Reed Business Information has sold its travel publishing division, which includes Gazetteers.com, Travolution and Travel Weekly, to entrepreneur Clive Jacobs.
Simon Ferguson, former publishing director of the group’s travel portfolio, who left RBI in March, struck the deal and will become chief executive of the newly created TW Group Ltd.
Media Week reports: “Daily Mail & General Trust (DMGT) has formed closer ties with celebrity title Hello!, having agreed that its digital unit Associated Northcliffe Digital (AND) will handle online ad sales for Hellomagazine.com.”
In case you haven’t yet seen it, here’s some more free publicity for the Economist – the publication’s new advert asking us to let our minds wander (or legs, perhaps, to the newsagent.)
In June FoliMag reported that the Economist’s profits were up 26 per cent for the last fiscal year.
“The London-based company, which publishes its namesake magazine, reported approximately $92 million in operating profit, up 26 percent over the previous 12-month period. Revenue was up 17 percent to roughly $514.2 million.”
“The Economist’s worldwide circulation grew 6.4 percent during the period to 1,390,780, the company said. Ad revenue at Economist.com was up 29 percent while page views were up 53 percent.”
The Guardian, however, reported that overall advertising was down:
“Chris Stibbs, the Economist Group’s finance director, said that advertising across the company first turned negative in the final quarter of its financial year, between January and March 2009, and has continued to show a year-on-year decline since then.”
It attributed the profit-rise to recent job cuts:
“[T]he group has remained profitable thanks to a cost-cutting programme that has seen around 130 jobs cut – roughly one in 10 of the company’s global workforce – and leaving it with a staff of 1,100.”
NB: The Economist calls itself a newspaper, not a magazine: see the website for a lengthy description of its history.
Following yesterday’s news that Community Care’s ‘Stand Up Now for Social Work’ campaign had been taken on by Take A Break magazine, the RBI title is now running a survey on journalists to gauge how much the media understands about the care industry and what it takes to be a social worker.
You can complete the survey at this link.
Responses will feed into a factsheet for the ongoing campaign, which was initially launched by drawing attention to the shortlisting of the Sun’s Baby P campaign for the British Press Awards.
Read: Community Care’s Simeon Brody on ‘Why social workers deserve better treatment by the press’
An update from Community Care on its ‘Stand Up Now for Social Work’ campaign (covered by Journalism.co.uk last month): the RBI title’s efforts have been picked up by Take A Break magazine.
The campaign started by drawing attention to the shortlisting of the Sun’s Baby P campaign for the British Press Awards.
TAB has launched its own campaign, ‘Thank God for Social Workers’, as a follow-up. Unfortunately, the mag’s article on the new initiative isn’t online, but Community Care deputy editor Emma Maier tells Journalism.co.uk that TAB is giving away 500 campaign badges and has also criticised the Sun’s ‘name and shame approach’.
TAB editor John Dale told Maier in her report on the development that the title is looking for more stories from social workers, who would have their details protected, and is keen to run more articles on the issue.
Read: Community Care’s Simeon Brody on ‘Why social workers deserve better treatment by the press’
Break Media has launched MadeMan.com, a new website focusing on sports, gadgets and fashion for men. An email version of the title has also been created with 100,000 subscribers so far.
According to a press release announcing the site’s launch, the website is expected to achieve 1 million ‘readers’ within just 30 days.
The site is hoping to attract advertisers who want to target a focused, male audience – it’s the first property launched by Break, which publishes seven other sites, in this area.
Former staff writer at Spike.com, B.J. Fleming, has been named as managing editor for the site.
In an anniversary post from last week marking his 1,001st blog post, Jeremy Leslie discusses what makes a magazine a magazine.
Leslie’s post raises a serious issue – the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) definition of a magazine. Last week the bureau rejected a membership application from title MK Bruce Lee.
As Chris Roper points out on News24:
“If you’re not allowed to call yourself a magazine, you don’t get audited. And if you don’t get audited and have an official circulation, it’s tricky to sell ads in a magazine. You don’t sell ads, you go bust.”
“Whether mainstream or independent, consumer, B2B or customer, old or new, industry bodies like ABC should be supporting innovative publications. And if we’re supporting innovation in content and presentation, why not format too?” writes Leslie.
Travel Trade Gazette (TTG) is running a competition in which readers can win the chance to guest the edit for a day, on August 18.
Readers are told:”You’ll get to see behind the scenes to see how TTG is created each week, discover how stories are researched and written, and get to see the front page before anyone else!”
TTG’s editor, Lucy Huxley, is off on maternity leave: other guest editors covering her absence will include Tui’s Dermot Blastland, Thomas Cook’s Manny Fontenla-Novoa, Virgin Atlantic’s Steve Ridgway and Abta’s Mark Tanzer.
The reader prize also includes a night at a hotel, a meal, and a ‘therapeutic treatment’ (at the hotel, not the magazine…)
Closing date is June 30, 2009. Full story at this link…
John Menzies has closed its digital magazines arm – MagazinesOnDemand.
“Digital magazines have not proved as popular as we had hoped and in this difficult economic climate it was not possible for us to continue trading,” a statement on a holding page on the company’s website reads.
In an interview with Journalism.co.uk in April, MOD’s managing director Sarah Clegg conceded that the outfit had not yet made a profit, but remained optimistic about the future of e-editions.
(Hat tip to MagCulture.com) Good.is is compiling a ‘Transparencies Archive’ on image-sharing website Flickr.
The set shows infographics that have appeared on the magazine’s website and blog.