For one thing, you'll notice that the list of magazines being launched includes a strong mix of private-labeled publications for stores, enthusiast organizations and other types of very focused market niches with loyal followings and a strong desire for relevant content. These are the kinds of niches in which print media has done very well historically and also the types of publications where captive audiences are going to appeal to many advertisers and marketers. It may be less expensive to advertise online, but when you own the audience for a particular niche anyway, why not capture the value for advertisers as effectively as possible? When you're involved deeply with a very focused topic or geography, print offers a way to get very personal with an audience that still appeals to many audiences and advertisers.

But as much as new titles such as these are valiant efforts to help marketers still looking for value in their advertising budgets, there is a larger and more nagging problem that is hanging over both consumer and B2B magazines that's just not going away; namely, why are magazine publishers still so intent on maintaining gross revenues to support ultimately unsustainable cost structures? Yes, there are good reasons to demand higher revenues for quality online content, be it through higher ad rates or various subscription and pay-as-you-go plans for readers, and these are likely to start taking off as advertisers chase their audiences into online venues more aggressively. Premium outlets will continue to thrive online indefinitely if they manage the mix of content and community features effectively. But the broader truth is that the era of big media founded on high revenues from a handful of titles is largely drawing to a close. This doesn't mean that media is dying; to the contrary, media is thriving more than ever before, even as it thrived before the past several decades of media consolidation. But what it does mean is that success will be measured by different standards moving forward.

I was struck particularly by an entry posted recently in Howard Owens' blog that underscored the importance of accepting different cost structures for media moving forward. Howard notes:

In other words, while it's great to get that ten million if you know how to do it, why are publishers still so intent on launching a handful of publications that might make big revenues the old way then they can launch far easily many smaller publications online that can succeed in smaller increments very effectively? While it's not a perfect analogy for every publishing operation, I am thinking particularly of portals such as TechTarget, which is able to define and publish very discreet slices of content for very specific computer technology topics that it pays for by selling qualified leads to tech marketers. The very targeted special topic sections that The Huffington Post and other publishers are able to create rapidly and efficiently are also good examples of how online technologies can allow publishers to adapt rapidly to hot interests far more effectively than the usual "book"-oriented mentality would allow.

At the same time, many of the people who advertisers are seeking are spending more and more time with the people with whom they share common interests in social media outlets such as Facebook and brand-specific online communities managed via white-label services such as Lithium Technologies. Good editorial content will always be a draw for advertisers, but increasingly it's an extension of a core online market conversation that's managed via platforms other than news and magazine portals. The recent addition of a Facebook Connect-enabled discussion community on The Huffington Post underscores the importance of editorial content having tight connections to the personal networks that people trust to underscore their willingness to trust sources of editorial content. The fundamentals of marketing are changing before our eyes, yet media companies still whistle in the dark in search of dated metrics while opportunities to invest in the success of future metrics remain underfunded.

In this sense it's fortunate that Reed Elsevier has dared to float a GBP 824 million stock placement to gain more capital in spite of its short term effect on its share prices. If publishers should double-down on anything, it should be on raising capital to reinvest in the innovations and new business models that will sustain them well into the future. The Web has, by fiat, declared publishing to be a innovation-driven growth industry for more than a decade, even while major publishers have tried to maintain the illusion that it's still an IP-driven cash cow industry. Lower share prices from dilution may seem like a painful decision in the short run, but if publishers don't have the working capital to keep up with mean, lean operations that have invested in innovative approaches to publishing already, then they won't have much in general very shortly. For those who tried to leverage their way into a mythical king-of-the-hill media mogul position in the marketplace, well, sorry, timing is everything, they say. In the meantime, congratulations for those folks who have managed to float new print titles for very focused markets. It works for today, at least.

As announced recently by their CEO Reed Atkin, Legal River provides a marketplace in which people looking for legal services can provide information that describes their qualifications for obtaining services and that describes their needs for services anonymously to solicit offers from practicioners. While in some ways a page out of the Lending Tree playbook, Legal River is actually more of a cross between TechTarget's lead generation servicing model and a classifieds online response service. Legal River users don't reveal their personal data to potential services providers but can instead review the incoming offers anonymously and choose to deal with any of the providers who respond - or not. Legal River charges on a per-lead-provided basis, which encourages a broad range of respondents to requests, This is unlike LegalMatch, which requires an annual fee from legal professionals using the service.

Legal River is in its very early days, focusing largely on supporting tech companies in the Washington, DC area to prove out the mechanics of the model before expanding to broader markets. This is similar in approach in some ways to InsideView and Jigsaw, which honed their business information services amongst Silicon Valley companies before tackling broader markets. A good place to start as any, and one which promises to be able to scale easily into those broader markets, perhaps in partnership with some other business information services providers. I find it encouraging that companies such as Legal River are getting active backing at a time in which some business information suppliers have pulled back on some of their innovation initiatives in the face of challenging markets.

Even more encouraging, though, is that the Legal River business model focuses on key productivity challenges faced both by legal services providers who need to keep marketing time to a minimum and businesses that need to find legal services more efficiently to survive and thrive in challenging times. Instead of thinking like database curators, as some B2B directories publishers continue to do, Legal River is looking at the opportunities for transactions that generate win-win business scenarios from interactions. Expect the new wave of cost-conscious financiers such as LaunchBox Digital to eye additional business-oriented publishing models as key candidates for startups that can generate revenues quickly and scale rapidly using today's cloud computing resources.