Upstart New Heights Magazine changes name, expands reach
From the Tampa Bay Business Journal:
TAMPA — Newspapers are struggling, and magazines around the country are fighting to find black in the bottom line. But locally, one glossy niche publication isn’t part of the trend.
New Heights Magazine has reached a circulation of more than 30,000 readers in just one year.
The publication, which launched last year covering 10 neighborhoods in what is described as Tampa’s “urban corridor,” has changed its moniker to Urban Corridor Tampa, or UC Tampa for short. The shift reflects a larger geographic footprint — now covering 25 neighborhoods in Hillsborough County — and a goal to create a branding that could show up in expansions into other markets.
Uniting through print
“When we started the magazine, it was geared more toward the residents of Seminole Heights and Tampa Heights, so the name made sense at the time,” said Jay McGee, UC Tampa’s publisher. “But now we’re going into so many more places, and we needed a name to reflect that.”
Changing a name, even for such a young publication, involves risk. McGee, however, said he coined the term “urban corridor” some years ago to describe the parts of Hillsborough that are beyond the office centers of downtown Tampa and Westshore but are vital to serving the overall commercial community. Those include Seminole Heights, Ybor City, West Tampa and Hyde Park.
Now McGee hopes to reach into South Tampa to dispel once and for all the border that Kennedy Boulevard creates.
“I cannot believe I still hear that kind of mentality,” McGee said. “It seems that people south of Kennedy are just trained to go to certain places and will ignore great spots like Ybor. There’s really a lot of great business to choose from throughout the corridor, and we hope the magazine will unite them.”
UC Tampa is published every seven weeks and distributed free through newsstands and by direct mail to affluent areas. Ad revenue has increased by more than 400 percent since it launched in January 2008, and that has allowed the magazine to increase its physical size from 24 pages initially to 48 pages today.
Still, UC Tampa is just breaking even as each revenue jump seems to result in some sort of geographic expansion.
Filling gaps
Nationally, magazines are looking to cut circulation or slow distribution frequencies to make up for advertising shortfalls. Of the 790 magazines tracked by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, nearly half showed a negative percent change in combined total paid and verified circulation in the fourth quarter of 2008, according to Media Life Magazine.
Locally, Fourthdoor Creative Group’s Blu, a joint venture with The Tampa Tribune’s Media General Inc. parent through Rain Publishing Group, is preparing for its second quarterly issue after what has been described as a successful inaugural edition published for Super Bowl XLIII.
“They deliver to a very niche audience that caters to specific advertisers’ needs,” said John Schueler, president of Media General’s (NYSE: MEG) Florida Communications Group and the company’s representative with Rain Publishing. “Newspapers are struggling because they have a much shorter shelf life. But with these kind of print products, you can fill gaps that exist at that level in Tampa.”
But upstart publication Tampa Bay CEO Magazine hasn’t printed a hardcopy edition in more than a year and still utilizes an old cover to lead its Web site.
http://tampabay.bizjournals.com/tampabay/stories/2009/03/23/story7.html?b=1237780800%5E1796268
