289 U.S. magazines reported that they’d sold 7.9 million digital replica editions in the last six months of 2012. That’s 2.4 percent of total circulation — up from less than 1 percent in the second half of 2011, and up from 1.7 percent in the first six months of this year. (AAM’s definition of a digital replica is that it contains “the same editorial and photojournalism as the national print edition,” though that material can be arranged differently on a tablet; nearly all digital magazines fall into this category.)

The growth looks more impressive on an individual title level, where some magazines made huge gains in digital copies: Game Informer, already by far the top magazine by digital circulation, increased that figure by 89 percent, while Cosmopolitan upped its digital circulation by nearly 40 percent in the second half of the year. Two Reader’s Digest titles – Reader’s Digest and Taste of Home — saw triple-digit-percentage growth of their digital editions, both entering the top 10 for the first time. The growth isn’t all paid: Reader’s Digest, for example, is offering print subscribers a free six-month iPad subscription. But Hearst sells digital and print subscriptions separately.

Here are the top 25 U.S. consumer magazines by digital circulation as of December 31, 2012, and how much that circulation grew (or shrank) over the first six months of the year. The Alliance for Audited Media cautions that these are preliminary figures, subject to audit.

1. Game Informer (GameStop), digital circulation: 2,305,816 (+89% over first half of 2012)
   
2. Maxim (Alpha Media Group): 259,529 (-8.9%)
3. Cosmopolitan (Hearst): 254,751 (+37.2%)
4. National Geographic (National Geographic): 160,077 (+18.9%)
5. Poder Hispanic (Televisa): 149,838 (-12.3%)
6. Reader’s Digest (Reader’s Digest): 147,149 (+248.8%)
7. Taste of Home (Reader’s Digest): 103,961 (+243.9%)
8. Popular Science (Bonnier): 98,389 (+5.8%)
9. ESPN the Magazine (ESPN): 92,197 (+20.4%)
10. OK! (American Media): 88,347 (+86.7%)
11. Parenting (Bonnier): 87,253 (+16.7%)
12. Men’s Health (Rodale): 85,842 (+44.2%)
13. O, the Oprah Magazine (Hearst): 84,632 (+4.2%)
14. Wired (Condé Nast): 84,118 (+22.3%)
15. Us Weekly (Wenner Media): 81,611 (+40.8%)
16. Nylon (Jaclynn B. Jarrett): 77,469 (+2.5%)
17. GQ (Condé Nast): 74,806  (+24.6%)
18. Food Network Magazine (Hearst): 67,727 (+65.1%)
19. Women’s Health (Rodale): 66,555 (+29.5%)
20. Star (American Media): 59,903 (+297%)
21. New Yorker (Condé Nast): 59,471 (+66.7%)
22. Esquire (Condé Nast Hearst): 57,795 (+41.7%)
23. Martha Stewart Living (Time Inc. Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia): 56,068 (+28.7%)
24. Glamour (Condé Nast): 53,794 (+56.8%)
25. Vanity Fair (Condé Nast): 53,735 (+47.6%)

Thompson said he wants to “dramatically expand” the number of blog posts that the site carries with the upcoming launch of a Science and Tech section, which will feature contributions from magazine regulars like Columbia law professor Tim Wu and author Ken Auletta as well as new writers. One of those new writers is former BuzzFeed staffer Matt Buchanan, who announced his move to the magazine on Wednesday:

Thanks everyone! I'm going to miss @buzzfeedben and @jwherrman BUZZFEED a lot, but I'm preeeetttty excited to be going to the New Yorker.

—
matt buchanan (@mattbuchanan) January 30, 2013

Until now, The Atlantic has been the poster child for the brainy traditional magazine that has succeeded at the new digital-media game. Owner David Bradley and president Justin Smith gambled heavily on an online strategy — one that included hiring strong writers like Alexis Madrigal and Ta-Nehisi Coates, among others, and online-first properties like Atlantic Cities.

These and other moves have driven large amounts of traffic, and also boosted digital revenues to the point where they now exceed print (Note: We’re going to be talking with Justin Smith about these and other topics at our paidContent Live media conference in New York on April 17).

The magazine has also put a substantial amount of resources into the new arena of “sponsored content” as a replacement for traditional advertising, although that has not come without controversy: a recent sponsored feature on the Church of Scientology drew a substantial amount of criticism, and the magazine said it has re-evaluated the way it handles such content as a result.

The Atlantic‘s moves have made others such as Time Inc. (which is facing some major cutbacks) look like they are stuck in neutral. Only Forbes has arguably equalled the Atlantic‘s progress, with initiatives like its “Brand Voice” platform (chief product officer Lewis D’Vorkin will also be joining us at paidContent Live). Now it seems that both could be facing some competition from the New Yorker, which is encouraging to see.

Image courtesy of Flickr user Rebecca Chatfield

Last month, the blog Newsbusters discovered that a large chunk of a piece that Zakaria wrote for Time magazine about gun control was almost identical to sections from a New Yorker piece on the same topic, written by Jill Lepore. Zakaria was subsequently suspended by both Time and CNN (although he has recently been reinstated after both entities said they found no evidence of further plagiarism). Lehrer, meanwhile — a high-profile author — was fired by resigned from the New Yorker after it was discovered that he had duplicated information from a number of sources.

Plagiarism is just inefficient hyperlinking

One of the themes that has been brought up repeatedly in stories about both Zakaria and Lehrer is the idea that they have been overworked as a result of media multi-tasking. Stories about the Lehrer incident, for example, note that he was writing books and had a packed public-speaking schedule while also trying to write a blog for the New Yorker, and Zakaria made the same link by saying he plans to cut down on his responsibilities — implying that this was to blame for him mixing up his notes from the New Yorker piece with his own writing (he also said he recently hired an assistant).

But I think Box.net CEO Aaron Levie put his finger on a big part of the problem in a tweet he posted recently, in which he said plagiarism “is just really inefficient hyperlinking.”

Plagiarism is just really inefficient hyperlinking.

—
Aaron Levie (@levie) August 10, 2012

Although he probably just intended to be witty, I think Levie makes a good point. Plagiarism is defined as the attempt to “steal and pass off the ideas or words of another as one’s own,” and it is the last part of that definition that is the most important one. It isn’t so much that a writer like Lehrer or Zakaria takes information from someone else and uses it in a column — plenty of writers do that, and as the media world has exploded thanks to social tools such as blogs and Twitter, this phenomenon has only become more commonplace. But neither of them gave credit to the source of the content they used, and that was the real crime.

This is exactly the same kind of argument that gets made about news aggregators or blogs that do a poor job of crediting the source of the content they are aggregating. As Jeff Jarvis has argued in a series of recent posts, since copying is rampant on the internet, we should be more focused on ways of giving credit to the source or creator of that content. And what better way to give credit than by linking prominently to its originator? This is just another reason why links are the lifeblood of the internet, as I argued in a recent post about the back-and-forth between bloggers and the traditional media over the latter never giving credit to the former.

Linking also provides a great defence

If either Zakaria or Lehrer had been more devoted to the idea of linking to sources, they might have spent more time making note of where the information they were using came from, so that they could include a link — in the same way that academics routinely cite footnotes to back up their claims. Would they still have tried to pass those sections off as their own? Perhaps. As my paidContent colleague Laura Owen has noted about Lehrer, some of his behavior was likely a result of the pressure to be a public intellectual. But if either one is sincere about how their plagiarism was an honest mistake, paying more attention to linking might help.

And if anyone needs evidence of how a consistent policy of linking to sources can be a positive thing, they should look no further than the Gawker case: the blog network was sued by a company for defamation, based on a piece that the tech blog Gizmodo wrote about its products. In a decision that acquitted the media company of this charge, the court said that part of the rationale for its ruling came from the use of links in the Gizmodo piece, which provided ample evidence of what the post was referring to. As the court decision put it:

“Having ready access to the same facts as the authors, readers were put in a position to draw their own conclusions about Redmond and his ventures and technologies… Statements are generally considered to be nonactionable opinion when the facts supporting the opinion are disclosed.”

David Weinberger, co-author of the seminal book The Cluetrain Manifesto and a fellow at the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society, argued in a post about the journalistic principle of objectivity that “Objectivity is a trust mechanism you rely on when your medium can’t do links.” In other words, when you have the ability to link to information that supports your conclusions, it’s easier to get away with being subjective, because readers are able to follow the links and decide for themselves whether you are credible.

I think the same principle applies to plagiarism: it is something that occurs when a medium doesn’t allow — or at least doesn’t encourage — links to original sources. The internet may make it more likely that someone copies content from another, but it also makes it easier to fix.

Post and thumbnail images courtesy of Flickr user skedonk

Facebook Stories will curate content around a monthly theme. This month, the theme is “memories” and the content includes a video report about a man who lost his memory when he got meningitis and a news story about a group of Ontario residents who used a Facebook page to help save the local Petrie Building.

In addition, each issue of Facebook Stories will have regular features: The Bookshelf has “a Goodreads list of books that helps you dig deeper into each month’s theme,” while “Playlist” curates songs from Spotify. And “Reading List” includes “exclusive access to the archives of some of the world’s best storytellers.” This month, three pieces from the New Yorker — stories that are normally available only to subscribers — are included. Facebook is also running a monthly Stories podcast, and a monthly infographic focuses on the issue’s theme. This month, it analyzes how people around the world share “life’s biggest moments.” Users are invited to share their own stories, which might be included in a future issue.

The Facebook design team’s Skip Bronkie and Peter Jordan are leading the project. Dan Fletcher, who was hired as Facebook’s managing editor in January 2012 and was previously a reporter at Time magazine, is editing and vetting stories from users. He also wrote the “Guelph, Ontario: Saving a Slice of Downtown” story in this month’s issue. Other team members include Allie Townsend, formerly Time‘s social media producer; editorial producer Jeffrey Gerson; Matthew Harnack and Mandy Zibart.

This is only the first issue of Facebook Stories, but there are a number of paths that it could take. Facebook spokesman Bounds warned against interpreting this as a competitor to other news sites, though. “The Facebook Stories site is designed to work with media partners and contributors who are providing us original content,” he told me, “and we are helping showcase their content in the context of unique user stories that we’re discovering on Facebook.”

Still, Facebook Stories’ geographic focus — you can click on “Map” to see the stories arranged on a world map — hints that it could be a possible competitor to AOL’s Patch, though if each local story is required to have a Facebook angle, that concept could wear thin. Its mosaic layout is tablet-friendly and already makes it look a bit like personalized iPad magazine Flipboard or Zite. Then there’s the aggregated content from the New Yorker, and the original content from people like NPR’s White House correspondent Ari Shapiro – a combo with hints of Daily Beast or Huffington Post. A tablet magazine consisting of user-generated local content, aggregated content and original content is an ambitious move — but it seems possible when you consider that such a magazine could have over a billion readers.

New York Times book publishing reporter Julie Bosman first reported Lehrer’s resignation on Twitter.

Lehrer’s publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, is “exploring all options available to us,” HMH spokeswoman Lori Glazer said in a statement. “We are taking the ebook of Imagine off-sale, and halting shipment of physical copies.” (For now, though, the book is still available on Amazon.)

Houghton Mifflin also provided a statement from Lehrer:

Three weeks ago, I received an email from journalist Michael Moynihan asking about Bob Dylan quotes in my book Imagine. The quotes in question either did not exist, were unintentional misquotations, or represented improper combinations of previously existing quotes. But I told Mr. Moynihan  that they were from archival interview footage provided to me by Dylan’s representatives. This was a lie spoken in a moment of panic. When Mr. Moynihan followed up, I continued to lie, and say things I should not have said.

The lies are over now. I understand the gravity of my position. I want to apologize to everyone I have let down, especially my editors and readers. I also owe a sincere apology to Mr. Moynihan. I will do my best to correct the record and ensure that my misquotations and mistakes are fixed.

I have resigned my position as staff writer at The New Yorker.

Borowitz has written for the New Yorker for a long time, and the acquisition of “The Borowitz Report” is probably better viewed as the hiring of a new writer. Borowitz’s posts will be edited, Thompson says, though “it won’t be the way we edit feature stories, three to six months in advance.”

The tone and content of “The Borowitz Report” will remain the same, Borowitz writes: It will be “as inaccurate as always,” and editor David Remnick “has assured me that I can write whatever I want as long as I don’t make fun of Malcolm Gladwell.”

Borowitz told me that borowitzreport.com will redirect to the New Yorker. “I think both the New Yorker and the Borowitz Report are going to get new readers out of this deal,” he told me. “I have already gotten tons of new Twitter followers this morning and the first Borowitz Report post is already one of the most-read stories on the site.”

Overall, the magazine is beefing up its digital strategy. “We’re adding writers, we’re adding categories, we’re doing all kinds of small things to make the site better,” Thompson said. He added that June was the best traffic month ever for newyorker.com.

Next Issue’s expansion to iPad is its first real chance at widespread adoption. The company started up back in 2009, when Condé Nast, Hearst, Meredith, News Corp and Time Inc. teamed up to create a cross-platform digital newsstand — but there were no visible results until the launch of a digital storefront “preview” on the Samsung Galaxy tablet in May 2011. The launch for Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) and above in April 2012 was a small step forward, but few people owned the right tablet.

With Next Issue’s launch on iPad, there’s a better opportunity to see whether readers are interested in all-you-can-read tablet magazines for a flat monthly fee. Thirty-nine popular titles are available now (full list below), with more expected later this year. Subscribers can choose an “unlimited basic” subscription for $9.99 per month, which gives them access to all monthly and biweekly titles, or an “unlimited premium” subscription for $14.99 per month, which adds weeklies like Time and the New Yorker to the mix. They can also purchase individual magazine subscriptions, ranging in price from $1.99 to $5.99 per month, and individual magazine issues, ranging in price from $2.49 to $5.99 per issue. There are free 30-day trials for both unlimited basic and premium subscriptions.

If a user already subscribes to a certain title, he or she can read that digital edition from within the app for free “or a nominal cost,” depending on whether the publisher bundles print and digital editions (as Time Inc., Condé Nast and Meredith do) or charges separately for digital editions (as Hearst does).

“GQ” magazine in carousel view

Is it a good deal?

Next Issue’s app looks great on both Android and iPad, and its availability on iPad opens it up to many more magazine lovers. But will they find unlimited subscriptions worth the fee? It probably depends on how much they’re paying for magazine subscriptions now, whether they’re willing to shift the money they’re paying from print to digital, how much they value a print subscription, how much they want to read popular magazines in general versus specific titles, and whether Next Issue has the titles they want. (As my colleague Mathew Ingram notes, this is also not the platform for people who prefer a Flipboard-style, social-based method of reading content.)

A personal example: My household subscribes to the print versions of New Yorker, Bon Appetit, Real Simple, Martha Stewart Living and the Economist. The total annual cost we pay for those magazines (using the prices listed on the magazine website, and assuming no discounts for multi-year subscriptions or other special offers) is $256.98, or about $21 a month. So an “unlimited premium” Next Issue Media subscription should be a bargain for us at $14.99 a month — except it doesn’t include print issues and two of the magazines we subscribe to, Martha Stewart Living and the Economist, aren’t available, at least for now.

As Next Issue adds more magazines, though — CEO Morgan Guenther tells me that the company plans to double the number of titles it offers this year — it becomes a better deal, and dropping print subscriptions becomes more enticing. In 2013, Next Issue will add its first “outside publisher” titles — i.e., magazines not published by the five companies already participating in the JV — in “key segments.” (That could include magazines like The Economist and Consumer Reports.) The company also plans to expand to some international markets, add search and social features, add some advertising and expand to newspapers (at which point titles from News Corp, the fifth partner in the JV, will become available).

The list of magazines available now, by publisher

*=weekly magazine only included in premium subscription package

Condé Nast

• Allure
• Bon Appétit
• Brides
• Condé Nast Traveler
• Glamour
• Golf Digest
• GQ
• The New Yorker*
• Self
• Vanity Fair
• Vogue
• Wired

Hearst

• Car and Driver
• Elle
• Esquire
• Popular Mechanics

Meredith

• Better Homes and Gardens
• Fitness
• Parents

Time

• All You
• Coastal Living
• Cooking Light
• Entertainment Weekly
• Essence
• Fortune
• Golf
• Health
• InStyle
• Money
• People*
• People en Español
• People StyleWatch
• Real Simple
• Southern Living
• Sports Illustrated*
• Sports Illustrated Kids
• Sunset
• This Old House
• Time*

The case involves a Canadian man, Peter Paul Biro, who became famous for using fingerprint technology to allegedly revealed undiscovered works by the likes of Jackson Pollack and Leonardo Da Vinci. Biro sued the New Yorker this summer over a 2010 story that cast doubt on the “man who keeps finding famous fingerprints on uncelebrated works of art.”

Last week, Biro expanded his defamation complaint to include a slew of new defendants. They include Gizmodo (a site owned by Gawker), Business Insider and the International Council of Museums. Biro says the new defendants defamed him by writing articles based on the New Yorker story and now he wants money from everyone involved for the “enormous damage” to his reputation, business and health.

The original story, by David Grann, is a meticulous account that describes Biro’s “scientific” authentication technique and how it vaulted him into the elite of the art world. But it also provides a very unflattering account of the traits and behaviors that that have resulted in Biro leaving a decades-long trail of civil lawsuits and outraged acquaintances (one businesswoman says he is “a classic con man”).

New Yorker editor David Remnick responded to Biro’s libel charges by telling AdWeek in July that the case had no merit and that, “We stand with David Grann and behind the story.”

As for the lawsuit, Biro’s chances seem about as good as finding a Botticelli at a yard sale. The law of defamation means that he will have to show that the New Yorker was malicious or, at a minimum, grossly irresponsible in its reporting.

As for Gawker and the other defendants, Biro must show they were at least grossly irresponsible in using the New Yorker magazine as a source (if the story is untrue in the first place, that is).

Biro has just filed a reply to the New Yorker’s request to throw out the case, so this could drag on for a while longer. In the meantime, readers can still enjoy Gizmodo’s account of Biro, titled “Is This Man the Art World’s High-Tech Hero or Villain?” and the original article.

via Courthouse News

Biro revised suit against Gawker et al

Pulse now has over 200 publishing partners, and its app (for iOS and Android) been downloaded five million times–broadening its reach beyond tech-blog-reading early adopters, CEO Akshay Kothari told me. Earlier this month, Pulse added Al Jazeera as its first international news partner.

As with its recent partnership with MSBNC and its other publishing partners, Pulse’s relationship with USA Today, Women’s Health and the New Yorker is promotional. Moving forward, “we and the publishers will work together to figure out the best way to monetize,” Kothari said. But the company is “not spending too much time on [monetization] right now,” choosing instead to build its platform and number of partners.

It’s worth pointing out that new partners doesn’t mean exclusive content. All of the content on Pulse is free–but those who don’t want to pay to subscribe to the New Yorker won’t find much of the print magazine’s content here. When I checked it out, all the New Yorker content on Pulse was from the magazine’s blogs. For full-length articles, you will still have to subscribe to the magazine.

The new price is lower — with 47 issues a year, it works out to $1.27 each for the annual subscription or roughly $1.50 an issue at the monthly rate. The annual rate is slightly lower than the current print blowcard promo of two years for $127 ($65). But Conde Nast has an even better offer – print and digital for $39.95 for one year or the bargain-basement rate of $69.95 for two years, easily the best deal of the lot and one that could goose print subscriptions. It should be low enough to bring in some new digital subscribers and a good enough deal to get some who might consider going digital only to keep print, too. The added access for print subs gives the New Yorker more of a sell for advertisers. (See below for more pricing info.)

The economics of the split with Apple means Conde Nast could be giving up 30 cents for every dollar, unless the publisher worked out a different deal as Hearst suggested it had last week. The new Apple policy gives publishers access to some customer information, as long as the subscriber agrees. It’s the next step in figuring out the app conundrum for magazine publishers.

First look: Last week, gaining access to Sports Illustrated (NYSE: TWX) on iPad as a print subscriber (a review subscription) was as simple as updating the app and logging in with my all-access pass info. Downloading and then installing the issue took more time than I’d like but it was still a fairly straightforward process.

Unfortunately, setting up The New Yorker as a print sub was not the most seamless experience. You need either your name and address as it is on the label (difficult since our gift subscription comes in both household names) or your account number. I finally had to go online to be sure I was using the right part of the label for the account; the in-app help didn’t have the answer and the form kept rejecting my efforts. Then you need either a current login or a new one. My login for newyorker.com, used to access the browser edition, didn’t work; it kept saying that my email address didn’t show up. I had to set up a new one. Once I was in, the screen looked like a genie had blinked my stack of back issues into digital form. Then I started to download the May 16 edition (125MG). After a couple of minutes the server kept disappearing and the download had to be resumed. After a few retries, I had enough to look at the issue while the download completed. The second download took about half the time with no glitches. (Peter Kafka, who reported first about the in-app subscription going live, ran into glitches, too.)

For a sense of the difference between reading experiences, I opened an article on Alexander McQueen. The digital edition showed one color photo and a url. The iPad app had a rich photo essay of the McQueen exhibit at the Met. One was sufficient; the other was an experience.

Update: In the official announcement that just hit, Conde Nast says the bundled price for print, iPad and the website is $6.99 a month or $69.99 a year. The box that last night was offering a special deal for two years now shows $69.99, which is a 75 percent discount over the print price, as the best annual offer with auto renewal. That allows Conde Nast to say it’s charging more for the added value. Conde Nast is, to use a little jargon, trying to change the value proposition for its subscriptions by including a new platform and pricing it a little higher as a bundle.

The company says existing print offers will still include all access. That makes sense since it’s to the publisher’s benefit to convert as many print subscribers as possible: they already “own” those subs and will have access to the info that Apple otherwise gets to gatekeep through iTunes. Another plus: no rev share with Apple on the bundles.

In-app subscriptions for Wired, Vanity Fair, Glamour, Golf Digest, Allure, Self and GQ will be $1.99 per month or $19.99 per year. Unlike The New Yorker, the bundle price will be the same through Conde Nast. Those editions are expected to start selling in-app and bundles subscriptions by the end of May.

Some people are obsessed with which publisher would be first to sell the in-app subscriptions and Conde wants a pat on the back for doing it. Personally, we’ve already watched what happens when publishers rush. At this point, I’d settle for getting it right. Conde Nast seems to have a reasonable approach that should help it guard against losing readers in a digital transition, maintain attention for advertisers across platforms and possibly even raise the discounted annual price some subscribers are paying.

Forget last year’s single-issue gold rush. This is the real beginning.