What's Black and White and Red All Over: the Newspaper Industry

Here's a link to a New York Times story about how the newspaper industry is going "from bad to worse" with double-digit ad revenue plummets:

On top of long-term changes in the industry, the weak economy is also hurting ad sales, especially in Florida and California, where the severe contraction of the housing markets has cut deeply into real estate ads. Executives at the Hearst Corporation say that one of their biggest papers, The San Francisco Chronicle, is losing $1 million a week.

Over all, ad revenue fell almost 8 percent last year. This year, it is running about 12 percent below that dismal performance, and company reports issued last week suggested a 14 percent to 15 percent decline in May.

If you're still writing for newspapers as anything more than a hobby or outlet of self-satisfaction, it's time to rethink your business model - quickly.

New Online Uses of Writing

I'm going to ask you to take a detour for a moment to another of my blogs where I mentioned the rumor of the New York Times opening its API, or application programming interface.

Have you ever thought about what electronic use of material could mean beyond posting an article on the Web or publishing it on DVD or CD collection? Opening the APIs is an example. The NYT can do this because it buys all rights, and so can make anything available to anyone it wants in any way it wishes. What if a company doesn't do this? In some cases, it may not matter:

• Their contract could allow something like non-exclusive "electronic" rights, and that might cover giving the material away to others. There is no set definition of electronic rights that I've been able to find.


• Some types of writing, like recipes, do not have copyright protection under law. Were I a publisher, I'd argue that even if the other material from writers was under their copyright protection, the recipes were not. It might stand up in court or not, but are you willing to spend the money to find out?


• Information also does not enjoy copyright protection. If the publication can extract what a court might see as straight information from your article, it could make use of that information. You, of course, could claim that such a use would be a derivative work - that is, derived from your original, and so needing a license from you. But that means either having the contract tight enough up front or spending time in court.


• What if another site simply links to select parts of your material in the form of an area clearly shown as the publisher to whom you licensed the piece? I don't think there is a clear answer.

The upshot to writers should be clear. If part of your business strategy is to re-license your work, and that work appears on the web, it may be that you find other sites taking it in bits and pieces, no longer needing an article in its entirety, or you, for that matter. And what happens when you marry this with the idea of Web 2.0, in which millions of users are capable of using programming hooks to include information on their own sites and social networking pages? It makes electronic databases look benign in response. At least in the case of the databases, you can point to a few names that create most of the problems.

If you'll notice an additional theme here, many potential uses of parts of an article fall into a grey area. Even if you thoroughly nail down a contract, the chances are that things are going to come up faster than you can possibly predict, and maybe faster than is possible to keep up. I know I was surprised when I read the NYT API story - and I have known of APIs and their uses literally for decades. Maybe the only business strategy will eventually be to keep moving so quickly, and being creative enough in the process, that your work retains its value to others. In other words:

1. Make sure that you know the value you bring to writing, and "being a good writer" is simply not going to be enough.


2. Have areas of deep knowledge that are difficult to duplicate.


3. Move upscale as fast as possible. Those who work at the commodity levels of the markets - service pieces, for example - are going to be the most vulnerable to the cut and paste approaches.

Newspapers Fold Sections, Drop Coverage

It should be no surprise to anyone reading this blog that newspapers are facing problems. Ads are down, and when the money dwindles, so do assignments. But what we're seeing now is the canibalization phase, like when a runner hits the wall in a marathon. For miles, the athlete's body runs off the glycogen stored in the muscles - a carbohydrate that is like starch in a plant. It's the fuel for short-term use. But after such an effort, most people go through that storage. When that happens, the body starts to burn fat.

Newspapers went through their glycogen a long time ago, with huge profits that would make pharmaceutical companies envious. Then came the fat. Now we're down to burning muscle and bone. Look at the signs:

• Late last month, the Boston Globe sent a note to advertisers saying that Living/Arts will get combined with Sidekick and Food, depending on the day (with weather moving there as well). Business&Money gets mashed in with Careers. In other words, they don't have the ads to support all the pages.


• The Village Voice recently fired 40-year dance critic veteran Deborah Jowitt for economic reasons, along with film critic Nathan Lee. As the New York Times story noted, "Lichtenstein, a spokeswoman for the paper, said in an e-mail message: 'Financial constraints force us to convert two full-time positions to freelance jobs. Both Deborah Jowitt and Nathan Lee have been asked to continue writing for The Voice.'"


• As the Times notes in a separate story, movie critics are also on their way out - "laid off, reassigned or bought out in the past few years" - at a dozen dailies.


• If things weren't bad enough with ads, newsprint prices are risingas the Wall Street Journal notes. "The drop in supply has pushed prices up $60 from their October 2007 low to $620 per metric ton, raising yet another hurdle for newspaper publishers already grappling with declining circulation and advertising revenue." Paper manufacturers, long beneficiaries of their association with newspapers, are trying to keep their profits up for now, because they know it's only a matter of time until they're in major trouble.

Folks, if you are among the ones still writing for newspapers, now is the time to stop. For all the money they still make - because the profit margins are still in the low double digits - it's not enough for the corporations that bought them originally expecting much higher amounts. These are markets going away that will never return. At least, not in our lifetimes.

I understand the sense of professional grief that can arise in writers, but you have to get over that quickly if you're making your income from newspapers. They aren't going to last. You need to find other ways of making a living now. It might be magazines, at least for a few years longer. It might be corporate. Or have you considered working with others in your area, maybe putting together a review site for local activities, maybe with some of the other writers getting squeezed out, and eventually looking for ad money to support it?

It's painful to think that you must give up what you love. But the end is coming, and you have to think about yourself on a very practical level. If you're not eating, you won't be writing for long.

Whatever course seems good to you, if you've been putting off walking away from newspapers, what you're seeing is the bow of the ship dipping beneath the waves. There are lifeboats to the side, but for them to do you any good, you have to walk over and climb in.

Newspaper Ad Revenue Takes a Tumble

If you like newspapers as a market, this is grim. The Newspaper Association of America reported that total print advertising was down 9.4 percent from 2006 to 2007, according to this report in Editor & Publisher. If you include online revenue the drop was 7.9 percent. That is not good, because the newspaper business is clearly related to that of magazines, so think of this as an early warning. And while online ads went from 5.7 percent to 7.5 percent of total newspaper revenue, growth is slowing:

There are signs that online revenue is beginning to slow as well. Internet ad revenue in 2007 grew 18.8% to $3.2 billion compared to 2006. In 2006, online ad revenue had soared 31.4% to $2.6 billion. In 2005, it jumped 31.4% to $2 billion.

As newspaper Web sites generate more advertising revenue, the growth rate naturally slows.

It is true that growth rates will, eventually, slow as the pot gets bigger. However, when online advertising is jumping by 20 percent according to Jupiter Media, you really don't want to see newspapers lagging behind.

Newspaper Publisher Facing Interesting Economic Times

Media General, claims to own more daily newspapers in the Southeast than any other company, is facing some potential economic shake-up. According to AP, the company is going to meet with a hedge fund that wants to nominate directors to the company's board:

Last week, [hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners] said it is nominating a slate of candidates for the company's board because Media General "has lost strategic, operational and geographic focus in recent years," according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

When a hedge fund wants to place directors on a board, it's generally because it doesn't see enough short term profits from the company, which could turn into return on its investment. The changes the directors might push for could run from smarter strategic directions to cost cutting and even selling off properties.

Media General owns The Tampa Tribune; the Richmond Times-Dispatch; the Winston-Salem Journal; 22 daily community newspapers in Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Alabama and South Carolina; and more than 100 weekly newspapers and other publications. If you are writing for a Media General paper, then I think it would be prudent to assume that there will be continued belt tightening, incluidng smaller freelance budgets and all the joys that brings to people like us.

Triangulating on the WSJ

We're starting to get indications of where the Wall Street Journal may be going, at least in part. Rupert Murdoch has changed his mind about making everything available on wsj.com for free. You know he had people undertake some significant financial analysis before reversing his decision, which suggests that the ad money that could come in simply doesn't compare with the paid subscriptions, as well as the difficulty that having all those articles for free might cause for the subscription base of the paper. After all, why pay if you don't have to? But that also suggests that papers hoping to make it online through the strength of advertising may face a difficult time.

So, he can't make enough online. But what is happening in print? Expansion of topics. He's convinced that a full page of sports and a new weekend magazine (edited by someone he's bringing over from another of his properties, The Times in London) will add to the value of the paper. It might at that, who knows? Certainly having some heavy non-business weekend coverage hasn't hurt the Financial Times. But before you figure out whether you should be trying to query, also realize that Murdoch has said that he things the front-page stories at the Journal are too long. That makes me wonder whether he'll try to add the coverage from people already in house, or consider freelance help.

In terms of contacting that new weekend magazine editor, look for my post tomorrow about Gorkana.com, an editorial move/update service that seems to have some potentially serious value, all without having to pay.

Contract Review: The New York Times

A current NYT contract crossed my desk the other day (not for an assignment), and as it had been a bit since I've seen one, I thought I'd review it. As usual, I'm not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. The numbers of the points refer to the numbered graphs in the contract:

1. This is a pay on publication contract, so if an editor holds the story, the paper can hold your pay. It does pay "reasonable and necessary expenses" so long as they are pre-approved, which seems reasonable enough unless you're on a breaking story and cannot get pre-approval. You have 60 days from incurring the expenses to "submit documentation acceptable to The Times." It's not as bad as some contracts I've seen that offer a 30 day window, and I can understand the time limit - if you wait months, it starts getting pretty hard to match up approved expenses to assignments.


2. This is the deal-killer, so far as I'm concerned - not only does the paper own the copyright, so you can't do anything with the story without permission, but they also get a wide range of non-exclusive rights to anything you've ever written for them before without an agreement. Interestingly, it does not seem to cover any story that was done under a written agreement, even if the agreement was far more favorable to you. If they syndicate the article, you get 50% of net receipts, after "syndication expenses" (whatever, and how much ever, those are). But putting the article on the NYT News Service doesn't count. Also, there is no provision for being able to see if the paper did, indeed, syndicate your work in any other manner, so you have to trust that they'll tell you.


3. You have to "cooperate in the normal editing process." If they don't publish the article for whatever reason, "you will be paid a kill fee in an amount to be agreed upon by you and the assigning editor." In other words, there is no minimum amount they are contractually obligated to pay. You can even have done exactly what they wanted and they are not obligated to pay you the full amount. It may be that editors are reasonable there - or not. But you are dependent on their generosity.


4. They can use your name, likeness, and by-line, not only to promote the piece, but to promote the paper. Realistically, if you have a name so big that its use could really help sell the paper, then I'd think there would be a chance that you could get a significantly different contract. But that's just a guess, and there are probably few people in the country who would fall into this category.


5. There are some broad warranties. An interesting one is that you will not "plagiarize another's work." Now, I'm generally OK with publishers wanting an absolute promise of not infringing copyright. But plagiarism is a far more slippery term. Under whose definition? At what point could you commit plagiary but not copyright infringement? That's a bit of a head scratcher, and would be a clause that would make me uncomfortable. You also promise not to violate anyone's rights, which is broad, but as we'll see later, is probably construed under New York state law. You also agree not to include "libelous or otherwise unlawful or misleading material." Misleading? OK, what's the legal definition of misleading? Nothing easy to state or understand? That means, sign this and you leave a lot of room for interpretation as to whether you might have breached the contract or not. Although you have to "cooperate fully" in the case of a third party suit, you aren't required to provide indemnification, which is good.


6. You have to review the paper's ethical journalism policies and say that you will comply with them. That means the contract is effectively making them part of the agreement, and you'd better read carefully, as there are many ways you could unknowingly go wrong. For example, you cannot accept "free transportation." Could a ride in a source's car count? Who knows? Maybe that's covered in their document, so have fun reading - and being careful. Also, you cannot accept "commissions/assignments from current or potential news sources." So, even if you aren't using someone as a source, if they could be a source, you can't accept work from that person or entity. Extending that to potential makes it enormously open-ended. And there is something snuck in: "To the extent the Article is syndicated for use in an advertisement or promotion, there will be a maximum Syndication Fee." So nice of them to drop it in here instead of where you discuss such issues higher up in the contract. What is the maximum? Apparently they can change it at will. And you cannot mention any association with the paper in speaking engagements or public appearance.


7. For two weeks, you cannot allow any article you've write on "similar subject matter" to go into print if it's going into something the Times considers competitive - which includes any newspaper, magazine, or any other publication, no matter what the form of the media (think web) "whose editorial focus is either New York City or general interest news and information." In other words, unless the paper gives you permission, forget doing other versions of the story if it's time sensitive and you have to get it into print quickly.


8. You agree that you aren't an employee - it's pretty standard looking.


9. This supersedes any other agreement you might have had with the paper.


10. The contract is construed under New York state law, which is good for issues like determining libel. But if you have any legal beef with the NYT over this story, you'd have to take it to New York county to get satisfaction. However, as my publishing lawyer has pointed out to me, the courts there understand the issues and if you're owed money, the awards can be larger than elsewhere.

Newspaper Industry Boasts Online Ad Growth

Another data point that I pass on as they come in: the Newspaper Association of America in a report claims fourteen consecutive quarters of year-over-year double digit growth in online advertising revenue. Online ads now represent 7.1 percent of all newspaper ad revenue. However, overall ad revenues in the third quarter of 2007 were down 7.4 percent, so even the fast percentage growth in online ads is nowhere near enough to keep newspaper income even flat.

When Were They Going to Tell?

Every now and then I find myself getting angry because for years publishers said, "We have to go cheap on the web because we're not making money yet. When we do, we can pay more. Hope you understand." But consider what many signs are telling you. Rupert Murdoch is someone disliked by many journalists, and he has his own agendas, but I've never heard anyone call him a stupid businessman. He's planning to make the Wall Street Journal free online. Why? Because he'll make more than the revenue from the estimated 1 million subscribers - which, given the subscription rates, has got to be at least $50 million a year.

Read that number again. And he expects to get far bigger audiences to make far more money.

When I wrote about questions I had on newspaper readership, it was clear from the numbers in the Newspaper Association of America-sponsored report I cited that newspapers are getting millions of visitors a month. I still think that in the long run they are not going to be monetarily valuable clients for freelancers, but how much are each of those people worth in annual advertising revenue?

And if you look at this Mediaweek article, Time Inc. apparently has been doing very well on the web:

John Squires, executive vp, Time Inc., said that while he’d like the company’s sites to “crawl up in terms of scale,” he’s happy with their rank in engagement and revenue per user. Speaking today at a Time Inc. Digital Showcase, he noted that according to Time Inc.’s own ranking, the company’s sites come in 15th among media companies in terms of time spent per visitor.

Happy with revenue per user? To me, that generally means that someone is making a good amount of money. Newspapers and magazines see pretty serious revenue from the web. So when were the publishers going to admit it to the writers?

Never. They don't want to pay more. They're very happy to have driven down the cost of content, because that means they have higher margins, which are the difference between what products and services sell for, and what they cost to produce or acquire. And I suspect they're not telling the editors, either. Why? Because right now the editors for online work are also making less than their print colleagues - which is also fine with the publishers, because that pushes margins up even higher.

That's what gets me angry - the con game. Just when were writers supposed to be able to redeem the promise of more pay for concessions made? Again, the answer is one word: never. I do understand the publishers, but don't like what I often hear, and I'm not going to buy the line anymore.

More Market News for Magazines and Newspapers

Here are some additional views of the journalistic markets. When you want to get an idea of what might be happening in the publishing world, it's good to listen to media buyers. They are the ones who decide where to put ad dollars, which drives the size and very existence of publications. As with most of us, their perceptions become their own biases, because they'll make decisions based on what they think is happening.

So take a look at this Media Life article, reporting on its own survey of media buyers. In particular, look after the discussion of House & Garden to the categories of magazines perceived as most in danger, where some titles might end up closing:

• newsmagazines


• teen


• celebrity


• business and general interest

These are far from universally accepted among the buyers in the surveys, but it's still worth considering. For example, almost two-thirds of them (and, unfortunately, I don't have details of how the survey was done, which can greatly affect the results) expect a shakeout in the newsweeklies, with US News & World Report being the most likely candidate for closure. Strongest and weakest titles among celebrity titles? People was far out front, with Us far behind. And consider this sentence: "The rest, In Touch, Life & Style, OK! and Star, hardly registered [in perception as strong titles]." In other words, once you're past Us, safety among the famous drops off. More tidbits in the article.

On the newspaper front, we have an article from Rich Edmonds, a media analyst, at Poynter Online. He notes that while newspaper online advertising revenue growth has been the bright spot of the industry, it has been feeling a significant slowdown. As he notes, part of it owes to the calculations of growth percentages: as the total gets bigger, the percentage any addition represents is smaller.

But this so-called “law of large numbers” is not the whole story. As for the rest, "it is all to do with classified upsells," analyst Paul Ginocchio of Deutsche Bank Securities, wrote me in an e-mail. Classifieds are the leading edge of the bleeding in print advertising, with losses substantially worse than even pessimists had forecast for 2007. Unfortunately, as Ginocchio notes, classifieds typically make up about 70 percent of the typical newspaper site’s online ad revenue.

In the view of Edmonds, newspapers will need some significnatly new strategies - not more porting paper to pixels. He has some observations and recommendations worth reading. As always, no single piece of information should determine your business strategy. But, put together, they help to give some view of the near and mid-term futures of your industry.

Newspaper Web Sites Reality Check

NOTE: Gary Kromer, director of research for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and president of the NAA Research Federation, pointed out that I had stupidly (he didn't say it, but I certainly can, because I've read enough financial statements that I should have noticed the "000" addition) misread the chart, which measures readership in the thousands. So the average monthly readership of the top 10 papers is something over 64 million a month, which, frankly, makes a lot more sense. However, the time spent on the sites is still frighteningly small, so I'm rewriting this post for clarity and to indicate the elimination of one problem - but the continued existence of another.

I still say that newspapers are cheap, no doubt about it. At first they were because their profit margins literaly made pharmaceutical companies pale by comparison. Now they are becaue their revenues and circulation keep dropping. However, they have been a traditional market for freelance writers, so it's important to know how they are doing in the new media of the Internet.

Check this set of visitor statistics for top newspaper sites. Nielsen/NetRatings is a standard supplier of traffic measure, although many people wonder how accurately they count traffic. So, apparently the top newspapers, at least, are getting a good amount of traffic.

But this is traffic that is going almost as quickly as it arrives. Look at the amount of time per visitor per month for each paper - and realize that includes all visits. Even at the New York Times, that means 5 minutes per person per visit, or a total of 20 minutes per person per month. That's close to the top end, and it goes down from there. That means hardly anyone, on the average, is spending enough time to do anything other than read a few headlines. They aren't digging into the content.

It jives with something I've seen, when one of my business blog pieces gets listed via Sphere (a content connection service) next to articles on the Wall Street Journal's site. When that happens, I'll get, oh, three or four visitors from there. According to this study, the WSJ is getting 9 million people a month, and they're staying for maybe 3 minutes a visit. Even if you have something featured next to a story, virtually no one - as in a tiny, tiny fraction of one percent - will pay attention.

All writers need to be looking at such information constantly. You are your own CEO. You are your own CFO. Only you will be the person to acquire the information and do the analysis to figure out how and where to steer your business. If newspapers cannot keep people for any length of time on their sites, then their advertising, other than, maybe, a major banner or display ad, will be doing little. Advertisers look at numbers like how much time people spend on a site. If they don't see decent stays, they're going to figure that the people won't be there long enough to see the ads, either.

Yes, Mr. Kromer is correct in saying that there are big numbers getting to the papers. However, there is still little reassuring about the results. It's not that "people don't want long stories on the internet...unless they have plenty of relevant information and perhaps in a different (table? bullet point?) format from standard newspaper fare" as he said, but that they won't be there long enough for advertisers to really get value, and that means the advertisers will be less keen on paying a general rate to appear, and not something based on click-through proof of effectiveness.

That problem obviously isn't unique to newspapers, but it's one that the publishing industry will have to address. In print, you claim that people read your publication and charge for ads that always remain on the page. Online, advertisers have the upper hand. What will it take to change things? I don't know. But I do know that at 5 minutes or less per person, advertisers will not be satisfied with the money they spend.

Ten Periodical Market Research Sites

Doing research on a potential client always makes sense. If you're writing for periodicals, here are some resources that you're likely to find useful:

• Magazine Publishers of America The trade organization has many research resources available, even if you aren't a member.
  
• Periodical Publishers Association Interested in the UK magazine market? This is a magazine publishing trade organization in the country. Check the member list for many names with whom you're probably not familiar.


• Folio Magazine This is the trade magazine for the magazine industry. See trends, who's doing well, and industry scuttlebut that can help you better target potential clients.


• Editor & Publisher What Folio is for the magazine business, E&P is for newspapers. I generally stay away from newspapers as paying poorly, but you might find some useful information if the market fits your business plans somehow.


• Jim Romenesko Romenesko's column at Poynter is one of the great resources for rumors, and it also points to many relevant articles.


• Mediabistro.comThe media news roundup is good, and you can even get it emailed to you without having to be a paid member.


• Yahoo News and Media Listings Although not exhaustive, these catalog listings of magazines, newspapers, journals, and other media can be a time saver when you want to see some of the variety of publications on the market.


• Google News Directory Not the same as Google News, it's a set of categories listings like those of Yahoo.


• BoSacks Media Intelligence Good sources of news affecting the publishing industry, extending into all aspects of the business, compiled by an industry consultant.


• Custom Publishing Council This industry group has lists of custom publishers, which is a great research tool and potential lead generator for writers.

Dealing With Take-It-Or-Leave-It Editors

The process of negotiation generally assumes give and take - that one party will give some on one point and the other will yield on another. But there are times that a person or entity is unwilling to bend at all. A writer recently wrote me (via questions I said I'd answer for The Renegade Writer blog) about such a situation, where the editor basically said, "I sympathize with your position, but if you don't give in, I'll find someone else because all our contributors sign this." The writer had felt beaten up in the process and wondered whether all the well-known writers in the title also capitulated.

The first step to better negotiation and business is knowing that there is no beating - only an irreconcilable difference of opinion. What you need for your business is the most important issue; something that works for one writer might not for the next. Or there may be a time that you are either receiving so much money or that you are in such desperate need for some paying work that you are willing to hold your nose and sign away the rights. That, too, can be a valid choice, presuming that you aren't giving in because you're afraid to ask for more.

Don't judge your needs by what others do. Many nationally-known writers sign bad contracts because they either don’t care, are foolish about business, or are scared to negotiate. There are also many whom editors perceive as bringing enough audience and value that they're willing to make changes.

That said, there are also plenty of editors who claim, “Why, no one has ever brought up that issue before!” Equine-generated fertilizer. Of course they have. The editor is probably hoping that you won’t know that.

Most reputable publishers will negotiate to some degree, because they realize that they need to. More established writers may have more advantage in negotiations because there is more of a drive to use their work. Also consider that if a publisher is so inflexible before you write word one, how reasonable will the edit process be?

The main attitude to shift is the idea that someone beat you up. Nope. You simply said no because the conditions were not acceptable to you. That’s called being responsible for your business. And you can only get to an irreconcilable point by speaking up and asking for what you want in the first place. Consider it a cheap price for greatly strengthening your business.

Newspapers Going Strong Online

If you write for newspapers and editors tell you that online is still a small thing for them, be wary. According to a Nielsen//NetRatings study for the Newspaper Association of America, a third of all active Internet users visited newspaper web sites in the first quarter of 2007. That's a 5.3% jump over the same time last year, and the average visitor spends more than 45 minutes there a month. That part may not sound big, but it's 11.5% longer than the same time last year. Notice this paragraph:

This report comes on the heels of NAA’s spring 2007 Newspaper Audience Database (NAdbase) report, research that analyzed the total audience (print readership and online usage) of the nation’s top 100 newspapers. NAdbase, released April 2, revealed that on average Newspaper Web sites have helped drive a 13.7 percent increase in total newspaper audience for 25- to 34-year-olds and a 9.2 percent increase for 18- to 24-year-olds (according to data from Scarborough Research).

Those demographics are big deals to advertisers, who are the ones ponying up the money to make the sites run, and supposedly represent unique visitors, even taking into account those who might show up both at home and at work. There's certainly an axe to grind for papers that want to remain relevant, but that's fine. When the editor says "We need the web," answer, "Yes, I've seen the figures - and I need to make a living."

Blogs - Backdoors to the Minds of Clients

Want to get to the inside workings of clients? Try a blog. Oh, sorry - not yours. Theirs.

I just read a story in a publishing trade magazine called Circulation Management. The topic was how many publishers are running blogs on their sites. According to a study, three-quarters of all newspapers run blogs on business-related topics.The Magazine Publishers of America has an online list of 400 blogs of member companies - go there, click on a publication title, and you get a list of at least its top blogs (though possibly not all). Highlight the blog and you see recent post headlines with a first paragraph available by selecting that story. Blogging is also a rapidly increasing trend for many companies that are trying to communicate with their customers.

I'm sure some people think immediately of how this might turn into a regular assignment, and while that might be a possibility, it's actually not the big payoff. What blogs - particularly those written by prominent staffers and top editors - provide is a window into the interests of the publications. You get a real-time clue as to what they think about and what trends they see, by virtue of the content. Forget about only looking at back issues that may or may not represent old editorial regimes or discarded concepts. As things change, you'll see it on a daily or, at worst, weekly basis. Use it well and you'll have a head start to a winning query.