Paste Magazine made headlines last summer for asking its readers for monetary donations. The recession hit the music magazine hard, and in order to keep producing magazines, it needed more than the revenue that advertising and subscriptions were making for it. Unfortunately for the magazine, even this was not successful in the long term, as the Paste Media Group announced yesterday that it will no longer be producing the print magazine.
According to the group, the “downturn of the ad market” has made it difficult to obtain revenue in an era where online publishing has become more popular than ever. Josh Jackson, the magazine’s editor in chief announced yesterday that a digital version of the magazine will be available for current subscribers. It is possible that Paste may resume producing a print magazine one day, but for now, they have suffered the fate that many others in the business have as well.

The magazine’s cry for help originally worked as many of their devoted fans donated money, with free music from several artists as an incentive. Still, this only shows that the world of print is not a hopeful one. With more and more magazines closing, it seems that digital publishing may soon take over completely.

The popular magazine Essentials from IPC Media has announced that “real women” will now grace their covers, rather than celebrities or models. A survey of Essentials readers showed that genuine women were much more attractive on the cover of the magazine.

Now, in its October issue, the magazine will be free of all models and celebrities and will show the results of a social media campaign in which the magazine attempted to find the ten “real women” that is on the front cover. According to Essentials, this campaign is a “first for women’s glossies”.

The editor of the magazine, Jules Barton-Breck has said that the real women on the cover “look, and are amazing”, and that the magazine will celebrate attractive women who are not celebrities or models. According to Barton-Breck, over 70% of the magazine’s readers noted that a real woman on the cover would be preferable to a famous model or celebrity. Essentials is the “first magazine in the UK” to repeatedly showcase these women, according to the editor.

Essentials gained more readers than any other magazine this month, with over one hundred thousand readers each month. According to the publisher of the magazine, Ilka Schmitt, this move will offer “something different” and may gain appreciation from other women.

As a spy Anna Chapman was used to negotiating every day of her life, but now that she is out of the spy game Chapman is said to be struggling to negotiate in real life having failed a deal with a raunchy men’s magazine.

Chapman agreed to do a photo shoot for the magazine but then turned around and placed some photos on her Facebook page which were quickly spread around the Internet a week before the magazine was published, which was a clear breach of copyright law.

While they may have placed her on the wrong side of the law, the photos do show why Chapman was so easily able to get into the upper classes of American society as she played with the millionaires because she was the girl of most men’s dreams and the photos are quite sensational.

Last month Chapman was deported out of the US in a spy swap said to be the largest since the Cold War.  She was sent to the US on a mission that was to last for a few decades so that they could get deeply embedded into high society in an effort to get to state secrets.

In one of the photos the 28 year old bombshell was dressed in a white dress while another photo showed her in a green-blue mini-dress that allowed her body to be viewed in its entirety.  Of course, there is also a photo with her trademark spy dark glasses referencing her former career.

The photo shoot location was also perfect given it was on the top of a five star Moscow hotel that featured the Kremlin in the background.

A computer is not only a monetary investment, but a piece of one’s life given the fact that society continues to become more and invested in the complex machines that now govern a majority if people’s personal and professional lives.  With this in mind, it is vital to stay up-to-date on the machines that we are heavily reliant on, which is a lot easier to do if you are looking in the right places.

There are many magazines at the newsagents that can make even the most computer illiterate person computer savvy with a quick read through.  The truth is that while computers may seem like mystical wonders given the extensive technology behind them, it is possible for even the average user to learn simple computer repairs and fixes to keep their machines running smoothly.  Of course, you have to know where to start which is where a few good PC magazines may come in handy.

Some of the top titles in the UK are PC World and PC Advisor both of which are low cost manuals that come once a month to help you keep your computer running at its top performance speeds.  Most people are unaware of the fact that just placing a few safety devices in place such as download antivirus 2010 software are all that is required to keep a machine running smoothly.

This is due to the fact that the number one reason that computers start to run slow or lag behind is virus, spyware, of other malicious software intrusion.  In fact, if a computer were completely safeguarded from infection and never suffered at the hands of a virus, chances are it would run factory smooth from the first day of its purchase onwards for many years.

With this thought in mind, it is important that you download antivirus 2010 software right away; the problem of course, is knowing what you need and where to get it.  This is where the UK computer magazines come into play, because these helpful manuals help you stay on top of the computer world and inform you on a monthly basis of all the software that you need to purchase or in many cases can simply download from free from accurate and safe sources.

PC World is a great place to start because with a monthly subscription you also get a bonus DVD that comes with some performance tips and software features.  Depending on when you subscribe, you may even find a few options to download antivirus 2010 software which is a great initial step in the right direction.

PC Advisor is also an excellent choice because it keeps you updated not only about advances for your personal computer, but also on issues that plague the most popular electronic devices such as audio players, smart phones, and as the market starts to open up most likely e-readers as well.  With this information at your fingertips, it seems a shame to watch your computer slow down for reasons you could have prevented.

The new People iPad application is free to all subscribers of the popular magazine prompting the first phase of what Time Inc. hopes will serve as a model to prompt future digital and print bundle sales of its publications.

However, while the merging of the two may seem flawless, it was not an easy arrangement given that Time Inc. and Apple were engaged in a battle for months over if the company would be allowed to offer print subscribers free access to the iPad edition.

However, Apple, which receives a percentage of all app downloads, hence the hesitation to make the app free, has agreed to allow subscribers to People to enter a verification code at the iPad app store checkout so that they can gain access for free.

One of the largest issues facing media businesses today is if the companies should attach a charge to access of any digital offerings which creates the large risk that few people will actually see the content.

Some magazine publishers including Conde Nast do not intend to offer digital content for free to print subscribers but instead is working on a pricing structure for bundled packages.

However, Time Inc. on the other hand believes that all subscribers should be able to gain access to any digital products without paying an additional fee which has enabled the decision to favour users instead of increasing profits at customers’ expense.

Editor of Time Inc. style and entertainment group, Martha Nelson, stated that the magazine’s subscriber base is very loyal and should thus have the content in whatever format they choose.

Male magazines focused on lifestyle have seen their circulations drop over the first half of the year while female publications of the same type continue to experience growth according to new figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

The statistics include distribution and circulation results from ABC audited titles on the market during the first six months of 2010.  The women’s fashion and lifestyle sector saw a growth of 14.6% compared to the first half of 2009.

However, the lifestyle market of male’s magazines saw a drop of about 3.8% when compared to the first half of 2009 and when compared to the last six months of the 2009 a 5% drop.

The largest hit title was Zoo which saw its circulation drop by about 28%.

US magazine sales have continued to fall over the first part of 2010 even though the latest monthly figures have shown a slight improvement for the industry which was hit especially hard by the economic recession.

Single copy sales of magazines at retail outlets fell by 5.6% during the first six month period of 2010 compared to the same time period in 2009.    According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, the fall was nine percent during the end of 2009 and 12% during the beginning of 2009.

Sale of single copies at outlets and newsstands is thought to be the best gauge of the industry due to the fact that this is where they are available for full price whereas subscriptions are usually heavily discounted so that overall circulations are higher for advertising reasons.

Magazine subscriptions still fell by 2% over the last six months down to 267m.  The recession was particularly hard on magazines because as their circulation falls so does the amount of advertising which are the main revenue grabbers for most publishers.

A few magazines did see their sales rise despite the overall market trends however with cosmopolitan taking the lead as the top seller in the US with a 1.5% increase in newsstand sales.

People also jumped up quite high with a 15% growth in newsstand sales and Women’s Health saw a 10% rise in sales.

Rochdale Council announced that it will ditch its local magazine, which should save the council almost £100,000 annually in publishing costs.

The move was announced by Councillor Ashley Dernley last week at a meeting who said that the council will continue to look at its marketing and press department in an attempt to find more ways to cut costs.

The magazine was published every quarter with the sole purpose of telling residents how they could utilize the best amenities and services in the area.  However, some councillors viewed it as an attempt to laud over the achievements of the town instead of an actual helpful guide.

Prior to May local elections both parties swore that they would toss it out once elected.

Councillor Dernley stated that given the finances of the council, there is no way to consider it viable enough to continue to publish and it was an unnecessary expenditure.

He added that local newspapers do an adequate job of letting local residents know about what is out there for them to explore and special services and upcoming events.  The scrapping of the magazine is a heavy contribution to the total amount of £211,000 that the council wants to save.

Meetings of the council can still be found by heading online to the council website.

A young man from North Carolina that moved to Yemen may be the new editor in chief of a magazine for Al Qaeda that contains an article written by Osman Bin Laden, and bomb making instructions according to US officials.

24 year old American citizen, Samir Khan, left the US in October of 2009 and is thought to be the editor of the online magazine Inspire, which seeks to recruit new members from the Arabian Peninsula of Al Qaesa.  This is the branch that was said to be involved in the attempt to bomb a Detroit US flight during Christmas of last year.

The publication is 67 pages online and is written in colloquial English.  It was launched last month and has graphics that describe how to create a kitchen as well as an article supposedly written by Bid Laden about global warming.

The key proponent of the site is American born Anwar Al-Awlaki who is linked to both the Times Square car bomb attempt and the Ford Hood massacre.  He has been designated by the US Treasury Department to be one of the head leaders of the Arabian Peninsula Al Qaeda.

However, intelligence sources now believe that Khan from North Carolina is actually the mastermind of the website with some within the intelligence community referring to the magazine as one of the most ambitious tools for recruiting used yet.

Analysts believe that Khan is a part of new computer radicals that are now using online tactics which are influential in promoting terrorism within the US and recruiting violent jihadists from abroad.

Khan started being watched in 2007 when intelligence officials started monitoring a militant Islamic blog that he posted online.

The owner of Penthouse magazine made an offer on Playboy Enterprises Inc and said that its new bid outbids the proposal that Hugh Hefner made to purchase Penthouse by about ten percent.

FriendFinder Networks, the rival of Penthouse, yesterday said that it could make an offer to purchase Playboy that would put its equity at around $210m and that it would like to meet with Playboy’s board on July 21^st.

Hefner and his partner Rizvi Traverse Management proposed this week that they could make Playboy a private company for $5.50 a share which would place the total value of the company at about $185 million.

At age 84, Hefner already owns about 70% of the Playboy Class A stock and another 28% of the company’s Class B stock.

Chief executive of FriendFinder, Marc Bell, wrote in a letter yesterday that they hope that following the transaction Hefner would still have control over the editorial content of the magazine and be allowed to stay in the Playboy Mansion where he currently resides.