August 12, 2005
I’m meeting Dave Daiss this morning at six and we’re heading to Hollywood. Breakfast in Quartzite, of course. Also going to Eddie Brandt’s, a photo archival Westerns store where I want to get some original 8X10s of Steve McQueen in “Wanted Dead Or Alive” and any other groovy shots for the magazine.

Mike Melrose sent me an interesting graph out of Ad Age, re: the internet has now passed radio in terms of annual U.S. ad spending. And speaking of the internet and magazines, here’s that famous east Indian magazine guru guy:

IWM: On mrmagazine.com <http://www.mrmagazine.com> you say: "The real information superhighway is magazines. The Internet is more or less a country road filled with dead ends, blind curves and pothole after pothole." What do you mean?

Husni: How many times when you're online do you find a Web site down? How many times do you try to go from one site to another, and the links are dead? Or the information is a year old? So far, the Internet has not proved itself to be the rose garden we were promised. Actually, we have discovered that there are a lot of thorns in that rose garden. And where can you get more information in less time and less space than in a magazine?

IWM: What are the biggest challenges facing magazines today?

Husni: The biggest challenge is how to efficiently reach the audience you're looking for. The days of marketing magazines using the shotgun approach -- where you just throw it out there and hope your audience will see it -- are long gone. We have over 5,000 magazines now [this must be an old magazine interview because the number is now above 6,500], which is almost three times the amount we had just 20 years ago. And newsstand space is limited. So we need to figure out the best way for magazines to reach their specific audience. It's a major challenge. The odds of remaining in business after 10 years are 1 out of 10. Magazines are published for what I like to call the three F's of publishing: fun, fame and fortune. A lot of people find fun; sometimes they find fame. It's fortune that's been elusive [well, that hasn’t gone out of date].

What is it about magazines that you find so appealing?

Husni: Magazines are like my Prozac. Even if I'm depressed I'll grab a magazine and starting looking through the pages, and it's refreshing. If I don't go to the newsstand at least once a day I feel there's something missing. I love their portability. I've always enjoyed the fact that no matter where I go I can take a magazine with me. They're the greatest invention.”

Artwork from CGII for today’s perusal includes Tom Waters and his plaid shirt (above, right), walking down the streets of Tombstone. And the Milt Joyce-Earp confrontation in the back of an Allen Streeet saloon (left). Good reference, so-so results, plenty of regret.

”We seldom regret talking too little, but very often talking too much.
This is a well-known maxin which everybody knows and nobody practices.” —Old Vaquero Saying