Monday, October 22, 2012

Time.com Relaunches With Responsive Design

Time.com Relaunches With Responsive Design:  To provide a more consistent look and feel to its readers, Time magazine has re-launched its website using responsive design technology, which automatically reformats a website to fit all computer and device screens.
Time magazine says it isn’t going to follow Newsweek’s move to a digital-only publication [1]. But nor is it ignoring the shift towards mobile news reading. And so Oct. 21, Time moved its site to responsive design so that the content automatically “snaps” to the frame, regardless of screen size (no more pinching and zooming). At the same time, Time redesigned its site across all platforms so that the content and user experience are uniform across all devices.

Forbes, Martini Media in Ad Deal

Advertising Week has come and gone, and while we're arguably no closer to cracking the code on digital advertising, Forbes and Martini Media are tacitly voting in favor of content-branded digital ads.
In a deal that's unconventional even for the likes of Forbes, the business news brand reached a deal with digital ad company Martini Media to integrate the magazine's staff-written editorial content into ads for blue-chip advertisers. And while there are plenty of native ad units that combine branded editorial content with the advertiser's own material, what's notable about these units is that they're running outside of the Forbes ecosystem.

Variety Names Publisher

Variety has promoted associate publisher Michelle Sobrino-Stearns to publisher. She succeeds Brian Gott, who left the publication after three years at the helm.
The move comes less than two weeks after Penske Media Corp. acquired the Hollywood trade publication from Reed Business Information for a reported $25 million.

Newsweek Not Representative of Industry

Newsweek's decision to stop publishing a print edition after 80 years and bet its life entirely on a digital future may be more a commentary on its own problems than a definitive statement on the health of the magazine industry.
Magazine ad revenue in the U.S. is seen rising 2.6 percent this year to $18.3 billion, according to research firm eMarketer. That would be the third increase in three years, driven mainly by gains in digital ad sales, though print ads are expected to be flat.
Paid magazine subscriptions were up 1.1 percent in the first half of the year, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. And while single-copy sales at newsstands are down 9.6 percent, overall circulation - the bulk of which is in print - is steady compared to a year ago.

PIA; 2012 Print Growth Slowed

PIA Print Market Update Shows Growth Slowed in 2012: According to the U.S. Census Bureau, YTD 2012 shipments on a nominal unadjusted basis declined 2.2%. While the Census Bureau still reports a decline, it is an improvement from the first quarter's 3.9% decline.
For the past few quarters, the majority of industry growth was generated from larger firms. When calculating the percent change in industry sales, we give a higher weight to each firm with more than 100 employees because these firms generate more than 60% of industry sales. Since the fourth quarter 2011, we have noticed a trend-larger firms reporting sales growth declining each quarter from a high in the fourth quarter of 2011 of 5.1% to a low in the current quarter of 2.1%.

WhatTheyThink Webinar; Print & Social Media

Print and Social Media: Working Together: Free WhatTheyThink webinar, sponsored by Ricoh, discusses how print and social media work together for a more effective marketing strategyLexington, Kentucky USA -- WhatTheyThink today announced the opportunity for industry professionals to attend a free printing industry educational webinar. Social Media Meets Print: Part One. The this first in a two-session series will be led by WhatTheyThink Senior Editor Cary Sherburne. The session is scheduled for Wednesday, October 24th, from 2:00 to 3:00

Newsweek Move Will Little Affect Quad/Graphics

Quad/Graphics Losing Longtime Contract with Newsweek Ending Print Editions: Newsweek will print its final edition at the end of this year, ending its decades-long relationship with Wisconsin-based printing firm Quad/Graphics Inc. Quad, which has worked with Newsweek since 1977, will not be cutting any jobs as a result.

USPS Urges Customers to Switch

USPS Urges Customers to Switch from POSTNET to IMb Barcodes: This week saw USPS writing to 800,000 business mailers who hold a POSTNET permit to encouraging them to start making the transition to IMb. If they don’t make the switch by Jan. 28, 2013, those mailers will no longer be eligible for those mailers will no longer be eligible for discounts for business mail prepared to standards for automated processing.

Friday, October 19, 2012

ABM Predicts 2.56% Postal Increase for Magazines

http://www.btobonline.com/article/20121019/MEDIABUSINESS10/310199994/abm-forecasts-postal-rates-for-periodicals-will-increase-2-56-in-2013
American Business Media is projecting that periodicals will face a 2.56% increase in postal rates next year.
The increase, pending approval by the Postal Regulatory Commission, will take effect Jan. 27.
Jack Widener, postal counsel for ABM, said in an email to members that the USPS also announced it has for the first time hit its borrowing limit of $15 billion. The agency said it will have to rely on revenue from stamps and other products to fund operations.

Silence on Catalyst Elk Falls Sale

With just hours to go before the third Catalyst Paper Elk Falls Mill site sale deadline, both the seller, Catalyst Paper, and the buyer, Alberta developer Harold Jahn, are observing a stony silence.
This is nothing new for Catalyst Paper which has not answered a Mirror phone call since mid-September. On Oct. 4 Jahn said his $8.6 million deal to buy the abandoned Catalyst Mill site would close today, Oct. 19, and he would be on site next week doing business.
Two earlier sale closure dates, Sept. 5 and 19, were missed since the deal was announced in August.

Woodlot Owners: Port Hawkesbury Paper’s Prices Too Low

Private woodlot owners say Port Hawkesbury Paper’s prices are too low to survive:
The private woodlot owners supplying the Port Hawkesbury Paper mill in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia are saying the prices the mill is paying for wood is too low for their businesses to survive.
Bill McCarthy, President of North Inverness Forest Management Limited, feels like the victim of school yard bullying after seeing the mill’s buying policy.
When wood buyers from the mill met with the organization’s manager, Clifton Sangster, last week, they discovered Port Hawkesbury Paper is offering just $43/tonne delivered roadside for 8 foot wood and $40/tonne for random length wood.  McCarthy said that “when NewPage shut down the mill in August 2011, they were paying us $50 to $55 per tonne roadside for our wood.”

IP & Vermont Gas Announce Pact

Vermont Gas Systems and International Paper Co. on Wednesday announced a $70 million pact through which the South Burlington-based utility would supply natural gas to the paper company's Ticonderoga, N.Y., mill as soon as 2015.

Q3 Magazine Ad Pages Down 8%

2012 is shaping up to be another lousy year for consumer magazines, at least as far as print advertising is concerned. According to the latest quarterly tally from the Publishers Information Bureau, total ad pages fell 8% to 36,059 in the third quarter of this year. That follows similar declines in the first and second quarters of the year; in the first nine months of 2012, ad pages are down 8.6% to 110,843.

Q2 Global Advertising Up 2.7%

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/185474/global-ad-dollars-up-tv-leads-internet-rises.html 
Internet, outdoor, and TV continued to be the top media categories making gains globally in advertising dollars.
For the second quarter, Nielsen’s Global AdView Pulse says Internet advertising rose 7.2%; radio gained 6.6%; outdoor was up 4.7%; and TV added on 3.1%. TV holds the biggest share of advertising dollars globally at 61%. Overall, global advertising growth is up 2.7% for the second quarter.

Terry McDonell Leaves Time's SI

Terry McDonell’s reign as editor of Sports Illustrated and the Time Inc. Sports Group has finally come to an end [1]. According to Time Inc. editor in chief John Huey, who announced the news in a company-wide email earlier today, McDonell started searching for his replacement over the summer and will now become a senior adviser for the company, “concentrating on digital projects he has in incubation.”

Time Out New York & CourseHorse with New Offer

Time Out New York Partners With Start-Up for Online Course Offering:
City and regional publication Time Out New York is giving readers access to more information, and not just through its editorial content. Parent company Time Out Group has entered into the local class discovery market—its New York edition has struck a strategic partnership with Internet startup CourseHorse to deliver local educational listings and discounts.

Switching to Digital Magazines a Challenge

Russ Grandinetti, vice president for Kindle content for Amazon, spoke to magazine publishers and editors Monday in San Francisco, where he talked about the particular challenges facing their industry as they slowly move toward digital platforms for publishing and editing.

eBooks, Music & Films Thrive; Not Magazines

Circulation of digital magazines in the US doubled in the first half of 2012 compared with the same period in 2011, according to ABC figures. Forgive me if I'm not jumping for joy or loudly proclaiming the death of print: digital titles still account for just 1.7% of total magazine circulation.
One by one, the content industries have undergone their own digital revolutions, starting with the music industry and moving on to books and film. In each case, the catalyst was a business from outside the industry throwing a grenade into what was quite frankly a stagnating pond.

Google Blaming RRD for Early Release

RR Donnelley blamed as premature Google filing wipes $20bn off shares:
The incomplete results statement revealed a 20% slide in Google's quarterly profits to $2.2bn (£1.4bn), missing analysts' estimates and sparking a flurry of trading that wiped nearly $20bn off the company's market value before trading was suspended.
Google placed the blame firmly on RR Donnelley in a statement released shortly after the blunder. It said: "Earlier this morning RR Donnelley, the financial printer, informed us that they had filed our draft 8K earnings statement without authorization.
Tom Quinlan, chief executive of RR Donnelley told the Wall Street Journal that "human error" was responsible for the early SEC filing, which he added was "not common in our world".
RR Donnelley, which files more than 100,000 documents each year, said in a statement that it would be investigating the situation.

Thursday, October 18, 2012

UPM Kymi Producing Coated Sheets

The expansion of UPM Kymi mill's converting department has now been concluded, and the production of coated fine paper sheets has started. The new sheeting line was taken into use 25 September and the first sheets have already been delivered to customers.
The aim of the new sheeting line is to serve UPM's customers in close-by markets faster, better and more flexibly than before, and to support the production efficiency of the integrated mill site.