Brian Fuller’s blog on the state of media and communications

The sound of change

You can kind of hear it in the wind, the sound of change in publishing. The cacophonous clanking of consolidation continues to be sure, but if you listen closely enough there’s music in the distance.
Howard Kurtz points at, what I think is, one of the drivers of change in his post earlier this week on [...]

No big deal: Magazine circulation falls (again)

The sky isn’t falling, really, even though the Audit Bureau of Circulation reports that overall subscriptions for magazines are down 2.27 percent.
Some big titles took it on the chin, to be sure: Playboy (-34%), Reader’s Digest (-25%). Neither of those tumbles is a head-scratcher.
But overall, circulation (paid and verified) is 313 million. That’s a [...]

It’s the medium is the message, stupid

L. Gordon Crovitz, writing in today’s Wall Street Journal (subscription required), puts it simply:
“It’s ideas that count, not how they’re transmitted.”
This is a closing line in a column about e-books and the iPad. That a “print” journalist makes this comment directly and without pussy-footing around with adverbs is a testament to how far we’ve come.
Or, [...]

The Great (Print-Online) Debate (Cage Match Edition)

In one corner, John Donovan, the crafty veteran (he of low-powerdesign.com), sat eyeing his opponent, rubbing his Everlast gloves together in anticipation; in the other, another crafty veteran, John Reardon, Donovan’s ex-boss at RTC Group, glared, as he shuffled his laced-up, ankle-high shoes on the canvas. In between them sat a third veteran, Rick Jamison, [...]

Saint Steven frets about blogger nation

Steve Jobs could belch and get national play. He did so this week at All Things D, where he said he doesn’t want to see us descend into a nation of bloggers. We must do everything in our power to find ways The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, etc. can continue to get [...]

National Enquirer Schools Mainstream Media; Film at 11

In times as weird as these, it’s perhaps not surprising that one publication doing real journalism is — gasp — the National Enquirer. Ok, maybe its former editor in chief, David Perel, is a bit defensive this morning, but his point is well taken.
Perel writes about his publication’s tireless efforts to break former presidential candidate [...]

Has the advertising free-fall slowed?

Don’t break out the Champagne just yet, but signs are emerging that perhaps the advertising collapse for newspapers and magazines is slowing and leveling off. Still, publications have a long way to go to get with the program.
The Wall Street Journal reported this week:
A year-end flurry of ad spending helped moderate steep declines at some [...]

My New Year’s Blogging Resolution

It’s simple: Suck less.

A lot of things happened in 2009, but one of the most important to me was I switched blogging platforms for Greeley’s Ghost from Blogger to WordPress. (Tip of the cap to Dean Rodgers, Portland, Ore., PR pro and author of the Koifish blog who tipped the balance for me on the [...]

The future of media? Not as bad as you think

What’s the future of media?
Michael Arrington worries about the end of hand-crafted content.
So what really scares me? It’s the rise of fast food content that will surely, over time, destroy the mom and pop operations that hand craft their content today. It’s the rise of cheap, disposable content on a mass scale, force fed to [...]

What’s killing newspapers? Newsrooms

The last two mornings, I’ve arisen before sunrise, I shuffled out into the chill, damp air and seen the most amazing sight in front of our garage: a pig….
…with lipstick.
I have heard about pigs with lipstick; read about pigs with lipstick but until this morning had never seen a pig with lipstick. In our neck [...]

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