Part I: Interview with CJ Tyson, Board of Advisors to the magazine, and professional dancer.
Part 2: Critical Review of Movmnt magazine (issue 1 and issue 2) to be published later this week.
Movmnt Magazine's MySpace Web page located at www.myspace.com/movmnt
Walk into any bookstore or magazine shop and try to find a magazine on "Dance." If you do, consider yourself lucky. My luck has always been very iffy in that area and it only seems to be getting worse. This latest challenge comes to mind.
When I decided to do a review of the new dance/ fashion/ music/ lifestyle magazine, Movmnt, I wasn’t expecting it to be a Herculean task. The
Now I don’t live in the city itself. I live in the suburbs, but I am surrounded by Barnes and Noble, Borders and B.Dalton bookshops. There aren’t many pure magazine stands or stores. The only one I can think of is in the Pike Place Market of Seattle with a smaller magazine stand in the U-District. For those that don’t know
Even so, off I went, searching for Movmnt Magazine. BN didn’t have it and checked their list—nada. They checked their computer for it at other stores—nada. I went to Borders. They didn’t have it. They didn’t have a networked system, so had to phone around—again nada. The nice sales guy decided to take it on as a personal challenge and intrepidly called several sibling stores with no success. He then called the Borders on Park Avenue in
No joy in Mudville. We totally struck out—even in
They also couldn’t order it for me since they didn’t have it on their list of approved publishers. If it’s not in the book, they can’t access it. Contrary, to public opinion, I was not able to request it from my book store--any of my book stores. I was stuck.
So I went to the magazine’s website and subscribed that way, using my PayPal account. Easy and painless, just the way I like my transactions. Except for one problem, to do a review, I won’t just do it on one sample—I needed at least two issues and this is a quarterly (not monthly) magazine. That meant waiting around for magazine issue 2 to arrive (since I was too late for the first issue) and then waiting around another three months for issue 3 (my second issue.) They don’t do backissues at the moment and I don’t blame them. They are a small startup magazine and backissue hassles can be just that—a major hassle.
But I told this to CJ (see part one for my interview with him) and he said no problem, he’d ask to see if they could get me issue 1, as a special favor, for which I was grateful. He even promised me an autographed copy of Moving Still, the book MySpace users who subscribe can get free with their 1 year subscription. A very good deal for twenty bucks—especially if you are a So You Think You Can Dance Travis Wall fan. He’s in the book, though with a much shorter haircut than his more recognizable (and current) spiky blond mop. In fact, a lot of him is in the book. Nothing that would make you blush (unless you’ve been raised very sheltered all your life) but a bit more revealing than you ever saw him on the TV show!
And I am a fan of the show and Travis, per se, along with many of the other dancers—talents all—and if it hadn’t been my accidental watching of that show, and seeing Travis dance, then I wouldn’t have gotten hooked on it. And I never would have done further investigation into the world of dance, Dennis Wall’s Dance Energy,
If that isn’t a Web/ Internet/ Social Networking/ MySpace/ YouTube kind of viral discovery path, then I don’t know what is!
Well, I didn’t get an autographed version of Moving Still, but I did receive issue 2 and Moving Still a week later. Another week later, I received, courtesy of the amazing Rami, a copy of issue 1.
Hence, this review can happen now rather than four to six months from now. Considering the fickleness of the magazine world, that may be a very good thing.
What is Movmnt?
According to the founders, it is a magazine for the online generation, for the urban lifestyle citizen, and the young, the independent and the curious. It is also about dance, fashion, music and society—and the blending of each into the other to create something…more.
CJ, a dancer, and obviously from his interview, sees it more as a mature dance magazine and I think he is right. It is a blend of music, art, dance and fashion with some interesting POV’s on culture but it was founded by a dancer and a person greatly interested in the dance world. That influence shows—and may turn out to be one of the magazine’s weaknesses if not carefully handled.
First Thoughts
The first thing that struck me with this magazine was how difficult it was to get a copy of it. The magazine currently is a niche market, especially with a small subscriber base of around 23,000 and distribution heavily focused on the dance world. To give you a perspective, another magazine I read, and by no means a BIG magazine, Women’s Health, has an average monthly distribution of over 900,000 with over a third of that as mailed subscriptions (i.e. yearly subscribers.) It also distributes monthly not quarterly like Movmnt. So we are talking a lot of paper being processed. Women’s Health is also a niche market magazine. It’s not a perfect comparison, but it gives you an idea of the hurdles a small startup has to deal with in the magazine business. Those hurdles are daunting and just for that, magazine publishers should be heartily commended for their bravery and bravado.
To give you a better idea, two other dance magazines that I found (and recognized as having read before, so they were familiar to me) when I googled for dance magazines, Dance Magazine and Dance Spirit, are claiming to “reach” over 300,000 and 700,000 readers. They didn’t give actual subscriber numbers, so take those numbers with a grain of salt. They could be claiming a yearly total rather than an actual subscriber base—you always need to try to unspin marketing and advertising numbers. Dance Magazine also says though, that (of their subscribers) they have over 24,000 subscribers that are dance instructors and that 92% of their overall readership is dance related.
That is a niche market! It’s also the way most magazines survive now, so don’t knock it.
Of my searches online for dance magazines, since I couldn’t find ANY dance magazines on my local magazine racks for several months, Movmnt did not come up once in the list. This is also a problem they should address, especially for a targeted audience that is the online generation. Keep in mind, if I did a targeted search, I found Movmnt, but not if I did a generalized search for “dance magazine” or “lifestyle magazine” or similar.
Movmnt might be also distributing itself through dance studios and subscriptions (and supposedly bookstores) but it’s going up against some heavy, “totally focused on dance” competition.
On a grander scale, there were actually very few dance magazines out there. None on the magazine racks, not even the two I mentioned, over the past two months, but also a real dearth (comparatively) online as well. We are talking a small niche here, which is surprising to me.
With the growing popularity of dance reality shows like the summer hit So You Think You Can Dance pulling in viewers on the order of 10 million or so (and in 18-49’ers, too, with a finale that pulled in an impressive 11 share) and the mega hit, Dancing With The Stars with audience totals double to triple the size of Fox’s SYTYCD, (with 26-28 million for the finale and around a 14 share) not to mention the popularity and rise of dance movies, you would think there would be a similar rise in magazine interest.
It’s a muddle. Maybe the online generation isn’t interested in magazines that much? According to recent changes in the industry, the teen market is certainly going that way with teen magazines dropping right and left and those remaining scrambling to reinvent themselves online and off in order to coax readers away from large social networking sites like MySpace. (FoxNews.com, Sept. 1, 2006, “Teen Magazines Dwindling, Web Publications Flourishing”)
It’s not just teen magazines, or even young adult. It’s media, especially print media, in general that is declining. This is one reason for the rise in niche marketing. It’s also the reason so many magazines and newspapers and even televisions stations and networks are still rushing to the Web (and have been for at least ten years now.) The online generation is real and that generation prefers the online world and the mobile world to the world of print and television.
It’s not a death knell. It never is. (Television was supposed to be the death knell for radio, radio was supposedly the death knell for newspapers and so on. The Web was supposed to be the death knell for …well…everything. It has been and isn’t.) So what is it? It’s media convergence—what I’m always harping about on this blog. It’s transformative rather than destructive. Networks have figured out that hit shows on TV can be rebroadcast on the Web. Ugly Betty was a surprise hit on the Web, just as it is a current hit on traditional broadcast. Newspapers are finding new ways to revitalize themselves in a new web format that augments their print versions without destroying them. The same goes for magazines, even though the road is tougher for them, as it always has been.
Remember, the Baby Boomer generation is still around, still very much alive, still kicking and lively and still holding and spending -A LOT- of money. This is not grandma in a rocking chair. This is grandma the rock climber! Magazines and newspapers in print form are this generation’s preferred media, along with television and television newscasts. There’s still money to be made—and it isn’t in wheelchairs. Advertisers often forget this in the rush to court the young and beautiful (and often broke)—but then remember it when they start checking their numbers to see who is really buying their products.
But the online world offers a way to replenish the supply of viewers, readers, consumers and subscribers and that generation is young and mobile and not as interested in sitting down for hours and reading. (A pity really…but also a generalization, too, since everyone is unique and different.) They prefer (in general) the online world and the mobile world.
And the online/mobile worlds are heady and fast and hard to keep up with—they are always changing and completely changeable. In a way, it’s a media outlet's or advertiser’s nightmare—one slip and you’re slammed relentlessly—and publicly. One superb move or innovation and you’re hailed as a god, again very publicly. No, it’s not for the timid but the potential gains for any media outlet or media minded group (like musicians) are beyond comparison. A niche market can suddenly take off and be a major player—or it can (likely) remain a niche (or perhaps diminish even more.)
So niche markets will remain niche markets and only a few news sources or magazines will reach a broader demographic, breaking free of the niche.
But what about a magazine that is a meld rather than a niche and with only a tentative foothold in the online world?
Movmnt—a true reflection of online culture, a media meld rather than a niche.
Movmnt may end up evolving into another dance magazine. I suspect that its subscriber base will help determine its evolving orientation. As of now, it truly is more an entertainment and lifestyle magazine with a heavy emphasis on dance and a lesser emphasis on music, cultural stories and art (in that order.) The articles and images reflect that diversity.
However, the reason I suspect it may end up a dance magazine, albeit a more maturely minded one that offers more than technique articles and reports on competitions, is that reading it, I found myself often stymied by the articles and images related to dance. I got the definite impression that the writers “assumed” that I knew already who they were talking about—and this remember, is from a “startup” magazine with no established rep or pattern in the industry yet. The fact is that if you mention a choreographer, perhaps a god or goddess in the dance world, I probably will not know who this person is and will not be able to just understand why the writer considers them so special. The writer needs to let me know why this person is special and what they’ve done and put it in terms that I, as a regular person and not a dancer deeply involved in the dance world, will understand.
I might know that Mia Michaels is a choreographer, but I only know that because I watched So You Think You Can Dance and the producers of the show made it very clear who she was and what she had accomplished and why that was such a big deal. Plus, I got to see her choreography at least once during the show—again called to my attention by the show’s format.
I might know who Debbie Allen is, but I don’t know her as a choreographer or even that much as a dancer. I know her as an actress and a good one—and mainly from Fame, the movie and the TV series.
However, in both issues, I often found this problem, though by the second issue, the situation of explanation first and backgrounding had improved. However, backgrounding on columnists could still be improved. I also found this problem with some of the other sections, but it wasn’t as dramatic as the dance sections and it improved by the second issue. If you’re talking about new artists, don’t assume I know who you are talking about. If you say their work is innovative, don’t assume I know why. Tell me why. Tell me who thinks it’s so innovative and why they think so. Is it just your opinion or the industry’s? And don’t make me feel bad if I don’t know who or what you are talking about—I’m hear to listen and learn, so teach me. Win me over.
I did not find this situation as often in the other pieces in the magazine, the ones not related to dance. There, the writers didn’t seem to assume as much and presented a background to help you understand why they were so crazy over this artist. And in general cultural articles, I found the least bias and the best presentation to an audience that wouldn’t necessarily have a background in the subject of interest. Therefore, I suspect the bias of the founders may be showing here. Possibly, they just forget as they write that not everyone is going to immediately know what they are talking about. This works fine for a dance niche (since even beginning dancers who don’t know this stuff will probably be told by their teachers why it is important.) However, it does not work for a more lifestyle/fashion/music/dance/culture arena where you can’t assume any level of depth of expertise in your audience, just a general curiosity and willingness to learn.
If you’re targeting an online, urban lifestyle reader then that doesn’t automatically imply a dance aficionado.
Second, overall, I didn’t find the covers that compelling. If I had seen this magazine on a stand, knowing nothing about it, I would likely not have purchased it. I preferred the first issue cover to the second, though I did understand the second issue cover better when I realized it was tied to an article on an artist. However, text layout and copywriting on the second cover did strike me as more sophisticated and better targeted to get my (the potential reader’s) attention.
In the writing, I found it uneven but improving by the second issue. On an even stranger note, in the first issue (not the second) some of the writing alienated me. It was almost too literati and almost condescending with big, twisty, flowery prose and heavy wordiness meant more to impress English Lit professors and less intended to be understood clearly. Stylistic doesn’t mean overdone, nor does it mean a pure journalistic form. However, there should be a midway point, a balancing point, between straight unadorned speech and philosophical literature. Again, who is the target reader here? I somehow doubt it’s dancers in this case, but it also doesn’t seem to jive well with the online generation either. By the second issue, it had toned down a notch and the magazine seemed to be on its way to finding its own unique style and voice.
Lauren Adams stands out with some very good pieces and D. Michael Taylor was simply a standout overall and with an exceptional piece on MySpace which I heartily enjoyed. (As of this writing, MySpace is now running over 134 million.)
The magazine is printed on heavy paper which gives it a stable and classy feel, more book-like than flimsy magazine-like. However, with the heavy printing and dark tones often found in the first issue, it actually added a slightly ponderous feel to the magazine. By the second issue, with its lighter, brighter and less heavy printing and color, it worked in the magazines favor, giving it a finished, polished, classy look.
On a very nitpicky note, as I’ve already mentioned how dark and heavy the first issue was in places, enough for me to notice, dark in color tones and heavy in print/type, the transitions from advertisements to articles was sometimes difficult. Often, they blended together and I couldn’t tell one from the other. This might have been intentional on the part of the designers but I doubt it was helpful to either the reading of the articles or the deciphering of the ads by readers. It was jarring, to say the least, since I might suddenly realize that a picture with copy on one page isn’t really associated with the article next to it.
Again, that said, by the second issue, there was a dramatic change in overall design and all to the good. It was brighter, more colorful (without being crass or cheap) and didn’t have the same heavy-handed feel that the first sometimes did. The advertisements ‘popped’ more and definitely grabbed my attention. They, too, weren’t cheap or crass looking, but rather, artistic, clever, vivid and compelling. Overall, the visuals were better and improving, though some of the second issue still felt very harsh and was hard to read. And while the visuals were better, some were still too artsy and confusing. I don’t mean the beautiful photography for the “Move for Aids” article. Mainly, I still don’t know if “Urban Angels” is an ad, a photo spread of dancers I should know (again, why?) or an over the top photo shoot that turned into a distracting exercise in excessive Photoshop experimentation. I don’t mind experimentation but in this case, this one didn’t work for me.
The content was also more focused and easier to read. However, “Dancer VIP” was almost a non-sequitor. A lovely piece of photography but nothing in it explained to me who this person was and why I should consider them a very important person beyond their name, their profession as a principle dancer and an obscure quote that didn’t really work for me. Again, I think the dance bias that assumes I will just know was at play again.
Finally, there are two items that I want to call out as innovative and refreshing and very, very promising. Things like this make me WANT to read a magazine like this and reread it—and tell my friends about it.
First, the idea of doing fashion shoots & spreads with dancers rather than models. It’s a wonderful idea and something not seen (outside of dance magazines with dancers wearing dance costumes for sale.) In the first issue, it wasn’t all that I would wish it to be—there was something not quite right about the spread. Again, it was dark and not that exciting or compelling and even the clothing didn’t pop, much less the dancers (often in shadow…too much shadow.) However, by the second issue, it was amazing, if a bit tamer than the first exuberant experiment. The colors were brilliant and vibrant and seemed to capture the vibrancy of the dancers. The dancers were clearly defined, as were the clothes, and everything popped. I didn’t feel that every shot was a winner, nor every piece of clothing shown off to best advantage (or the dancer for that matter, since it was less dance and more fashion pose) but I definitely wanted to pin a few of those shots to my wall just so that I could stare at them—this included the clothing. Nothing is more appealing that a hot outfit on a hot body, and not one that is slim because of anorexia nervosa. I definitely love this trend of fashion plus dancer and can’t wait to see the next one—hopefully, as exuberant as issue one but with the finesse, color and control of issue 2’s “Army of Me.”.
Second, the "Army of Me" article was a standout. Not so much in content, but rather in design, art and communication methodology, even beyond the fashion/dancer angle already mentioned. It was a beautifully done piece of work. The layout and design was refreshing, surprising and very compelling—and without sacrificing readability! Here the “fashion meets dancer” idea works and shows off the clothing to great effect. Danny Tidwell can definitely wear clothes (and make you want to go out and buy whatever he’s wearing, too.)
And while “Wake Up Call” seemed another non-sequitor, even more so than “Dancer VIP” because of the lack of fluidity between the poetry and background information in the first part (along with the fashion shoot) and the sudden list of world transgressions in the second—there was no obvious link between the two—the transition to the article “Army of 3” was a clever twist that did work because of the commonality of names and sense of “us against them” so easily conveyed by the accompanying photography of the “3” in that article, if not the “3” in the previous article. That article, too, while different stylistically than the previous one, was well-written, interesting and compellingly photographed. It also fit with the overall feel and design of issue 2.
Overall
Overall, this magazine shows great promise and some wonderful innovations that could easily reverberate throughout the fashion and magazine industry. It has some great writing and photography and while both are choppy at times, they are improving steadily—as are all the aspects of the magazine, even the ad layouts and transitions in content, which frankly, is more difficult than you might think, certainly more difficult than just improving the quality of individual content pieces.
There are definitely challenges ahead for this magazine. Targeting of its audience is one, finding that audience is another. The founders may find it easier to just cut back on what the magazine is innovating and become another dance magazine fighting for dancer mindshare. I sincerely hope not, since a great deal will be lost, I believe, if they do that. This isn’t a dance magazine, but it doesn’t easily fit into another niche, which may prove problematic in marketing itself to readers and advertisers.
It’s really more akin to a fashion magazine but with innovative twists and a better feel for intelligent adults as well as complex (not sound bite) cultural and world issues. It just chooses to express those values through a mixed media method—art, music and dance.
In that sense, it is an online generation magazine, rather than a dance magazine.
However, given that, the challenges are fierce to gain the hearts and minds (and dollars) of this generation. It’s going against heavyweights from People to Vogue to Cosmopolitan to InStyle to Rolling Stone. It needs a stronger online presence and more interactions with that online community. It shouldn’t abandon its dance/music/art roots but it should always be conscious of who its audience is and who it wants for an audience.
And through all that, it needs to remember to keep innovating and pushing new boundaries (always with quality control and an objective view of itself so that it doesn’t slip into either trite mediocrity or conceited self-involvement) in order to stand out against the bigger, more established, monied giants—but giants that are still only tiptoeing into a new world where brave and brazen movements are required for survival.
Perhaps Movmnt picked an apropos name…
Related articles:
Part One of This Article: Interview with CJ Tyson, Board of Advisors to the magazine, and professional dancer.
Serious articles: Review of So You Think You Can Dance LIVE Tour Premier (Seattle, WA) and the Review that included Denise Wall's Dance Energy and the NYC Dance Alliance.
Spoof (related) article (Travis Wall): Spoof humor article about whether Travis is a clone of famous Canadian actor, Gordon Michael Woolvett
This article may be copied in whole or in part, as long as fair use rules are observed, no parts are modified from the original and credit is given when quoted or reposted.
CG Anderson is a 10 year new media provocateur involved in media, art, technology and the online world. Also a writer, blogger and novelist. CG's comments are personal and opinionated and solely the responsibility of the author, so there. Don't like the opinions, disagree, agree, don't know? Great, make a comment—clean ones will be allowed, netiquette-challenged ones will be ignored!
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