Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Ink Magazine's descent into narcissism

John Landsberg reports on the latest bizarre happening at the KC Star's Ink Magazine:

The Kansas City Star's Ink publication, which has been referred to by one journalist as "a paper written by 18-year-olds for 14-year-olds," is now running a contest where young hotties (and friends) have submitted pictures of themselves in various stages of dress--and undress.

Ink readers are now able to vote for their top male and female hotties.

"What results is a parade of, yes, (mostly) attractive people — but also a Ford-worthy assembly line of aggrandizement, self-promotion, flattery, and some of the most shameless immodesty this side of a Flavor of Love episode," reports the folks at the wonderful blog site Bovine Comedy, which highlighted the contest (LINK).

Below is a screen shot of the KC Star home page linking to the gallery of hot Ink readers.

Photo credit: Lucubrations Hat tip: Tony's Kansas City
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16 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not to mention pedophile heaven, but hey. Pedophile advocacy is the KC Star thing.

Anonymous said...

I suppose it is better than having the ugly KC people send in pics, there would be far too many to judge.

Kevin Gregory said...

2:36 -- And far better than having Star ex-columnists sending in photos.

Anonymous said...

He needs a shave. Who is he?

Anonymous said...

Didn't an MNI paper also recently have an adult, "best legs" contest?

If you failing, and they are, try T&A. But then try to charge WSJ prices.

Anonymous said...

September (Magazine) Ad-Page Tallies Plunge (Advertising Age)

Is September now the cruelest month? It may very well be for fashion and beauty titles this year. The final tallies for those crucial issues are emerging -- and for almost every one of the titles, results are terrible.

Magazines' big hope, and sustaining belief right now, is that the declines stem almost entirely from the recession, not from any long-term shift in consumer or advertiser demand. At Conde Nast, which has built its identity almost as much as its balance sheets around September issues over the years, the recession had better be the main culprit.

Ad pages in the September issue of W fell 53% from last September, according to the company's report Tuesday morning. Allure saw pages fall 52%, Self gave up 51%, Glamour lost 42%, Vogue arrived down 37%, Details lost 35%, and GQ and Teen Vogue each lost 32% (see graphic).

Those titles were hurt by the absence of the Fashion Rocks supplement this year, so Conde also provided comparisons to last September as if Fashion Rocks never existed. But those comparisons were still pretty grim: By that measure, W fell 47%, for example; Vogue fell 30%, Allure lost 28% and Glamour lost 25%.

Anonymous said...

Amazing. An entire genre of nine or ten glossies,(not couting the non-starter Ink) dedicated to dreck. Who ever said we knew the value of a dollar.

Anonymous said...

Gray Lady's (WHORE) Dilemma (WSJ)(hear MNI)


Would you remortgage your home to lend money to the New York Times?

No, I'm not kidding. Nor am I rattling the charity cup.

New York Times bonds, like many these days, are signaling substantial risk. The March 2015 notes are yielding 11%, or more than four times as much as "risk-free" bonds issued by the U.S. government.

Anyone confident the Times can avoid bankruptcy within the next six years can simply borrow against their home at around 5.5%, invest the money at 11% and make themselves rich.

I wish them luck.

Anonymous said...

Gray Lady's Dilemma cont.(WSJ)

Charging for online content: There's the rub

All this should be good news for bondholders. They could do with the help. Yes, operating cash flows still cover interest expense. But at the end of last quarter, the Times had total liabilities of $3 billion and current assets -- cash, equivalents and inventories -- of $772 million. (Wow, almost like McClatchy)

But the really interesting story will come when the Times reveals how it plans to start charging people to read its articles. This is going to be key to the survival of the company, and the rest of the industry.

The TimesSelect venture, which tried to charge to read its opinion columnists, folded in ignominy a couple of years back. Fewer than one Web-site visitor in 50 was willing to pay money to read Maureen Dowd and Thomas Friedman online.

...(money quote) Perhaps the Times will have better luck charging people to read actual news.


Do the math. The Times' websites had about 52 million online readers in the first quarter. Internet revenues? Just $78 million.

That's 50 cents per reader per month. That's not even a box of tic tacs.

Company operating costs during the same period: $654 million. Payroll alone was $145 million.

The Times recently asked some readers in a survey if they'd pay $5 a month to read the paper online.

Ahem.

Anonymous said...

Gray Lady's Dilemma cont.(WSJ, who takes the grey whore to the bath house)

Doom and gloom, but glimmer of hope, too

There's a lot of doom and gloom around. Earlier this month media executives got exercised about a research note in which a 15-year-old author disclosed that teenagers don't like to pay for media.

This says something very disheartening about media executives. The rest of us are saying: This is news? Teenagers don't pay for anything. They never did. They have no money. Thirty years ago, we taped our music from the radio.

The people who pay for things are the people who have the money. Adults.

Looking for signs of hope? Last week Gannett, publisher of USA Today, suggested glimmers of light in the distance. Earnings beat expectations after the company took a machete to costs.

Oh, and McGraw-Hill got so disgusted with the newspaper business it put BusinessWeek up for sale. Rumored price: $1.

This could be bullish.

BusinessWeek, after all, is the ultimate "magnetic south" -- contrary indicator, pointing in the opposite direction. It's a long-running joke in the business world, dating at least to 1982, when the paper's front cover heralded the dawn of the greatest bull market in history with the words, "The Death of Equities."

Could the announced sale of the magazine mark the bottom of the market?

Stranger things have happened. Hey, this is the news business

Anonymous said...

TOO DELICIOUS TO PASS UP

Dead Magazine Walking (recoveringjournalist)

Every so often you stumble over a statistic that takes your breath away. Here's one:

Newsweek's paid newsstand circulation averages just under 67,000 copies a week.

WTF? Only 67,000 people take money out of their pocket each week to buy a copy of a national magazine in a nation of more than 300 million people? That really doesn't sound good. And it gets worse when you take the math a couple steps farther.

Let's see if we can estimate how many different places Newsweek can be purchased. Newsstand sales aren't restricted to newsstands; they include all places magazines are sold, including supermarkets, bookstores, etc. So let's do some math:

There are slightly more than 35,000supermarkets in the U.S. Most of them probably offer Newsweek in their checkout lines.

There are about 50,000 drug stores in the U.S. Let's say half of them sell magazines.

There are 4,000 bookstores in the U.S. Again, let's say half sell magazines.

There are a bit more than 3,400 newsstands.

Let's not forget 7-Elevens, which all sell Newsweek: 5,700 of those. There are probably at least as many other convenience stores under different names.

Take all of those together—and I'm doubtless leaving out many other outlets where copies of Newsweek can be purchased—and you get 70,000or so possible places you can plunk down $5.95 to pick up a copy of Newsweek.

In other words, unless something in my math is wacky, Newsweek sells an average of less than one newsstand copy a week in each place that it's available. Oh my.

Anonymous said...

Conde Nast is the most egregiously vile of the media companies. They drip hatred of conservatives on virtually every page of their title publications.

I really want to see them go under.

Anonymous said...

6:12, uh, aren't you overlooking a bigger and much more important measure of Newsweek's circulation? Hint: paid in advance; received by mail. What is that number, hmmmmm?

Anonymous said...

...They drip hatred of conservatives on virtually every page of their title publications....

How about one specific example?

Anonymous said...

...They drip hatred of conservatives on virtually every page of their title publications....
-----------------------
REAL conservatives, or you inter-masturbating pseudo-conservative douchebags? (Because you guys are so much more fun to read than REAL conservatives.)

Anonymous said...

Next time you need an example of liberal name calling...please look at this comment. Misogynist, full of hatred, obviously sexually absorbed...in the end...quite sad and pathetic.