San Diego Entrepreneur - San Diego Media

San Diego Publishing Business

nospam@example.com (Rex Edhlund) — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 09:57:11 -0700

More info...

The Metro is indeed "sold" or structured in some way that there is a new publisher. There are to be massive changes (GOOD) and it is to be transformed into a "city" style publication. I assume this means more lifestyle coverage.

THAT won't be as easy of a sale.

San Diego Magazine, Riviera Magazine, 944, San Diego Home and Garden, and now the Metro... all chasing the same tail? It could have been an interesting challenge but it isn't going to be for me.

I finally had my audience with the new cat. Our massive staff of 4 people apparently made it difficult to get around to the meeting. It was much as I suspected, with the new broom came sweeping changes that brought in people he already had in tow.

Bob Page, the new owner, had no idea how much publishing experience I bring to the table. National magazine experience, publisher of the Downtown newspaper, design awards, community awards, blah, blah, blah I'm so wonderful awards. You get the point. He has no idea what he's losing. It strikes me as strange to not even do your homework on what it is you're buying. That's fine of course, just a little clumsy.

Clumsy is what REALLY bugged me about this last week. Since I had a big, 36 page awards program project that needed to go to press; nobody had put it in writing that I would even get paid for it so I was avoided with ninja-like precision. I assume they didn't want to chance me bolting on them. All that avoidance did was whack the hornets nest in my brain, make me feel disrespected and in a very bolting mood.

A short work-stoppage brought it to a conclusion and I am to be vamoosed from the Metro and North Park News. As it had been written from day one and completely avoided from that same moment with a lot of phony reassurances from those exiting.

Editor Tim McClain is tossed too. (See new broom reference) That guy should be snapped up as soon as he recovers from transitory burnout. He is a un-reformable workaholic and fanatical about his endeavors. You've got no idea how hard this cat worked. He was challenged and confined by the old Metro standards, so of late the world hasn't really seen what he is capable of, but from within I can tell you he was a brutally hard worker, freakishly organized, and one of the greatest multi-taskers I have ever worked with. Really, he was like a "buy one - get three free" human promotion.

I wish I had another project to lure him with. He was the only one that worked at the ridiculous pace that I did and he did it for the same reasons. He likes that intensity.

We'll see, maybe I DO have a project.

Continue reading "San Diego Publishing Business"

San Diego's Magazine Market Doesn't Work Right Now

nospam@example.com (Rex Edhlund) — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 00:08:44 -0700

The San Diego Metropolitan Magazine

is dead.

Replace with

It's All Good!

with a sub-head that says

Hard hitting journalists can't take a punch

The music has stopped and not every player gets a chair. A new publisher is in the wings and may play a different tune with the magazine. I have yet to be officially notified as to whether or not I have a chair.

Yes, the longer, spicy, highly opinionated entry has been killed. What I thought may ruffle a few feathers and give a small audience some insight into a troubled market was more like a chicken farm through a wood chipper.

Massive feather ruffling with a river of blood.

The Fourth Estate is having an Estate Sale!

nospam@example.com (Rex Edhlund) — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 16:55:30 -0700

Oh Sweet "Media"

The Media is changing, shuffling, and kinda freaking. I'm in it so I see it, live it, hear it every day. The changing of trends and means of data communication is a large part of my ongoing education and one of the reasons the San Diego Business Club project even exists. I heart evolution, I can't wait to find out what's next, and I hope I survive.

So today's "next" is the failing health of our San Diego print King.

In the midst of declining revenues and unsuccessful adaptations to an ever-confusing business model, our local paper, the SD Union Tribune has been sold.

Keep in mind that "our paper", the San Diego paper, has been owned for years by a semi-interested, party boy who inherited the paper from his mega-rich adoptive parents. So the go-get-em, tough as nails, hard nosed journalism blood has been exsanguinated for quite a while. Like many mass appeal print publications, the U.T. has been suffering a diminishing relevance in the face of up-to-the-second news and it's large circulation requirements fail to inspire the polarization that often fuels a readers passion. That's not to say they don't have opinions, it just seems that they are dealt with in more of a passive aggressive way. They just don't give it any ink.

Platinum Equity, based in Beverly Hills, Calif., added the newspaper to it's portfolio of investments, calling it "a good fit." Nobody seems to know exactly what this means, so at the very least, this is going to be fascinating. Their other investments are all over the place. I can't wait to see how this fits in with the fiberglass, pharmacueticals, and phone equipment they already have in their stable of unstable businesses.

As social media dominates the latest information age, how will an investment firm make newsprint work. Come to think of it, how do we adapt traditional publishing to the new social model?

Is old school publishing anti-social?

With a self referential term like The Fourth Estate... maybe it is.