A weblog for Pete Ellertsen's mass communications students at Benedictine University Springfield.

Friday, October 01, 2010

COMM 150: Advance warning - first documented essay

Like I said in class today, it'll be a 5- to 8-page documented essay due at the end of October (actually the first of November since Oct. 31 falls during a weekend). I'll write detailed instructions for you in the next few days, but it'll be on some aspect of niche marketing ... and how niche marketing has affected the communications industry. When I have the instructions ready, I'll post them to the blog.

In the meantime, this article on niche magazines will be a good starting place. Read it. We'll talk about it Monday, in connection with John Vivian's chapter on magazines in "Media of Mass Communication."

The article is titled "Niche magazines: who reads what, and why?" It's by Amanda Lerner, and it appeared April 25 in North by Northwestern, which describes itself as a "daily newsmagazine of campus life, culture and entertainment for Northwestern University in Evanston." [Northwestern, by the way, has one of the top graduate programs nationwide in journalism and integrated marketing communications. It's called the Medill School of Journalism, and you might want to keep it in the back of your mind when you start thinking about grad school.] Lerner says:
Niche magazines are not just small, bi-monthly or quarterly magazines that target fishermen or knitters. According to Medill professor David Standish, the category encompasses “all magazines look for a specifically targeted audience. I guess niche . . . kind of depends on how small that target is.” In these tough economic times, some niche magazines are hitting a much larger target audience than others, leaving them in the proverbial dust in terms of readership.

“In terms of print product, those that are going to survive are going to have to do something really useful for their readers.” Standish said, “I think the whole media landscape is in upheaval right now. And I think that what’s happening with magazines, the area that I know best, is that there is going to be a considerable shake-out.”
That's the money graf*, but, really, you should read the whole thing.

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* Jargon alert: In newspapering, "graf" is short for paragraph. No, I don't know why it's spelled with a "f." But it is.

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About Me

Springfield (Ill.), United States
I'm a retired English, journalism and cultural studies teacher at Springfield College in Illinois (acquired by Benedictine University and subsequently closed). I coordinate jam sessions for the "Clayville Pioneer Academy of Music" at Clayville Historic Site and the Prairieland Strings dulcimer club, and I sing in the choir and the contemporary praise team at Peace Lutheran Church in Springfield. On Hogfiddle I post links and video clips for our sessions and workshops on the mountain dulcimer (a.k.a. "hog fiddle"), as well as research notes on folklore and cultural studies, hymnody and traditional Anglo-Celtic and Scandinavian music. I also posted assignments and readings in my interdisciplinary humanities classes. The Mackerel Wrapper (now on hiatus), carried assignments and readings for my mass comm. students. I started teaching b/log when I chaired SCI-Benedictine's assessment committee, and reopened it as the privatization of public schools grew increasingly troubling and closer to home.