A famous local plumber used to spend a zillion dollars a year in Yellow Pages advertising …
He tracked the leads he got off his ads carefully and it was hugely profitable. And then suddenly, a handful of years back, practically overnight the returns on that advertising all but disappeared.
Times change. Sometimes ruthlessly.
I remember when former Kansas City Star editor and publisher Art Brisbane had his hand on the tiller at 18th and Grand and there were more than 2,000 people on the payroll. They’re lucky to have 600 today.
While that drop didn’t go down overnight like the Yellow Pages did, it’s been an exercise in pain and frustration ever since. Painful for the hundreds upon hundreds of staffers that the Star has had to lay off. And frustrating for what’s left of the readership who today are paying far more for far less. Unfortunately that game is still afoot and things will continue to spiral down until somebody kn the print news biz figures out to make display advertising work anything close online to the way it does in print.
Think the publishing business isn’t a tough racket? Think again.
Since the 1st of the year, not only has the daily newspaper axed its Sunday Star Magazine and embattled local alt weekly the Pitch parted company rather suspiciously with longtime publisher Joel Hornbostel, the hits(and musical chairs) at KC Magazine just keep on coming.
The city magazine’s latest casualty?
KC Mag editor Lara Hale.
Hale took a bullet late last month and while publisher Anthem Publishing was quick to crow about its new KC Mag editor, mum was the word as to Hale’s whereabouts, achievements or anything else.
Just, poof, she was gone!
And while for the most part the highly regarded Hale has been laying low, she did manage to squeeze off a parting shot of sorts – where else? – on her Facebook page.
The suspicion being that Hale may have taken a bullit courtesy of a certain self aggrandizing freelance “editor?”
Possibly the vainglorious Katie Van Luchene?
By the way, as I recall, that’s a made up name. Van Luchene’s real name is something like Sadie McGlockowitz or something – I can’t exactly recall.
In any case, after a bit of poking around and talking to folks who marvel at the number of “editors” KC Mag has gone through in its short time on this earth, there may be reasons – according to some – for its relatively high turnover at the top.
“I’d love to let everyone know what a shitty, poorly managed company Anthem is,” says a source close to the situation who asked not to be named.
The betting money seems to be that it was Van Luchene who “orchestrated” Hale’s downfall.
The bottom line: Trying to run a profitable print publication is about as difficult a proposition as there is in the journalism racket. Almost as hard as – you know – running a profitable online new publication.
Obviously it can and is being done, but all those dead bodies scattered about the battlefield didn’t get there for no reason.
The rate at which Anthem Media burns through staff is absolutely stunning. Editors and publishers come and go, sometimes in a matter of just a a month or two. Other than Katie Van Luchene, nobody seems to stick around for a second longer than necessary.
Katie stays on the move hitting 20 functions a day! They couldn’t FIND HER to fire her even if they wanted to! Love that girl!
At the risk of asking a “duh!” question, is Ms. Hale part of the Star Hale family? Also, how far back do you think Van Luchene’s name change goes? I knew her in the eighties, and that (KVL) was her name.
I don’t know the answer to your Hale question, but I’ll poke around.
Can’t say for sure on Van Luchene, but I remember stumbling onto her real name a handful of years back and her totally freaking out
If the industry is doomed and even a flagship paper is shedding jobs like an old locomotive, why is it ALSO the fault of a minor freelance KC editor?
If anything, people never even knew this magazine existed.
Chip’s right, t’s not like KC Mag is a household word…
It’s kinda like they piggybacked on the memory – and past successes – of the old Kansas City Magazine.
However, to the extent that even that achieved much in the way of cred, KC Mag has come up far short of even that dubious mark.
Marketing is a brand new game. Gone are the Yellow Page ads, the newspaper ads, and the magazines. Even catalogues of Chamber of Commerce Members are useless unless they are on line, visible on the phone, the tablet, or somewhere in front of us at the exact time we need it. The age old wisdom of the marketer that 100 letter will yield 3 replies, yielding 1 new customer or client has been replaced with numbers which are even less attractive. If you use the phone to market, you can improve the numbers to what was originally the 100-3-1 law, but beware of the “do not call list”. Unless we tune out completely to avoid the news like Ferguson, we get our national news from Fox, CNN, and MSNBC. We peruse Huffington and Beck for our personal choices, bearing in mind that the advertisers on each are still trying to get us to buy. The numbers have changed, and, with the change, we are watching the death of printed news, whether it is McClatchy or Links Magazine. Where there is no profit, there will be no business, at least eventually. The era has changed, and the most expensive component of business is labor. Hearne has had the foresight to understand that journalism is little more than allowing a few varied individuals with differing ideas to post their thoughts, along with advertising, and as long as someone reads the ads, he has the opportunity to outlive the Star, provided that his longevity does not catch up with him, like it does with all of us.
Good comments.
Your above good comment was also a good comment…
🙂
Look Hearne, you know better than anyone that the downfall of all the great papers was when they were sold off to investment companies that did not care about quality but squeezing as much profit as possible from those papers.
Katie learned from the best — Anthem founder Brian Weaver, a narcissist extraordinaire. (Infamously told an employee whose son was terminally ill that she was “playing the cancer card.”) Weaver’s wife *was* the HR vp (a department of one) making an appearance at the office one day a week (and reportedly pulling down a six-figure salary). When Brian would inevitably make an inappropriate and/or insulting comment, employees had the option of going to his wife or stewing in resentment. He now has a less-prominent role, but he still sets the tone for the organization.
I know several of the magazines past editors and my impression is that Van Luchene is a large part of why they don’t stick with it. She is all smiles in public (and in the 200 photos she poses for and posts every day) but speak one on one with her and she is the cattiest person ever. She has so many people convinced that she owns the magazine that I think she maybe believes it herself. In our office we call her the “queen of comps” because she is always looking out for freebies and will show up at the opening of an envelope as long as there is a cocktail and photo opp in it for her. I once sent her a press release for a fundraiser my partner was chairing and asked if she would please include it in the magazine event listings. She replied that the magazine would only publish the info if she was given tickets to the event. They did so. She attended the event, posted many pics of herself there but the event was never publicized in the magazine before or after. When I contacted the magazine, I was told that the info was never passed on to the team. Turns out Van Luchene does not manage the magazine content at all but merely attends events and does “publicity” work.
I have known several former Anthem editors. One lasted for all of 18 months, making him one of the veterans. All said the workplace atmosphere was toxic. I understand Van Luchene hasn’t worked in the office for many years. That may explain her longevity.
Van Luchene is not an employee of the company. She stays around because she has no real job responsibilities, yet reaps all of the perks and publicity. She invoices a nominal fee each month, but would probably hang on to her “job” even with no pay because of all the freebies that come her way as a result. Do you really think that she pays for any of the $200 fundraiser tickets or dinners she and her retired husband attend, sometimes several each day? Of course not. Do you think she would have any social life or “friends” at all if she stopped “working” for the magazine?
And yet 435 and Spaces are full of ads. So is Herlife. Somebody’s making money
in print