• by John Gaffney , November 3, 2002

Vintage Wine Or Sour Grapes? There was a party last week sponsored in part by MediaBistro that celebrated a lot of the magazines that have gone to magazine limbo after the internet bust and ensuing money crunch. I worked for one of those internet business books back in the day. It was called Revolution. Myself and everybody associated with it expected it to set the world on fire. We got some good kindling going, anyway. It lasted about 15 issues. But I heard of some comments made at the Media Bistro party that insinuated the magazines that didn’t survive lacked impact at the newsstand or among the chosen audience. I disagree strongly. The Industry Standard, for example, took a through look at internet marketing and advertising, maybe before the practice could stand the microscope. Brill’s Content was a great concept, that just might have made a few key people think more critically about creativity and presentation of media. Magazines are a voice. Some sing better than others. Some have bigger choirs. But it’s a bad thing when a voice is silenced. Don’t trash them if you used to work for one. Plenty of people will be around to do that.

Here Comes The Sun: I like what The New York Sun is doing from a marketing and editorial standpoint. They’re adding some big names from the intelligentsia, and trying to take up the circulation. It’s toughest battlefield will be at the planner/buyer level, and it’s there that it better have a compelling reason for its future.

Easy as…..: The only place Michael Eisner is having a hard time is with ABC, and that’s a very bad place to have a hard time. Are you going to buy media on a network news show that may be obsolete within six months? Will you as a buyer start to question a network’s programming decisions because they keep coming up short? I would.