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MPA Unveils Web Redesign, Touting Social Web Features, Enhanced Search and More
 The MPA website, www.magazine.org, has relaunched with a host of new features and improvements designed to enhance both MPA-member and non-member user experiences.
In announcing the new look of the premier portal for magazine industry information, MPA President/CEO Nina Link said, “We redesigned www.magazine.org not only to increase online engagement with our various constituents but to also better take advantage of technological advances in the digital space.” She added, “This redesign is the just the first step in our online ‘makeover,’ so look forward to even more enhancements to the portal in the coming months.
Highlights of the portal include:
- Streamlined navigation: The new design allows users faster access to information they are looking for, plus modules for "Related Content," “Most Viewed Content” and “Featured Topics”
- Optimized search: Users can now search by specific section, month and file types (pdf, mp3, video), with more targeted and relevant search results
- Social Web Functionality: In addition to an RSS feed, the site now offers a “ShareThis” utility that facilitates social bookmarking on sites like Reddit, Facebook, del.icio.us and many others
- iDirectory: Contains detailed listings for MPA’s entire membership, comprised of magazine publishers in the U.S. and abroad, as well as their business partners. Also includes the magazine industry’s most comprehensive digital supplier list
- Industry News: A wider range of magazine industry-related news encompasses MPA-member company releases and press articles, as well as relevant news from the digital sector
- MPA Events and Seminars: More readily accessible from the homepage, industry events, awards shows and professional development seminars feature smoother online registration functionality
- “Community” section: MPA communities encompass platforms online—Facebook, LinkedIn, and off-networking opportunities at conferences, award shows and receptions.
Check out what else is new at www.magazine.org.
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Governor Schwarzenegger on AMC Marquee
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will add some muscle to the roster of heavy hitters at the 2008 American Magazine Conference (AMC), taking place October 5-7 at the Westin St. Francis in San Francisco.
Schwarzenegger will be interviewed by TIME Managing Editor Richard Stengel. This interview is tentatively slated to take place Tuesday morning, October 7, depending on the Governor’s schedule. Other keynoters include Jeffery Katzenberg of Dreamworks SKG, the Sunday evening kick-off speaker, and Monday headliners futurist Paul Saffo, Tom Rogers of TiVo, and Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg.
Themed “Unleashing the Power,” this premier business conference for magazine industry executives will focus on ways in which publishers can better leverage their brands across platforms, particularly in the face of current marketplace challenges.
A number sessions of will center on magazine advertising. “The Hard Sell in a Soft Economy: How Publishers Can Fight for More Ad Dollars,” featuring Dom Rossi from MPA, will present a strong, research-based case for magazines as a “nice to have” in media plans to a “have to have.” In “Reshaping the Model for Magazines,” Bob Carrigan of IDG Communications and Jack Griffin from Meredith Corporation will reveal how they are evolving their businesses in response to dramatic shifts in content consumption and advertiser demand. And Jeff Goodby of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners will be joined by fellow adman, John Butler of Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners to answer the question, "What Makes Great Magazine Ads?”
On the circulation front “Retail 2013,” moderator Peter Kreisky of The Kreisky Media Consultancy, with panelists John Loughlin, Hearst Magazines, and Glen Clarke, The News Group, will take a look at the state of newsstand five years from now.
This year’s special pre-AMC program for indy publishers by indy publishers will address “How Independents Change and Grow with the Times Without Spending a Fortune.”
The hot-button topic environmental sustainability will be addressed by the panel “Getting to Green,” which includes panelists David Refkin, Time Inc.; Bryan Welch, Ogden Publications; and Avrim Lazar, Forest Products Association of Canada; with moderator John Q. Griffin, National Geographic Society.
Other pertinent topics include: “Monetizing Beyond the Ad Page,” Cause Marketing/Edit in Magazines: What’s Good for Your Readers…and Your Brand,” and a roster of editor/publisher interstitials on innovation.
AMC 2008 will be capped by the previously announced visit to the “Googleplex,” the Mountain View, CA-headquarters of Google.
For the full program schedule and AMC registration information, go to www.magazine.org/amc.
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MPA Welcomes 11 New Members
MPA welcomes its newest additions, which include six domestic publishers and five associate members.
The domestic member publishers, which also are MPA-IMAG members, are:
Management Executives, Inc.
http://www.acfei.com/
Publisher of: The Forensic Examiner, Annals and Inside Homeland Security
Coastal Style, Inc.
www.coastalstylemag.com
Publisher of: Coastal Style
Christian Science Publishing Society
www.spirituality.com
Publisher of: Christian Science Sentinel, The Christian Science Journal and The Herald of Christian Science
8020 Publishing, LLC
www.8020publishing.com
Publisher of: JPG and Everywhere
Uptown Media Group
www.uptownlife.net
Publisher of: Uptown
Manhattan Media, LLC
www.manhattanmedia.com
Publisher of: Avenue, 02138 and New York Family
The associate members are:
The Causeway Agency
www.thecausewayagency.com
Full-service communications agency providing full range of services, including brand idenity programs, research, strategic planning and consulting and website development.
Heidrick & Struggles
www.heidrick.com
Leadership solutions for clients, assessment, coaching and professional development to senior management teams.
Pointlogic USA, Inc.
www.pointlogic.com
Helps clients make smarter business decisions, to generate insight into strategic and tactical choices and deliver concrete, software-based solutions.
Quantcast Corporation
www.quantcast.com
New-media measurement service enabling advertisers to view audience reports for millions of sites and services. The free service empowers publishers to demonstrate the value of their audiences by tagging their websites, videos, widgets and games for direct measurement.
Reilly Emerging Media
Digital strategy, magazine and circulation consulting, business plan development, growth in emerging media and markets.
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New Member Profile: Uptown Magazine and Uptownlife.net
Uptown Magazine is a quarterly publication, founded in 2004, reaching over 500,000 affluent and influential African-Americans. The magazine has both national and regional editions for Chicago, New York, Atlanta and Washington, DC. Editorial content highlights the best in automotive, travel, fashion, food and spirits, sports, and entertainment, including profiles of some of tastemakers that represent their audience.
In addition to the quarterly print magazine, Uptown’s website, Uptownlife.net, includes exclusive content, video, blogs, Uptown Social—a restaurant, hotel and lounge guide, and much more. They also sponsor annual high profile events, such as the Uptown Escape, Uptown Social music series and Uptown Food and Wine Festival. | top
Digital Driver: Vanessa Kaneshiro, Time.com
This is another in a series of exclusive interviews with magazine executives responsible for leveraging their brands on digital platforms.
 Vanessa Kaneshiro
Video Producer and Editor
Time.com
As the video producer and editor for Time.com, Vanessa Kaneshiro is responsible for all the video content on the site. Previously, she worked in video capacities with VH1 and MLB.com, and earlier with MTV's news and documentary unit. She started her career working on documentaries for PBS and various independent production companies.
Q. At the recent "Magazines 24/7: Video" conference, you mentioned that you, as the only video producer at TIME, may work 13-hour days and weekends to report, shoot and edit videos for the site. And last fall, one of TIME's writers praised you for culling the video clips for The 100 Best TV Shows of All-TIME for his TV Blog . What are the pros—and cons—of being a one-woman band?
A. Thankfully, that has changed recently! TIME just hired Craig Duff as the new Director of Multimedia. My workload has already lightened since he's started and it's great. But there are definitely a lot of pros when you're working alone. I tend to be a perfectionist, so to have control over every detail of a video from start to finish is definitely something that I like a lot.
Every shoot is a challenge and if it works, it's a great sense of accomplishment. The "100 Best TV Shows" package took me a solid month to complete (including weekends) but I have to say I still love looking at that project. The major con is, of course, that if a video doesn't come out as strong as it should, there's only yourself to blame.
Q. At that same MPA event, you indicated that most of your videos are relatively brief. Talk a little about what's entailed, and what you look for, in boiling down the raw footage to get the nuggets you need.
A. Our videos actually tend to hover around four minutes or less. The "10 Questions" videos we do online—an edited version of the interview runs in the magazine—run a little bit longer to really get a feel for the subject's personality.
For a "location" shoot or a video that's going to accompany a print story in the magazine, you really have to plan what the storyline is going to be before you go out. Otherwise, it's really easy to come back with a lot of wasted tape. When you come back, you pick only the best-of-the-best moments from the raw footage and the storyline markers for the intro, facts, and wrap-up (statements from interviewees or the reporter's voiceover).
Every piece of footage or every statement included should be serve only one purpose: to move the story along—and you get one shot only for each. You also have to think about what will keep people watching, and it helps catch users attention by placing your most gorgeous shots, funniest moments or most shocking moments in the first 10 seconds—or less! What's challenging is that you constantly have to put yourself in the place of your viewer and think, "Would they have the same level of interest in this topic as I?"
Q. How long have you been with Time.com? Have you found that some of your duties at your previous companies help you in your post at Time.com?
A. I've been with Time.com for almost a year now. Working in television and film has absolutely prepared me for working in online video. When working on a long-form documentary or a documentary series for TV where budgets can be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, the production standards and requirements are almost non-negotiable. They have to be near-perfect quality—the best sound, the best videographers, the best color correction and editing, and the list goes on.
When you're working online, however, you have to think about production in a completely different way because everything from the crew, to the budget, to the medium or player size is smaller. We make great-looking videos, but there's more flexibility in production standards.
When you understand all that goes into making a doc or a TV show, you're absolutely prepared to do shoots on your own. When TIME asks me to set up shoots in other states and countries, my time spent in TV managing crews and booking edits, or working with 30 interns and associate producers at a time, has made me really adept at coordinating productions.
Also, after working on multiple simultaneous storylines for a documentary series, you're really qualified to do videos that will have a storyline too—but instead run just three minutes. Both are difficult, but for different reasons. In docs, you have days to think about this scene or that, but you have hundreds of hours of tape to work with and the organization of the team has to be extremely efficient. In short videos, you have maybe an hour of tape but you need to decide very quickly how you're going to present your story, and then jump right into editing if you want to finish it the same day.
Q. Among the recent video interviews you shot was one that your boss, TIME Managing Editor Rick Stengel, did with Maria Shriver . Thus far, what's been the most memorable interview you've been involved in, celebrity or otherwise?
A. That's a hard question to answer! You always have a preconceived idea of what someone is going to be like and sometimes it's spot-on and sometimes you leave with your mind completely and pleasantly changed, and those are the interviews I like the most.
I would have to say Madeline Albright was very inspiring, and Anthony Bourdain, Denis Leary, and Tim Gunn were great fun to produce. Coordinating the Vladimir Putin shoot for the "2007 Person of the Year" was definitely the most challenging thing I've done in my career by far, but when it all worked out, I felt like I just completed a marathon. It was an accomplishment for the whole team at Time.com.
Q. In a June issue, TIME ran a page heralding, "TIME is now on YouTube!" How much does that add to your workload?
A. Our new YouTube page has been great for Time.com and isn't too time-consuming. I do think it's really important to take the video that you create and put it out on as many platforms as possible. You put so much work into every single one—you should show it off!
At VH1, we uploaded our videos on our site, of course, but also to iTunes, Verizon Mobile, YouTube, Google Video and Yahoo! Video. People are very attached to their platforms and daily websites they visit, so the video should live in as many places as possible just for that reason. YouTube has been a lot of fun because the best reward is to connect with people, read comments, and, of course, see your view tally rise.
Q. Do you get involved in other digital platforms beyond the website and YouTube?
A. We're ramping up to start regular delivery on iTunes and other platforms going forward (mobile, etc). It's a team effort with marketing and ad sales, and there are ongoing discussions about what kinds of formats we would have to deliver in the end.
Q. When it comes to video productions, are there things that magazines in general could be doing to improve their online content?
A. From a producer's viewpoint, I'd say magazines really need to focus on production quality. Video can be expensive to produce, but you still want the magazine to look good. I don't think just because it's "web video" it should be badly shot with bad audio and a bad or non-existent storyline. If you want your magazine to have a certain image, you should put the time, planning, budget and staff to create videos that are just as good as your web design, photography and the printed magazine. In the end, you have to decide if you want a lot of bad videos scattered around your site, or less video but better quality.
The other thing that's been fascinating is the discussion about the visual "image" of the magazine—you are essentially bringing your magazine from print to something people can see and hear. So you have to think: Which reporters will best represent you on-camera? Depending on your established reader audience and the content they expect from you, can your videos be funny? Does everything have to be hard news? How will you curate pitches from freelancers to make sure they go through the same standards a written story would? Should you produce single videos to go with printed stories or web series and videos that live on their own? It's a lot to think about, but if you plan ahead of time, you'd be surprised at what you can do.
Q. What's the longest a video should run on the web versus, say, on TV?
A. In terms of length, I would say nothing longer than three or four minutes unless it's a feature story or interview with no b-roll.
Q. What's the latest tally on the unique monthly visitors to TIME.com?
A. About 15 million unique monthly visitors so far this year. The most popular pages are usually: the homepage, "Pictures of the Week,"and "The Page."
Q. What have been the one or two most viewed video features of, say, the last six months?
A. "10 Years of Viagra Jokes" and "10 Questions for Rain." The latter was a great video we did to go along with the annual “TIME 100” issue. “The Colbert Report” on Comedy Central played it since the Korean pop star Rain is Colbert’s rival in the TIME 100 online poll. Also, "How to Cook a Bug!"
Q. Looking ahead, are there things you'd like to be developing that you're not already doing?
A. You know, just keeping up with day-to-day production is really challenging. But going forward I would love to add more of a "doc-style" feeling to our short videos, keep production standards really high and work to bump up the creativity in our videography and editing—like working with more graphics and music.
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Tomorrow's 'Innovator: Glam Media's Samir Arora
 Samir Arora, Chairman/CEO of Glam Media, will discuss "Media and Network Brands" at the "Meet the Innovators" event tomorrow, Wednesday, July 23.
Glam Media's distributed media networks model with a reach of 64 million unique visitors, is effectively changing the definition of a media company in the 21st century. Arora will discuss what magazines need to know about the use of vertical networks and the distribution of branded media content within a network environment.
Glam Media is considered the fastest growing property on the Internet, bringing together its flagship site, Glam.com; the Glam Publisher Network of more than 450 sites, blogs and magazines; and select syndicated content partners. Arora also serves as Chairman of Information Capital, LLC, a venture capital fund that invests in leading-edge big idea companies.
The two-hour luncheon event—to run from noon till 2:00 p.m.—will take place at The Harmonie Club, 4 East 60th Street in Manhattan. Click here for more information. Onsite registration is avaiable.
In September, MPA will present another "Meet the Innovators" event, at which MagHound's Dave Ventresca will be the featured speaker.
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Dateline: China
MPA Exec Reports on Magazine Success Stories from Beijing
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| McCullagh (right) meets with Trends publishers (left) | Charles McCullagh, MPA’s SVP/Member Services, is currently in Beijing taking stock of the thriving Chinese magazine publishing scene. Exclusively on the MPA website, McCullagh offers frequent reports of his experiences, observations and meetings with local publishers.
Following is an excerpt from McCullagh’s July 15th entry, on the meteoric rise of up-market consumer magazines in the People’s Republic of China:
“To be sure, the advances would not have happened without strong international partners including IDG, Hearst, Condé Nast, National Geographic, Rodale and others. But, given what has happened in other sectors of the Chinese economy, one must believe the entrepreneurial tick was already there.
“One of the more prominent success stories in this sector is Trends Publishing, located in Beijing and approaching its 15th anniversary. Trends represents an enlightened example of a disciplined in-market brand building through international partnerships—with Hearst, in particular—and an unwavering sense of the "Chinese-ness" of the business.”
To read more of McCullagh’s Chinese chronicles, check out the International section of the MPA website.
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A Spotlight on Magazine Leaders of Color
 Betty S. Wong
Executive Editor
Family Circle
When Betty Wong first started thinking about a career, she knew she wanted. “I did not want to be doing the same tasks everyday,” said the executive editor of Family Circle. “I wanted a job that was always changing.”
It appears that she got her wish, and then some.
At Family Circle, Wong oversees editorial day-to-day operations, which include: developing article concepts; assigning and editing stories; creating issue plans; writing cover lines, heads and decks; and managing and hiring a staff of more than 30 who work closely with her to produce 15 issues a year. In addition, she is often called upon to work on bigger strategy plans that extend the Family Circle brand, whether it’s via the website, licensing projects or partnerships with other organizations. “Editors today are responsible for not only creating and managing content in their magazines but also developing the entire brand,” Wong said.
It takes a lot of juggling; resulting in no day being the same as the one before, or even after it, for that matter. She has always loved magazines, so she finds holding a “tangible product that I was a part of making” at the end of every month truly fulfilling.
Getting to where she is today took a lot of hard work and persistence. She had to pay her dues, she said, which was not an easy thing.
“Starting out as an editorial assistant at a big consumer magazine is never what we envision the experience to be like. Movies and TV make magazine jobs look like it’s all about glamour, fun and free shoes. It may not be all that glamorous in the beginning.”
When she got started in magazines, she said she did not have the “luxuries” of Wikipedia and Google. She defined much of what she had to do then as drudgery work. But it was that drudgery work that helped her to develop the research skills and editorial judgement that she finds useful today. And she advises those looking to break into the business, as well as those looking to move up the masthead, that it's crucial to work on honing editing skills.
“If you can look past the day-to-day grind and look for learning opportunities, then it helps in keeping the end goal in mind for you,” she counseled. “There is no such thing as a small job. Those small jobs and small experiences are a training ground for what you’ll need to be doing in your next position.”
Not only does she believe those interested in breaking into the industry should adjust their focus and perspectives, she believes the industry has some work to do as well—particularly in the areas of diversity and consumer outreach/involvement.
“The magazine industry should reflect the true composition of America, in its staffs and on its pages.” She added, “We must really involve the reader, giving them a forum for their ideas. Whether it is on the pages of the magazine or creating a community via the website, we need to start inviting our readers to co-create with us.”
She is optimistic. “I see a lot of that happening in the next decade or so.”
The Masthead Mosaic series puts a spotlight on leaders who are helping to make magazines rich and relevant to the increasingly multicultural American marketplace. These profiles are meant to serve as a source of inspiration, motivation and guidance for seasoned professionals and novices alike within the magazine industry. For more interviews with of leading magazine executives, visit the Masthead Mosaic section on the MPA website.
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