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

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, [...]

Back at EE Times–What gives?

After three years out of the daily publishing grind, I re-entered the troposphere this week as Products Strategist for EE Times.
As my old man used to say, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.” (I think he used to say that each year near the end of his one mandatory no-drinking month).
I spent the past three [...]

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 [...]

A peek at the new EE Times

Come spring, EE Times will be reborn, and Electronic Buyer’s News will be resurrected. That was the message EE Times Group CEO Paul Miller delivered last week during meetings in Irvine, Calif., and Santa Clara, Calif., as he gave audiences a sneak peek at the new network’s look, feel and value propositions.
It’s a [...]

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 [...]

E-Reader mania and the death and rebirth of books

The gift-giving buzz this year is all about e-readers, which in the short run will wind up like so many Razor Scooters, but in the long run will turn out in the long run to be very useful devices. In the meantime, the disruption the very thought of this platform is causing is intriguing.
Rupert Murdoch’s [...]

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 [...]

The Future of News (is “pretty clear”)

Summary: The future of news needs not only to leverage all of us but it needs to be visual.
Say what you will, but the kid’s timing is impeccable.
On a day that saw news break that newspaper circulation continues its freefall (nowhere faster than my hometown newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle -25%) and a survey emerged [...]

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