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Thursday, November 19, 2009

Can Adobe and Apple Play Nicely When–And If–The Tablet Shows Up?

kid fight

Adobe is preparing to put magazines on Apple’s purported wondertablet. But what if that device, like Apple’s iPhone, doesn’t want to work with Adobe?

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Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Condé Nast’s Offering for Apple’s Mystery Tablet: Wired Magazine

cover_wired_190Here’s yet another content creator that’s convinced Apple has a tablet device in the works: Condé Nast says it will have a digital version of Wired magazine ready for the purported gadget by the middle of next year and will eventually create similar versions for all of its 18 titles.

But Condé, like other publishers, says Apple won’t actually talk to the company about its plans for the device–or even acknowledge that it has plans.

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Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Strength in Numbers? News Corp. May Join Time Inc.’s “Hulu for Magazines.”

rupert-murdochWhile Rupert Murdoch is busy thumbing his nose at Google, he is making more friendly overtures to other media players. Sources tell me his News Corp. may join the digital e-reader storefront that Time Inc. and other magazine publishers are putting together.

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Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Why Time Inc. Is Slashing Jobs: The Chart

Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes kicked off his quarterly earnings call by explaining why the company is cutting hundreds of jobs in its Time Inc. magazine unit.

But if you’re impatient, you can simply look at this grim chart, which details the publisher’s Q3 performance

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Monday, November 2, 2009

Hearst’s UGO Gets New Blood, Still Needs CEO

Hearst’s dude-centric UGO site, which has been without a permanent CEO since June, is still looking for a new boss. But in the meantime, it has some new blood: The company has brought in Hearst veteran Christopher Johnson to run programming and product strategy and hired Julie Shumaker to run 1UP, the gaming site it bought earlier this year.

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Friday, October 30, 2009

Bad News From the Washington Post: Ad Sales Slide Again

newspaperlessMany newspaper publishers say the ad sales slump has stopped, but not at Wapo: Both print and Web ad declines accelerated over the last quarter. Newsweek, meanwhile, saw its ad sales drop by half.

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Monday, October 26, 2009

BusinessWeek’s Fire Sale Nets McGraw Hill $5.9 Million, or $15,000 Per Staffer

dark-knight-burningMcGraw Hill isn’t quite done with BusinessWeek–it isn’t supposed to formally hand off the magazine to Bloomberg until later this year–but it is just about there. Today the company told investors just how much it will net from the sale of the 80-year-old title: $9.3 million, or $5.9 million after taxes.

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Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Condé Nast Tries Turning the App Store Into a Newsstand: Will You Buy GQ for Your iPhone?

megan-fox-gq-october-2008-06-771162Condé Nast is still in layoff mode, but that hasn’t stopped the publisher from putting together an app worth writing about. It’s part of a digital magazine strategy that actually makes some sense.

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Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Condé’s Cuts Come to Vogue

conde-nast-buildingAs expected, Condé Nast executives are swinging the layoff ax around the fabled magazine publisher. Today’s cuts are at Vogue, where I’m told at least six people have been let go from one of the company’s best-known titles. There will be more to come from the publisher, which shut down four magazines last week and is trying to bring down costs at its remaining titles by 25 percent.

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Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Bloomberg Buys BusinessWeek For a Song, Plus Up to $5 Million

newstandWhat’s one of the biggest names in magazine publishing worth? These days, maybe $5 million.

That’s the high end of the range Bloomberg will be paying for BusinessWeek, reports BusinessWeek. Next question: How many of the magazine’s employees stay on once the deal closes later this year? BusinessWeek publisher Keith Fox can’t make any assurances. But he does call the deal “exciting.”

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Fighting Words! Time Warner Says Comcast/NBCU as Dumb as…Time Warner/AOL.

bewkesJust in case anyone thought Time Warner had any lingering interest in NBC Universal, this ought to put it to rest: Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes just compared the proposed Comcast/NBCU deal with the disastrous one his company made with AOL nearly a decade ago.

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Monday, October 5, 2009

Here Are the Condé Nast Cuts: Modern Bride, Elegant Bride, Gourmet, Cookie Closing

conde-nast-buildingHere are the long-awaited cuts that Condé Nast has been mulling: Modern Bride, Elegant Bride, Gourmet and Cookie are all closing. More details via an internal memo from CEO Chuck Townsend.

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Friday, October 2, 2009

Publishers Like Time Inc.’s “Hulu for Magazines” Pitch. What Will Apple and Amazon Say?

genieTime Inc. has spent the past few months convincing other publishers to join a new joint venture aimed at a market that doesn’t really exist yet–magazine-like publications to be delivered via e-readers like Amazon’s Kindle and Apple’s rumored tablet. Publishers like the idea. What will Apple and Amazon say?

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Monday, September 28, 2009

Time Warner Dumping Its Magazines? Not So Fast.

time titlesHeavyweight media investor Gordy Crawford–who happens to own a big chunk of Time Warner–says the conglomerate plans to dump its magazine business. But I get the sense that Jeff Bewkes and company plan on keeping at least some of the unit’s iconic titles.

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Monday, August 31, 2009

Rolling Stone’s Web Failure Wasn’t So Shabby, After All. But Now What?

lennonConventional wisdom of the day: Magazine mogul Jann Wenner, the man who made his mark with Rolling Stone in the 60s and 70s, and then again with US Weekly in this decade, has blown it on the Web. And now it’s too late for him to catch up.

And who knows? It may even be true. But here’s one bit of nuance to chew on: Magazine mogul Jann Wenner has made money–as in, a profit–on the Web for the last five years.

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About Peter

Peter Kafka has been covering media and technology since 1997, when he joined the staff of Forbes magazine. Most recently, he has been the managing editor of the tech and media Web site, Silicon Alley Insider. Read more »

Ethics Statement

Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.

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