portlandville.com

Upon moving to the city from a 12 acre patch of woods, meadow and water in Vermont, I had no interest in mastering the art of picking up after the Labradors with delivery bags from the NY Times or the Oregonian. Eventually, after a couple of years of prodding and a steady drip of mild derision from my wife, I picked up the basics, so to say.
Here’s a new development, for anyone who has canceled his or her print subscriptions. It’s worth a look for the video and music alone. The score is all pre-disco/Philly sound, and the actress is excellent. I think I saw her in I’m Not There. (But then, I also thought I spotted Kim Gordon, Marianne Faithful and Sally Kellerman.) Link

I Love It! Picking up after my little Yorkie is actually fun! Everything is so neat and simple. I don’t feel any more embarrassment. — A satisfied customer

Via Springwise

PR as we know it is dead. You can’t launch a product before you have customers.

– Connie Conners, CEO of Conners Communications as quoted in a post by Enid Burns on ClickZ.

In the post, Burns explores the trend among PR firms to drop traditional PR functions while embracing SEO (search engine optimization) and SEM (search engine marketing.) The new services involve working directly with authoritative bloggers and developing content for clients. Here is an open letter posted on Connors’ site.
Via PR Newser

Have you checked out the opbmusic site?

The site features good programming including local bands, handy real-time playlists, a blog, an archive of studio sessions by Blitzen Trapper, The National, The Shaky Hands and many more. Also occasional live sets. Isn’t it great to have something new and good in Portland media?

Where else can you have breakfast with The Jicks?

Speaking of public radio. Carrie Brownstein wrote an interesting blog post recently about staying home with the flu and seeing Anthony G. on the Today Show. I hadn’t heard of him before. She points to some video here, courtesy of Gawker. Holy…

Viewing tip: Look for the wink-and-point when the time ticker hits 1:27.

My neighbor scaled his house on Thanksgiving weekend to celebrate the start of light season.

That evening, our dog Sophie body slammed the front door and rushed into the house just after we hooked her to her lead on the front porch. Tail down and shaking, she ran upstairs as soon as I unclipped her. What the? I went out to look around. Then I saw Frosty, rocking gently in the breeze:

For a day or so, she had to be coaxed out of house.

We’re invited to a Christmas Ships party tonight aboard a friend’s floating home. Chris made up a batch of these. She swears the choice had nothing to do with lit-up boaters.

Newspapers all over the country are entering the magazine business. I wrote in an earlier post about some of these. The trend goes on. USA Today just announced plans to launch Open Air, an Outside-ish magazine.
The NY Times now publishes magazines on sports, style and real estate in addition to its own weekly general interest magazine.
Our own Oregonian has launched three so far: Mix on food, Ultimate Northwest on the good life and now Homes + Gardens Northwest.

But let’s back up a moment.

Is free, unrequested distribution good enough for advertisers?
I should change the wording in the first sentence from “…are entering the magazine business” to “…are launching magazines.” As publisher and blogger Rex Hammock points out, a magazine is just a format. Now publishers employ all kinds of business plans involving the magazine format. Back in the old days, ten years ago, the term “magazine business” implied, among other things, that paid, requested, or affinity circulation (as in association magazines or custom publications) were elements of the plan. Sure, the glossy format was and remains an attractive showcase for advertising. But more than that, advertisers once prized magazines’ ability to attract and hold on to an engaged readership. Engagement was measured using subscriber surveys and subscription renewal rates.

These days, in regional regional and newspaper-published magazines, publishers and advertisers seem to prize the format over the reader relationship. X number of copies are distributed, unrequested, to outlets and homes in selected locations. Probably, the reasoning goes, a good number of desirable readers wait at the other end. Renewal rates are not relevant because the recipients have no choice about receiving it or not.

One extreme example of this approach is what I call porch bombing. Early in it’s business life, the Portland Tribune employed this method. A lot of unread copies ended up in the shrubs.

Certainly free distribution is easier for publishers. And advertisers don’t seem to mind that they are not hitting the bullseye; they can shoot a whole quiver of arrows in the general direction of the target.

Is this kind of circulation sustainable as advertisers find much more efficient media? Who knows. On the other hand, magazines such Martha Stewart Living, say, or Vanity Fair, can plan on delivering an engaged readership into the future, as long as readers vote with their wallets by subscribing, renewing, or buying at the checkout. In the case of the NY Times, it’s a good bet that subscribers and Sunday buyers have come to expect the new magazines as part of what they pay for.

[Aside: Business plans built around free content are not bad per se as anyone who spends time on the web knows. Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, is writing a book about free content, titled Free, to be published in 2008. Meanwhile, for anyone interested in this stuff, check out some of the posts on his blog. This promises to be an important idea for publishers to consider as we develop strategies for the future.]

OK. As I was saying, our hometown paper is launching magazines.

The latest, Northwest Homes+Gardens, jumps into what is now a crowded field.

Here are some thoughts on the first issue:

Homes+Gardens Northwest (HGNW) debuts with a 116-page issue including 43 pages of ads. About ten advertisers appear twice in the issue. It appears from promotional materials a former (successful) Oregon Home sales person is spearheading sales efforts.
Ad rates are low, at roughly $2000 a page (depending on discounts) for roughly 40,000 claimed circulation.

The magazine is airy and nice-looking. Pictures and white space appear to take up more space on the pages than the writing. Like its sister publication, Mix, HGNW employs an over-sized, perfect-bound format.

5,000 copies will be distributed for sale at retail locations around the state — the HGNW media kit calls these extra copies. My local Fred Meyer had 10 copies on display with hundreds of other titles on the main magazine rack (mainline, in magazine talk) deep in the middle of the store. (Aside: It may not fit in a standard checkout rack, should the publishers ever decide to pursue checkout stand sales.)

According to promotional materials, 40,000 copies will be delivered (as inserts in papers? tossed on the porch?) to “upper income families and some couples, who own homes in suburbs and small communities near Portland.” It’s unclear whether Portland residents are on the list.

The cover includes the catch phrase “Real Homes, Real People, Real Solutions.” There is no mention of the Oregonian anywhere on the cover, although there is a tag in small type on the spine.

[Aside: For years, Oregon Home used the phrase “Real Homes, Real People” in its promotions. Hmm. What’s that about? Related: Just one article featured a real, visible home-owning family. Designers and architects are featured more prominently than homeowners and artisans. Real Homes, Real Tradespeople?]

It’s nice to see a whole section related to regional gardening. Now there’s an under-served editorial niche in this region. Although the ad market is a tough one.

Lots of magazines “repurpose” their editorial as web features or in print anthologies. The O runs some articles simultaneously in both the magazine and its HGNW newspaper section. This Thursday’s section repeated a books feature and decorating feature. Saves money, for sure. There are a few other rationales that I can think of:

1. Totally different audiences: few read both the O and the magazine
2. Readers read both but won’t notice/mind the duplication
3. Shared editorial staff is stretched too thin

I’m baffled.

Separated at birth:

Actually, come to think of it, it might be a positive thing for the magazine if the newspaper article prominently identified the magazine as the original source and told readers where to get a copy. I couldn’t find a promotion for the magazine in the newspaper section.

As for the crowded field I referred to earlier (and have blogged about before)…

Oregon Home is doing well in the “shelter” space.
Current issue is 116 pages with more than 40 pages of ads.

The issue comes bagged with a 100-page buying guide for household goods and services. Dubbed The Get Guide, it includes another 30-40 pages of ads.

Ad competition
Very few advertisers bought ads in both OH and HGNW. Looking back at last year’s November OH, only two or three regular advertisers appear to have “jumped” from OH to HGNW magazine’s premier issue.

Portland Monthly’s new Portland Spaces jumps into the fray next month. Last we heard, Oregon Home’s former sales manager is spearheading sales efforts at Spaces, making competition interesting all around.

Also meanwhile, Portland Monthly seems to be thriving. The current issue is 228 pages, with more than 100 pages of ads.

All of our local magazines seem to be overlooking some very basic interactive opportunities on the web, but that’s another story, and there are rumors of new sites in the works.

HGNW has a simple website showing some content, but it is surprisingly hard to find unless you already have the magazine and spot the address on the bottom of the masthead. Try searching for it on OregonLive. (maybe they’ve fixed that by now) Portland Monthly has a tired-but-utilitarian city directory site. Oregon Home has no site as of this writing.

(Disclosure: I was a part of the original Oregon Home publishing team.)

If you blog, at a minimum, you should have something to say. Right? If a reader reads the stuff, great. If not, at least you’ve practiced your sadly under-developed writing skills. Dear diary…

The third person thing is tough to sustain. “We do this, We think that.” Maybe we’ll ditch that affectation.

The temptation is strong to blog about other blogs. This isn’t a bad thing; the conversation is a big part of what makes blogging worthwhile. But it’s pretty easy to do the easy thing. I (there goes the we) have succumbed more than once here in Portlandville.

It’s also easy to simply read the news and point to articles, as if ten thousand readers look to you for your wise and witty ability to point out everything you deem interesting. Every blog in Portland has mentioned the recent frequency of coverage of Portland in the NY Times. For a while there, a dozen bloggers pointed to each NY Times reference like paparazzi announcing Brittany sightings. Yup, I did that too.

When all else fails, trot out the dry, witty, cryptic reference to a link.

As in:

“Speaking of links….”

I’ve only been doing this for a short while but the danger of the mundane looms large. It’s hard enough to write, much less say something someone might enjoy hearing.

So in November I/we shut it down this pop stand, read a book, went to a few movies, and followed those real- life links for a while.

While I was away, I had a great time on the weekends, away from the iMac, with these …

Into the wild. Beautifully filmed movie by Sean Penn, based on the book by John Krakauer (who grew up in Oregon). A couple of scenes filmed around here.

No country for old men. The Coen brothers’ latest film, based on Cormac McCarthy’s novel about why you shouldn’t pick up just any old bag of drug money that you stumble upon. Beautifully filmed and chilling.

I’m not there. Todd Haynes’ movie about Dylan. Beautifully filmed and dreamlike. I loved it.

Here’s a clip:

But hey, I’ve liked Dylan since high school:

Careful readers will note that a word has mysteriously disappeared from my caption. It should read, “get out of going through all these things twice.” I guess the proofreaders hadn’t memorized every epic-length Dylan song, so the omission slipped through. Apparently, God bless’m, they also missed an awkward line break in my neighbor’s caption.

Back to the movie. If you are Mr. Jones, or if you don’t know who he is, you may want to see Scorcese’s bio pic No Direction Home first, or D.A. Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back, or stay away altogether. You’ll be fine.

I’m not there soundtrack. Actually, it seems to me that hardly any of this is in the movie, but this collection of Dylan covers is excellent on its own. Nice to hear Tom Verlaine’s guitar in the rocking house band, the Million Dollar Bashers. Portland local Stephen Malkmus joins the bashers on Ballad of a Thin Man. Listen here.

The Road. Cormac McCarthy’s latest novel; a father and son make their way through a post-apocalypse southern landscape.
OK, I read this when it first came out, but it’s now out in paper and the Coen brothers movie reminded me to pick it up again. So what if Oprah likes it. It’s still good.

Tree of Smoke . Denis Johnson’s latest novel.

A few weeks ago I saw the trailer for Atonement, directed by Joe Wright, based on Ian McEwan’s novel. Wait…hadn’t I already seen this movie? Impossible. It hadn’t even opened in Portland yet. The trailer matched almost perfectly the images in my head from reading the book a couple of years ago. Turns out that others felt the same way, as we heard the other day in this report on NPR.

Here’s the trailer:

You may also note that the trailer pretty much tells the whole story, in case you want to save eight bucks.

Which brings us back to the theme of this post, having something to say.

In the NPR piece, Atonement director Wright says about his work,

“I always used to be terribly worried when I was a kid because you’d have these ’60s kind of guys talking and [saying], ‘Well, you gotta have something to say, man,’ and I’d worry that I didn’t have anything to say — you know, ‘What have I got to say?’”
“And then it was later that I realized that it was fine not to have anything to say as long as you realized you had everything to learn.”