Magazine Meltdown

Radar Magazine recently folded (see Print Is Dead party invite to the left). Time Inc. cut 600 employees, Conde Nast endured a round of layoffs yesterday, Portfolio is struggling, and Men's Vogue just died. The economy is bad but this is the worst time ever in what was once the mostly recession proof magazine industry.

I want to know where the glamour of the magazine industry went. It's certainly not online because no one really knows how to monetize Internet based magazine type content effectively, and I'm not seeing it anywhere else. Apparently it discintegrated in the mist.

I've been told that magazines work better than any other media in the three B's (the beach, the bathroom, and the bedroom). We might be moving toward a Kindle like device that stores video, books, the electronic version of the New York Times, and all your necessary feeds, but you probably wouldn't ever take your Kindle to the beach. If only for that reason, and that reason alone, magazines should continue to thrive.

You can give me the recession but please don't take away my magazines. The best will undoubtedly survive, but when they do I hope these media empires leave room for an aspiring hard worker and dedicated fan.

Always a reader,

Lauren Proctor

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A Fitting Music Recommendation

Tobias Froberg (Bjorn Yttling Remix) - "A Brickwall"

If Palin Became President

The sky is dark and dreary with sentiments of pollution and the world's end. The only apparent movement is the up and down of oil drills sucking the last of our resources from the parched Earth, and when you open the windows of The White House office the only sound is screaming.

You're in the world after Sarah Palin's takeover of the United States presidency, and more specifically in the Oval Office. You got here by typing PalinisPresident.com into your browser and now Palin is seated across from you, a smile glued to her face. She's wearing a pair of those apparently non prescription glasses and is clad in one of the suits that inevitably came out of the $150,000 dollar appearance budget that the Republican party has spent on her. As you glide your cursor over the office's clutter you unveil Politics For Dummies, a trashed Science magazine, a stock market ticker, and much more. Explore the right part of the site and Palin will tell you about her college diploma, her maverick posters, and her thoughts on Katie Couric.

This satire of PalinisPresident is hilarious; I can only hope that in a couple weeks we'll still be laughing.

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Feel discombobulated after visiting Palin Is President? Want to rock out a little to some electro based remixes? I do too. Let's take it together with The Pragmatic. They're perhaps a bit too dissonant to recommend to everyone, but if you're into M.I.A., Simian Mobile Disco, Jusice, or anything electronic, you'll enjoy the pop splattered electro sound of The Pragmatic. My favorite tracks are the hook saturated "Do You Blame Me" and "Circles" so meander over to their page and check their vibe.