Author: Guy LeCharles Gonzalez

This author has written 1987 articles
Read more about the article Is Print Advertising Dead?

Is Print Advertising Dead?

Vintage Baby Ruth Ad by dklimke
Vintage Baby Ruth Ad by dklimke

Check out @themediaisdying on Twitter for a glimpse at the convulsions of an industry that’s either at death’s door or, for the more optimistically inclined, in the midst of a violent but necessary transformation.

I’ve worked in magazine publishing for 15 years now — consumer, B2B and non-profit — and as has been noted pretty much everywhere recently, 2008 was an ugly year.  Mass consumer and B2B brands are getting hit the hardest, but even local and niche brands with strong subscriber bases are getting hammered by this perfect storm, and surprisingly to almost no one with any sense some people, the Internet has turned out to not be the magic bullet it was proclaimed to be.

(In fact, in many cases, online publishing is effectively “trading dollars for pennies“, and the economic fallout that’s affected print advertising is undoubtedly going to affect online advertising, too. ETA: It already has.)

Flip through the most recent issues of your favorite magazines and you’ll probably notice they’re a little bit lighter than they used to be. Less editorial content; thinner paper; deeply discounted, sometimes desperately worded subscription offers.

Almost all of them likely have less ads (and in many cases less relevant ads) than they used to, too.

I was cautiously optimistic that the major damage might be limited to 2008, and 2009 could be a rebuilding year for most brands on flat revenues, with some going under and a few even pulling off a Miami Dolphins-style turnaround, but 13 days into the new year, it looks like things still haven’t quite hit bottom.

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Continue ReadingIs Print Advertising Dead?
Read more about the article The Return of Spindle (and a call for help)

The Return of Spindle (and a call for help)

Spindle Magazine: A State of Mind
Spindle Magazine: A State of Mind

When it comes to Spindle, I often refer to “we” but the reality is that it’s 99.5% me; I’m a control freak and have no shame admitting it.

Of course, that has a rather extreme down side to it, too.

I have a couple of poetry editors who are more like consultants whom I run poems that I’m on the fence about for a second opinion, but I read every single submission first — poetry, fiction, non-fiction, photography — and reply to every one of them myself. For a while, I was offering critical feedback on the majority of the rejections, but as anyone who has ever been an editor before, that’s a recipe for disaster on so many levels.

[Side note: Badly rhymed poems centered on the page make my eyes bleed and baby Jeebus cry. DO NOT submit such poems.  To me, or to anyone!]

Plus, I’m Spindle‘s sole webmonkey, posting all of the content and optimizing the Joomla platform, the latter of which often takes up more time than it should because I love the technical side as much as the creative side.

I sent out an email yesterday to everyone who’d submitted something last year and hadn’t received a response yet — or in some cases, who’d received acceptances but their work was never posted — explaining that we’d been on “unofficial hiatus since last Spring when I changed jobs and things only got crazier and further delayed when I bought a house, moved to New Jersey, and changed jobs again; plus the election, the crashing economy, blah blah blah. I’m not offering excuses, just context, to explain why you haven’t heard back from me yet.”

I knew I was way behind, but I was stunned to realize some of these submissions went back as far as February 2008! Ridiculous, and quite frankly, a little bit embarassing, regardless of the legitimate circumstances.

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Continue ReadingThe Return of Spindle (and a call for help)
Read more about the article Liveblog: Take One for the Team?

Liveblog: Take One for the Team?

Whose side am I on?

4:00pm: I’m seriously conflicted.

I’ve been a NY Jets fan forever, since way back in the days of Mattel’s crack-like handheld Football, when I pretended the little glowing dashes were Richard Todd, Wesley Walker and Bruce Harper. Unlike the Mets, to whom I converted in the early 80s after my favorite Yankees moved on, my allegiance to the Jets has never wavered, even during the darkest days of Rich Kotite and Rick Mirer.

As much as I’ve loved some individual players (Wayne Chrebet is the prototypical Jet, IMO) and loathed others (Neil O’Donnell, I’m looking at you) I’ve always been a JETS fan, no matter what, but when they cut Chad Pennington — the best, most loyal QB they’ve ever had — in the pre-season in favor of the unretiring Brett Favre, I was personally insulted. It was a move as much about PR and attempting to smooth over the exorbitant cost of Personal Seat Licenses next season, as it was about putting the best team on the field after a terrible 2007 season, a team I said back then was looking at a 10-6 season no matter whom the QB was.

Ahem.

When Pennington landed in Miami, the one team I’ve hated much longer and with more reason than the Patriots, I was torn down the middle, especially with Bill Parcells running their ship and cleaning house, and immediately marked today on the calendar as a must-see game. Back then, I expected this game might have the Jets on the verge of a playoff spot with a victory and Pennington looking at playing spoiler. That it’s turned into so much more, is amazing.

I actually had a last-minute chance to go to the game in person, but couldn’t adjust my schedule to take advantage of it. Part of me is glad to not be there as I imagine I’ll be a bit schizophrenic throughout the game, simultaneously cheering Pennington and the Dolphins on to victory, but also wanting to see Leon Washington have a big game.

And so it begins…

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Continue ReadingLiveblog: Take One for the Team?
Read more about the article The Mind Reels

The Mind Reels

With only a few days remaining for last-minute surprises, 2008 has been one for the books on so many levels — personally, professionally, globally — the mind truly does reel.

And reels, and reels, and reels… perhaps somehow what I imagine bonefishing might be like?

(h/t to one of my newfound loves of the year, Garden & Gun.)

But I digress. Kind of.

On January 1st of this year, I posted a brief recap of 2007 and a to-do list for 2008, the latter of which I predictably missed the mark on by a mile. Perhaps because 2007 had been a year defined by so much transition, my focus was more internal, and nowhere on that list is there any hint of what 2008 actually had in store, from becoming a new (first-time) homeowner to taking two huge steps forward in my career.

In the midst of it all, this blog went from an intense flurry of passionate political punditry to a, once-again somewhat unfocused and occasional mix of publishing, poetry, politics and pop culture. Plus, I attempted to add a more personal, anonymous blog to the mix to talk about our life as new homeowners which I’ve discontinued and rolled into this site. (“Bloomfield” tag will get you all of them.) I’m okay with that, though, as my primary goal for this blog has always been more selfish than anything else, a place for me to keep the creative juices flowing in the most rudimentary of ways by offering an outlet, when necessary, for whatever’s running through my head, and my intent at the beginning of the year was to consolidate my “platform” anyway.

But I’m rambling again…

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Continue ReadingThe Mind Reels
Read more about the article Outrage, Humor, Context

Outrage, Humor, Context

Burn, baby, burn
Burn, baby, burn

David Brothers was one of the smartest comics bloggers on the scene a few years back when I was at my peak of following the industry, and he’s remained one of the few whom I still follow despite my current pull list being a shadow of its former self.

[Side note: Have to get to Midtown soon before they cancel my bare-minimum pull list again. Particularly looking forward to Joshua Dysart’s Unknown Soldier.]

He has a great post up at his site, 4thLetter, called SuperHHero KKKomics 200Hate: A Year In Review, an exponentially more substantiative response to the knee-jerk (but cleverly illustrated) 2008: The Year of Misogyny, that starts as a typical rant about the poor treatment of blacks in comics, but quickly becomes something much, much better.

Some of my favorite highlights of 200Hate include:

Barack Obama– leader of Dark Reign, gullible enough to trust Norman Osborn
Crispus Allen– killed his own son, has to have some old white lady re-ignite his faith in God after he tries to kill his best friend for being a lesbian, probably Pro Prop 8, forced to wear goatee as racial identifier, likely never-nude
Falcon– lost his best friend, hasn’t appeared in Captain America lately, was set on fire once
Manhattan Guardian– tossed aside the second a WHITE Guardian shows up
Martian Manhunter– murdered with a spear (martians count as black, see also Lil Wayne “We are not the same, I am a martian”)
Spawn– blows own head off in own comic, promoting the suicide of strong and proud black men
Spawn (Michael Jai White)– Killed by the Joker in The Dark Knight, movie goes on to make a billion dollars
Storm– taken from high profile X-Men appearances to be a supporting character in some lower-selling book, forced into arranged marriage, needs Emma Frost (who once enslaved her) to call her names just so she can feel like she belongs somewhere
Tyler Perry– still not invited to write a Black Panther story where T’Challa remembers how his big grandma was the one that scared him into following the path of the warrior, leaving untold the story of Bg’mama, the true power of wakanda

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Continue ReadingOutrage, Humor, Context

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