Electronic publications are multiplying like a bunch of love-struck rabbits, so traditional magazines are going the way of the dodo, right? Don't hold your breath. Publishers of paper-based consumer mags (as opposed to publications built from bits) put out a record 800-plus new titles last year - but who's counting? Samir Husni is.
An associate professor of journalism at the University of Mississippi, Husni has been keeping track of magazine launches for 10 years. His methods are decidedly low-tech. At least once a week, he drives from his home in Oxford, Mississippi, to the big city of Memphis, Tennessee, where he goes magazine hunting at a few local newsstands. His students help him with his never-ending quest, and Husni has correspondents all over the country who make sure that Mr. Magazine doesn't miss the exciting début issue of Cincinnati Wedding.
Until this year, the professor's Guide to New Consumer Magazines was a stern-looking, uninviting report. But for the 10th anniversary edition, Hearst Magazines Enterprises turned the annual reference work into a hardcover consumer book with a glossy jacket. It now even contains a full-color chapter with the 50 "most notable launches of 1994" - six of which (Family PC, Family Computing, Home PC, Inter@ctive Week, NetGuide, and Computer Life) represent the frenzy with which publishers are trying to keep PC users hooked on carbon, not Web pages.
In all, 41 computer-related consumer magazines were born in 1994, double the average for the period 1988 to 1993.
Husni's book, which also lists comics, Gen-X rags, and racy newcomers such as Qui Presents: Women in Prison (described as "alleged letters from women behind bars") and Plump and Pink ("wide-body babes in XXX action"), is a monument to the niche philosophy that publishers started to embrace in the early '80s. The different-strokes dictum, alive and well in magazines and on the Net, is something that hasn't translated to TV or radio. Husni, then, has reason to celebrate even the most marginal-sounding new titles. Finch and Canary World, anyone? How about Tattoo Guru or Great Sea Sagas of WWII?
The fact that a large percentage of new periodicals fold after just a few issues doesn't faze Husni too much. As he happily maintains, "Magazines prove that the real information highway was, is, and will always be found on their pages."
Samir Husni's Guide to New Consumer Magazines: US$49.95, Hearst Magazines: (800) 288 2131, +1 (212) 261 6708.
STREET CRED
Smut BlockerCD Jukebox
Print Media Is (Not) Dead
