Consumer spending in August turned in its weakest performance since the last “flat” month — February. Some observers attribute the poor performance to the drying-up of the government stimulas well. The last of those checks went out mid-July. The New York Times (Sept. 29, 2008)
The ranks of news magazines declined by almost 40% from 2003 to 2008 (from 75 to 45 titles), according to the National Directory of Magazines, which catalogs more than 20,500 U.S. and Canadian publications. The biggest category of magazines is regionals. They number more than 1,100, appealing to both readers (who love everything local) and [...]
Gannet Co., the nation’s largest newspaper publisher, is cutting 100 more jobs this week. The announcement comes after last month’s elimination of 1,000 positions. This time around, the cuts were all in management jobs in Gannet’s newspapers nation-wide. No cuts were made at the company’s flagship paper, USA Today. As with the rest of the [...]
A new study by BigResearch reveals that increasing numbers of consumers are eschewing shopping as a leisure activity and rather combining shopping trips with their daily commutes to work. “Drastic changes in shopping behavior call for drastic changes in marketing methods,” according to one observer. Progressive Grocer (Sept. 10, 2008)
TasteofHome.com, the website of the recipe-lovers magazine, has rolled out a new video channel that mixes together original content, user-generated clips and professionally produced cooking fare from across the Web. The video channel actually went live in mid-July, though it has slowly been adding more and more features as the weeks go by. Just last [...]
The Conference Board’s consumer confidence index jumped to 56.9 in August from July’s 51.9, apparently in part as a result of reduced levels of concern about inflation. The New York Times (Aug. 27, 2008)
ABC and People mag have teamed up to present an hour-long weight loss special on Sept. 30 at 10pm. “Half Their Size: The People Magazine Weight Loss Challenge” will focus on eight residents of Mississippi (the nation’s most overweight state) for a nine-month period to show how diet and exercise changed their lives. The “Half Their [...]
The latest Fas-Fax report was released by the Audit Bureau of Circulation this morning. Trade magazine paid and non-paid circulation remained flat during the first half, but did report a slight increase of 0.85% over the same time period last year. The largest gainers were Los Angeles Business Journal, San Fernando Valley Business Journal, and [...]
This month’s issue of Inc. magazine released its second annual Inc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing privately held companies in the US. And a few magazine publishers made the ranks this year. Among them are Red 7 Media, Journal Publications, Cahaba Media Group, and BZ Media to name a few. Red 7 Media, Folio’s parent [...]
In the two years that CNN’s iReport has been around, it has helped citizen reporting become a web sensation. So far this year, everyday-joes have posted 175,000 videos and photos to iReport and it has seen a 176% increase in submissions since this time last year. iReport and other citizen journalism websites, like FNC’s UReport [...]