Lisa Granatstein, "Mediaweek" editor: Mr. Media Interview I love to read. They don’t start calling you Mr. Media because you’re illiterate, of course, and magazines have always fascinated me. When I pass a newsstand, I absolutely must stop and see what’s new and different. Drives my wife crazy.

My garage is littered with the carcasses of many forgotten publications, including Might, which was the first most people ever heard of Dave Eggers, and Smart, which gave a lift to a young Terry McDonnell, now editor of Sports Illustrated. Somewhere out there is also a copy of 7 Days, the short-lived city magazine that put Adam Moss on the map. Moss recently led his new magazine, New York, to three big wins in the 2007 National Magazine Awards, contributing to the 0 for 9 shut-out of The New Yorker and its respected editor, David Remnick.

Talking media, and magazines in particular, is great sport for me, so imagine my delight when Lisa Granatstein agreed to do a Mr. Media interview.

Lisa is the managing editor of Mediaweek and editor of Mediaweek.com. She’s a brand name in media coverage and has been so for nearly a decade.

Earlier in her career, Lisa was a reporter for Time magazine and an associate editor of its technology spin-off, Time Digital. She’s also worked at US News & World Report, Conde Nast Traveler Online, and she was a stringer for The New York Times metro desk.



BOB ANDELMAN/Mr. MEDIA: Lisa, the news these days has been pretty bad for print media, especially in newspapers. Every day, it seems another once-proud, ink-stained wretch announces layoffs. Book editors are on the endangered species list, and film critics appear to be next. What, by comparison, is the outlook for magazines?

LISA GRANATSTEIN: I’d say it’s pretty much on par with newspapers. Right now, the industry is really going through a bit of a revolution. Magazines need to change with the times. They are competing not just with cable and network TV but also with the Internet, and more and more, they are finding that their brands are becoming less relevant in print, and they are having to find a way to migrate online and be relevant there, and that’s difficult for a print brand. They don’t have the video capability that TV properties naturally do. There is a lot of technology that they have to build, and it’s been a big challenge, both in terms of drawing readers but also in maintaining an advertising base.

ANDELMAN: As a freelance writer myself, it seems that a lot of the magazines are almost at a disadvantage because a lot of them don’t have writing staffs beyond a few people, so even if they convert to video, they don’t have that loyalty. They hire people one story at a time, one piece at a time, and for the Internet, that’s hard, because you really have to be an everyday presence.

GRANATSTEIN: Right. A lot of magazines have to double up. Writers are writing for the Web site as well as for the magazine. I know in my case, our magazine, Mediaweek, is having reporters file stories daily for the Web site, it’s become a wire service, produce videos, do their own interviews online occasionally, and of course, work for the magazine, and that’s what’s happening across the board. Obviously, the independent magazines, the smaller, regional publications, are suffering much more than the bigger, wealthier major publications such as Hearst or Time Inc. But they, too, are finding it to be a real challenge.







ANDELMAN: And Time Inc. has been selling off magazines and cutting back, right?

GRANATSTEIN: Yes. Absolutely. Just recently, they sold what had been Times Mirror Magazines, then renamed Time4 Media, to a Swedish publishing giant known as Bonnier Group, and that was sold for $220 million. They’re just unloading a lot of titles. They have to pare down. Ann Moore believes in the revolution that is happening, and Time Inc. is becoming less of a magazine publisher and more of a brand maker and looking more at the Internet to grow its brands rather than launching new magazines. I mean, I can’t even remember the last time they actually launched one.

ANDELMAN: Business 2.0?

GRANATSTEIN: Yes, sure. I mean, it was a mystery.

ANDELMAN: It’s been a while.

GRANATSTEIN: Yes, that was a while ago. It used to be, years ago, that magazines, there used to be five, six, or more major launches a year, and now, if you’re lucky, you hear about one or two major ones. The commitment isn’t there to put out a magazine. The costs and the risks are far too high. Ann Moore, the CEO of Time Inc., I believe, is looking more at the Internet properties, at expanding online rather than focusing on the print publications.

ANDELMAN: I guess the biggest magazine launch of late would be Portfolio, right?

GRANATSTEIN: Absolutely.






ANDELMAN: Conde Nast, and that didn’t really win a lot of plaudits. I mean, people didn’t seem very excited by this… It’s like a paperweight. It’s a huge publication, but no one is saying, oh, boy, you’ve gotta run out and get this.

GRANATSTEIN: Right. It kind of landed with a thud, I mean, both in the sense of it being huge with advertising. The publisher, David Carey, who’s from The New Yorker originally, has a real way. He’s quite an amazing publisher. He can really sell, and he sold this, but it has yet to be seen whether the readers are really interested in another business publication.

There was a little bit of buzz, but it quickly died away.

ANDELMAN: Once people actually held it in their hands.

GRANATSTEIN: Yeah. It took a year and a half to get this thing out the door, which is a huge amount of time, and that might have been to their disadvantage. They probably had to spend too much time fiddling around trying to get it perfect, and sometimes you just need to get it out a little faster and then think about what you did, but too much thought sometimes doesn’t help.

ANDELMAN: I guess it’s the difference between are you producing Forbes or Fortune on a weekly basis, or are you producing The Harvard Review on more like a monthly or quarterly basis?

GRANATSTEIN: Right. The key issue is do you really need a year and a half to knock out an issue?

ANDELMAN: Yeah, and well, they’re what, quarterly right now?

GRANATSTEIN: Right now, I think they’re only publishing two issues this year, and then they are going to be publishing monthly next year. So the next one is coming out in the fall. They also have an active Web site, but you know, it’s a lot of time between two issues, but I guess they’ll be doing a lot of research, yet more research to see what went right and what went wrong in that issue and refining it.

ANDELMAN: And while it was a beautiful picture on the cover, it didn’t really say anything.

GRANATSTEIN: It was a gorgeous picture on the cover, but does it scream business? I’m not so sure. I’m not sure what it was really trying to do. Was it arrogance thinking that there was so much publicity out there everybody knew what Portfolio was? Or maybe they thought the name would be enough. I don’t know. I’m interested in seeing how it does on newsstands. It’s a little too soon to tell, but it certainly led to changes at other business publications, which can only be a good thing. There was a lot of maneuvering and redesigning and overhauling at Fortune and Forbes. I think that’s a good thing. It does stir up the pot a little bit.





ANDELMAN: Well, let’s talk about some other specific magazines. If any of these you’re not comfortable with or you’re not that familiar with, we can keep moving down, but I was kind of curious to see what you thought about what happened when TV Guide switched from digest to full size. Did it stem the tide of the circulation losses, or does it just postpone the inevitable for them?


© 2007 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.

Labels: Lisa Granatstein, Maxim, New York Observer, Penthouse, Portfolio, The New Yorker, TV Guide, WonderTime

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