13,500 is the number of advertising pages lost across the magazine industry in the first quarter of 2009, according to the Publishers Information Bureau.
" Cat on a window with our claws holding on tight: We’re going to make it through this. "—Santa Fe Trend publisher Cynthia Marie Canyon, whose magazine went from quarterly to biannual at the end of 2008.
" I was just listening this morning to Donald Trump talk about how right now there’s a lot of opportunity to buy things. That was exactly what happened to me. "—Santa Fean publisher Bruce Adams, who bought the magazine on April 1.
As the magazine industry tumbles, Santa Fe's two city-centric glossies—Santa Fe Trend and the Santa Fean—are undergoing major overhauls.
In October, several of Trend's advertisers could not pay their tabs, publisher Cynthia Marie Canyon says. As a result, the publication's winter and spring issues were published online rather than in print. At the end of May, the magazine will release its first issue of 2009: 128 pages of arts, architecture, interior design and—cross her fingers—advertising.
"It's been really hard, but luckily I have the loyal following of the community because I'm a 10-year-old magazine," Canyon tells SFR. "I gave a lot of specials to artists and incentives to customers to help them stay with this one as their advertising choice."
Meanwhile, the Santa Fean magazine once again has local ownership. Publisher Bruce Adams bought the magazine this month at a once-in-a-recession low price (Adams would not disclose the purchase price). The magazine also moved offices, consolidated its staff and plans to increase its arts and real estate coverage.
Canyon says Trend's best chance for survival may be through some sort of merger or partnership with a larger publication. But as far as printing costs go, prices have dropped and that too has helped keep Trend in hard copy.
"If you're a publisher, you guys are getting better deals than you've ever gotten before," Kerri Rosenberg-Hallet, director of sales for Publication Printers, which prints Trend (and SFR's Annual Manual and Restaurant Guide), tells SFR.
"It seems like suddenly there's too many printers out there, and that's simply because with the economy people have reduced their run quantity, their page counts, the frequency of printings and a great deal of people have completely stopped printing altogether."
