One of the more intriguing if odd things to come out of yesterday’s Magazines 24/7 conference was Shock, the forthcoming Hachette title, which has “soft-launched” its Web site ahead of the magazine (due June 1) and has been shooting rough digital video of its edit staff (in t-shirts, mainly) studying images of what appeared to be moose sex for the magazine. And no, we’re not kidding.
Marta Wohrle, Hachette VP, director of digital media, said the idea for the video was to create a connection with the reader to a magazine that is pending. “The magazine is going to be a lot less agressive than the Web site,” Wohrle told FishbowlNY. “It’s a bit of a new [magazine] genre — consumer generated photojournalism.”
The panel’s moderator, New York Times media columnist David Carr, said people are used to “people talking over each other,” also part of the new aesthetic. Perhaps we’re used to it, but do we really want to watch it?
EARLIER: NYT Carpetbagger Carr Schools Mag Execs On the New Video Aesthetic
Shock
Sometime after lunch at the Magazines 24/7 conference in Midtown yesterday, New York Times media columnist David Carr — moderating a panel on what magazine Web sites are doing with video — summed up what the Times and just about every other publisher is grappling with in traversing video for an increasingly YouTubed audience:
“Get it. Run it. Hit it. Quit it.”
So what’s nytimes.com doing with video?
“We don’t really know. We’re figuring it out as we go along.”
Other notes from the video panel:
As for the video Carr shot for his Carpetbagger project, which he says at its peak saw videos viewed 200,000 times: “It proved people will watch anything.”
The Onion‘s American Voices weigh in on the Harvard author scandal:
David Niles, Portrait Photographer
“This just goes to show there are many things a Harvard education can’t teach you, like how to use a thesaurus to cover up your plagiarism.”Kevin Umbehaun, Lawn Mower
“A Million Little Pieces was one thing, but this is outrageous. I expect teen fiction to be completely original.”
We were over at the MPA’s Magazines 24/7 yesterday afternoon. And in between magazine people talking about video (more on that, specifically, in a bit), mobilized content and digital catch-alls, we bumped into Cargo ex-pat editor Ariel Foxman — looking casually-dressed, lightly-bearded and well-rested — who was listed thusly on the conference’s registration list:
Mr. Ariel Foxman
[blank space where employer's name would be]
He told us he’s “endlessly interested” in this digital stuff and has been mulling his options. “It’s only been three weeks,” he said.
We’ll be interested to see where the most visible editor of a folded dudes’ guide winds up.
The firepower in the room at Michael’s restaurant today was daunting. Not only did we see captains of industry and media, but also people who in their time have commanded firepower quite literally. Former UN ambassador (and future secretary of state?) Richard Holbrooke sat for awhile with diplomat Joseph Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame, before going off to lunch with another mystery guest. The ambassador to Japan was there with his brother, Bob Schieffer.
And theirs weren’t the only conversations we dearly wish we could have heard above the buzz. Superstar actor Kevin Kline was a salad’s throw away, Dominick Dunne was with Alana Stewart, and NYC & Company’s Cristyne Lategano-Nicholas was with a deputy mayor. We can only wish next time we’ll be able to tell you not just who, but also what they said. Here’s the rundown:
Table 1: The alcove table today was taken by a big party from the William Morris agency, including execs Wayne Kabak and Suzanne Gluck.
2: Ellen Levine, editor-in-chief of Good Housekeeping, with Time Inc. editor-in-chief John Huey. Levine is rumored to be on the move at Hearst, and so we wonder what they were talking about…
3. Mayor of Michael’s Joe Armstrong, looking dapper as always, seated with who(?), greeting author Pamela Keogh, Court TV chief Henry Schlieff (appropriately carrying a plastic bag with his network’s moniker; we never did find out what goodies were inside) and others as they walked by to their tables.
4. Stanley Jaffe and Dick Ebersol.
Tapping their voyeuristic — and, too, humor-vexing — vein, our neighbors at Nerve.com are launching something called Nerve Video this afternoon. And while we don’t expect solo-eroticism involving stray tabbies, we do hope that the content will prove to be as compelling as its intelligent, endlessly appealing sex talk.
This just in:
Daniel E. Magnus Named Managing Director and Publisher of Metro New York
New York (April 26, 2006) — Metro New York announced today that Daniel E. Magnus has been named Managing Director and Publisher, effective May 15, 2006. He will lead the New York team, and will be responsible for all operations of the newspaper in New York.
Magnus was most recently VP of advertising and director of business development at the Robb Report, whose parent company, CurtCo, this week announced it was putting its titles on the block.
From our FishbowlDC broheems, an excerpt from New York Times executive editor Bill Keller‘s memo relating to today’s National Journal article on the increasing number of leak investigations involving the press:
“I’m not sure journalists fully appreciate the threat confronting us — The Times in the eavesdropping case, the Post for its CIA prison stories, and everyone else who has tried to look behind the war on terror. Maybe we’re suffering a bit of subpoena fatigue. Maybe some people are a little intimidated by the way the White House plays the soft-on-terror card.
Whatever the reason, I worry that we’re not as worried as we should be. No president likes reporters sniffing after his secrets, but most come to realize that accountability is the price of power in our democracy. Some officials in this administration, and their more vociferous cheerleaders, seem to have a special animus towards reporters doing their jobs. There’s sometimes a vindictive tone in way they talk about dragging reporters before grand juries and in the hints that reporters who look too hard into the public’s business risk being branded traitors. I don’t know how far action will follow rhetoric, but some days it sounds like the administration is declaring war at home on the values they profess to be promoting abroad.”
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