More than a hundred magazine executives attended the fourth annual MPA-IMAG Conference for Independent Publishers. The event, themed “Cross-Platform Publishing:Mastering the Strategic Challenges,” took place May 16 to 18 at the Graves 601 Hotel in Minneapolis, MN. The summit was preceded but the Utne Reader Independent Press Awards, to which IMAG attendees were invited. To view the full program and speaker lineup, click here.

Senator Pat Roberts (R-KS).

In a major victory for magazine publishers, advertisers, and the First Amendment, the U.S. Senate amended proposed legislation on direct-to-consumer (DTC) prescription drug advertising, removing provisions that could have required moratoria and government pre-approval of advertising.  The legislative activity now moves to the House, where the pending bill still contains the problematic provisions.

MPA is urging members to thank a bipartisan group of key senators for their strong support of the advertising amendment, most notably, Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS), the amendment’s primary sponsor. The fax numbers for 10 senators most involved in passage of the amendment can be found here.  

MPA is also asking that the membership prepare for major legislative work in the House.  As MPA works to ensure that DTC advertising remains an important source of patient information—as well as a major part of magazines’ advertising portfolio, MPA will be contacting members in the near future for help with grassroots advocacy efforts in the House.

All told, 57 Magazine Digital Initiatives were announced in the first quarter of 2007. This represents the highest number of such initiatives tracked in any one quarter since 2006, according to research conducted by MPA.

The new digital initiatives unveiled by magazine publishers so far this year range from podcasts, more videos for websites and new content for mobile phones to many website redesigns and innovations in user-generated content and social networks.

American Express Publishing’s Food & Wine announced new podcasts during the first quarter

MPA members who announced digital initiatives from January through March 2007 include: AARP the Magazine and Segunda Juventud, with online audio versions of the magazines for blind consumers; American Express Publishing Corp., with podcasts, weekly online episodes and multimedia programs; Conde Nast Publications, with blogs, podcasts and video; Crain Communications, with daily email alerts and website revamp; Dwell, with a website redesign, social networking, video, blogs and podcasts; Forbes, with video content, online reader polls and voting, a mobile-enabled website and free Wi-Fi directory; Gemstar-TV Guide, with broadband content, cross-platform distribution, indexed video content, website acquisitions, website makeovers, online and broadband syndication and online contests; Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., with virtual test drives for new cars, online video and website redesigns; Hearst Magazines, with user-generated content, expanded video offerings, online video games and mobile websites; and The Knot, with a new wedding channel and original online video content.

Still other first quarter digital announcements came from: Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, with a new website and blogs; Meredith Corporation, with a weekly satellite radio show and online video; National Geographic, with website acquisition, online video series, podcasts and branded cell phone service; New York, with a custom directory of restaurant rankings for mobile phones; Newsweek, with web video channels and indexed on online video content; Nickelodeon, with a virtual online community for tweens; Playboy, with e-commerce websites and entire photo and text on digital archive available on DVD; Primedia, with a website revamp, online video, blogs and forums; Rodale Inc., with integrated marketing platform, exclusive online content, video, web channels and new websites; and Time Inc., with user-generated content, new in-house production studio, online video, podcasts, news feeds and a photo archive project partnership with Google.

Emily Allen began her career in the interactive space in 1999, serving as the Director of Product Management for Real Media in both San Francisco and New York. Most recently, she was at Time Inc. as the Online Manager for Golf's website. She left that post last year to join Smithsonian Publishing, whose properties include Smithsonian and Air & Space magazines and their websites, www.smithsonianmagazine.com and www.airspacemag.com.

Q. The announcement of your arrival last year indicated there would soon be exclusive web content and expanded video capabilities on your revamped websites. Can you talk about the kinds of editorial and video content you're planning to add?

A. At this point, we're producing a fair amount of exclusive web content. We have web editors in place and the magazine staff often contributes. We've also identified and launched new interactive features, such as games and trivia, forums and blogs, as well as regular web departments, photo essays and the like. We publish web content using an architecture built for infrequent updates, nor does it offer design or template flexibility. We're in the process of a major redesign and we will be migrating to a new content management system that will allow us the flexibility to produce good web content and better react to the evolving digital environment. That includes a more robust video offering.  We're planning to add several significant features in the coming months, focusing primarily on travel, the environment and science.

Q. What areas of your Smithsonianmagazine.com and Airspacemag.com websites account for the heaviest traffic?

A. The Reader Scrapbook, a relatively new feature that invites readers/visitors to submit aviation photos, is very popular right now on Airspacemag.com.  Also, the videos tend to generate a significant amount of traffic as well. Smithsonianmag.com's web-only articles do very well, especially historical pieces, anything to do with ancient civilizations and archeology and the environment.

Q. What are the most popular stories on each website right now?

A. Smithsonian's 2007 Destination America special section is currently very popular, as is "Beyond Jamestown," a piece published in the May issue of Smithsonian about John Smith's exploration throughout the Chesapeake Bay. On Airspacemag.com, we have an Amelia Earhart article up now that explores America's obsession with her.  

Q. How long are the video segments on Airspacemag.com and Smithsonianmagazine.com on average?

A. Video length ranges from 30 seconds to five minutes.   

Q. Do you anticipate adding video commercials to your sites as well? Any timetable on that?

A. As soon as possible. There is obviously a lot of demand.

Q. Have you been using focus groups as you map out the new online elements?

A. We rely on in-house surveys and panels and will continue to integrate user testing throughout the process and post-launch.

Q. Are there things you did at Golfonline.com that you can translate to your present position and duties? 

A. Prior to my arrival here, there was no formal sales process in place with respect to the digital properties. I brought a lot of knowledge from the business side, creating the budget, establishing the sales process and integrated selling. Golfonline.com went through a couple of redesigns, so I'm no stranger to that.

Q. You're also planning user-contributed content, such as blogs and forums, plus online contributions from the editors of your magazines.

A. We launched an art blog and a science blog a few months ago—ARTiculations and TheGist—and they've been very popular. The editors will take a much larger role with blogs and podcasts. Some even shoot video for us while on assignment. The magazines' contribution is a very important element to our online success.

Q. You're overseeing Smithsonian Publishing's Internet business. But are you also involved to some degree in other iterations of the websites on other digital platforms, such as mobile?

A. I will be very involved in our mobile and other digital strategies, but we're not there yet.

Q. How would you describe the goSmithsonian.com site that was introduced in February 2007? How successful has that been to date?

A. goSmithsonian.com is an interactive guide to the Smithsonian Institution museums as well as a resource for visitors researching and planning their trip to D.C. The site has been very successful thus far. People are very engaged with the individual museum sections, which include timely information on events and exhibitions, interactive floor plans and shopping. But people are actually utilizing the site to book their hotels, search for local-area dining and so on.

Q. What's your favorite Smithsonian exhibit?

A fun promotional piece from the Magazine Marketing Coalition helps call clients' attention to how magazine advertising drives consumers to action: a container of Post-it tabs.  The tabs appear on the new promo piece with copy citing: "For all the ads you want to tear, tab or save, here's a little bit of help." 

The Coalition urges magazine sales executives to distribute these promo pieces to clients at their sales calls—as advertisers plan their 2008 media buys—as a lighthearted reminder of the “stickiness” of magazine advertising.

To get a free supply of the Post-it promo pieces, members should email MPA Marketing Coordinator Ashley Foxx at afoxx@magazine.org as soon as possible. Half the supply is already gone, Foxx noted.

MPA has an agreement with CANIEM, a sister association in Mexico, to offer four professional development seminars a year, assist the sister organization in the development of engagement and accountability research, and to consult with the organization as appropriate.
MPA's Wayne Eadie, SVP-Research, and Chuck McCullagh, SVP-International, offered a seminar for 65 representatives of major Mexican publishers about "How to Prove to Agencies That Magazines Work."

During the April 26 session, McCullagh presented an overview of the international publishing scene, with particular emphasis on such fast-developing countries as Brazil, Russia, India and China and the quick pace of advertising growth. McCullagh raised the question of why the top General Interest Magazines in Latin America (by circulation) were all published in Mexico, whereas the top Special Interest Magazines (also by circulation) were published in Brazil. He suggested one reason might be the heavy television (or mass-market) focus in Mexico. Meanwhile, Brazil, with its longer tradition of special-audience and special-interest publications, may well be more advanced in niche marketing and especially Internet marketing techniques to generate subscriptions.
McCullagh also reminded the CANIEM audience that engagement research is really a global phenomenon and that engagement and accountability research was being promoted, if not demanded, by global ad agencies. 

Marc Horovitz founded Garden Railways in 1984 and stayed on as Editor 11 years ago, after having sold the bimonthly to Waukesha, Wisconsin-based Kalmbach Publishing Co. Garden Railways' circulation has risen from just 350 initially to about 36,000 worldwide today. "Our primary target audience is those people who are interested in creating model railways in their backyards," says Denver-based Horovitz. 

Although Garden Railways is primarily focused on model trains, he notes, "Each issue includes a large gardening component. We are the only model-train publication with a horticultural editor!"

Sometimes Kalmbach's Model Railroader and Classic Toy Trains and their websites run Garden Railways articles, he adds.

Here, Horovitz talks about brand-name trains, railway gardening, botanical gardens, and bad weather.
  
Q. Is inclement weather the biggest concern for these outdoor model railroaders? What's the best way to shelter their trains and layouts?

A. Generally, the trains come indoors in bad weather. The structures can come in too, or stay outside, depending on requirements. Or they could be covered with boxes or other coverings. The rest of the equipment, like tracks, can withstand the elements.

Q. Baby boomers and retirees fondly recall Lionel and American Flyer electric train sets. For your readers, are there other noteworthy brand names?

A. That's how I started out too. Lionel is not a contender in our field. The biggest names are LGB, a German company, and in the U.S., USA Trains, Aristro-Craft, Accucraft and MTH Trains. Most of their trains are made in China these days, like a lot of other things. There are also dozens of smaller manufacturers.

Q. What's the biggest gardening or landscaping pointer that garden rail hobbyists should bear in mind?

A. We use plants to create plausible miniature worlds. Railway gardening has become almost a sub-hobby. But it all depends on where you live. Every region has its own plant materials that do well there but not necessarily elsewhere.

Q. There seem to be many related tourist attractions around the U.S. and the world—from the German pavilion at Disney World's EPCOT and the Chicago Botanical Garden to the Louisville Zoo and the Camden (NJ) Children's Garden. In your years with the magazine, has the number of these attractions grown much?

The deadline to apply for the MPA Foundation Publishing Fellowship at Stanford University is approaching. The Foundation is accepting applications for its "Professional Publishing Course on Emerging Technologies," an intensive, nine-day program for mid-career professionals in the magazine and book fields. The final application deadline is June 6.

The course itself runs July 13 - 21at Stanford. The university is located near Palo Alto and Silicon Valley, and less than an hour from San Francisco.

The Professional Publishing Course, first offered in 2006, is designed to immerse participants in honing editorial, managerial and business skills, as well as in understanding trends and cutting-edge information about today's most advanced publishing processes across all the major industry disciplines. Because the university is located in the heart of Silicon Valley, the school infuses its course with information on emerging technologies and new media as they relate to the publishing field.

The MPA Foundation offers a select number of fellowships to its domestic members, each of which provides a full financial aid package equal to the amount of tuition and lodging for each of the three Stanford publishing courses. Since the program’s inception in 2006, the MPA Foundation has awarded over a dozen publishing fellowships. To apply, complete the online application on the MPA Diversity website.

This spring, magazine professionals are getting unprecedented access to audit information. 

First, the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) is featured in two seminars—one this past April and another coming up on June 6 with "ABC Primer on Verified Circulation."

Now, BPA Worldwide President/CEO Glenn J. Hansen will on June 19 address a seminar on "BPA Worldwide Consumer Rules and Resources."

Hansen is a 27-year veteran with BPA, the media-auditing organization with the largest membership in the world; BPA counts more than 500 consumer magazines among its clients. His session will cover newly released audit rules and also focus on such magazine industry issues as sponsorships, public place and bulk distribution. Moreover, the BPA seminar will feature the utility of numerous online tools available via its open-access website, www.bpaww.com. As President/CEO for the past eight years, Hansen has guided BPA's global expansion not only geographically—most notably, in Asia and the Middle East—but also by product line—especially in the consumer, interactive and events media sectors.

Jack Griffin, President of the Publishing Group at Meredith Corporation, will be the speaker at MPA's next "Breakfast with a Leader" event, set for June 19. Like the previous "Breakfast" events, this one will take place at The University Club at One West 54th Street (at Fifth Avenue) in Manhattan; it will run from 8 a.m. to 9:30 a.m.