Media Industry
Industry: Email Alert RSS FeedBuffing-Up The Brand
Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Nov 1, 2002 by Cable Neuhaus
Byline: CABLE NEUHAUS Editor-in-Chief cneuhaus@mediacentral.com
Sometimes bad things happen to good magazines. Examples abound, many too horrid to contemplate: A suddenly sour ad market deals a death blow to ambitious editorial projects several months in the making. Your Mr. Big inexplicably takes his publisher's magic to a competitor's book. A veteran editor who is like that with his readers decides this is the year he'll finally retire to a fishing village in Maine. A printing plant burns. Terrible, ulcer-inducing things, all.
Most RecentMedia Articles
- E! Online's @Tiger (Woods) Gossip Is Now Following Me on Twitter
- Time Warner Cable, News Corp., Let Me Tell You Why You Need Each Other
- Blio's Debut Has Game-Changing Potential on the Publishing Business
- Cyber Czar Challenged By Thieves and Government
- NBC Affiliates Give Jay Leno Show Ds and Fs As Lead-In to Local News
- More »
But nothing that happens to - or at - a magazine can do as much harm as complacency. To avoid arthritis of the spine, books need to keep moving. The best of the breed are ever in near-manic states of self-criticism, reflection, exploration, and recalibration. (We at FOLIO: are doing all of these things at this very moment.) A magazine that fails to constantly examine its place in the world is a magazine that, sooner or later, will have no place to go but out of business. Irrelevancy, in the mag world, is death without dignity.
This month FOLIO: focuses on two great - but aging - American magazines that are self-confident enough to have looked in the mirror and then looked around the corner. Both, as it turns out, came away startled by what they saw. Our subjects, Playboy and Martha Stewart Living, are more alike than one might immediately assume. Each, after all, is obsessively devoted to a life well- (and somewhat hedonistically) lived. That's not a bad thing. (OK, maybe it is. Your call.)
Given their attention to perfection in every detail, it's no great surprise that these icons have lately taken a time-out to reconsider their core virtues. Playboy, which has hired its first new editorial director in 30 years, is about to embark on a difficult wholesale rethink. (Even the continued use of nudity is in question.) Living, which, like Playboy, has seen its territory carved up and attacked by a profusion of new titles, has just completed a redesign two years in the making. The staffs of both books, as you will see, cooperated with FOLIO: in our reporting this month, and we thank them for that.
Finally, a thought about time - specifically, about letting it pass your magazine by. Whisper what you will about Hugh Hefner's Playboy, there's no gainsaying that, for many years, it set the standard in its category. (An aside: It would be dishonest not to acknowledge that I admire Hef's giant achievement, not to mention his hospitality. As a journalist, I've been a guest any number of times at his home in Holmby Hills. Above, see an incredibly unflattering picture of us eating, most unsexily, at the Mansion.) But the reality of today's men's magazine market is harsh: Playboy committed the unforgivable sin of sauntering, rather than galloping, through the decades. The dilemma Hef & Company now face is, Can the brand's equity be reclaimed in full? Depends on who gets involved in the fixing. Allowed room to roam, it seems to me that an inventive editorial mind has a better-than-even shot at pulling a rabbit out of the hat. Playboy could get hot yet again.
Brought to you by CBS MoneyWatch.com
- Best- and Worst-Paid College Degrees
- 6 Things You Should Never Do on Twitter or Facebook
- How Much Sleep Do You Really Need?
- 6 Big Myths about Gas Mileage
- 5 Rules for Immediate Annuities
- Death in the Family: 12 Things to Do Now
- Dumbest Things You Do With Your Money
- 6 Online Networking Mistakes to Avoid
- 401(k) Mistakes to Avoid
- 5 Economic Scenarios to Keep You Up at Night
- The Real ‘Best Places to Retire’
- Best Credit Cards for You
- 12 Tough Questions to Ask Your Parents
- The Real ‘Best Colleges’
- Home Buyer Tax Credit: How to Cash In
- Why You Shouldn't Bash Cash
- 8 Phony 'Bargains' and Better Alternatives
- Danger: 3 Debit Card Scams to Avoid
- 6 Myths About Gas Mileage
- 29 Fees We Hate Most
- Quick and Easy Ways to Boost Returns
- Best Stocks to Buy Now
- Lower Your Taxes: 10 Moves to Make Now
- New Jobs: 8 Lessons from Real-Life Career Switchers
- The New Job Market: Who Wins and Who Loses?
- Health Care Reform's Public Option: Everything You Need to Know
- Volunteer Work When Unemployed: Should You Work for Free?
- Whose Recovery Is This?
- Long-Term-Care Insurance: 4 Biggest Risks to Avoid
Content provided in partnership with
Most Recent Business Articles
- Multiple criteria evaluation and optimization of transportation systems
- Multi-criteria analysis procedure for sustainable mobility evaluation in urban areas
- A two-leveled multi-objective symbiotic evolutionary algorithm for the hub and spoke location problem
- Multi-criteria analysis for evaluating the impacts of intelligent speed adaptation
- The development of Taiwan arterial traffic-adaptive signal control system and its field test: a Taiwan experience
Most Recent Business Publications
Most Popular Business Articles
- 7 tips for effective listening: productive listening does not occur naturally. It requires hard work and practice - Back To Basics - effective listening is a crucial skill for internal auditors
- LIFO vs. FIFO: a return to the basics
- FAS 109: a primer for non-accountants - Financial Accounting Standards Board's "Statement 109: Accounting for Income Taxes"
- Design a commission plan that drives sales - Sales Commissions
- Too Young to Rent a Car? - 25-years-old the minimum age for car renting - Brief Article


