Bauer launches a $12.99 ad-free food monthly
BAUER
Publishing may have hit on a unique formula to beat the ad crunch in the print world: Start a new magazine with zero advertising — but a sky-high cover price.
Food to Love hit newsstands this week with a $12.99 cover price and initial distribution of 240,000. It’s not seeking any subscribers. Down the road, it may book a few ads, but Bauer USA President Steve Kotok says no big deal if it doesn’t.
The editor is Julie Blume, a former content director of Taste of Home. Blume is stuffing original recipes developed in the company’s test kitchens into the new mag.
“Food to Love introduces cooks to new ingredients and methods to prepare meals that are good for you, simple and family-friendly,” she said. The first issue is dedicated to slow cooker recipes.
Kotok said so-called special interest publications (SIPs) are one area of growth for the company that continues to rely predominantly on newsstand revenue even at a time when that part of the revenue stream has been plagued by declining sales and fewer retail outlets.
Rather than go for the lowest price points in the market — as Bauer does with its celebrity titles such as In Touch, Life & Style and the topselling service title, Woman’s World — the strategy is now to add higherpriced mags to the mix.
“We’re producing something that is a keepsake, rather than a disposable item,” Kotok said. “This is 120page, heavy paper stock. It really is a cookbook.”
The company jumped from seven SIPs in 2016 to 17 in 2017
“We have plans to more than double that this year, releasing 41 SIPs in 2018,” Kotok said.
Low price is still a driver. Woman’s World, with its $1.99 cover price, has been the best-selling US newsstand title since 2013, when it pulled ahead of Hearst’s Cosmopolitan. It has been outselling People since 2010.
Kotok said that the privately held company had US sales of around $200 million last year and “was up in the 5 percent to 10 percent range.”
Long Island iced jobs
Newsday owner Patrick Dolan is taking a sledge hammer to the bluecollar workforce that has been printing and delivering the Long Island newspaper for most of its 78-year history.
Dolan is outsourcing printing and distribution to the New York Times.
About 225 unionized pressmen, truck drivers, electricians, mailers and other tradespeople will be out of work as a result of the outsourcing. That’s about 16 percent of the 1,431-person workforce.
The printing work will move to the NY Times’ College Point plant in Queens.
“There’s shock but not surprise,” said Michael LaSpina, president of Graphic Communications Local 406, which will see roughly half its members’ jobs wiped out. The 235 newsroom journalists, copy editors and photographers who are also part of Local 406 will not be affected, he said.
Co-publishers Debby Krenek and Ed Bushey broke the news in an internal memo to staffers last week — but as Media Ink reported back in November, news of a possible outsourcing to the Times had leaked out months earlier.
Condé cuts
The new editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair, Radhika Jones, and the new editor-in-chief of Glamour, Samantha Barry, took an ax to their staffs on Thursday.
At Vanity Fair, pink slips were handed out to Managing Editor Chris Garrett, deputy editors Aimée Bell and Dana Brown, Editorat-Large Cullen Murphy, Features Editor Jane Sarkin, Associate Managing Editor Ellen Kiell l and Senior Photography Producer Kathryn MacLeod.
Researchers and assistants were also being cut in what one insider described as a bloodbath that hit up to 20 people.
Also gone was Graydon Carter’s long-serving executive director of communications, Beth Kseniak. Nobody at Hive, headed by Editor Jon Kelly, was cut — but some insiders think Jones will begin to tone down the relentless anti- President Trump fervor championed by Carter, long a Trump nemesis.
At Glamour, the cuts were less severe — only about five by mid-afternoon.
In changes that actually began last week, Creative Director Paul Ritter was replaced by Nathalie Kirsheh.
Model booker Richard Blandino is also gone. Both Ritter and Blandino technically reported to Raul Martinez, the Condé Nast corporate creative director, but worked almost exclusively for former Glamour Editor Cindi Leive.
On Thursday, Fashion Director Jillian Davison and Deputy Fashion Director Sasha Iglehart were
cut. “Vanity Fair and Glamour are taking the first steps in reshaping their teams to reflect the new editorial directions of the brands — with new additions and initiatives to be announced shortly,” a Condé Nast spokeswoman confirmed. “The priority for each is to create quality and provocative content across all platforms equally, embracing the next generation of readers and viewers,” the spokeswoman said.