Besides Slate, there are few online men’s magazines, but Dennis Publishing, the British publisher of Maxim, Men’s Fitness and other lifestyle titles, launched Monkey in November, which Dennis calls “the world’s first weekly digital men’s magazine.” Completely ad-supported, the publication is sent free to anyone who registers.
Although the content of the magazine is similar to print publications with its lifestyle focus, it differs with the preponderance of video content. “There’s all sorts of videos, from reviews of cars to film trailers to game trailers and sports videos,” said reviews editor Leon Poultney. “There’s less editorial and it’s very visually driven, with video and flash elements. We took what you find in a men’s lifestyle magazine and made it very interactive. We’re doing things that regular print magazines couldn’t do.”
The magazine is being offered for free, “because it doesn’t make sense to charge when the info is available free on the Net,” said Don Amaechi, an account manager. With no subscriber revenue, the magazine is reliant on advertising and it’s successfully selling ads for films and entertainment, clothing, accessories, insurance, tech gadgets, energy drinks and toys, Amaechi noted.
Rich media ads with embedded video are running for the products. They combine pre-recorded TV ads embedded into the page with surrounding content Monkey produces, such as logos created with Flash animation. For an energy drink, “We took an image of the bottle and got bubbles moving around the page,” Amaechi said. He said the ads include “videos at the center of the page that make it more engaging for the user.”
Ads on a digital magazine have benefits over print advertising, including a longer life (after an ad runs in a weekly edition of Monkey it is archived for subsequent viewing); and accurate metrics (ABC circulation figures report over 200,000 views a week, “and if they don’t get that we can rerun the ad,” Amaechi said).
Jules Feiffer, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Cartoonist and Writer, Dies At 95
Jules Feiffer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist and writer whose prolific output ranged from a long-running comic strip to plays, screenplays and children's books, died Friday. He was 95 and, true to his seemingly tireless form, published his last book just four months ago.
Feiffer's wife, writer JZ Holden, said Tuesday that he died of congestive heart failure at their home in Richfield Springs, New York, and was surrounded by friends, the couple's two cats and his recent artwork.
Holden said her husband had been ill for a couple of years, "but he was sharp and strong up until the very end. And funny."
Artistically limber, Feiffer hopscotched among numerous forms of expression, chronicling the curiosity of childhood, urban angst and other societal currents. To each he brought a sharp wit and acute observations of the personal and political relations that defined his readers' lives.
As Feiffer explained to the Chicago Tribune in 2002, his work dealt with "communication and the breakdown thereof, between men and women, parents and children, a government and its citizens, and the individual not dealing so well with authority."
Feiffer won the United States' most prominent awards in journalism and filmmaking, taking home a 1986 Pulitzer Prize for his cartoons and "Munro," an animated short film he wrote, won a 1961 Academy Award. The Library of Congress held a retrospective of his work in 1996.
"My goal is to make people think, to make them feel and, along the way, to make them smile if not laugh," Feiffer told the South Florida Sun Sentinel in 1998. "Humor seems to me one of the best ways of espousing ideas. It gets people to listen with their guard down."
Feiffer was born on Jan. 26, 1929, in the Bronx. From... Read More