First the good. This year’s National Magazine Awards were announced a couple days ago. National Geographic won three, followed by Vanity Fair, which amidst the uproar over its suggestive pictures of squeeky-clean tween queen Miley Cyrus, grabbed two. Conde Nast Portfolio, the glossy monthly that debuted a year ago, took home one – not bad for a rookie.
Now the bad. Given by the Magazine Publishers of America, the Ellies are considered one of the high points of the year for the magazine industry. While magazine publishers don’t have as much to worry about these days as newspapers, these aren’t exactly the industry’s salad days. Ad spending in consumer magazines is expected to grow a mere 3.6 percent this year, compared with a 14.4 percent jump in online advertising, according to this report from TNS Media Intelligence, a custom researcher.
Some one-time venerable magazines are on their last legs. Nikki Finke reported on her Deadline Hollywood Daily blog on May 2 that TV Guide’s editorial staff has been gutted and the magazine is in danger of being folded. It’s hard to believe. In my magazine journalism classes in grad school, TV Guide was always held up as the epitome of magazine journalism success, with a bigger readership than any other publication in the country, with the possible exception of Reader’s Digest. According to Finke, TVG now has about 3.5 million subscribers, not counting the people who click on the TV Guide channel to see what to watch.
And now the ugly. Sex magazines by and about college students. I won’t post live links to any here -sorry, I’m just not that kinda gal – but you can read all about it in this article from 2007 from the New York Times.