State of the Media Report 2004 by
journalism.org, which seeks to improve news coverage in a more neutral fashion than those who cry bias from the left and right. The group offers advice for
average citizens and
others. The report focuses mainly on US media and identifies
eight trends.
The content analyses finds that
newspapers have more lifestyle news than in the past, but less government and foreign affairs, even with wars abroad. More front page articles about issues, less on crime and disasters.
Network news was heavy on foreign affairs, government, accidents, disaster, crime and health care. The
cable networks had a lot of politics and Iraq stuff, but also a lot more celebrity/entertainment/lifestyle stuff than the big four.
Local TV news treats crime as topic A.
The
magazine audience is aging, and total pages are declining, but some, like The Economist and the New Yorker, have found success in niches.
Internet journalism is "still largely material from old media rather than something original." And it's still text-y. But it is clearly the
future of journalism. But don't pronounce the dinosaurs dead yet. Radio once ruled, and in a way it still does: 94 percent still tune in to
radio news at least once a week.
posted by Slagman
on Apr 1, 2004 -
7 comments
Pin-up Photoshop fraud. I know Photoshop massaging of images has been posted here earlier (somewhere), but Maxim magazine seem to be getting sloppy. A least
Vargas didn't do tiles. (via Mikes list)
posted by marvin
on Nov 7, 2003 -
35 comments
Simon Waldman, director of digital publishing for Guardian Newspapers, found an interesting piece on Hitler's Mountain Home, "A Visit to 'Haus Wachenfeld" in a 1938 copy of Homes & Gardens magazine. Intrigued by the glowing nature of the article and it's historical importance [
We hear a lot about how the British upper and upper-middle classes felt that 'That Hitler chap had some very good ideas' ... but it's only when you see it in this almost comically fawning form that you realise how someone who can seem utterly abhorrent with hindsight can appeal to people at the time,] he posted it to his
blog only to be sent a
takedown notice by Homes & Gardens magazine, for copyright violation. Wired has the
story.
posted by Blue Stone
on Sep 21, 2003 -
16 comments
The colour scheme throughout this bright, airy chalet is a light jade green. In outside rooms, like the sun-parlour, chairs and tables are of white plated cane. Here Hitler will read the home and foreign papers which his own air-pilot, Hansel Baur, brings him every day from Berlin before lunch. Homes & Gardens magazine
gushes over the Führer's Bavarian pad, circa 1938.
(via boingboing)
posted by gottabefunky
on Sep 12, 2003 -
10 comments
Hippie Atrocities and Beautiful Freaks -- Oz Magazine was, for a ten year run during the Sixties and Seventies, Australia's, and later England's, premier underground satire 'zine. Featuring contributions from (among others) Lenny Bruce and Germain Greere, and subject to two obscenity trials--one in Australia and another, more famous one following the editors' exile to
England--it evolved, in its English incarnation, a
wicked,
witty and of course, thouroughly
psychedelic design aesthetic. There are galleries of cover art
here and
here,
and a Shockwave adaptation of the infamous School Kids issue
here.
[warning: some images NSFW.]
posted by arto
on Aug 26, 2003 -
6 comments
Chicago Tribune's Top 50 Magazines (might require registration, sorry) Not sure if I agree with anyone in the top 50. I mean
People? Let's be serious; if you're going to put
People in a "Top 50 List" then
TV Guide should be right after
People.
What I do agree with is the list of "Mags Gone Bad:"
Newsweek - So unnewsworthy.
Playboy - Gone are the days of great journalism. Now it's like looking through a catalog written by crumb ass writers.
Premiere - Was it really ever
that good, aside from a David Foster Wallace article here and there?
Rolling Stone - Again, if it wasn't for the half-cocked rambling os Hunster S. Thompson this magazine would be total tripe.
Spin - See
Premiere but without the David Foster Wallace articles.
Vanity Fair - Maybe a nice cover or two, but not much else to celebrate.
posted by bivouac
on Jun 12, 2003 -
29 comments
Wal-Mart Inc. stopped selling magazines Maxim, Stuff and FHM In the past, Wal-Mart has refused to sell CD's that carry warning labels about explicit lyrics...
Who is behind this censorship ? I can think of only one group =
CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALISTS,
every day these hypocritical monsters are taking more freedoms away from us. They think Jesus would drive a SUV but would never read a Maxim magazine. I am calling on
Canada and
France to liberate us from these monsters...
posted by bureaustyle
on May 6, 2003 -
84 comments
We Have Cameras Magazines: Why is
Maxim offering a
free, no-catches 2 years subscription to anyone who can be bothered to give them one of their spamsucker e-mail addresses? Hey, I hate Maxim but I'd take one if I lived in the U.S, if only to keep the postal service busy and ingratiate myself with my nephews. Will all magazines - at least the shittiest ones - be free in the future? Subscription rates, sales and advertising revenues keep falling and it seems the only bargaining chip magazines have left (to solicit advertisements) is circulation. And still new mags, like
Radar, keep popping up. Good thing? Bad thing? You tell me.
posted by Carlos Quevedo
on Apr 25, 2003 -
25 comments
Decoding Visual Language Elements in News Content is an MFA thesis examining how layout, cropping, image selection et al. influence the way the content is perceived. The
interactive demo is especially interesting; you can take some TV and magazine layouts and switch out pictures and other elements. It's fascinating to see how different cropping and tints affect your impressions of the content. Media literacy -- especially right now -- is a good thing.
(Link via Stan Chin.)
posted by Vidiot
on Mar 21, 2003 -
12 comments
Dodge Magazine #1; "Dodge is devoted to anyone with a passion for graphic design, and an open minded approach to new forms of visual communication."
Dodge Magazine #2; "The assignment for this issue was simple. Create a piece based on, or motivated by the theme of 'lost and found'".
posted by hama7
on Jan 27, 2003 -
11 comments
What Happened To My Woodcock? Much as I love reading Mary Killen's etiquette column in
The Spectator, it has to be said it's becoming more and more exotic and self-consciously ridiculous. But that's nothing compared to the success of
This England magazine, Britain's best-selling quarterly, complete with a crusty, pastoral
editor's letter (Yes, Amanda, it was published in 2002) and a reactionary, anti-EU
petition. Add magazines like
Country Life and
The Lady,
Countryman or
The Field, and the old question once again arises: will there still always be an England or will it just become more and more parochial and eventually go undercover? Or just disappear?
posted by MiguelCardoso
on Dec 6, 2002 -
17 comments
Is this naturism, photography or soft-core child pornography? If you search for photographers like Sally Mann or Jock Sturges you'll come across this entirely legitimate purveyor of naturist books and videos. In the Fifties and Sixties nudist magazines, like
Health and Efficiency, were an excuse for looking at naked bodies. Now that porn is legal, have nudist publications made a comeback as an excuse for looking at photographs of naked children? Their website is itself well concealed - the
front page looks innocent enough but, the
further you click
into it, the more
unsettling it becomes. Or are we all becoming to paranoid for our own good? (
I'd say NSFW)
posted by Carlos Quevedo
on Nov 9, 2002 -
110 comments
21C Magazine Paul Miller (re-)launches an
ambitious new magazine. Looks promising with such "Confirmed Regular Contributors" as Howard Bloom, Alex Burns, Erik Davis (yay!), Samuel Delaney, William Gibson, Jaron Lanier, Rudy Rucker, Douglas Rushkoff, R.U. Sirius, Bruce Sterling, and Margaret Wertheim :)
posted by kliuless
on Sep 22, 2002 -
24 comments
Do Judge A Magazine By Its Cover: I'm ashamed to say I only recognized one name (Covarrubias) from the list of
illustrators featured in Condé Nast's sparkling collection of
cover art, dating from the 1910s to the 1950s. It's also searchable by
magazine. So now I count myself a fan of Rene Bouet-Willaumez, A.H. Fish, Henry Stahlhut, Carl Erickson and a few others too. All in all, it's good, clean fun - even though the site's commercial and one's fingers often ache to open the damn things and actually read the bastards!
posted by MiguelCardoso
on Sep 4, 2002 -
6 comments
Life Is A Magazine, Chum... Come to the Magazine! A lot of us grew up with
Life Magazine and there's a certain nostalgic/narcissistic pleasure in looking at the cover of the
week you (if you're over 30, that is) or your parents were born in. Their
wacky and
classic covers are also worth checking out, even though there are some inevitable repeats. Oh - and never forgetting their astonishing
classic photographs, of course.
posted by MiguelCardoso
on Aug 9, 2002 -
18 comments
(Note to young sportswriters: Always make your steroid question your last question.) Sports Illustrated Übercolumnist Rick Reilly asks Cubs slugger Sammy Sosa if he would be willing to undergo a test for steroids. After all, Sosa has said he would be "first in line" if baseball required tests for steroids. Reilly asks, "Well, why wait? Why not step up right now and be tested? You show everybody you're clean."
Sosa chuckles ruefully, pats Reilly on the back, and replies, "No, sir, that would weaken the player's union, and besides, your question is quite inappropriate."
Just kidding. Actually, Sosa yells and screams. His answer includes the word "motherfucker." "You're not my father," he tells Reilly.
Journalists writing to the
letters page of Jim Romenesko's Media News disagree on the appropriateness of Reilly's request.
posted by Holden
on Jul 3, 2002 -
29 comments
Fashion comes and goes, but art that might have come from the side of a van is forever. The cover artists from
Dragon magazine, a staple of my pimply years, all have websites now, from
Keith Parkinson to the ghastly
Clyde Caldwell to
Larry Elmore (who is putting his old
Dragon comic,
SnarfQuest, online). The grand master of bodacious barbarian babe art,
Frank Franzetta, has a site, too. Relive your adolescence through gleaming swords, vanquished dragons, and hyperdefined musculature! (Warning: Not all pictures are work-safe.)
posted by snarkout
on May 24, 2002 -
11 comments
Interesting online magazines. Not as popular or commercial as say Salon but interesting reads from a less mainstream perspective. With so many options and so much variety, it’s difficult to stake your claim. What are some of your favorite online magazines?
posted by lostbyanecho
on Apr 14, 2002 -
19 comments
Is "Gourmet" The Best American Food Magazine? Lookit all the nominations it's got! It's certainly got a lot better since
Ruth Reichl started editing it. Reading about its history one gets to know what American foodies were cooking, eating or just drooling over in the
40s,
50s,
60s,
70s,
80s and
90s(Let no one pretend, after reading this potted history, that food used to be better in the old days). Still, for my money, the best food magazine in the world, better even than the French
Saveurs, is the scrumptious, San Francisco-based upstart
Saveur, whose online version has recently become extremely generous. Like most people I rarely try out a recipe - I just read it as virtual
gastroporn. In fact, it's the only magazine I actually collect.
posted by MiguelCardoso
on Apr 3, 2002 -
34 comments
I mourned Sassy, too! "Darren E. Burrows is to Keanu, as Samantha Mathis is to Winona Ryder, as Joan Collins is to Elizabeth Taylor, as Jason Priestley is to johnny Depp, as Luke Perry is to James Dean, as Caludia Schiffer is to Brigette Bardot, as Bill Clinton is to JFK, as YM is to Sassy." --Christina Kelly,in her "What Now" column, Sassy, May 1992. And wouldn't you know it,
she's now the editor-in-chief of YM. (Yes, I know this post won't make sense to anyone who wasn't a teenage girl in the early '90s.)
posted by lillitot
on Mar 24, 2002 -
23 comments
Creem Magazine is back. After an 8-year hiatus, the classic rock rag that launched the career of editor/author/Springsteen-worshipper
Dave Marsh, elevated
Lester Bangs to rockcrit boddhisatva status, and introduced me to the Velvet Underground and the Stooges is online and ready to roll the presses once more. Will they give a much-needed kick in the ass to a moribund field of journalism, or are they a bunch of old hippies cynically cashing in on Cameron Crowe's
Almost Famous vibe? Don't forget to dig the
scanned covers. Boy Howdy!
posted by MrBaliHai
on Nov 29, 2001 -
10 comments
What happened at Lingua Franca? The
monthly had top-notch writing and reporting on the academic life as well as National Magazine Awards, but it
shut down in October. It was originally thought to be another September 11 casualty (circulation hovered around 15,000, despite the magazine's heavy buzz). Now, it looks like a $16.5 million lawsuit filed against Academic Partners acquisition Arts and Letters Daily might have hastened the magazine's demise. The charge? Breach of verbal contract -- after the papers selling ALD were signed, promises of payment to the previously working for free executive editor went out the window. What responsibilities come with turning a communal labor of love into a business enterprise? How do you introduce the element of professionalism into something that was once done for fun?
posted by maura
on Nov 6, 2001 -
10 comments
Brill's Content folds. "Brill’s Content and Inside.com, the church lady and swinging single of the myopic media world who got hitched in April, have been closed, victims of terrible publishing and Web economies and a strained relationship between Steven Brill and his major backer, Primedia."
posted by schmedeman
on Oct 16, 2001 -
21 comments
Not just another Weblog link: This, apparently, is the front door (or at least today's front door) to the ChristianityToday.com Weblog. It comments, it provides links, it archives.
posted by jhiggy
on Jan 8, 2001 -
5 comments
Seattle's "Alternative Weekly,"
The Stranger has no actual articles in it this week. Instead, they replaced all of the words in the articles that would normaly be there with
a novella. All the normal formatting is there, right down to the letters to the editor and the little news bits. Really clever idea, and from what little I've read so far, a neat story too. Unfortunately the clever layout doesn't translate to the Web site, but the story does just fine.
posted by endquote
on Aug 17, 2000 -
5 comments
Wired No More The assimilation of Wired.com into the Lycos empire is complete. And www.wirednews.com also goes to the Lycos music front page. How long before it gets shifted to a Tripod member page?
posted by holgate
on Apr 25, 2000 -
2 comments
