NYC tabloids react to NRA chief, while Gannett-owned NY state paper produces interactive map of area gun owners

A Gannett newspaper in the Lower Hudson Valley produced and published an interactive map of area gun owners, drawing fire from readers (sorry, couldn't resist).

"I can't believe these a$$hats published this info. Clean up your hardware, stock up on ammo," wrote one irate reader.

"This is CRAZY!! why in the world would you post every licensed gun owner information??" wrote another. "What do you hope to accomplish by doing this. This is the type of thing you do for sex offenders not law abiding gun owners."
"The map indicates the addresses of all pistol permit holders in Westchester and Rockland counties," the newspaper said. "Each dot represents an individual permit holder licensed to own a handgun — a pistol or revolver. The data does not include owners of long guns — rifles or shotguns — which can be purchased without a permit."

The feature has generated over 1,700 comments so far online, the vast majority of them negative, and many, many saying readers should boycott the paper.

The interactive feature comes on the heels of the elementary school shooting in Connecticut and the shooting this weekend of firefighters called to a fire deliberately set to attract shooting victims in Webster, NY. outside Rochester.

Just before Christmas, the NRA's chief executive Wayne LaPierre gave a speech where he recommended putting armed guards inside schools. The New York tabloids responded by featuring LaPierre on its cover – the Post leading with "Gun Nut" and the Daily News calling him the "craziest man on Earth".

12 Apps of Christmas: Next Issue Media's digital newsstand comes to the iPad & finally takes off, while Mag+'s native iPhone magazine solution gets showcased

The Twelve Days of Christmas runs from Christmas Day to the evening of January 5th, or Twelfth Night. But TNM's 12 Apps of Christmas, which began last week, will look at significant media apps (or trends) released in 2012.

Today, Christmas Day, we look at July, with the series continuing through New Year's Eve. This will be the only post here today at TNM, have a Merry Christmas.

July saw several new, important media apps released, but the summer was also a time of continuing difficulties in Europe as the Euro crisis continued on. During the month, the reporters for The Athens News, one of two English language news organizations in Greece, went out on strike due to unpaid back wages. Sadly the situation has not improved and the paper's website has remained without an update since mid-November.

Also in July, the founder of paidContent, Rafat Ali, launched a new travel website called Skift.com. Skift used the WordPress CMS to launch its 'travel intelligence' website, another take on online B2B publishing, and the first major move in this area since the demise of VerticalNet.

Late in the month Apple launched Mountain Lion and updated its own Mac apps. The launch of the new Mac OS went fairly smoothly, especially in comparison to the release later in the year of iOS 6.

The most significant app releases in the month came from two very different sources, using two very different approaches.

The iPhone edition of the British Journal of Photography was an all-new app that used the Mag+ platform. Rather than simply making a universal replica app, the British magazine had launched a well-received tablet edition using the Mag+ platform. In July the magazine launched a new iPhone edition using the same, but now updated platform.

The results were wonderful: a fully native take on the mobile format.

Another app release in July may, in the end, be even more significant. Next Issue Media had been established back before the original iPad was launched. A digital alliance between major publishers Condé Nast, Hearst, Meredith, News Corporation and Time Inc., the new venture was, as expected, very slow to take off.

At first the new company launched a digital newsstand for the Samsung Galaxy Tab, then later an Android app was launched. This was an effort by media giants that was going nowhere, at at a slow pace.

Finally, in July, Next Issue Media launched its iPad app and finally the new venture gained some traction.

The business model is a break from the old subscription model: for one monthly fee a reader can access a whole catalog of magazine titles. Obviously the reason for Next Issue Media is to retain control with the publishers and avoid Apple's fees and control.

It is rather ironic, though, that while Next Issue Media is looking out for the interests of big publishers, Apple has made changes to its App Store that favor the big publishers, as well. For now, at least, no one seems to be looking out for small, independent publishers. What is now needed is an easy to navigate and search digital newsstand that creates an even playing field for digital start-ups.

Cody says
Merry Christmas
from Talking
New Media!
(and is there any of that roast leftover?)

Yo ho, my boys! No more work to-night!

"Yo ho, my boys!" said Fezziwig. "No more work to-night. Christmas Eve, Dick. Christmas, Ebenezer. Let's have the shutters up," cried old Fezziwig, with a sharp clap of his hands, "before a man can say Jack Robinson."

You wouldn't believe how those two fellows went at it. They charged into the street with the shutters -- one, two, three -- had them up in their places -- four, five, six -- barred them and pinned then -- seven, eight, nine -- and came back before you could have got to twelve, panting like race-horses.

"Hilli-ho!" cried old Fezziwig, skipping down from the high desk, with wonderful agility. "Clear away, my lads, and let's have lots of room here. Hilli-ho, Dick! Chirrup, Ebenezer."

Clear away! There was nothing they wouldn't have cleared away, or couldn't have cleared away, with old Fezziwig looking on. It was done in a minute. Every movable was packed off, as if it were dismissed from public life for evermore; the floor was swept and watered, the lamps were trimmed, fuel was heaped upon the fire; and the warehouse was as snug, and warm, and dry, and bright a ball-room, as you would desire to see upon a winter's night.

12 Apps of Christmas: the trend of web properties launching tablet magazines gets a boost from Huffington

The Twelve Days of Christmas runs from Christmas Day to the evening of January 5th, or Twelfth Night. But TNM's 12 Apps of Christmas, which began last week, will look at significant media apps (or trends) released in 2012. Today we look at June, continuing the series through New Year's Eve.

June, glorious, June. After some 25 years I finally went on another longish vacation. This business of ours is brutal, isn't it? So TNM was shut down for the last week of the month while I was in Greece – and it's a good thing, too. WiFi was pretty iffy.

Early in the month I was able to highlight the new app from B2B media firm Cygnus Business Media for Aircraft Maintenance Technology. Up to that time – and come to think of it, today as well – Cygnus is one of the few B2Bs out there showing any leadership when it comes to tablet editions. Late in the year Crain Communications finally showed some interest, but far too many B2Bs remain years behind their consumer counterparts.

The big news of the month was supposed to be the introduction of the Microsoft Surface tablet. Steve Ballmer, the company's CEOm could not get the launch event started on time, making everyone want 40 minutes before getting his show started. To make matters much, much worse, Microsoft did not announce either pricing or a launch date despite all the hoopla associated with the event.

Eventually, of course, the Surface surfaced, but only at a few limited retail locations so now Microsoft is still in the midst of rolling out its own tablet. Whether anyone really cares remains, six months after the intro event, an open question.

As far as tablet magazine launches were concerned the biggie was the launch of Huffington. The tablet-only digital magazine was nowhere near the first web property to decide to launch a tablet magazine.

The Next Web, for instance, had launched its digital magazine back in February, and before that one Engadget Distro had appeared in Apple's Newsstand.

But the Huffington Post tablet magazine launch drew the most attention simply because of who was behind the magazine.

Later this year, when the news hit that The Daily would fold, many pointed to these tablet-only magazine published by web properties as proof that any tablet publication would need the support of either a print or online product behind it. One wonders if in the future some will argue that the only way to launch a print product will be to make sure one has a tablet product to support it?

It was also around this time that I got in the habit of producing short video walk-throughs of the new tablet apps. Here is the one produced in June for Huffington:

Morning Brief: Stock futures lower on budget concerns; Apple shuts down iTunes Connect for the holiday, Maybach to the Newsstand with a new app

It's Christmas Eve day, and I assume many TNM readers are enjoying an extended holiday. As for me, well, I have fond memories of working on the day before Christmas so am happy to be here to continue to talk about New Media.

One of the great things about working in the newspaper industry – back in the days when the newspaper industry was in better shape – was working Christmas Eve. No matter whether you were in the newsroom, the advertising department, or production there was always the next day's paper to put out, so few complained about working that day, after all, there would be those working the next day, as well. So, we all made the best of it, and found ways to actually enjoy the experience, wishing our fellow workers a good holiday, and doing things like cracking up some wine, that today would be against company policies.

So to those working in media on Christmas Eve, a hearty welcome to TNM.

---

Wall Street will have a shortened day of trading today because of the holiday. Stock futures are down, as one would expect, as investors express concern over whether Congress will be able to get its act together before January 1 to reach an agreement that will prevent automatic tax hikes and spending cuts from being implemented – the so-called fiscal cliff.

I wouldn't bet on Congress.

Apple has shut down iTunes Connect for the week. One hopes that while their system is down they are working behind the scenes to fix some of the issues involved with the App Store.

The biggest issue, however, remains the design of the U.S. App Store, which now overwhelmingly favors the apps from big publishers at the expense of small, independent publishers. Finding a new app without already knowing the name is now nearly impossible – as a result, I now spend most of my time outside the U.S. store in the other international App Stores that have not abandoned developers as of yet.

Before shutting down things for the holiday, Apple rushed to make sure new apps and app updates that were in queue were released into the store.

One of those apps is from long time TNM reader and independent publisher Christopher English. His new app for Maybach Magazine hit the store on Friday afternoon, as did quite a number of other new titles. (The Maybach app icon, which is the cover of the January issue, can be seen above-right.)

The new Maybach app was created using nov8rix which English chose because of the Newsstand support.

Many of the new apps are coming from the U.S.-Indian firm Magzter. The DIY solution has become popular for many smaller publishers because of the lack of upfront costs – Magzter instead employs a revenue share strategy. It is a tough deal, however, as publishers must split their subscription revenue with Magzter, a split that occurs after Apple gets its 30 percent. That means for every dollar of sales the publisher only sees 35 cents.

For ad driven business models this is not so bad, after all circulation usually, at best, just covers expenses. But for those new digital magazines trying to make a go of it through subscription sales, the two splits – one with Apple, one with the vendor – pretty much eats up any chances at the publisher seeing a profit, let alone a livable wage.

As a result, many of the new digital magazines being released a being forced to price their issues and subscriptions quite a bit higher than other digital magazines, in order to eke out some revenue. This puts these new titles even more at a disadvantage inside the App Store. Maybe after Christmas we will awaken to see that Apple and these vendors have been visited by the Christmas spirits and things will be changed. (I put the odds of that happening about the same as the House GOP coming to their senses.)

One of the new digital magazines released late last week was Büze Magazine, a new drinks magazine that is most definitely using a more interactive digital publishing platform than many of the DIY new releases.

TNM will take a closer look at this new digital magazine start-up after the holiday.