• NY Times, Tuesday, April 4, 2006 11:01 AM

While other magazine publishers have moved somewhat more adroitly into the Web business, Condé Nast has for a long time been a notorious laggard, showing little enthusiasm for the new medium. Finally, things are beginning to change at the New York-based company that produces so many of our best titles. The New York Times chronicles the company's recent and upcoming Web launches, saying they "reflect the new reality in the magazine industry: The Internet is an indispensable companion to print." Steven Newhouse, chairman of Advance.net, which oversees Condé Nast's Web sites, all owned by Advance Publications, says, "You gain a broader audience and more loyalty from your subscribers if you extend the experience into the Web." The Times notes that magazine publishers have "been forced to confront the shifting appetite for news online and have watched their advertisers migrate to cyberspace." However, "magazines have felt less of a need [than newspapers] to reorient themselves. For one thing, the drops in circulation for magazines have been less drastic than for newspapers. For another, magazines have always had a more relaxed, if not intimate, relationship with their readers, who tend to set aside precious leisure time to read them. 'They still think in terms of pages and ink,' Mike Neiss, a senior vice president of Universal McCann, said of magazine editors. 'They look at it the way you'd look at Nixon doing standup--you can't really stretch the brand as far as you think you can.' "

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