New Interactive Magazine Puts Print First

http://www.printweek.com/news/1189677/New-interactive-magazine-puts-print-first/

The pilot issue of iLove magazine has just been sent to 13,500 carefully-targeted readers, ahead of plans to up the monthly circulation to 700,000.

The fashion and beauty title is the brainchild of Digital Space, which has offices in Northampton and Ilkley. 
The firm has been working in the print-to-mobile arena for a number of years and has produced a variety of cross-media projects with major magazine and newspaper publishers. It has now decided to create its own product. 
"Print, as a mechanism for triggering a response has far greater value than most people put on it," said director Adrian Fleming. "We have taken a piece of print and overlaid the sort of analytical values you’d get on an insightful web page."

M&A Value Highest in More Than a Year

http://www.btobonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130708/MEDIABUSINESS/307089994/1094/rss01&rssfeed=rss01

A total of 392 M&A transactions and investments were announced last month in the marketing, media, technology and business information/services industries, according to Petsky Prunier's monthly report on M&A and investment activity. Reported deal value totaled $21.6 billion across all segments, an increase of 7% from $20.2 billion in May, and the highest reported monthly value in more than a year, the investment bank said. 
The number of deals increased 8% from 364 in May, for the fifth consecutive month-over-month rise.

Consumer Attitudes Towards Paywalls Shifting

http://printinthemix.com/Fastfacts/Show/742

According to a study by Oxford University’s Reuters Institute Study of Journalism, twice as many consumers are willing to pay for online news content than a year ago, albeit the numbers are still relatively low.
The study, conducted by YouGov, polled 11,000 internet users across nine countries, including the U.S.
Findings: Half of global respondents (42% of American) said they had bought a printed newspaper in the last week, but only 5% said they had paid for digital news in the same time period. This is partly because the majority of online newspapers still do not have paywalls.

Davler Media Buys New York Spaces

 http://www.foliomag.com/2013/davler-media-group-buys-new-york-spaces#.Udxt6lOYyKw
Montvale, New Jersey-based Wainscot Media, which publishes 18 regional magazines, has sold New York Spaces to Davler Media Group. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but it includes the magazine, published 9 times per year, its website and its Top 50 Design Gala.
New York Spaces was bolstered by Wainscot's purchase of New York Home from Hour Media back in 2007 when the company folded the latter title into its existing luxury interior design magazine.  

Fewer Magazine Closures, Fewer Launches

http://www.adweek.com/news/press/magazine-closures-slow-so-do-launches-151065

Fewer new magazines are launching. But fewer are folding, too.

Only 97 new print and digital magazines launched in the first half of 2013, down from 133 in the year-ago period, according to figures released today by MediaFinder.com, an online database of U.S. and Canadian publications.
Food and regional titles dominated new launches, with 12 new food magazines including Allrecipes.com, a print spinoff of the popular home cooks website owned by Meredith Corp., a few annuals from Better Homes and Gardens, Edible Milwaukee, along with 10 new regional publications. The luxury trend continued, with the introduction of titles like Haute Time and Tempus and no fewer than three new Hamptons magazines: Beach, Avenue at the Beach and Daily Summer. 
On the bright side, the number of closures declined, to 29 in 1H 2013 from 48 in last year's first half.
Consolidation by Bonnier Corp. and arts and crafts publisher F+W accounted for a number of them. Bonnier shuttered Garden Design in February, and its Parenting and Babytalk titles were folded when they were sold to Meredith in May.

Barnes & Noble CEO Resigns

http://money.cnn.com/2013/07/08/news/companies/barnes-noble-ceo/index.htm
Lynch is departing after a three-year tenure in which Barnes & Noble was battered by the shift away from brick-and-mortar bookstores to e-commerce and digital products. 
The company has tried to compete in the tablet market with the likes of Amazon's (AMZN, Fortune 500) Kindle and Apple's (AAPL, Fortune 500) iPad, but sales of its Nook tablets have disappointed, falling 34% in the most recent quarter.

Bids for Maxim at $20 Million

http://adage.com/article/media/maxim-magazine-fetch-bids-20-million/243023/
Maxim magazine, the bawdy men's title that went up for sale in March, is fetching some bids of about $20 million, less than a 10th of the price its owners paid six years ago, according to people familiar with its finances. 
Maxim publisher Alpha Media Group, controlled by creditor Cerberus Capital Management, is expected to lose between $3 million and $5 million this year, according to the people, who asked not to be named because the matter is confidential. 

Argos: Catalogs with Touch-Screens

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/10158229/Argos-hires-EMI-executive-as-new-digital-director.html

Bertrand Bodson has joined Argos as its first digital director and will oversee the development of the retailer’s website and mobile shopping applications.

Argos, which is owned by Home Retail Group, is investing £300m over the next three years in a bid to revitalise its stores and digital divisions.
This involves replacing the famous laminated catalogues in stores with touch–screen computers, introducing “fast track” queues to collect online orders, offering wi-fi within stores and closing around 75 stores as leases expire.

Resolute/Union Agreement Allows Restart of Ft. Frances PM

http://www.chroniclejournal.com/content/news/local/2013/07/05/resolute-restart-fort-frances-machine-12-weeks

Resolute Forest Products and Communications Energy and Paperworkers Union locals 92 and 306 have reached an agreement that will see the restart of a paper machine at the Fort Frances mill.

More than 40 employees are to be recalled on July 17 to run No. 7 paper machine for up to 12 weeks.
Citing challenging market conditions, Resolute shut down the kraft mill and one paper machine in Fort Frances in February, and laid off almost 240 staff and unionized employees.

Maine Offers Cate Street Capital/Great Northern Paper Help

http://bangordailynews.com/2013/07/04/news/bangor/lepage-state-helping-cate-street-with-east-millinocket-mill

State leaders are working with Cate Street Capital to help the New Hampshire firm keep its East Millinocket paper mill operational, Gov. Paul LePage said Thursday.

"We are trying to work with them, but it is difficult," LePage said before he marched in the Bangor Fourth of July parade.
A paper mill in Nova Scotia that receives heavy Canadian government support competes with the new Great Northern Paper Co. LLC mill for its share of the newsprint market.

Stora Closes Newsprint PM Permanently

http://www.storaenso.com/

Stora Enso has finalized negotiations with employee representatives regarding the closure of the 205,000 tonne/yr PM 2 at its Hylte mill and the 270,000 tonne/yr PM 11 at its Kvarnsveden mill, both in Sweden.

The two newsprint machines were already stopped for market-related reasons on May 16 and have not been restarted since. It is now clear they will remain down for good.
The PM closures are part of a broader round of restructuring and profitability improvement actions, which will reduce costs by a total of Euro 54 million ($70 million) annually and the number of employees at the company by 600.

Monadnock Fire May Close Mill for Months

http://www.sentinelsource.com/news/local/fire-destroys-electrical-system-at-monadnock-paper-mill/article_9f19acfd-182c-55a3-8d8c-e4a466bc0620.html

The Monadnock Paper Mills could be shut down for about a month after the equivalent of a four-alarm electrical fire torched the mill's power system early this morning, Bennington Fire Chief Mike Roina said.

Scores of fire crews were called to the mill on Antrim Road about 3 a.m. and worked for about three and a half hours to knock down a fire inside an electrical room in the mill's basement, Roina said.
Fire crews faced the challenge of intense heat and smoke inhalation because of the building's poor ventilation system, Roina said, adding that no one was injured.

Port Hawkesbury Biomass Plant Running Full

http://www.capebretonpost.com/News/Local/2013-07-02/article-3299744/Biomass-plant-humming-at-full-capacity/

The new biomass-fuelled Nova Scotia Power co-generation plant is now humming at full capacity at the Port Hawkesbury Paper site in Point Tupper.

Mark Sidebottom, NSP's vice-president of power generation and delivery, said on Tuesday the commissioning comes after a 120-hour final testing process last week.
The plant has been under construction for two years and the commissioning process has taken the last six months. The $200-million project came in on budget as expected.

Lecta Closes Coated Woodfree PM

http://www.lecta.com/home.htm
Lecta subsidiary Papeteries de Condat stopped production on PM 6 at its mill in Le Lardin St. Lazare in central France yesterday, as announced two weeks ago.
The machine has a capacity of 130,000 tonnes/yr of coated woodfree (CWF) paper in the basis weight range of 170-380 g/m².

Apart from PM 6, the Condat mill houses two other machines, PMs 4 and 8, with a combined capacity of 410,000 tonnes/yr of CWF paper.  

CEPI Reports 2012 European Pulp & Paper Falls

http://www.euro-graph.org/publicms/index/view/

CEPI just released the latest European pulp and paper industry statistics, which give a clear picture of the performance of the industry in 2012. These key statistics include data about production, consumption and the trade of pulp, paper and raw materials, as well as data concerning energy, environm  
CEPI members produced 92.1 million tonnes of paper and board in 2012 which represents a decrease of 1.6% over 2011. The pre-crisis production in 2008 totalled 97.9 million tonnes. Pulp production fell by 1.0% while the output of market pulp increased by 4.3%.

Exports of paper and board outside Europe showed an increase by 5.3% whilst imports fell by 9.7% when compared with 2011. The overall consumption of paper and board in CEPI fell by 3.8% last year. In comparison the overall GDP in Europe decreased by 0.3% in 2012, but it will recover in 2014 with a 1.4% increase (source: Eurostat - EU27).
European pulp and paper production in 2012 continued to be affected by the economic slowdown which began in mid-2011. Notably, its performance remains above other energy-intensive sectors in Europe. The European paper industry is looking for a healthier supply and demand balance and is modernising its industrial base to remain competitive.

Attention: Catalogs, Taken for Granted

http://www.dmnews.com/does-a-catalog-make-a-sound-when-it-falls-if-theres-no-one-there-to-hear-it/article/301888/

I recently had a meeting with a VP of a top PR firm in New York to see how I might tap its eminent list of clients for intelligence in future stories. When I mentioned that postal-themed stories were very popular among readers of Direct Marketing News, she pursed her lips in puzzlement and said, “Really?”  I explained that, indeed, though marketers take advantage of all the magic that digital methods provide them, direct mail remains an important weapon in many campaigns. The puzzled look remained fixed on her face.

“Don't you get direct mail from Macy's or some other favorite retailer as well as emails from them?” I asked her.  “Don't you get catalogs?”
“Yeah, I guess I do,” she said.
“And are any of those catalogs still lying somewhere around your apartment for further reference?”
“Yeah, they are.”
“And the emails? Do you regularly consult them?”
“I guess not.”
If direct mail has become an invisible marketing channel among marketing insiders, what about outsiders like, say, the members of the House of Representatives who will soon sit in judgment over whether remote sellers like catalogers will be compelled to pay state sales taxes in all the states and municipalities where their customers live? A few weeks ago, when the National Retail Federation (NRF) was in Washington recognizing 136 legislators as “Heroes of Main Street” for supporting the that will mandate remote tax collection, Lou Geisler and some other concerned catalogers were knocking on doors on Capitol Hill.

Canada Post's Novel Direct Mail Campaign

http://www.dmnews.com/canada-post-has-a-ball-with-direct/article/301600/

Direct mail isn't always just a letter in a white envelope—sometimes it's a mysterious rubber bouncy ball that arrives on your doorstep in an unbranded clear plastic tube with simple and tantalizing instructions: Tell a story. 
That was the idea Canada Post cooked up for its Bounce Me campaign, an effort launched earlier this year to edify agencies and client-side marketers about the value of direct mail in the marketing mix. 
“A lot of them haven't grown up using direct mail and now they're focused on social and online,” says Jennifer Campbell, general manager of direct marketing strategy at Canada Post. “We have a great opportunity and undertaking to educate them on the fundamentals of direct mail.”

Two Sides Publishes Annual Report

http://twosidesus.wordpress.com/2013/07/08/two-sides-u-s-annual-report-july-2012-june-2013

Over the last year, Two Sides made the transformation from new kid on the block to familiar advocate for the sustainability of print on paper.  Our membership continues to grow and our collective voice is getting stronger every day.  Even more exciting, we’ve extended our reach and effectiveness where it really counts – to the C-suites of many major U.S. companies and to American consumers.  Following the strategic guidance of the Two Sides U.S. Board of Directors, our ambitious 2012-2013 Marketing and Communications Plan built on past successes and incorporated new efforts to put an end to anti-paper environmental marketing claims and share the news that Print and Paper Have a Great Environmental Story to Tell.

Women's Health Posts Record Numbers

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/womens-health-julyaugust-issue-sets-brand-record-212748421.html

Women's Health—the fastest-growing women's magazine in the world with a global readership of 22 million—posted a record-breaking first half 2013 for advertising pages ever produced for the brand, up +27% January – June 2013. The July/August issue is the largest issue of overall book size, up 41% in paging and up 45.6% in revenue in the history of the Women's Health brand (source: PIB).

Alliance Between Meredith and Wenner Titles

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/womens-health-julyaugust-issue-sets-brand-record-212748421.html

In a tale of strange bedfellows, Meredith’s Fitness and Wenner Media’s Men’s Journal have struck up a sales alliance to compete with bigger health/fitness players Rodale and American Media Inc.

There’s not much precedent for separately owned titles going to market together, and they usually involve independents. (The Nation and National Review tried it last year to give advertisers a way to deflect backlash they might get from supporting just one of the politically leaning publications. New York and Dwell have joined forces on City Modern, an event series and joint publication.)