Jeff Bennett's Blog

Over the years I have loved magazines.  It is a wonderful media format.  Short stories.  Great photos.  At it’s apex it seemed the magazine segment of the media industry covered virtually every niche.

A combination of the Internet syphoning audience.  Where the audience goes so goes the advertisers.  The Internet brings performance based ads as well..not just ads for branding.  The increasing cost of shipping, acquiring customers for subscriptions and paper all have been very large challenges to the magazine segment.  Media companies have been shedding, shuttering and trimming their portfolio of magazine brands.  Too bad.  It is a great format.

I have been a digital citizen since the mid 1990s and I consume alot of content on the web…but I have never got the same satisfaction reading newspapers or magazines on the web though.

One magazine that I have really enjoyed in the last several years is Gourmet.  Being a foodie I loved the articles and pictures.  I thought it was very well done.  Last Summer my wife and I got to spend some time with some folks from Gourmet that were writing and shooting an article about the Lake Placid Lodge.  It was very cool.  I was saddened to learn that Conde Nast was going to shut it down though I am surely understanding of the issues.

Yesterday I got word that Conde Nast is going to relaunch this great magazine in the Fall, with an app on the iPad called Gourmet Live.  Surely Conde Nast has a great deal of evergreen content in recipes, photos, food essays and the like that can be utilized.  As I think more about it Conde Nast also will have the ability to draw on the unique functions of the iPad to bring content to life in a more personal way:  geo based, video, podcasts, extended photos in a gallery.  The opportunity also exists for Gourmet Live to support a dialogue with readers through commenting, Facebook Connect and more.

The CEO of Conde Nast, Chuck Townsend, was quoted in yesterdays New York Times:  “It’s not a magazine and it’s not a digital version of a magazine, it’s a whole new way to engage with consumers.”  Amen to that!

There has been so much speculation on the iPad saving the Newspaper segment of the media industry…and here we go with the magazine segment.   I must say that I have really enjoyed reading the New York Times and Wall Street Journal on the iPad.  A friend introduced me to  another great app by Guardian called Eyewitness, which is another example of how a media company can leverage content and bring it to life in an exceptional way on the iPad.

It was not noted in any of the posts I read about Gourmet Live, but from my perspective, this is a very “green” way for Conde Nast to move forward as well.  Which is another great aspect of this app.

What great news.  The rebirth of an iconic media brand with the opportunity to flourish in the new new digital world on the iPad.