg, who slashed the pay of executives at bailed out companies by 90 percent, and health czar Nancy-Ann DeParl, who some in Congress say calls the shots on health issues, rather than Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

Collins said after the hearing that she will introduce legislation making these advisors more accountable to Congress.

“I remain convinced that we do need to have an answer to this,” she said. “I’m convinced that the proliferation of czars is a major problem in terms of accountability and congressional oversight and transparency.”

David Carr(l) and Ken Auletta have a Google chat

Did you know that employees at Google’s Mountain View, CA campus get free oil changes and car washes on Thursdays? Or that there are five doctors on campus? How about the fact that engineers can spend 20% of their time working on what they want? This 80/20 rule, which has spawned Google Wave, Google News and Gmail, is part of a corporate culture where boss and cofounder Sergey Brin rollerblades (late) to meetings in his gym shorts. Every building has its own cafeteria serving everything from Mexican food to sushi and free food is everywhere.

These delicious facts emerged at the Magazine Publishers Association of America’s first ever Magazine Innovation Summit, where David Carr, media columnist for The New York Times, interviewed New Yorker writer Ken Auletta, author of the new book “Googled: The End of the World as We Know It.”  “I went to Google and walked out of there with my pockets full,” confessed Carr. “Why wouldn’t you? It’s free!”

The laughter that followed was one of the lighter moments in a conference where Google loomed large for its success in contrast to the devastating loss of magazine advertising revenue in the last 18 months. As Auletta pointed out, Google got it right in more ways than their unique corporate culture: they manage to give away much of their content while generating more money from search than  the combined revenues of all the major magazines companies gathered for the MPA conference.

In fact, the quest to avoid the mistakes of the music industry through innovation and collaboration were leitmotifs at the conference. Instead of the false optimism or beleaguered pessimism that have prevailed at recent MPA conferences, this time participants talked excitedly about new e-readers, shared magazine digital storefronts, mobile as the bridge to truly engaged content, and paid content as a no-brainer–the secret sauce that will hopefully do for magazines what Adwords did for Google. “In the end you have to have guts to say I’m not going to give content away for free,” said John Squires, Time Inc.’s Executive Vice President, who is leading an effort to join Time Inc., Hearst and Condé Nast in the creation of a shared digital storefront to showcase their magazines. The principle focus, Squires added, was the development of new paid mobile apps. “People will pay for content on mobile,” he said with great assurance.

At points in the conference, the technology talk was deafening. Doug Carlson, CEO of Viv and Managing Director of Zinio,  prophesized that “the world is going wireless and mobile. The future of the magazine industry is portable tablet devices so that consumers can have content with them wherever they are.”  Mary Lou Jepson, CEO of Pixel QI, confidently predicted that e-readers and laptops would soon merge. Josh Quittner, former editor of Business 2.0 and now Editor-at-Large at Time Inc., hailed the arrival of the Apple Tablet. “We all know it’s coming,” he said. “When Apple’s [tablet] device is announced, there will be a mass ascension and everyone will go to media heaven.” Those on the ground, he noted, can look forward to even more advances in the next six months including devices that give a great reading experiences through color, eight-inch-on a diagonal, multi-touch screens and broadband-only network access. “Tell your readers not to buy e-readers for the holidays,” he urged the audience. “They will be stuck with TV’s with rabbit ears.”  And speaking of TV’s, Netflix founder and CEO Reed Hastings professed with great certainly that Wi-Fi- enabled TV’s will be here by Christmas.

Of course, whenever magazine executives gather, there’s no shortage of talk about the longevity of print, no matter how snazzy the new technology that threatens to eclipse it. When Scott Donaton, President and CEO of Ensemble, asked his panelists whether they cared if their brand existed in print, David Carey, Group President, Condé Nast publications, neatly sidestepped the issue: “Each platform will create a new audience,” he answered.  Efrem (Skip) Zimbalist III, President and CEO of Active Interest Media, shrugged and said it really didn’t matter. “A great e-reader can help the environment and make edited content very immediate.” But Maria Rodale, Chairman and CEO of Rodale, Inc., would have no part of that debate. “Fifteen to twenty years from now, what matters is that our brands stay relevant and viable,” she declared. “Magazines will still be here because everyone likes to read in bed.”

For more about the longevity of magazines, check out the MPA Video: The Twenty Tweetable Truths About Magazines

Andrea Chambers

Yo…T-Pain is wylin’ out!! Why did dudecome to a party in a hearst bumpin’ Jay-Z’s D.O.A??? Maybe it was because he was burying his “BIG ASS CHAIN” and them silly ass hats….hopefully the auto tune was in there as well!

Despite new technology that can provide more engaging and better targeted ads for online video, most publishers have been stuck repurposing 15- and 30-second TV spots online, a problem that execs say leads to lower CPMs and a poor user experience. But with advertisers and agencies struggling, there may not be an easy fix to this problem.

On a panel last night at Will Richmond’s VideoSchmooze event in New York, executives from Comcast, NBC Sports, Hearst and blip.tv talked about how publishers were still struggling to monetize video assets online, despite an increase in ad budgets slated for online video.

While much of the discussion centered around determining the appropriate ad loads for online video as opposed to traditional TV channels, George Kliavkoff, EVP of Hearst Entertainment & Syndication, suggested that the industry should be less concerned about how many ads are being delivered, and more concerned about what types of ads are being delivered.

“I hope that the market is not going to be deciding how many 15- or 30-second ads [we're showing],” Kliavkoff said. “If that’s the conversation, then we’ve failed as an industry. I think the conversation should be about what new and engaging ads take advantage of the technology that you can deliver online with video that are not 15- or 30-second re-purposed ads.”

Even though publishers on the whole have become more interested in delivering interactive ad experiences, pre-roll is still the most common ad format for online video. That’s due, at least in part, to the wide availability of TV ad units that can be repurposed for the web. YouTube, for instance, long eschewed pre-roll video advertising, preferring instead to sell in-video ads. But the company balked when some new content partners forced it to begin running pre-rolls against their content.

But execs say it’s also due to agencies being unable to meet the demand for innovative new ad units. Perkins Miller, SVP of digital media at NBC Sports, recounted at Tuesday night’s event how he asked a number of agencies to come up with better ways to do advertising online. But out of a half dozen agencies that NBC reached out to, Miller said he didn’t get back a single workable idea. So NBC developed its own interactive ad capabilities for many of its live sporting events.

The need for publishers to develop their own custom ad units is being driven mainly by agencies that don’t have the resources to create new, interactive ad units, according to Dina Kaplan, COO and co-founder of blip.tv.

“One of the challenges is that now that clients have budgets for web video, which they do, you need to have video assets, you need to have pre-rolls, and post-rolls, and you need to have overlays. And at a time when the agencies are struggling, having to create more assets presents some challenges,” Kaplan said. “Agencies are shedding people, so how do you create more ad units with fewer people?”

Even if agencies are not able to create more engaging ad campaigns for online video, Kliavkoff said that the industry could at least do a better job of targeting the spots it has. “If all we’re going to do is take content from the TV and put it on the web, and all we’re going to do is put the same 15-second or 30-second ads on the web, can we at least target those ads? I know it’s some grand vision of the future, but i figured it would be here by now.”

Despite the lack of interactivity and targeting, the good news is that brands and advertisers are slowly moving more money into web video. Kaplan noted that while two years ago blip.tv had to fight to take ad money away from TV budgets or online budgets, her sales team had struck eight deals with eight brands in the previous eight business days — a milestone for the company.

Are Condé Nast trying to buy Elle USA?, Rumours have swirled since the NY Post reported that magazine publishers Hachette Filipacchi might leave their current offices for smaller ones to save on rent.

For all that its worth, Condé already has Vogue which is such a success in itself, I just think it would be best if they kept that magazine as their main focus, it’s not like they need Elle to survive as a company; that being said I can see why they would want Elle as a business decision considering their increasing ad revenues that means more money for them. Mainly though I’m just worried that they would change some things that would alter the way the magazine is, which could be good or bad but I wouldnt want the magazine to lose it’s identity as I love it as it is; it would be extremely interesting though seeing the rival magazines run by the same publishing house, how would that work out!

After months of holiday shopping—and finding millions of things I want (and millions of things you couldn’t pay me to have)—the Hearst holiday gift guides are here. And I’m pretty proud of how great they look. Gifts for everyone!

There are thousands (literally) of gifts for everyone on your list. Check them out!

Marie Claire gift guides for The Working Girl, The Men You Love, Stocking Stuffers, Charitable Gifts, The Domestic Diva, and more…

Redbook gift guides: Gifts for Best Friends, Great Gifts for Difficult People, Kid Glossary, Unforgettable Gifts, Gifts that Give Twice…

Esquire: Gifts She’ll Never Forget, Gifts That Will Get You Laid, Toys No One Else Will Get Them, Worst Gifts!…

The Daily Green: The Complete Green Outfit, Green Gadgets, Gifts Outside the Box, Safe Toys…

Good Housekeeping: Housewarming Gifts, Gifts for Teens, Stocking Stuffers…

Country Living: Go-To Gifts, One-of-a-Kind Gifts, Gifts for the Hostess, Gifts for the Farmer’s Market Foodie…

Seventeen: Gifts for Moms, Dads, Twilight Lovers and more…

Cosmopolitan: $20 Gifts That Look Way More Expensive, Gifts for People Who Have Everything…