July 20, 2015 Media Industry Newsletter Vol. 68 No. 28 New York, N.Y. www.minonline.com Steve Smith's Eye on Innovation: JUST HOW MUCH IS "NEW MEDIA" ACTUALLY MEDIA? News aggregation apps and major media brands no longer have guns pointed at their heads. Apple News isn't going to be eating anyone’s lunch, killing any rivals or becom- ing content monopoly. The open beta of iOS 9 dropped last week and, with it, a preview of the aggregation app Apple announced last month. Like the Maps and Music apps before it, News enters a familiar content category with the prospect of displacing established endemics like Google or Spotify, respectively. In this case, Apple News is most clearly like Flipboard in style and approach but also similar to Facebook in hoping partners will create enhanced experiences that live on their third party platforms. These aggre- gators promise greater reach to readers who don’t want to install and launch too many branded media apps in order to catch up on their range of interests. Mobile platforms, especially, seem to have revived the portal approach to digital news gathering that died nearly a decade ago on the Web. (continued on page 4) BIG WOMEN'S-FASHION FALL PREVIEWS FOR "NYT" T AND "WSJ." Like their beauty- and fashion-magazine brethren, September is the month for The New York Times magazine's T Women's Fashion and WSJ.'s women's fashion issue. Their respective August 23 and August 15 releases give them a calendar head start, and T's 164 ad pages and WSJ.'s 100.4 are notable benchmarks. T's count–up from 158 last year–is the most since the 175 carried by Women's Fashion in pre-recessionary August 2008, and publisher Brendan Monaghan tells min that "this is a continuation of the momentum in fashion, beauty, luxury home furnishings and travel that we've experienced all year." Stu- art Weitzman, Kenzo, J Brand and Marni are among the issue's fashion newcomers. (continued on page 2) "NATIONAL JOURNAL": FROM REVOLUTIONARY TO EVOLUTIONARY. The July 16 announcement by Atlantic Media chairman and 17-year National Journal owner David Bradley that the print weekly will end its 46-year run at the end of 2015 had the Darwinian "news in Washington now moves too quickly for a weekly publica- tion." The transfer of resources to the "higher-velocity work" of NJ Daily, Hotline and NationalJournal.com will likely have minimal impact on the 1,000 member organi- zations that pay five- to six-figure annual sums (depending on company size) for the content. Speed counts for lobbyists and digital media can deliver critical informa- tion more timely. It was a less technological Washington in 1969 when the late Thomas N. Schroth launched NJ after being fired from rival Congressional Quarterly. D.C.'s image as (continued on page 2) • COSMO NOW APP HAS TAKEAWAYS FOR RIVALS.............. ......... Page 3 • GUCCIONE'S HENDRIX BOOKAZINE; MORE "DIRT" IN MODERN FARMER.... Page 5 • THE IN-BOX RULES.................. ........................... Page 6 • SOCIAL MEDIA BOXSCORES (JUNE): GOOGLE+ AND INSTAGRAM... ... Pages 8-9 • AUDIO LIVEHAPPY; HARPER LEE'S FIRST MAGAZINE COVER........... Page 10 www.minonline.com © 2015 Access Intelligence, LLC. Federal copyright law prohibits unauthorized reproduction by any means and imposes fines of up to $100,000 for violations. PAGE 2 MIN 7/20/2015 BIG FALL PREVIEWS FOR "NYT" T AND "WSJ." (continued from page 1) WSJ. set an all-time record as the brand surpassed last August's 90.8, and publisher An- thony Cenname credits "22 new advertisers and 32 spreads" for growth. Stuart Weitzman is also a WSJ. newcomer, as are Alexander McQueen, Calvin Klein, Ero and–outside of fashion– Mercedes-Benz and Samsung. Both magazines carry Louis Vuitton (a gatefold in T), Gucci and Prada, the three Eu- ropean designers headlined by The Washington Post on June 15 to be "in trouble" in part because luxury consumers don't want to look "too showy" at a time of political outcry over income inequality. The designers' spending in spite of a weak euro compared to the U.S. dollar suggests that the WP headline was hype, but a sign of things to come might be la- bels that are "understated." This part of the historic New York Times-Wall Street Journal rivalry is "friendly," and Cenname tells min that "I'm happy about T's strength. It means that the relevancy of news- paper magazines is very strong." "NATIONAL JOURNAL" WAS A PRINT PACESETTER (continued from page 1) a government "company town" was entrenched since World War II, and Schroth and his successors–most notably John Fox Sullivan, who was publisher from the mid-1970s through the Bradley purchase–filled a void by providing con- tent on the bureaucrats largely overlooked by The New York Times, The Wash- ington Post, Newsweek and Time. These "Hill People," as Sullivan calls them, were those behind the scenes in the White House, Congress and federal agencies that did the legwork behind the legislation. This made NJ a must-read for lobbyists, who would advertise the most in the beginning of odd-numbered years, when a new Congress was in town. Sullivan & Co. were ahead of their time by charging subscribers more than $1,000 per year when content was all but given away by mass-circulation publishers who had to maintain rate base for advertisers. NJ's circ was roughly 5,000, and 1986-1997 owner Times Mirror Co. was mostly passive. Under Bradley, National Journal Group CEO Tim Hartman, and editor-in-chief Tim Grieve, NJ has become the same 360 phenomenon as The Atlantic. But the print closure shows that NJ is not the brand fulcrum that The Atlantic is, and the continuation through year-end may have been made to fulfill contractual commitments to members. It also gives NJ editor Richard Just time to make his next career decision. Grieve hired Just from Newsweek in February 2014. THE LATE "ADWEEK" FOUNDER JACK THOMAS (1927-2015) TO BE EULOGIZED ON JULY 22. He helped launch Adweek in 1978, and Thomas used his earlier magazine connections–Time di- rector of U.S. sales, New York magazine publisher, etc.–to make the category a key to Ad- week's early success as it competed with the venerable Ad Age. The two trades continue as rivals in 2015, but magazine advertising in both has long been negligible even though the 1990-2010 run of the Mediaweek spinoff was done in part to give publishers the opportunity to more efficiently reach media planners. Thomas retired from Adweek in 2000 and passed away from natural causes on July 9. The July 22 memorial service will be at 11 a.m. in St. John's of Lattingtown Episcopal Church in Locust Valley, N.Y. Editor-in-Chief: Steven Cohn ([email protected]) 203/899-8437 Digital Media Editor: Steve Smith ([email protected]) 302/691-5331 Group Editor: Caysey Welton ([email protected]) 203/899-8431 VP Publisher: Amy Jefferies ([email protected]); Director of Market Development: Laurie M. Hofmann ([email protected]); Analytics Coordinator: Stacy Hill ([email protected]); Marketing Associate: Allie DeNicuolo ([email protected]); Editorial Intern: Jameson Doris ([email protected]) Production Manager: Sophie Chan-Wood ([email protected]); Graphic Designer: Yelena Shamis ([email protected]); Event Content Manager: Kelsey Lundstrom ([email protected]); Senior Account Executive: Tania Babiuk ([email protected]); Boxscores ([email protected]) Access Intelligence, LLC President & Chief Executive Officer: Don Pazour; SVP, Media Group: Diane Schwartz; Chief Operating Officer: Heather Farley; Subscriptions/Client Services: 888-707-5814; List Sales: Statlistics, 203-778-8700; Advertising: 203-899-8498; Reprints: Wright’s Media, 877-652-5295 ([email protected]); Editorial Offices: 10 Norden Place, Norwalk, CT 06855; 40 Wall Street, 50th floor, New York, NY 10005; Faxes: 203-854-6735, 212-621-4879; www.minonline.com Access Intelligence LLC, 4 Choke Cherry Road, 2nd Floor, Rockville, MD 20850; Ph: 301-354-2000 Published 2015 © by Access Intelligence LLC. Distributed via email and online. For email and postal address changes, allow 2 weeks notice. Send to: Client Services or call 888-707-5814. For advertising info contact 301/ 354-1629. Contents may not be reproduced in any form without written permission. Subscription Rate: $1099 MIN 7/20/2015 PAGE 3 Steve Smith's App Review: COSMOPOLITAN NOW REJECTS TIRED MOBILE CONVENTIONS. The small conveniences, sensible design decisions and experiential tweaks to the Cosmopol- itan Now (Version 2.0) app add up to one of the best magazine brand app experiences I've had. Hearst is also using this engine for its relaunched Seventeen Now app and I hope more are coming. It's a fluid and more evolved mobile-centric environment that leaves much for rivals to copy. Eschewing the tiresome mono-column feed, Cosmopolitan Now opts for a more pleasant, if too symmetrical, tile wall that puts more fresh content on-screen without losing visual appeal. This is a very flat design, in that the front page and all section homepages of- fer multiple functions without clicking through. Users can share and bookmark an article for later viewing, and previ- ously read articles are shaded. The new design also rejects that ubiquitous hamburger menu for a filtering system that parses the current pile of fresh stories by category (Video, Pics, Celebrities & Enter- tainment, Lifestyle, Health, etc.). The app arranges these topics in a dial-like interface that is slightly too small for most fingers, although I like how it pops up whenever the user scrolls up on a section page.