Week 6: Magazines and Photography Flashcards
How is digitalization affecting the magazine industry?
Example: Sports Illustrated embodies photography, and the magazine has a reputation of great photography as well as great writing. Yet by 2015 Sports Illustrated had laid off all of its stories staff photographers.
What is a magazine?
The word “magazine” is French; it means “storehouse”. Magazines are collections of materials (stories, ads, poems and other items) that their editors believe will interest the audience.
How did modern magazines emerge?
Magazines in the early 19th century were produced in a decidedly non-industrial manner by a hand-powered press.
The 19th century saw critical developments in the magazine’s look, with respect to both covers and internal layouts. There was more white space and more illustrations and different fonts; in fact, this meant the development of a discipline of magazine designers.
The 20th century saw more ads than ever, and they appeared throughout the issues.
The spread of literacy, railroads across America and postal laws substantially lowered the
cost of mailing magazines, encouraging entrepreneurs to try their hands in the business.
The great expansion of American business after the Civil War’s end in 1865 had a major positive impact.
What is Brand and why did it become increasingly important?
Brand: a name and image associated with a particular product
The great expansion of American business after the Civil War’s end in 1865 had a major positive impact. The large number of items being produced increased the competition among manufacturers of similar goods. To make money on any mass-produced item, a manufacturer had to make sure that hordes of people recognized the brand and bought
it.
What are the Five major types of magazines?
1) Business-to-business magazines or trade magazines: focus on topics related to particular occupation, profession or industry.
Examples: advertising, marketing, banking, building, computers, clubs, hotel, motels, resorts etc.
2) Consumer magazines: aimed at the general public.
Examples: Cosmopolitan, Vanity Fair, Men’s Health, Maxim
3) Literary reviews and academic journals
Examples: The Gettysburg Review, Foreign Affairs, Harvard Lampoon
4) Newsletters: small-circulation periodicals, typically four to eight pages long, composed and
printed in a simple style.
5) Comic books: periodicals which sell a story through pictures as well as words.
Comic books were developed in 1930s as publishers of cheap magazines that presented detective, romance, action and supernatural science stories tried to take advantage of the popularity of newspaper comic strips to boost sagging sales.
Graphic novels:
illustrated stories that aim to be longer and more developed than a comic book.
The “rate card”:
the format statement of advertising space that a message presents to advertisers.
Circulation:
the number of units of the magazine sold or distributed free to individuals in one publishing cycle.
Controlled circulation magazine:
a magazine whose production and mailing is supported not by charging readers, but through advertising revenues; the publisher rather than the reader decides who gets the magazines.
Example: Medical Economics – creates a list of doctors whom advertisers would likely consider useful targets and mails issues to those people only.
Custom magazine:
a controlled circulation magazine that is typically created for a company with the goal of reaching out to a specific audience that the company wants to impress. Example: American Way – given out in American Airlines flights.
Paid circulation magazine:
a magazine that supports its production and mailing by charging readers money, either for a subscription or a single copy.
Media kits:
databases compiled by magazines that tell potential advertisers attractive key facts about their readers.
What are market segments and how do certain magazines allow advertisers to reach them?
Segments: portions of a magazine’s readership that an advertiser wants to reach.
Many consumer and trade magazines offer advertisers the possibility of paying for certain segments of the readership. During the printing process, certain ads are bound into copies that go to certain segments of people, and other ads and articles are printed in copies that go to other segments of people.
Examples of magazines which do this: Time, Reader’s Digest.
Tabloidization:
a commercialized news culture where lifestyles, consumerism and sensational modes of presentation become pre-determined and prioritized.
Why have magazines been “dumbing down”?
We have seen a decline in magazines performing informative roles and a rise of those performing entertaining and social roles. This leads to concerns of magazines dumbing down.
What are the (5) Magazine production goals:?
- Draw an attractive audience - try to reach upscale readers – upper- middle-class or upper-class people with substantial disposable income
- Draw an audience that is loyal to the content and personality of the magazine – its “brand” - magazine’s executives must convince advertisers that the magazine is edited so efficiently that the people who receive it read it consistently and thoroughly and presumably pay attention to the ads.
- Provide an environment conductive to the sale of the advertiser’s products. publishers understand that from an advertiser’s point of view, a magazine is above all a platform for persuasive messages.
- Provide this audience and environment at an efficient price. Publishers know that they must present advertisers with a competitively low cost per thousand readers if they want to gain or keep business
- Provide a way for advertisers to associate with the magazine’s brand and audience
beyond the magazine’s pages to a variety of platforms
Why has Producing the magazine as a branded event become a recent trend?
magazines try to position every title not just as paper-bound reading material, but as a personality with which readers want to engage in many areas of their lives.
They do so by interacting with their audience through digital media or by expanding into other media and staging events (e.g. Forbes has eight platforms which extend its personality in moneymaking ways: digital, mobile, magazines, video, events, BrandVoice, Forbes Insights, Forbes Custom)
Magazine distribution:
Magazine distribution:
Subscription:
a long-term order for a magazine that is paid for in advance, for a predetermined period of time or number of issues.
Single-copy sales:
the number of copies of a magazine sold not only by subscription, but one issue at a time.
Major companies like Apple, Google and Microsoft have also gotten into the distribution space. Why do they require all users use these marketplaces on their digital devices? (2 reasons)
a) to make sure the apps that go on their phone work properly; and b) to collect fees from firms that want the manufacturers to sell the magazines through the marketplace (e.g. Times vs Apple).
Slotting fees:
payments that ensure companies’ products will be placed prominently at the front of magazine racks or at the checkout counters of supermarkets.
Native advertising:
the process of placing sponsored material in a magazine that looks and reads like editorial content.
Describe the steps in photography production
1) Start with an idea
2) Make an arrangement
3) Take pictures
4) Production process and selection of the best pictures
5) Publish the issue
Describe the changes to the photography production model
- The whole economics around photography have shifted.
- Online, you can publish easily with low control over the content.
- Value of product has generally decreased.
- Prices decrease to match the prices people are willing to pay.
- Newsrooms are unable to justify a whole photography team, so they keep only an editor to
choose the best pictures online, because it is harder to convince investors of the importance of photographers for a magazine/newspaper.
What are Online image depositories and what do they offer?
They offer cheaper storage, faster internet and greater technological capabilities.
Challenges notions not only of amateur/professional, but of intentional and incidental illustration.
Stock photos and image banks:
Used by advertisers, news outlets. Images are captured by multiple themes and symbolic qualities
Economy plays a significant role in photo industry
