Portfolio - Yes, Portfolio - on Magazine Sales

There are three reasons to flag this post by Portfolio's media columnist Matt Haber.

1. Yes, Portfolio, the unlamented attempt at a fourth major business magazine from Conde Nast that hired top talent from across business journalism and then accomplished conspicuously little with it, is again producing original content on its website.  So if you're a PR person and the other national outlets have turned you down, it's worth a shot.
2. Haber's column is actually pretty funny, a review of circulation numbers of consumer magazines that show that a) we are spending more on cooking magazines, b) celebrity-obsessed supermarket titles have peaked and c) there are a lot of old people in America and they sure love their magazines.  Readers Digest may be bankrupt, he notes, but it is the third largest circulation magazine in America behind two different titles published by the AARP.
3. His blog roll of media critic websites is tremendous.  If you're in the media business it's a great way to quickly catch up on trends.  One of these days I'll add a wider blog roll to this site, and when I do I'm going to grab a bunch of links from there.

It would be unfair to note these minor observations without at least mentioning that USA Today's excellent media writer David Lieberman today has an interesting CEO interview with David Zaslav of The Discovery Channel.  It wasn't quite ground-breaking enough to warrant its own post and there aren't any major PR lessons to learn from it but if you're interested in what's selling on basic cable these days, there is a lot there.