The stand-alone magazine app is not dead quite yet as a small number of publishers continue to launch their apps outside the Apple Newsstand

For most magazine publishers the Apple Newsstand seems like the logical place to launch their tablet editions, and often is the first choice, with other digital newsstand like Google Play and Amazon (and others) considered secondary choices. But for a number of reasons, some magazine publishers are still choosing to launch their digital magazines as stand-alone apps inside the App Store. Cost, especially if they are using Adobe, is one reason. Marketing can be another.

Greek publisher Lambrakis Press S.A. continues to publish stand-alone apps for its Greek edition of Marie Claire. ΜΟΥΣΑ #3, as its name implies, is the third such stand-alone app, with the publishing cycle appearing to be somewhat quarterly.

The app is a fantastic digital edition, with issues quite large due to their animation and video. The downloads are excruciatingly slow, but since it is a stand-alone app the wait is all on the front end.

One gets a sense that this tablet edition remains an experiment as the issues continue to be free and there is no set publication schedule. With the Greek economy in shambles, it is probably a bit of a minor miracle that a digital edition this good is being produced at all.

Here is a brief look at the latest installment:

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It is a bit hard to figure out what Turnstile Media Group is trying to do with its title Golfweek. It's newest app, Golf Week Mag is a replica edition and a stand-alone app, a combination that is really quite rare.

The reason it is so rare is that if a replica edition is the goal there are an enormous number of vendors that will put your magazine title into the Newsstand at next to no cost. Some charge small fees, others are charging download fees, while still others are completely free but want a share of the revenue.

Golf Week's new app is functional, bug free, but utterly unreadable as all replica editions are. I suppose it is possible that this app could be made into a native tablet edition, and eventually moved into the Newsstand (as other publishers have done). But in the meantime this new app seems to me like a waste of time.

It is totally understandable that launching a native tablet edition for a weekly might be a burden and impractical at this time – and because of this a replica edition may be the solution of choice. But forcing readers to remember to download their issues each week really seems a terrible idea.

Turnstile Media Group seems to still be experimenting with the whole concept of digital editions. It still has a stand-alone app inside the App Store Golfweek for iPad which was originally launched back in March of 2011 – a million years ago in terms of the tablet publishing platform. But even in 2011 readers found it rather crude. "Expected much better. Very elementary design. Maybe it will get better but simply bad right now," wrote an early review.

Unfortunately, while the app has been regularly updated, it hasn't proven to be very popular. So the launching a new edition makes sense, but the publisher now finds themselves still with a rather outdated looking app that is not even capable of selling digital subscriptions.

ABM’s year-end report shows B2B media grew revenue overall, though print ad pages continue depressed

The year 2012 was hoped to be one of recovery for the B2B media business in the U.S., and while total industry revenue did manage some growth, print ad pages continues their decline.

Source: ABM BIN Report

Ad pages fell 6.94 percent for 2012, according to the ABM's year-end report, though December saw declines moderate somewhat, with ad pages down 6.69 percent versus the same month in 2011.

The results, though, have to be disappointing. 2011 eked out a microscopic increase in ad pages following a number of years with declines. B2B publishers have, as a result, been trimming back their magazine portfolios in response.

Overall, B2B media grew 4.3 percent for the year, led by strong trade show growth – by far the biggest revenue generator in the industry. Both data/business information services and digital advertising also grew, with digital ad revenue accounting for 16 percent of all B2B media revenue, according to the ABM (up from just over 12 percent in 2010).

The report for overall revenue in B2B is compiled by the ABM from its own BIN report for magazine advertising, the CEIR, the Center for Exhibition Industry Research report for trade shows, Outsell's report for data and business information, and ABM estimates based on the Interactive Advertising Bureau Ad Revenue Report.

Side note: the association continues to maintain its own website along side its new site at thenewabm.com following the association's merger with the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA).

Another side note: I've always been skeptical about revenue reports from third parties. Ad pages can be counted pretty cleanly, though things like make-goods and other giveaways end up in the final reports. But revenue reports assume a media property is getting its rate card rates. So it is best to look at both the ad page and revenue reports, compare them and come to your own conclusions based on your own experience.

Distributor brings its B2B magazine 'Chilled' to the iPad in a hybrid digital magazine for the Apple Newsstand

Downloading the first digital edition of Chilled for the iPad one anticipates that the digital edition will be a native tablet edition as the file is over 150 MB in size. But opening the first inside the new Apple Newsstand app one immediately sees a two-page ad spread over two tablet pages, typical of a replica edition.

What the reader gets, though, is a hybrid edition: a digital magazine where the print ads are reproduced exactly as in the print magazine, mostly without any enhancements, and the editorial is reformatted for reading on the tablet.

The digital publishing platform used here appears to be Mag+ based on its navigation and overall look. The initial disappointment is seeing the ads unchanged quickly disappears as the reader moves on to the editorial. Like many first digital issues, it is hard to get advertisers and their agencies to being swapping out creative for the digital edition, and many publishers are leery of crossing circulation audit rules.

But I doubt the publisher of Chilled is too concerned with circulation rules in the same way a consumer magazine normally would be. Chilled is a trade publication, with a vast majority of its readership being bartenders (the rest being consumer), according to the magazine's publisher Jeff Greif. This explains why the magazine is free to download within the Newsstand app.

Left and Middle: a 2-page ad spread over two iPad pages shows that this is a hybrid edition, where the ads are unchanged from print; Right: an article with sliding photos shows that the editorial pages have been reformatted for the tablet edition

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The magazine is published by Chilled Media LLC which is an offshoot of Chilled Distributors LLC – in other words, the beverage magazine is tied to the beverage distribution business. (The app appears under the developer account name of Anthony Graziano, president of both companies, and listed as managing editor of the magazine.)

The tie to the distribution business is a bit like those grocery store publications that contain ads from the food brands – in other words, its good to be on both sides of the business. This is something that we will see more and more of, and while some might call this content marketing, it is a little more complicated than that when we actually see it in print (or digital, as the case may be).

The magazine has had digital editions in the past as the title can be found inside the Zinio digital newsstand. RCS Publisher Services is credited with distribution services in the magazine and they may have had a hand in the digital edition.

The app may just be part of the publisher's overall digital distribution strategy, by creating a hybrid edition they have published a well-designed, easy to read digital edition, making many right choices.

Update: Chilled has been updated to add new interactive pages.

a+ magazine: a free Newsstand magazine launches with some lofty goals; developed, released by f2f 6Sixty Digital

Looking for the first time at a new tablet-only magazine the first thing I want to see is what platform was used to create the digital magazine. Then i want to know in what orientation the magazine is to be read, and finally the file size. Then I can actually start enjoying the magazine itself.

a+ magazine presents some surprises. It's file size of 111 MB is so modest one would assume only one orientation is supported (not true) or that there would not be much interactivity (also not true).

The magazine was founded and is edited by Smokey D. Fontaine, which the app itself was built by f2f 6Sixty Digital.

The new publication is free of charge to download and subscribe to thanks to Toyota. The app opens up to the words "powered by Avalon" and the first issue itself is packed with ads for the Avalon. Launching with a single sponsor is a great way to go, something that I would think B2B publishers might want to try. Usually single sponsors are the way to go when trying to build up paid circulation to the point where ads can be sold, but by going with a free circulation model the publisher probably can hit that point much quicker
The new digital magazine's mission statement makes pretty interesting reading:

At no other point in history has digital culture been so clearly visible.

At no other point have clicks, touches & swipes so clearly defined what we like, love and feel about the world around us.

The rise of digital has brought with it an opportunity to express ourselves in ways never thought possible, to create and dream and match our imaginations with boundless possibility.

But there is a price to be paid...

The digital moment has also brought with it a transience, a nagging feeling of emptiness built into the pixels that flash across our irresistible screens.

So where is the experiencer that gives us something to truly remember? Where is the platform that dazzles us with the beauty of our creativity?

The answer is here...

There is more but you can go ahead and read the rest in the free digital magazine. A variation of the mission statement can be found in the app description, as well.

The new app has been sitting in my iPad for a couple of weeks. Since then an update has been issued to fix bugs. The app is universal, which I'm not sure was a good idea being that the design does not support the iPhone 5. Launching a digital magazine that can also be read on smartphones is a huge temptation for many publishers, I'm sure. But unless the publisher is designing a "The Magazine" or 29th Street Publishing type of publication it is usually a big mistake (though I like the original BJPhoto app that used Mag+ to create its mobile edition).

Hearst's Esquire magazine launches weekly tablet editions inside their Newsstand app to attract new readers

Hears Magazine's Esquire has begun publishing weekly tablet editions inside of its iPad Newsstand app. The weekly editions will be priced at $0.99 a piece, but will be free to those readers who already are subscribing to the iPad edition and will appear every Thursday other than on the week the main magazine becomes available.

Of course, print readers, who already are forced to subscribe again to access the digital editions, are once again locked out.

"Esquire Weekly is a little gift," writes editor in chief David Granger inside the first weekly edition. "To you, yes, our readers on the iPad. But to ourselves, too. Every time we expand Esquire's purview, each time we find a new way to broaden the topics we cover and morph the ways in which we cover them, it offers us new opportunities that always, sooner or later, surprise us by blossoming into something we really like, something really good."

The new weekly edition is, as you'd expect, not a massive issue. But it contains a fair, and maybe even generous amount of material. This isn't a Kindle Single, this is an actual tablet weekly magazine.

The design is consistent with Esquire's native tablet design (they are using the Adobe DPS) and is not overly complicated. But Esquire's staff is large enough to handle this (easy for me to say, right?) and so the added real estate can serve not only editorial purposes but advertising ones, as well.

Further, this move will reinforce Hearst's not so subtle attempt to drive readers to digital delivery. Though they do not say so, their policy of forcing print readers to choose between the postal service and Apple's Newsstand is leading to Hearst being able to brag about its digital numbers while simultaneously driving down print production costs.

"With the evolving ways our app subscribers and Esquire.com readers seek and interact with the magazine’s material, a weekly digital edition provides them with another way to access Esquire’s rich editorial on their tablet in an easily digestible format," Granger said in the magazine's announcement. "The weekly edition blends the best of new and traditional media and includes long-form content, recurring columns, video and more from our renowned writers covering a wide range of men’s lifestyle topics."

As for the app itself, Hearst will need to issue an update soon. Recent reader reviews inside the App Store have been universally bad due to continuing bugs involving issue downloads. The app, come to think of it, may not be the source of the problem, as download issues are often caused by the hosting service, subscription verification services, etc. Nonetheless, readers are not happy about the problems, though the new weekly issues may placate a few of them.

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Here is a brief walk-though the first weekly issue of Esquire:

B2B tablet magazines - Part 2: QHSE Focus Magazine launches new Newsstand app, instantly claims to be the #1 magazine (on the iPad, that is)

Another B2B magazine launch that is using the MagCast platform is QHSE Focus Magazine. The app was originally launched in April but a new app has made its way into the Newsstand, most likely to house two separate editions of the magazine, though there appears to be only one in the library right now.

The app description says that it is the "world’s No. 1 iPad magazine for Quality, HSE, Lean and 6 Sigma Professionals!" but since I am quite sure that it is the ONLY iPad magazine Quality, HSE, Lean and 6 Sigma professionals the claim can be taken with a grain of salt.

Like most MagCast digital magazines the design is pretty simplistic, and not exactly reflecting that it was produced by a seasoned magazine art director. Most of the photography looks to have come from stock photo libraries rather than being shot specifically for the magazine.

The magazine is published by Roman Gurbanov, who is from Kazakhstan and is the QHSE & Sustainability Manager at ERSAI Marine, LLC, according to Gurbanov's LinkedIn profile.

Here is the publisher's own promotional video for the magazine:

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When the B2B online media company VerticalNet was launched in the nineties, the executives went after both B2B print magazine editors and their ad sales staff. Print publishers for a brief time had to try and keep their revenue producers loyal as staffers were lured away with the promise of stock options. Losing an editor was one thing, but many B2B publishers really feared losing their ad sales staffs.

Today, though, with the emphasis on paid subscriptions, I am not seeing many ad people launching their own digital magazines. If they were we might be seeing B2B print publishers react more aggressively to any perceived threat from digital publications. For the most part there is no threat.

But I think that is going to be changing in the months to come. I know of several titles that will be launched this year that could shake things up a bit. The first B2B digital magazine that is launched, for instance, containing ads for the number one company in the industry will get the attention of traditional B2B publishers in a hurry.

B2B tablet magazines - Part One: independent UK publisher launches Commercial Kitchen; Mark Allen Group launches replica for Independent Nurse

If this were the late nineties, venture capital companies would be pouring money into digital-only B2B start-ups, so wide open is B2B to be disrupted by digital-only products. But it's not the late nineties, is it. Instead, this is the era of private equity investors. As a result, many major B2B publishing companies are hanging on by their finger nails in hopes that they will be able to cash out at some point in the future – investing in digital media only gets lip service, and only as a way of proving that their companies are increasing their value.

As a result, no publishing segment has been as slow to launch tablet editions and mobile media products. That there hasn't been a digital start-up to scare them all into action probably can be chalked up to the fact that so many editors, sales pros and publishers have left the industry, never to return.

But that doesn't mean that there are no new digital launches in B2B. Each month a couple trickle into the Apple Newsstand, new digital-only magazines like Commercial Kitchen from the U.K.

Published by Mark Taylor, the tablet-only magazine is using the MagCast platform which is centered on creating a PDF file using the iPad's specs, then (sometimes) enhancing it with add-ons like video, audio, etc.

In this case, the magazine early on contains an invitation to subscribe to updates and who knows what. It is odd that more publishers don't aggressively push to get more contact information in this way.

Because the tablet mag is designed specifically for the iPad, it is easy to read – though the use of PDFs as the main tool for the digital platform means that the layouts have to be very simple. Commercial Kitchen is charging £3.99 per issue, though the monthly subscription is only £1.99.

Other than the typical hiccups that come with not having a nice sized staff (TNM is a good example of that!), Taylor has done a pretty good job here. Throughout the magazine, and inside the videos, Taylor keeps saying "we" but the lack of a masthead inside digital edition, along with a bad typo in the editor's column, pretty much is a dead giveaway that this is a one man effort.

"Welcome to our first edition of Commercial Kitchen Magazine. I'll admit it was originally planned for early 2013 but I really didn't imagine how diffcicult (sic) the job at hand would be," writes Taylor, though I wish he would expounded on this a bit. A blog spot from February on the magazine's website says that the first issue was in production back on February 8 – so it did, indeed, take awhile to see the new magazine app go live.

Here is the introductory video found inside the digital magazine, which is a player linked out to YouTube (the issue only weighs in at about 17MB):

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The Mark Allen Group is a London and Salisbury publisher of 50 magazines and journals. Their third Newsstand app is for Independent Nurse.

Again, this app does something that U.K. B2B publishers do not do: it opens directly to a registration page. The registration is not mandatory, so it does not violate Apple's developer guidelines, but it is a smart move, nonetheless.

Getting reader information is important for all publishers, but it is essential for B2B publishers – especially when the title in question is a qualified circulation magazine (though in this case, Independent Nurse is charging for issues).

Apple's own mechanism for information sharing, its dialogue box that appears after one has subscribed, is woefully inadequate, so until Apple approves a qualification mechanism inside the Newsstand B2B publishers will have to lure the readers to voluntarily give their information. My own preference would be to invite the readers to sign up for an e-newsletter, or some other free offering.

Morning Brief: The New Yorker and WIRED apps get minor tweaks, as does The Economist; Yahoo's CEO helps the PE firms that invested in Tumblr

Condé Nast Digital rolled out a couple app updates to improve their digital editions. These included an update to The New Yorker Magazine app to improve iPhone 5 display support. The iPhone edition was originally launched in August of last year. WIRED Magazine was also updated, though the app description only mentions "cosmetic fixes" – one of those fixes may have been the app's icon as this month's issue has a concept cover that includes only text against a white background, effective in print but pretty much invisible when seen inside the App Store.

The Economist for iPad was updated:

Dear reader,

This update will, for readers on iOS6 and above, ensure your reading position in the edition is maintained if you navigate away from the application. It also improves the performance and stability of the app. For any assistance please use the in-app help.

Thank you for reading The Economist.

- The Digital editions team

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Tumblr's sale, first reported late Friday by the WSJ, was about as inevitable a sell out as there could be. Tumblr's board of investors includes Sequoia Capital, Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital, all firms that put money into the company on the promise that within a few years the company would sell itself to someone so there could be a big pay day. After putting in $125 million the pay day ended up being a $1.1 billion deal with Yahoo.

Tumblr's revenue in 2012 totalled a measly $13 million so why would Tumblr be worth $1.1 billion? The answer is that it's not, but that is just the way the game is played. PE's invest in one company, get sold to another. The execs, like members of Congress play along knowing that one day they, too, will get a payout, either through a PE investing in their company, or else a golden parachute when the time comes.

As for Tumblr, the thought is that its move towards "native advertising" will greatly increase is value, with revenue projected to greatly increase. But the idea that readers won't notice the move to what is essentially PR is highly unlikely – but then again, those that are pushing for native advertising don't think much of their readers anyways.

Two new food magazines shows that a gulf that remains between major commercial magazine publishers and new, citizen publishers within the Apple Newsstand

Digital publishing was supposed to be the great equalizer – at least that was the hope of citizen and small publishers. While the major magazine publishers had good printing contracts that favored high volume publishers, in digital publishing the playing field would be more level.

But a look inside the Apple Newsstand shows that if you have the money to spend on native digital publishing platforms the end result will be quite different than what is seen with simple, PDF-based platforms.

A look at two food magazines that have released digital editions today show the differences.

Nourish is a new Newsstand edition from Australian publisher Blitz Publications. Nourish is the eighth Newsstand app they have released, all for the iPad only (as opposed to a universal app containing an iPhone edition).

The app description describes the magazine as "not just another food magazine, it is a woman’s holistic guide to good health and wellbeing, through good nutrition, healthy, tasty meals and great recipes."

The app was built using the Oomph platform, Australia's homegrown digital publishing platform that has produced some very good digital magazines such as Coles, and other digital magazines.

Oomph, like most (all?) native digital publishing platforms is not cheap for the citizen publisher, though not extravagant for the commercial one: $749 a month for a Newsstand app ($999 for a stand-alone app). With added costs for hosting a publisher is looking at a $10K investment at a minimum – practically nothing for a title producing $10M in revenue a year or more, but out of the question for someone looking at a vanity title.

The digital edition of Nourish can be read in both portrait and landscape, but it really designed for portrait. In this regard it is a modest conversion from print, but has the advantage of having its fonts chosen for the tablet, and being able to use the navigation standard of scrolling within a story and swiping to move to the next article.

Food plus Chef Magazine is from Kevin Schmidt, and while a native tablet magazine (meaning that it is not a conversion from a print title), it is a different thing altogether. Like many other citizen publishers, Schmidt has chosen to use the MagCast platform – a PDF based system that works like other PDF systems, but seems to be the platform of choice for so many new publishers. The cost to use MagCast is about half that of Oomph, but then again the design potential is at least half as much as well.

Designing a PDF file allows the publisher to design for the tablet's display, but what one ends up with is limited by the screen size, whereas with other platforms one can extend the screen by using scrolling text boxes, pages that scroll down to the next page, or simply oversized pages that require scrolling to see the whole page.

Most PDF solutions allow for some form of embedded content like video, audio, links, and the like, but the options of how these are displayed are limited. So the design success of any PDF solution lies almost completely in the static pages designed – here Food plus Chef is, I would judge, better at page design than many of the other MagCast produced magazines I've looked at.

Schmidt has also done an excellent job of supporting his new digital magazine by building a simple website, a Facebook page, and creating a Twitter account. Many newbie publishers simply launch their digital magazine and wait and hope someone finds it and subscribes. With Apple making it impossible to find new digital magazines inside the U.S. App Store that usually results in disappointment.

The app review team appears asleep at the switch as dubious apps continue appearing in the Newsstand

The Apple App Store, when first opened, was like the wild west – apps would routinely make it through the review process that were of dubious worth. It led, eventually, the Apple famously proclaiming stating that "We have over 250,000 apps in the App Store. We don't need any more Fart apps."

But Apple is back approving Fart apps – possibly driven by a desire to remain the number one app store in existence. It won't work, it is inevitable that Google Play surpasses Apple's store simply based on the market share of smart phones.

I've recently written about the some of the sharks that are launching apps into the Newsstand, many coming from Russian developers. JLynnApps, which already has some less-than-credible apps inside the App Store has released another that really has to have you scratching your head as to how it made it through the review process.

UnderCover News is simply a collection of low-rez screenshots that are then placed in a Newsstand app. There is no magazine cover, no table of contents, no masthead (they certainly wouldn't want to use their real names here), no ads, and only 12 pages of content. Each screenshot then has an embedded link in it that takes you out of the app to the original publisher's website. The stories are, way out there, and usually are to be found on conspiracy websites or far-right news sites. A short note from the "editor" opens the app with the word "Hi" followed by a couple sentences, ending with "Best" but no name. Even the email address included is aimed at "admin" rather than an actual person.

The app is built using Fast PDF. The developer's website contact page lists their address as "244 Madison New York, New York, 10016" (sic), with no phone number and no e-mail address.

The anthrax vaccine story seen here is a good example. The story originated with a report by a presidential bioethics commission that declared that the vaccine against anthrax should not be tested in children until its safety it better understood. This immediately turned into a story that the Federal government wanted to test an anthrax vaccine on children.

In fact, vaccines are tested on humans all the time, but only when a reasonable amount of safety checks are conducted. Still, in clinical trials, it is possible for something to go wrong – that is why new drugs are tested. Of course, in this case it was convenient to twist the story into a monstrous tale of the Obama administration going rogue.

But the issue here isn't the news content as Apple would be wrong to reject an app for political reasons. No, the issue here involves three issues: 1) the app takes copyrighted material and reassembles to without the publisher's permission in order to attract its own readers, it is aggressive aggregation of the worst kind; 2) the app does not fulfill any function that the browser could not handle, a typical reason an app is rejected; and 3) the track record of the publisher shows that all their apps have questionable reviews attached to them (check them out yourselves and tell me that these are legitimate reviews).

Apple is either asleep at the switch or else are now actually encouraging bogus apps to be launched into their store in order to maintain their number one position. As a result, the Newsstand is a mess and getting worse every day. This is a great way to convince publishers to shy away, I can't imagine that is their goal here.

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The major problem with Apple's Newsstand remains the inability of readers to find what they want. It is a mess and getting worse every day. The problem is see at its worst with the U.S. App Store that contains hardly any promotional efforts and does not even contain an "ALL" section where readers would be able to find either the best selling apps there, or a listing of apps by release date.

As a result, I routinely change stores to use the Irish or Canadian app stores to find new apps. It is simply not possible in the U.S. store. Even "browsing" does not work as Apple restricts the search to 6,000 apps which is far less than the number of Newsstands apps now available. How Apple determines which make it into the 6,000 shown is a mystery.

I've speculated in the past that Apple must believe that by limiting the number of apps readers see that they will drive sales to bigger titles and make more on volume. For every buyer of a citizen published magazine ten are bought of Cosmo, for instance – actually, probably a thousand a bought.

I get it. But the store is a mess and its reputation is in danger. Apple should not get into the censorship game, but it also should not allow in apps that are obvious violations of its own developer guidelines. Just as importantly, Apple needs to make it easier for new apps to be found by not intentionally making it difficult for them to be found. Not everyone wants to go exploring in the Irish app store to find a new app, do they?

The Saturday Evening Post enters the Newsstand with an app build by replica edition and flipbook maker YUDU

You probably would not expect a legacy title like The Saturday Evening Post to be a leader in the digital media space. The magazine title was founded in 1821, with a dotted line link back to The Pennsylvania Gazette, first published in 1728.

For years the title was a weekly, but hard times nearly killed it off and today it is published only six times a year by the Saturday Evening Post Society.

And no, the magazine will not be a leader in the digital space.

Today the old title launched a Newsstand app built by YUDU which specializes in flipbooks and replica edition apps. The best that can be said of the app is that it at least appears under the publisher's name rather than the vendors and the app description is professionally written (though the screenshots used are terrible and hopefully will be replaced with actual screenshots from the magazine itself.

One of my biggest complaints with replica editions is that they reduce the size of the magazine to a point where the reader needs to work in order to be able to read the magazine – using either pinch-to-zoom or very strong reading glasses. Knowing that it is mainly older readers that the ol' Saturday Evening Post appeals to one could almost hear readers muttering the line "they just don't make magazines the way they used to."

Also released into the Newsstand today were other Saturday Evening Post Society's other titles, children's magazines Turtle Magazine, Jack and Jill and Humpty Dumpty – all inside the Newsstand thanks to YUDU apps.

Morning Brief: Hearst launches Totally Global Media, a worldwide advertising platform; Boston Globe launches new Sunday Arts section, Travel section also re-branded

I think rather than rounding up the news this morning I'll let the companies speak for themselves, editing out some of the puffery, of course.

Of all the media news, the news from Hearst I find the most interesting (see below). The launch of Totally Global Media is a reflection of the fact Hearst owns many of their international titles and are actually in a position to sell advertising globally. Many other major publishers have licensed their magazine titles to other overseas publishers and would not be able to do this.

The thing is, though, that digitally, inside the Apple Newsstand, copies of one major magazine title sit right next to the same magazine title of another country, usually published by the local publisher. This not only creates branding problems inside the Newsstand, but makes it confusing for global brands who want to use the vehicle for advertising. Hearst's move is, then, really a partnership deal that brings together their publishing partners is a way that will allow for brand sales across not only titles, but international editions, as well.

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Hearst Magazines International announces launch of Totally Global Media: a first of its kind global digital advertising platform

NEW YORK, May 16, 2013 – Hearst Magazines International (HMI), a unit of Hearst Magazines, today announced the launch of Totally Global Media. TGM is a worldwide advertising platform comprised of Hearst Magazines’ websites and Hearst’s international publishing partner websites that offers quality content from brands including Harper’s BAZAAR, Esquire, ELLE and Cosmopolitan as well as highly-trafficked, pure-play digital sites such as Digital Spy in the U.K. and Yoka.com in China.

US & UK tab editions

With offices in New York and London, TGM is a centralized marketing solution for brands looking to leverage digital and cross-platform programs in multiple regions of the world, with a portfolio that offers 200 million unique visitors per month in more than 20 countries. Hearst Magazines International’s publishing partners include industry leaders Burda Media, Televisa Publishing + Digital, Groupe Marie Claire, Rogers Communications and more.

“TGM is a one-stop-shop for global marketers,” said Gina Garrubbo, senior vice president of Totally Global Media. “We’re developing and managing custom, multi-country digital and cross-platform advertising and marketing programs with global appeal, translated for local markets, all with a single buy and one point of communication—it is streamlined and highly efficient.”

“TGM is the first worldwide advertising platform built on globally recognized content brands that offers marketers a powerful tool for communicating with a huge audience of women,” said Duncan Edwards, president and CEO of Hearst Magazines International. “For advertisers, TGM simplifies the often complicated process of marketing in multiple countries, and for our publishing partners, it is an opportunity to capture incremental dollars from global budgets. TGM is a prime example of Hearst’s unique ability to harness our brands and audiences to create scale that is unrivaled in the industry.”

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The Boston Globe Launches New Sunday Arts Section: More Content, Color and Columns

Enhanced 20-plus-page section features award-winning arts and lifestyle writers and expanded coverage; popular lifestyle “Names” column also moves to Sunday Metro section

BOSTON (May 17, 2013) – The Boston Globe will launch a new 20-page Arts section on Sunday, May 19, bringing more vibrant, award-winning arts and lifestyle coverage to readers every week.

The enhanced Arts section, which will now also include the Globe’s Sunday Books content, will feature more pages, content and columns, with color on almost every page. Award-winning Globe arts writers – including Pulitzer Prize winners Sebastian Smee and Mark Feeney – will take center stage, along with enhanced restaurant, style and books coverage. The section will also include “The Ticket,” the central dashboard for Boston’s cultural scene, keeping readers in-the-know on the week’s hottest theater, music, movies and arts picks. A new video game column by Jesse Singal will add another new dynamic to the section’s lifestyle coverage.

“Readers will now have all of Boston’s cultural and artistic life at their fingertips, in one lively and engaging section every week,” said Doug Most, deputy managing editor of features. “And now they will undoubtedly discover great stories they may have previously missed, from pop culture to the classical arts, to a review of the latest best-selling novel to the opening of a new restaurant. We have no doubt the new section will serve as the cultural voice for our community.”

The new Arts section will include:

Exclusive Arts and Movies content, including television, video games, visual arts, music, dance, opera and theater.

• “The Ticket,” featuring Globe critics’ picks for the coming week.
• “The Enthusiast,” two pages of new food and lifestyle coverage, including fashion and shopping. The food section will cover restaurant industry news and gossip, a column dedicated to the scene and ambience of new restaurants, along with a drinks column and the occasional cocktail recipe.
• Books, with interviews, criticism and columns, and an even stronger focus on New England authors.
• An artistic comparison of a historical photograph with a current shot of the same location or subject, chronicling change in Boston’s artistic, cultural and architectural worlds

The Globe’s new Arts section debuts Sunday, May 19, 2013, and all of its content will also be available online at BostonGlobe.com.

The Sunday Travel section will also be re-branded with the same distinct aesthetic as Arts. Travel will also feature a new column, “The Concierge,” a full page of advice, tips and more.

The daily lifestyle and celebrity news column “Names” – written by Mark Shanahan and Meredith Goldstein for the back page of the Metro section – will also move from Saturday to Sunday, remaining on the back page of Metro, and making the entire edition a must-read for arts, pop culture and lifestyle enthusiasts.

Three new digital magazines from Europe: all three promote products or events, but take varied approaches to the new publishing platform

The Newsstand remains a very busy place as publishers, start-ups, citizen publishers, and brands rush to launch publications. Three new apps from Europe show not only the variety of design approaches possible, but also the business models, as well.

Festivalguide Magazin comes from Germany, from Intro GmbH & Co. KG. As the name implies, the digital magazine was created to write about the upcoming music festival season.

The new app is free and is the fourth Newsstand magazine app released into the Newsstand by Intro. An iPhone app was also released, though that app is a stand-alone one and was designed as a news app rather than as a mobile version of the tablet magazine.

All the Newsstand app appear to be of native tablet design, though I could not identify the digital publishing platform used to create it - it looked unique to me. The new app had a few bugs in it involving the subscription process – it seemed stuck in a circle of dialogue messages before finally starting the issue download. One thing unique about it was that the navigation bars were always visible instead of disappearing and reappearing with a tap of the screen.

Gourmandises d'été was launched into the Newsstand by Melons Le Rouge Gorge and is also free to download. The digital magazine is designed to promote the company's food products through recipes and feature stories.

The digital magazine is also available to download as a PDF, so it is not surprising to see that the app has the look of a replica edition. But the typical page numbering seen in print – left-even, right-odd – is totally unnecessary in both the tablet and PDF platforms. Some habits, it appears, die hard.

DESIGN in/from Spain also is meant to promote brands, in this case interior design firms from Spain. But this new tablet-only magazine is replacing a print publication and so is charging for access within the Newsstand.

The Newsstand app is published by ICEX Spain Trade and Investment, which is publisher of technical and academic publications, so their design magazine is not promoting its own brands. But at the same time the magazine is in English and seems designed to be used by a trade commission – that is why I found it somewhat surprising that it was not free.

"Well, there's no bucking the move towards paperless communications," says the editor's letter inside the first tablet edition,"and while it's always sad to say goodbye to print, it's also exciting to embrace the future. So welcome to the first iPad app issue of our magazine DESIGN which we hope you'll find convenient to use, as well as enjoyable to read."

Wheels Australia Magazine draws inspiration from other native tablet editions to produce a unique Newsstand version of its popular automotive print magazine

It has probably always been the case that the most influential media products are not always the most popular at any give time. The best selling album of 1965 was the soundtrack to Mary Poppins, not Rubber Soul, for instance. (No Beatles album was ever the biggest selling album of the year in the U.S.)

The same, I am convinced, is true for the emerging tablet platform for magazines. By far most digital magazines are replicas, but a replica is a replica, and no spot insertion of video or audio is going to change that. No, the tablet magazines that are influencing designers are coming from digital start-ups like Photography Week, La Presse+ (for newspapers) and The Magazine (though I have my doubts about the long term influence that one will have).

WHEELS AUSTRALIA MAGAZINE, the new tablet edition from Bauer Media Group (under the developer account of PBL Media Pty Ltd.) is clearly influenced by other tablet editions that are native in design.

Built using the Adobe DPS, the Newsstand app is designed to be read in landscape, which keeps its June issue down to 249 MB once installed on your retina display iPad. This isn't one of those tablet magazine apps that woe you will endless bells and whistles, despite opening up with an animated cover. It is relatively simple in design – let's say it appears that the designers were comfortable with the tablet platform, enough so that they didn't need to go overboard.

The digital edition probably could use some video content, but it isn't obviously missing.

Going with a landscape design means that some of the rules many publishers insist on living by go by the wayside. With a replica edition or a hybrid edition, the print ads stay in place, even if they might be enhanced. This makes it easy to qualify for being counted in the ABC (actually, now AAM) audit. But while this may placate the bureaucrats it does nothing for the readers, and it is of questionable value to the advertisers unless the agencies swap out creative (which they rarely do).

This landscape edition of Wheels contains some advertorial. Whether that copy is found in the print edition or is exclusive to the tablet edition is hard to say without having a copy of the print edition handy. But one can see that to monetize a tablet edition built like this one the publisher will need to think a bit out of the box.

The Newsstand app has priced monthly subscriptions at AUD $6.49 ($5.99 U.S.), with an annual subscription priced at AUD $59.99. That's pretty pricey but the app does allow you to sign up for a subscription and get a free seven day trial, so other publishers wishing to check out this new tablet edition can do so without their accounting folks raising a stink.

New L.A. comedy magazine app, Far Gone, has a rough start to its life inside the Apple Newsstand

What is it about comedy magazines and app problems? Paperweight, the digital magazine from writer/editor Chris Duffy and designer/ developer Brain Perry, needed a couple of weeks to work out its issues before the app corrected its subscription problems (I'm happy to report that the app is fine now and getting good marks inside the Newsstand).

The new app for Far Gone, from The Periodical Co., launched today into the Apple Newsstand and it, too, is having serious issues. For one thing, the subscription mechanism simply doesn't work. A tap of the bar at the top of the library brings up a dialogue box that either crashes the app or gives a warning message. Most likely the app's release into the App Store today caught the developers by surprise and the backend was not set to receive requests.

But the app doesn't look very promising, in any case. Screenshots show a Kindle Edition-like design, and what is up with that library design anyways?

The new digital magazine's website is far better. In fact, one wonders why a digital magazine app is even necessary - the app and its contents are free, after all, so it isn't because of subscription purchases that a Newsstand app needed to be built.

Like Paperweight, I'm sure this app will get fixed and will eventually begin working. But until then, the joke's on us.

The New Yorker launches Strongbox, a secure way to send documents and messages to the magazine

Have we really reached the point where this is necessary? I guess the sad answer is yes. Today The New Yorker announced the launch of Strongbox, a place where people can send documents and messages to the magazine's staff with, as the magazine says, a reasonable amount of anonymity."

The new website is powered by DeadDrop, a server application that lets news organizations set up an online drop box for sources – think of it as that mysterious mailbox in A Beautiful Mind.

The system was put together by Aaron Swartz and Kevin Poulsen – Swartz, of course, is the computer programmer who hanged himself after being arrested by MIT police on state breaking-and-entering charges and being charged by Federal prosecutors with two counts of wire fraud and multiple violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

Kevin Poulson has a post on The New Yorker's website on Strongbox and Aaron Swartz which provides more background on the project.

"Readers and sources have long sent documents to the magazine and its reporters, from letters of complaint to classified papers," writes Amy Davidson on The New Yorker's website. "But, over the years, it’s also become easier to trace the senders, even when they don’t want to be found. Strongbox addresses that; as it’s set up, even we won’t be able to figure out where files sent to us come from. If anyone asks us, we won’t be able to tell them."

Morning Brief: WIRED Magazine cover celebrates 20 years of publishing; L.A. law firm launches new media consulting division; Bonnier CEO tries to reassure the troops following sale of its Parenting Group to Meredith

One of the first things readers notice about native digital magazines is that they often contain animated covers – in fact, animated covers have become a bit of a cliché already, though I think they can sometimes be quite effective. The problem with print magazines that wish to use animation on their cover is that they sometimes have to come up with excuses for the animation – a nice photograph that is used on a print magazine cover is sometimes animated simply by making the promotional headlines slide into place.

Other times, however, the print and digital cover are conceived on at the same time. A good example would he where a video is used for the digital edition and a still from that video used for the print edition.

But what to do when the print magazine cover is a concept cover? That is the dilemma faced this month with the digital edition of WIRED Magazine. The cover is meant to celebrate 20 years of publishing and will certainly look quite unique on the newsstand or in your mailbox.

But with Newsstand apps, the cover becomes the app's icon (should the publisher use the automatic updating function). As a result, the WIRED icon looks rather odd, and inside the iPad's Newsstand is hardly recognizable.

Of course, next month a new cover will appear and the issue becomes moot. But I imagine print art directors and those in charge of digital editions sometimes have lively discussions about covers that work in Apple Newsstand as well as the physical print newsstand environment.

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The Los Angeles law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips is launching a digital media consulting division, Manatt Digital Media. The new company describes itself as "a disruptive new full-service digital media services business." The new firm will have its own venture capital fund.

The new company says it has its own team of "media insiders" though to be honest they look like a bunch of lawyers to me.

According Variety, the new firm expects to make 10 to 15 investments per year, with investments ranging from $15,000 to $600,000.

Like most investment firms, the company seems to be looking for a Facebook-like home run by investing early in video and social media start-ups. So don't look for much of their client's money being pushed towards media start-ups as blasé as digital publications, sadly.

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Bonnier's sale of its Parenting Group to Meredith has to be a worrying development for the magazine company's staffers. The sale was for assets only so Meredith, the buyer, will be rolling up the titles into their own magazines. As a result the sale means the positions will go away.

"This divestiture, following last week's sale of the Mountain Group, should not be taken as the dismantling of the company," said Bonnier Chief Executive Officer Dave Freygang.

"As you may know, over the past several months Bonnier Corporation has made adjustments to our product portfolio. These moves are strategic calculations on our part to ensure that the company is in a position to grow revenues and achieve sustained profitability."

Meredith and Bonnier moved quickly to consolidate the titles as the Newsstand apps for both Parenting and Babytalk have already been pulled from the Apple Newsstand.

Students and faculty at Northwestern College (Iowa) release a tablet magazine app into Apple's Newsstand, built using the Mag+ publishing platform

A good friend of mine used to be the principal at the local high school. At that time I used to be invited in to talk to the yearbook class about the publishing business. Half the class was interested in what I had to say, the other half just wanted to pass the class and move on with their lives.

My friend the principal eventually was moved up to superintendent of the whole school district. But in a recent conversation with him I said that the journalism and other publishing classes really should be concentrating on digital media, that while learning about print wouldn't be a complete waste of time, the teachers owed it to their students to prepare them for the business that exists today, let alone in the future. He agreed, then reminded me that this isn't his area anymore.

That is one reason I keep a look out for new digital publications coming out of schools such as this new Newsstand magazine from Northwestern College, a private Christian liberal arts college located in Orange City, Iowa.

I haven't a clue why the magazine is called Cardboard, maybe that is their sports mascot – if so, then they have the second best mascot name after UC Santa Cruz who are the Banana Slugs – but I have a feeling that is not the reason for the name.

In any case, the new magazine has appeared in the Newsstand under the developer account name of the faculty advisor Dayne Logan, who also serves as the faculty adviser to the college's student newspaper, the Beacon. Inside the app the premiere issue editors are listed as Linden Figgie, Abbie Goldschmid, Justine Johnson and Tom Westerholm while the magazine's advisor is Richard Sowienski; the app's project manager was Priyanka Fernando, with Dayne Logan the advisor on the app project.

To build their digital magazine the team used the Mag+ platform. The result, of course, is a native tablet magazine which has its first issue weighing in at 78 MB due to the limited number of pages inside the issue (though both orientations were used in the magazine).

The digital magazine is free to access, of course, which gives others interested in the platform yet another example to see. Hopefully the faculty at Northwestern College will continue to support the new digital edition going forward as the publication looks great and I'm sure the students found the exercise in digital publishing a worthwhile venture.

Meredith Corporation condenses two of its magazine markets by buying Bonnier's parenting titles

The Swedish publisher Bonnier recently advertised that they were seeking a VP, Group Publisher for their parenting division – it turns out they won't be needing to fill that slot as the company has sold both Parenting and Babytalk to Merdith Corporation.

According to the announcement from Meredith, the deal is an asset deal only, meaning that both titles will be folded. Readers of Bonnier's Parenting will now start receiving Meredith's title Parents, while readers of Babytalk will now receive Meredith's American Baby.

Although Meredith's announcement states that they will maintain the websites of the two acquired titles, no mention was made of the company keeping on the Bonnier employees.

Below is the press release in full:

Meredith Acquires Parenting and Babytalk Brands From Bonnier

NEW YORK, May 14, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Meredith Corporation MDP; (www.meredith.com) announced today it has acquired Parenting and Babytalk magazines and their related digital assets from The Bonnier Corporation (www.Bonniercorp.com).

Under the agreement, the readers of Parenting will receive Parents magazine effective with the September issue. Similarly, readers of Babytalk will receive American Baby magazine effective with the September issue. The companion digital site, www.Parenting.com, will operate as a part of the Parents network of digital media.

Both Parents and American Baby magazines will include popular editorial features and columns from Parenting and Babytalk to ensure that readers are being super-served with great editorial content that reflects the best of the combined products.

Financial terms were not disclosed, and the acquisitions will not have a material effect on Meredith's financial performance.

Meredith Corporation is the leading media and marketing company serving American women. Meredith reaches 100 million American women every month through multiple well-known national brands and local television brands in fast-growing markets. Meredith is the industry leader in creating content in key consumer interest areas such as home, family, food, health and wellness and self-development. Meredith uses multiple distribution platforms – including print, television, digital, mobile, tablets, and video – to give consumers content they desire and to deliver the messages of its advertising and marketing partners.

Additionally, Meredith Xcelerated Marketing serves the nation's top brands and companies by delivering content-powered engagement for a hyper-connected world. Its deep expertise in digital, mobile, social, healthcare, analytics and international marketing enable it to provide cutting-edge cross-channel customer management for many of the world's most popular brands.

A hallmark of Meredith's business model and financial profile is its ability to consistently generate substantial free cash flow by leveraging the strength of its multi-platform portfolio. Meredith is committed to increasing Total Shareholder Return through dividend payments, share repurchases and strategic business investments.

Media app updates: tablet editions of Macworld, PCWorld go free for print subscribers; new MagCast built digital magazine gets raves from hockey fans and an update

Print subscribers this morning finally got what they had been clamoring for, free access to the tablet edition through their print subscription accounts. Both Newsstand apps for Macworld Digital Magazine (U.S.) and PCWorld Digital Magazine (U.S.) are from the publisher IDG.

Both apps had been receiving bad reviews inside the Apple App Store, though, I found interesting, PCWorld seemed to be getting it worse. Both magazines apps also were called out for bugs that hopefully now fixed with these latest updates.

The issue of charging print subscribers remains a controversial one with both readers and publishers. Some publishers, such as Hearst, have made a policy of this which has led to growing digital subscriptions, but also diving print readership. Hearst has never, as far as I know, officially said that their goal was to drive readers to digital to cut production costs, but their policies are certainly doing just that.

Other publishers have chosen to charge all digital readers simply because of the issue of subscription verification – the added cost to do this not considered worth the price.

Both IDG computer magazines are reformatted for the iPad, something that puts them at an advantage over Future's Mac|Life which has been getting negative reader reviews due to it being a buggy replica edition.

The Loop, the digital magazine that uses the new TypeEngine digital publishing platform to create a simplified digital magazine along the lines of Marco Arment's The Magazine, has had to issue two quick updates to address bugs. (see original TNM post here, and the follow-up here.) This is probably not a big surprise as this is the first app to use TypeEngine's new app solution.

Reader reviews have been split between those who love the concept of a Kindle Edition-like digital magazine, and those that found the app buggy.

Other media app updates this morning:

By the Bottle, from Extra Edge Club LTD, has updated their Newsstand app to add iPhone support. (See original TNM post here.)

Education Week, from Editorial Projects in Education, was updated to fix some bugs. What really should be address, though, is the poor app description that was created for the app - only one screenshot (the text is OK). The cost of the digital issue is pretty high – $69.99 for an annual subscription – so I'm sure downloads are pretty low for this digital edition.

Finally, one of those digital magazines with an outrageously long name – Hockey Development Magazine: Tips and Systems Drills for Hockey Coaches and Players – was updated for "code optimization and enhancements." (See short post on the app in the new release section, scroll down to April 17.)

The digital magazine used the MagCast platform to create its Newsstand app and readers have so far been very positive in their reviews – 17 five-star reviews to zero other. Not a bad start for Jeremy Weiss who launched the digital magazine last month.