Magazine Hot List 2005: Highlights

As we move into the next quarter century of The Hot List, we continue to evolve how we evaluate magazines. When the list debuted in 1980, choosing the top 10 meant looking for the titles with the largest increases in ad pages. Soon after, it was determined that consistent growth needed to be considered; hence, the three-year evaluation of PIB numbers. Then, circulation vitality was added to the mix. This year, we also evaluated reader involvement with the help of Monroe Mendelsohn Research’s Publication Readership Satisfaction Survey. While the process has changed over the past 25 years, the goal has remained the same: to gauge momentum in the advertising marketplace. To be considered for The Hot List, a consumer magazine’s advertising must be tracked by TNS Media Intelligence/CMR for Publishers Information Bureau. To qualify for The Hot List, a magazine must have been published for a minimum of three years, have published at least 10 issues during the last calendar year, and have $50 million or more in advertising revenue. To qualify for the 10 under 50 List, a magazine must have been published for a minimum of two years, have published at least 12 issues during the last two calendar years, and have ad revenues of less than $50 million.For both lists, we begin by examining the advertising performance, both in terms of pages and dollars, during the last three years. Greatest weight is given to performance in the last year. We also consider the performance of each magazine against its category and the performance of the category overall. Once we whittle down the list, we dig deeper. We work closely with Dan Capell, who edits Capell’s Circulation Report, to evaluate the performance of each of the Hot List contenders. We also speak to media directors, who give us some insight into what advertisers are thinking. After this, we go back to the beginning--to the advertising performance of each of the contenders--to make our final cut and rank the magazines. --Patty OrsiniThe Hot List 1. Real Simple2. Lucky3. Us Weekly4. In Style5. O, The Oprah Magazine6. Shape7. Men's Health8. ESPN The Magazine9. Vanity Fair10. Parenting10 Under 50 List 1. Runner's World2. People en Espanol3. Blender4. Organic Style5. Teen Vogue6. Sporting News7. Altantic Monthly8. Nick Jr.9. Elle Girl10. Weight WatchersEditor of the Year: Us Weekly's Janice Min By Judith NewmanBrad or Britney? Britney or Brad? It’s 9 o’clock on a Monday night at Us Weekly and Janice Min, staring intently at the cover-photo candidates, chews her salad and mulls. The difference between an OK-selling cover and a great cover is about half a million dollars. In one week.Observing any cover meeting can be unpleasant. Generally, by the end, the staff is a raw nerve and the editor looks like she’d like to pull a Heathers and set the place on fire. Even those entirely removed from the process are ready for Scotch with a Xanax chaser. There is none of this sense with Min, Adweek Magazines’ Editor of the Year—no drama, no hissy fits. The puppyish staff (the news editor and photo director are both in their 20s) is jazzed, and a little punchy. While they wait for Min’s decision, they buzz about, bringing other photos for her approval. Photo director Peter Grossman shows Min one of those classic paparazzi shots of an almost-unrecognizable Courtney Love sitting in her car, arm shielding her face. Min rolls her eyes. Grossman announces in a stentorian voiceover: “Us Weekly: No one brings you closer…to their windshields.” By 10 p.m., the dilemma has not magically resolved itself. The problem is this: There is absolutely nothing new to say about Britney Spears, yet the magazine has paid a reported $15,000 for honeymoon photos. There might be something new to say about Brad Pitt since, as Min sits there, an aspiring starlet named April Florio, who claims to have had a relationship with him during his marriage, is being interviewed and photographed. What will Florio admit to? Everyone drops by Min’s office to weigh in. Wenner Media chairman Jann Wenner, in a bespoke suit and three-day growth of beard, flops down on a chair when Florio’s transcript comes in. The starlet has confessed that Brad tried to steal a kiss. “A kiss?” Wenner says, exasperated. “There are only two things I want to know: ‘I did it’ and ‘Here’s what it looks like.’” A few minutes later, Kent Brownridge, the vulpine senior vp/general manager of Wenner Media, marches in. “No boning?” he says. “No story.” Then he marches out again.Ultimately, what with the lack of any discernible boning on Brad’s part, Min goes with Britney and her trailer-park prince. Brad, who’s been the main cover photo for five weeks thanks to his separation from what’s-her-name, is demoted to a tiny side photo. The next day, Us’ photos get front-page coverage in the New York Post and Britney goes on a tear against the magazine’s invasion of her privacy. Us shoots back: “Coming from a celebrity who sold pictures of both her wedding and her stepdaughter, it’s unlikely the issue here is privacy.”That week’s magazine sells 935,000 on the newsstand. This puts it in the top 25 percent of Min’s covers, though it does not quite make the new Us benchmark of 1 million copies. Through February, there already had been three such issues this year. Over the last year, the world of celebrity journalism has changed, and that change is largely due to a petite, unpretentious, perpetually bemused Korean-American named Janice Min. Us has become a part of popular culture, shorthand for trashy-but-irresistible celebrity fluff that’s referenced regularly on Saturday Night Live and Letterman. Min herself is an idea machine, packaging and contextualizing photography that would be tiresome without Us’ arch commentary. (A personal favorite: “Do Kabbalah Bracelets Work? When Good Luck Charms Go Bad!”) So indelible has Min’s mark been on the magazine that some People staffers have taken to calling the rival rag “Jan-Us.”The magazine’s transformation began, of course, in 2002 under the leadership of Bonnie Fuller, whose career has hewn to one guiding principle: Nobody likes to read. Or, rather, they don’t like to read about celebrities, since celebrities don’t have much to say and we presume they’re lying to us anyway. Fuller’s genius was to take other magazines’ front-of-the-book photo spreads and make them into a full-blown magazine.The ship Fuller ran wasn’t exactly the Love Boat. Still, by the time she left in an ocean of bad blood in 2003 and Min, her executive editor, took over, Us was prospering. Critics predicted Fuller’s abrupt departure to rival American Media would be Us’ death knell. Not so. “By the time Bonnie left,” says Brownridge, “we were overjoyed circ had gone from about 300,000 to 500,000. Now if we had a 500,000 week, we’d all be in tears.”In the second half of 2004, average circ at Us was up 12.7 percent, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Revenue is up 59 percent, according to Publisher’s Information Bureau. Last year, People magazine’s ad pages were down 2.2 percent and The Star’s were down 9.8 percent, while Us’ were up 27.6 percent, with a 62 percent increase in beauty advertisers--highly unusual for a weekly. The magazine’s mantra of “young, better educated, richer” is reflected in the roster of new clients. “This year, we’ve got Christian Dior, a full spectrum of L’Oréal, as well as clients like Coach and Mercedes-Benz,” says vp/publisher Vicci Lasdon Rose. The Oscar issue was Us’ biggest ever, with 76 ad pages and a total book size of 160. People’s dominance of the celebrity-weekly category is still unquestioned; it earned $768.9 million in ad revenue in ’04, according to PIB, versus Us’ $144.3 million. But some in the industry can envision a time when that might change. “I think by focusing strictly on celebrity in this sort of upmarket way, Janice has broken further away from the pack [of celebrity magazines],” says Pattie Garrahy, CEO of PGR Media, which represents Tommy Hilfiger. “Some of our clients embraced [Us] for the first time last year. We feel more positive about them than we did three or four years ago.” Min’s particular sprinkling of stardust is not so much how she’s positioned the magazine as how she’s positioned the celebrities themselves. They are generally under 35. And if they are subjects of news at People, objects of awe at In Touch and objects of envy and scorn at Star, at Us they are friends. You love them, but you talk about them behind their backs--and you know they can take a little good-natured ribbing. “My generation thinks of celebrities as their peers--like neighbors, or people you went to high school with,” Min says. (The average age of the Us reader is 32; Min is 35.) “They’re on a first-name basis with them.” And through some mysterious alchemy of her great instincts and America’s short attention span, Min has become a kingmaker. Us has become a barometer of hotness for everyone in Hollywood, giving it the power to create celebrity out of--well, pretty much nothing. There were a slew of cover-story cuties Us readers were on a first-name basis with two years ago who, in this age of reality TV insta-fame, are not quite our pals anymore.Not that Min is under any delusions that this power of hers is doing anything remarkable for mankind, or even for entertainment itself. She’s cheerfully candid about Us’ place in the culture, about who she picks and why. “When you sign up to become a celebrity, it’s not because you necessarily think you’re the best actor in the world,” she says. “If that were true, Dame Judi Dench and Ben Kingsley would be on our cover every week.”When you think about it, Min isn’t asking for much. She just wants Us to be America’s guiltiest pleasure. Is that so wrong? “This is the job Janice was born for,” says a former editor at People who worked very closely with Min. “Whether it was celebrity gossip or office gossip, she was always the first to know what was going on.”Janice Byung Min was born in Atlanta and grew up the youngest of three in Littleton, Colo. Her mother was an agent for the IRS; her father, who would become an executive for a medical-supplies company, was first a professor of zoology who, perhaps, taught Janice something about keeping sentiment in check. “Dad always brought home these animals from the lab that became my pets: guinea pigs, rats, mice, hamsters. And at some point, they would just sort of…disappear, back to the lab.” Today’s darling is tomorrow’s dead meat: A valuable lesson for a celebrity journalist.In 1992, Min, only 23, landed a job as a staff writer at People. At first, she struggled. “Her stories read like bad wire copy,” says one editor. “When you’re considered a poor writer at People, you’re kind of palmed off from one section to another and not given much to do. Janice would sit in her office, crying.”But that changed. An oft-told story involves then-senior editor Paula Chin sitting Janice down and passing to her the “Sacred People Recipe.” “She didn’t get the People ‘snap’ at the beginning--and then she did,” says Carol Wallace, former managing editor of People. “Once she got it, she never looked back.” In the mid-’90s, the old guard at People still liked to think of their magazine as a purveyor of news as much as a celebrity sheet. So many lifers rolled their eyes as the magazine became ever more interested in Tinseltown fluff. Janice embraced the fluff. She wasn’t merely good at the lighter stories--she shined. “Let’s see, I had the JFK Jr. beat, the Lady Diana beat, the Oscars,” she says. “I wasn’t a feature-well girl. My covers were like, ‘Hero Pets!’” She’d always loved clothes, even as a child. But when she discovered her unholy love for Prada in the mid-’90s (“I could wear it 24/7, seriously--and sometimes do”), she also realized she could write about it with distinction and wit. She transformed People’s “Style Watch” page from an occasional feature to a weekly destination. Min was promoted to senior editor at People but within a year decamped to Life magazine. In the Kremlinology of Time Inc., this was considered bad form--and there were some screaming matches between Wallace and Min that the whole office overheard. Today, though, Wallace is much more understanding. “Janice was extremely ambitious, and I identify with that, because early on in my career I had an alarm that went off every three years that dictated I had to change jobs.”Once at Life, Min was bored and miserable--the pace of a monthly seemed positively glacial compared to a weekly. Again, in less than a year, she wanted out. In 1998, she was named assistant managing editor at In Style under managing editor Martha Nelson--now managing editor of People. At In Style, Min oversaw wildly successful spinoffs In Style Weddings and In Style Makeover. But by 2001, Min left and began yet another job search.Min originally had applied for the job of editor in chief at Us, but Wenner didn’t consider her seasoned enough. When Fuller got the job, she was called in for the executive editor position under Bonnie. “Janice told friends, ‘I know this is going to be crazy, but I’ll learn so much.’” And however crazy it was, Min seems genuinely grateful to Fuller. “We had great chemistry,” she says.Today, Wenner, no fan of Fuller’s, says that much of the original thinking of Us under Bonnie could be credited to Janice. But whatever the case, when Fuller decamped abruptly in 2003 for the editorial director title and a $1.5 million salary at The Star, Min was the obvious choice to take over.Min knew she had to act fast to buck up a demoralized staff. She started with small, symbolic gestures, like not moving into Fuller’s huge office. (Fuller’s old digs eventually were converted into three smaller offices for staff.) She also changed the tone of the conversation about celebrities. “She just had this light, sort of amused approach,” says Wenner. “Bonnie really disliked the people we covered. There was a meaness and a schadenfreude. With Janice, that just doesn’t exist.” After the tumultuous Bonnie years, Wenner is palpably relieved when he talks about Min. “She’s this completely steady, organized, inspiring person to be in charge,” he says. “She knows how to bring out the best in everybody.” This is critical for a weekly, Wenner adds, “because we’re not burning people out. In a very fast-moving situation, she knows how to keep her head and treat everybody well. There’s no big, brooding firestorms and adrenaline frenzy.” In media coverage of Min, the editor inevitably is depicted as the “anti-Bonnie,” a characterization to which those who know her well don’t subscribe. “The problem with that is, it makes her seem as if she can’t be tough or demanding, and she’s obviously had to be both,” says Jim Brosseau, another former editor at Us. “But she understands that the magazine isn’t all there is in the world.” Brosseau recalls the sweltering day of the New York City blackout in 2003. “We were evacuating the building, and she tried to get as much of the bottled water she kept in her office to the staff [as she could] for the long walks home. It’s not the sort of gesture that makes good gossip-column copy.” Min has a life outside the office. It takes place in her Meatpacking District loft with her husband, Peter Sheehy, a history teacher at Horace Mann, and their eight-month-old son, Willis. It’s this life, perhaps, that keeps the celebrity life in perspective.Min knows there will be a time when she will be able to put Britney, Brad and Jessica on the shelf and not miss them. In fact, colleagues who say they’ve never had a serious discussion with her might be surprised to know that her favorite show, besides The Sopranos, is Meet the Press. She dreams of one day running a political magazine. Or, perhaps, a magazine about furniture, or kitchens. A girl is entitled to more than one obsession.But apologize for giving America a sweet tooth for all this eye candy? Never. Min sincerely believes that the kind of escapism Us offers is critical today. “The more polarized this country becomes, the more celebrities matter,” she says. “Because they provide common ground. I could walk into any situation, with any group of people…and we could bond discussing J-Lo’s third marriage. I mean, you can overload on beheading videos. “I realize,” she adds, “that some people see Us as a sign of the apocalypse. I see it as a safe place.” Executive Team of the Year: Newsweek editor Mark Whitaker and worldwide publisher Greg Osberg By Tony CaseCall it the crib sheet for inside the Beltway. Newsweek got perhaps the ultimate sanction last summer as legislators set out to get to the bottom of intelligence failures that led to 9/11. Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland gave her imprimatur to the newsweekly’s illuminating, ahead-of-the-pack reportage on the subject at hand by telling fellow members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence: “In all my intel reading over the weekend, I thought to myself: Why be on the committee? All I need is a subscription to Newsweek.”In a world of 24-hour news, one could be forgiven for seeing the newsweeklies as long past their prime, as having lost their relevance. But even as news-oriented weeklies jockey for position against dailies, cable and the Internet--and with ever-multiplying numbers of celebrity weeklies, shopping guides and other niche titles drawing so much attention--the Washington Post Co.’s venerable Newsweek has bucked the “conventional wisdom” and generated major buzz--even in Congress.The magazine’s stronger-than-ever journalistic outturn; fresh, unpredictable take on subjects already covered by a zillion other press outlets; numerous industry honors; innovative cross-media partnerships and spinoffs; and steady advertising growth all inspired Adweek Magazines to honor Newsweek editor Mark Whitaker and executive vp/worldwide publisher Greg Osberg as this year’s Executive Magazine Team of the Year. This “team” was singled out with the understanding that Whitaker and Osberg have very different--and separate--roles at Newsweek. The wall separating news and sales at this upright, hard-news outfit is an impenetrable one. But the two sides can and do cooperate. Newsweek appears to be a place where everyone knows they’re working for the common good, where the turf battles so common at larger, multimedia conglomerates seem less of an issue.“Throughout the organization, everyone understands that we’re in this together, and that in order to be the kind of influential, exciting, important publication that we all want Newsweek to be…it has to be a successful business enterprise,” says Rick Smith, Newsweek’s chairman and editor in chief, to whom both Whitaker and Osberg report. “The church-state barrier still very much exists at Newsweek--but there are portholes from one side to the other so you can see what the other guys are doing.”Mark Edmiston, managing director of the M&A firm AdMedia Partners and the CEO of Newsweek from 1981 to 1986, says there had to be some degree of cooperation between the top news and business-side ranks for the magazine to have reinvented itself so effectively in the last decade or so, as the whole category has had to reinvent itself. “That, clearly, is where the teamwork came together,” Edmiston says. “Time after time, the integrity of the editorial product has been maintained. The troops are not going to get rolled over by some guy out there with a good suit on. There’s a comfort level there.”“The newsweeklies a decade or so ago were at a crossroads, but they have evolved, and what [Whitaker] has done is a good example of that--offering a very passionate, articulate, contemporary take on the news,” says Paul Woolmington, CEO of media-planning firm The Media Kitchen. “When he got hold of the magazine, he did an excellent job of evolving it into something that is more of a must-read.” The job of newsweekly editor used to be that of an “oracle, these very revered positions,” Woolmington says. But Whitaker is “more commercially minded--he’s a very adaptable person. If it ain’t working, he’s going to change it. It’s not, ‘If we’ve done it for 50 years, we’re going to keep it going.’ That was one of the legacies of the past.” Under Whitaker, Newsweek has become an environment that’s “more reader-friendly, a bit more relaxed, and less stuffy,” Woolmington says.Linda Thomas Brooks, executive vp, managing director of General Motors Mediaworks, seconds: “Newsweek has done a really good job of doing consumer research to find out what the marketplace wants--they’re data-driven, not ego-driven. And Greg is always figuring out a way for us to do business together.” When asked whether Newsweek--boasting a readership of more than 20 million each week--wasn’t a “must-buy” for the automaker, Brooks shoots back: “There are no must-buys anymore--just as for the consumer, there’s no must-read anymore. But [Whitaker and Osberg] have figured out how to stay relevant from the consumer standpoint and from the advertiser standpoint.”Under the much-admired guidance of Whitaker for the last six years, the 3.1 million-circ Newsweek has scooped up three coveted National Magazine Awards--for General Excellence in 2004 and 2002, and in the Reporting category in 1999. Last year, the title was honored for its impressive, exhaustive coverage of the Iraq war, beating out archrival Time. Raising the profile of the magazine even more, Whitaker last year became president of the American Society of Magazine Editors. In an age of shortened attention spans--and, hence, shorter magazine articles--Newsweek last November served up the definitive election postmortem with its 46,000-word, behind-the-scenes special report from the campaign trail. A team of reporters and editors working exclusively on the postelection issue spent a year--and seven figures--tailing camps Bush and Kerry. To compete with Time’s famed Person of the Year year-end issue--one of the most successful magazine franchises ever--Newsweek four years ago created its Who’s Next issue. This year, that issue scored a record number of ad pages.Newsweek and its peers have had to retool themselves to keep readers interested. Clearly, there’s more work ahead. In the most recent Audit Bureau of Circulations report, for the six months ended Dec. 31, 2004, Newsweek’s slight year-over-year gain in subscription sales was met by a 5 percent decline at the newsstand (the magazine sells 20 times more subscriptions than it does newsstand copies; same goes for the competition). The much larger, 4 million-circ Time slid 2 percent in overall circ, as a near-5 percent gain in single-copy sales could not offset a 2 percent slip in subs. The 2 million–circ U.S. News & World Report was flat all around.For years, much has been made of the Time-Newsweek horse race. But how much do the Newsweek troops really worry about what’s going on across the street--literally, now that Time Warner has erected its towering glass headquarters just across Manhattan’s Columbus Circle from Newsweek’s offices? “Competitively, we obviously are at a huge disadvantage--we’re up against a huge empire,” Whitaker says. “But the advantage we think we have working for this company--family-run and with a deep tradition of editorial independence and quality--is that we can be very nimble in trying new things.”Though some might see the newsmagazines as relics, Whitaker contends that Newsweek still holds a unique role in the media mix. “We don’t kid ourselves that we’re one-stop shopping, that you come to our magazine and don’t need any other media,” he says. “I don’t think serious consumers of the news look at it that way.”The editor wants to make his mark in all the diverse areas the magazine covers--whether Iraq or Washington, Wall Street or Hollywood. Whether covering Ahmad Chalabi (whom Newsweek pegged as “Our Con Man in Iraq”) or late-night gabber Jon Stewart, the magazine always seems to have its finger on the pulse. “My idea of an iconic Newsweek story is one that will be accessible to a general reader but also really smart to an expert reader,” Whitaker explains. The editor is also quick to own up to a mistake. A recent dustup over a cover shot that put Martha Stewart’s head on a model’s body--which Whitaker later called “just dumb and badly executed”--resulted in a new policy of putting photo credits on the cover, a first for a newsmagazine.One of Whitaker’s greatest achievements is the all-star roster of journalists he’s assembled, some whose faces--thanks to their frequent appearances on MSNBC, CNN, the Sunday-morning talk shows and elsewhere--have become as familiar as their names. And they’re only getting more exposure. Last month, it was announced that one of the magazine’s “rock stars,” columnist Fareed Zakaria, will host an international-affairs series on PBS stations. Other Newsweek scribes who have become household names include George Will, Anna Quindlen, Howard Fineman, Eleanor Clift, Andy Borowitz, Jonathan Alter, Evan Thomas, David Ansen and Michael Isikoff.Much of that talent has filled Newsweek’s pages for decades. In fact, it’s hard to find a magazine with a masthead of talent as entrenched as Newsweek’s. And nobody is more established than Whitaker, who joined the magazine in 1977 as a reporting intern while still a student at Harvard--and who has been there ever since, steadily working his way to the top after stints in Boston, Washington, London and dispatches dotting the globe. This, after a peripatetic life as the son of academics, which took him from the East Coast to the West Coast to the French countryside. The stability of Newsweek’s ranks, and the family atmosphere the magazine has long nurtured, are among its greatest strengths, says Washington Post Co. chairman/CEO Donald Graham. “It is unusual and invaluable to have people who know the magazine so well,” says Graham, the son of legendary Washington Post publisher Katherine Graham for whom this publishing enterprise always has been a family affair. “Newsweek’s key people go back a long way together--they’ve torn up a million covers together [when news breaks], and they absolutely know when a news event happens how to cover it in the best possible way.”Smith says that in every job Whitaker has taken over the years, he “exceeded expectations,” even when a particular role might not seem a natural fit. When Whitaker was appointed business editor, some scratched their heads, since his background was in international reporting. “You learn to swim by swimming, and with each new assignment, Mark, whether in familiar waters or not, proved to be a hell of a swimmer,” Smith says.Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter--a Harvard classmate of Whitaker’s and fellow Harvard Crimson alum--says his old friend, who graduated summa cum laude in 1979, really is as smart as you think. Alter remembers a particular physics course that proved too tough for him, so he dropped out--only to find that Whitaker so aced the class that he was asked to be the teacher’s assistant. “I think there’s a suspiciousness about intellectuals in this country,” Alter says. “But sometimes, brains wins.”For his part, Osberg has worked for Newsweek since 1990, save for a three-year stint at the tech company CNET as president of sales and marketing. Smith calls this Osberg’s “time in the wilderness” but adds that it made him an even stronger publisher, as the Internet has become an increasingly important part of Newsweek’s editorial mission and its ad-sales strategy. In fact, there is a perception that during Osberg’s absence, Newsweek suffered, losing some of its competitive edge against the dominant Time. “He came back even stronger than ever,” Smith says. “I knew we wanted him back--and needed him back.” When Osberg returned, in October 2000, Graham was one of the many who welcomed him back. “I’ve known many great advertising and marketing executives, and Greg is absolutely one of the best I’ve ever seen,” he says.Newsweek last year enjoyed 6.8 percent growth in advertising pages, the third year in a row the magazine boasted gains. Bolstering business in ’04 were big commitments from Chrysler, which bought six double gatefolds around Newsweek’s election coverage, and McDonald’s, for which the team created a series of advertorials around the anniversary of the Ronald McDonald House charities. Strong categories include automotive, financial, technology and media/entertainment, reports Osberg.While Time outsold Newsweek last year by about 400 pages and its year-over-year ad-page growth of 10.3 percent outpaced Newsweek, Osberg points out that the No. 1 advertiser in Time is…Time Inc. Echoing Whitaker, he says: “We couldn’t compete on their playing field--they’re the world’s largest media company.”Instead, Osberg says, he and his team built alliances with the likes of MSNBC--which, on a daily basis, features Newsweek staffers and their work on its cable programs and Web site--and international publishing partners which last year launched editions of Newsweek in Russian, Chinese and French, bringing to seven the number of local-language editions of the magazine. In the U.S., Newsweek launched two titles: the student-produced college newsmagazine Currents and the shopping title Tip, a spinoff of the magazine’s Tip Sheet column. Smith says since he came to Newsweek 35 years ago, people have asked him about the role of the newsweekly. A quarter-century after the Columbia Journalism Review depicted Time and Newsweek as cartoon dinosaurs, the genre’s obit continues to get written--then filed away as it bucks expectations and adapts to each new medium threatening to kill it off. “The extraordinary proliferation of news and information outlets works in our favor--the blizzard of snippet quotes and video clips and screaming headlines and screaming pundits makes our role in the lives of our readers even more important,” Smith insists. “I think Mark understands that down to his fingertips, and Greg understands the power of that idea as a selling tool. These are very smart guys.” Read the Startup of the Year and Creative Team of the Year reports in PDF form below:Startup of the Year: Cottage Living Creative Team of the Year: Runner's World

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Magazine Hot List 2005: Highlights

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