“Apple’s Newsstand launched with the release of iOS 5 on October 12th, and by any measure, it appears to be a big win for Apple and for publishers alike. Since the iPad took the technology world by storm 18 months ago, it’s been an interesting time for publishers with several notable App Store rejections, industry confusion about how to implement tablet subscriptions, and a fair amount of criticism of Apple’s 30% revenue share. It appears now that Newsstand is the real deal, delivering on the iPad’s promise of a new dawn for publishers. Huzzah!”

That was from November 29th, 2011, just over a year ago, and it came with the headline The Future is Bright for Newsstand Publishers.

And the American Journalism Review, under the headline “Apple’s Gift to Publishers,” from about the same time, said this: “News Corp.’s iPad-only publication, the Daily, vied for first place with National Geographic for gross revenue generated in the Newsstand section.”

Let’s actually look at some “math.”

“The Daily” had 80,000 subscribers at the beginning of this year, and shuttered with what they said was 100,000 subscribers.

100,000 subscribers at $40 is $4 million dollars a year. After Apple’s 30%, that is $2.8 million a year. Let’s round that down to a fairly delicious $52,000 a week, or $200K a month, because some subscribers cancel and Apple refunds them, and because you should always be conservative.

So, let’s say you plan to break even basically, so you don’t have to pay taxes. To do that, you’ll want to “spend all your money,” so then say your tech team and related costs are $30K a month (haha, that is “1.5 developers and some other stuff,” so that should probably be higher, because “dealing with Apple” is almost a full-time job, but hey), then you have five junior reporters, which is $30K a month if you don’t give them health insurance.

Then maybe you have two editors, who are also “art directors,” and a hefty freelance budget, and also someone to promote stories and the app because subscribers are your bread and butter. Then you will probably have “an executive,” because someone has to do the Quickbooks and fire people. But make that executive a part-owner, so you can pay them half the amount they would really want. And probably also give equity to the tech heads and the head of ad sales, so you pay less salary and get more devotion.

Because right, you’d want an ad sales team. You could get four really cheap hardworking ad people for probably a total of $50K a month, and they could have benefits, because they will not work otherwise. There. Done. You have a successful, amazing, exciting iPad magazine, for $200K a month. Maybe. Give or take.

And you have a staff of about 15 people. Probably you could afford 17 people maximum.

You probably can and SHOULD do this! Perhaps “start small.”

Until July, “The Daily” had 170 employees — ten times that number.

And yes, when you have subscriber attrition, and a big burst of your early one-year subscriptions runs out, and they don’t re-up, you just lay some people off. And then you get to play the game of “try and keep growing, but with less people.” So in that way the “new media business” is identical to the “old media business.”

“Huzzah”!

Today, “The Daily” slot in Newsstand has been taken over by “How It Works.” How does it work? You tell me.

Is “Homeland” “Buffy”? Spoilers and theories.

“My rule of thumb is that if you wake up not with a massive hangover but with enough of a feeling to think ‘I drank too much last night’, you will have drunk enough to damage your brain cells.”
 — Some doctor, who hates fun, happiness and probably himself, is all “blah blah blah drinking is bad.” Whatever, as if LIFE doesn’t damage brain cells in a million other ways. Anyhow, this article includes the alcohol diaries of a cross-section of Britons; a surprising amount of rose gets drunk on that benighted island.

Photo by AISPIX, via Shutterstock

“For the first time in Barbie’s more than 50-year history, Mattel is introducing a Barbie construction set that underscores a huge shift in the marketplace. Fathers are doing more of the family shopping just as girls are being encouraged more than ever by hypervigilant parents to play with toys (as boys already do) that develop math and science skills early on.”

Miguel Gutierrez dances at BAM! Do you like dance? Then you will like that. Lisa Dierbeck and pals read at Bookcourt. Animal Collective plays Terminal 5. Josh Fruhlinger is at the Animal Farm Reading Series at Legion Bar. And something called “Diarrhea Planet” plays something resembling music???

Now that we are experiencing The Holidays — and don’t kid yourself about that — I would like to extend a belated happy Black Friday to anyone who observed or experienced that Holiday, or whatever it is exactly, like maybe an Economic Day of Obligation? Non-religious Holy Day?

I don’t agree too much with the idea of Black Friday, and I try to not judge people who want to have Black Friday. You wanna shop, go and do that thing. Shop till you pop, Black Friday, and now, what, Thanksgiving, Brown Thursday, they got you shopping now? Wowee, go ahead and go shopping on Black Friday Eve, fine. They might run out of your items at the nice price, so go and get you some, and, ultimately, it’s all good for the Economy, right?

Advertising whips up The People into a Feeding Frenzy of Consuming, and people go forth and buy stuff, which is just like the Election and the voting, seriously, all the kabillions of campaign dough that get spent on TV ads where the opponents start out with The Issues and then end up assassinating each other’s character? Those are fun, eh, the cheap-shot negative ads? Does anybody say they went to vote because they saw an ad on TV? Nobody, right? I wouldn’t, even if I did, I mean, I think it sounds dumb to say you would do that, right? I would never admit I am dumb, let people figure that out for themselves, I always say. It would totally make you look dumb, to say you voted because of an Advertisement. But still, there are all these ads! That’s a lot of fucking money that gets spent on those commercials, man, and whatever other stuff you need for an Election: websites, brochures, flyers, leaflets, stickers, buttons, shit like that? Coffee mugs? Does a button for a candidate make somebody vote? No way, right? But somehow, The People get all lathered up to go vote and the companies that make stickers and websites get paid for helping, so that’s good for the Economy, when people spend money on goods and services.

So as far as all the shopping, people are already going to buy stuff because of The Holidays, that’s not going to change, right? What do you care when they do it? I mean, you will probably buy some stuff because it is The Holidays, but you will do it on your own terms, not because you saw an ad for the Midnite Madness with a bunch of flatscreens for sale for the first hundred customers or whatever.

The other thing that happens now as The Holidays continue is this Cyber Monday thing, where people who probably never set foot in a store on The Day Before Black Friday Formerly Known as Thanksgiving, or on the actual Black Friday itself, can sit on their ass in front of a computer (or stand up at their standing desk because sitting on your ass all day will kill you) and buy stuff. If it was simply about buying stuff, everyone would stay home on the Internet or the QVC and stuff on cable. People who Cyber on Monday are people who take no Joy in being out in The World with People buying stuff, and I can understand that, because being Out There with People is frequently disgusting. Some shoppers just want the stuff, and now with Cyber Monday, they can get a deal, maybe, and do it while they are at work, right? And it slows down the whole fucking Internet, doesn’t it? My computer was slow at work on Cyber Monday and somebody told me it was because of all the shopping. Is this true? It doesn’t concern me that you thieve time and Internet off your company while you Cyber Monday, but if you are slowing down my computer, you are now a problem.

I will maybe try during my The Holidays to buy stuff for gifts from a local place that doesn’t sell stuff made in China, unless it’s something that should be made in China, which is what? What do they have at Target that should be Made in America? I don’t have any illusions about Target, man, they are just a nicer Wal-Mart. I always go and buy some stuff from my local merchants, and guess what, that shit costs more, because my local merchants don’t sell in volume, and they don’t make their employees work on Holy Shit Thursday (I gotta work?) and stupid fucking Black Friday so that hordes of frantic people can get a deal on a microwave made in China.

I sincerely hope anyone who didn’t really want to work on Black Friday or Pre-Black Thanksgiving Thursday was not conscripted into service, or at least if they were drafted, I hope they got paid extra to be in the midst of all that rabid bargaineering for those deals. They should get paid extra. Since it’s good for the economy, Thankshopping and Black Friday should be U.S. Holidays, and people should get paid extra to work those days in stores, which are the Churches of Shopping, non-denominational. Then maybe with that Thursday and Friday officially designated as Official Government Shopping Days, we can just have Thursday Before Black Friday and Black Friday on the calendar and then move Thanksgiving to the Thursday before, hah? That would work for a few years, right?

You gotta figure Black Friday must also be a big day for Shoplifters, eh? Lots of confusion, way too many people in the store, mayhem, screaming, fights, rudeness, children., etc. I don’t know from Black Friday, man, I would never go to a store on Black Friday, are you kidding me? Look what happened to this one shoplifter, allegedly, an alleged Shoplifter who was allegedly choked to death at a fucking Wal-Mart, Jesus Christ, seriously, Wal-Mart? I think if you are a shoplifter, the last thing you think is ever going to happen to you is that you will be executed summarily on your Happy Hunting Grounds. I will of course wait for the Wheels of Justice to grind, but I am not optimistic about this case. The tree of Shopping must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of shoppers and shoplifters.

An O-Nalysis: My Recommendations For Oprah

Mr. Wrong can converse with you via many medias.

★★★ Twice or three times in the night, the shuddering blast of a ship’s horn cut through the windows and the shade, into the blank and trackless depths of sleep. Daylight showed the explanation: real blankness, pale fog out every window. The fog thickened, if anything, during and after breakfast, before gradually thinning, leaving a white opacity in the sky at lunchtime. In the afternoon, among the temporary evergreen groves on the sidewalks, the fog-remnants were a golden, light-scattering haze. Pushing a stroller briskly over to and into the Park, trying to stay ahead of the dusk, was enough exertion to make the outer coat a burden. Even when twilight fell on the playground, it was not so cold that children couldn’t rebel against their hoods and hats. Later, there were raindrops sprayed across the dark windowpanes of home, and a wet shine on Broadway in the near distance.

“The establishment media has become a part of the establishment class. That means it’s against their best interests to do the right thing and expose the corruption that plagues Washington — if they did, they’d be fighting against themselves. At Breitbart News, I plan to investigate these people. Together with Breitbart News, I’m going to expose corruption in Washington.”
 — A blogger is moving from one wingnut website to another, and the establishment media is all over it!

“[A] side effect of the congested, cramped, cement-laded city life is that the temperature tends to be a little warmer year-round, a shift known as the ‘urban heat island’ effect. As it turns out, these changes aren’t only affecting cities’ human populations. In Australia, where spiders already have a propensity to be terrifyingly large, new research by University of Sydney PhD candidate Lizzy Lowe, says The Age, found that Sydney’s higher temperatures and easier access to food are driving the spiders grow even bigger.”

The Delights Of ‘Diamond Joe Biden: Vice Presidential Jams’

Show of hands for yes: did the internet turn on you this year?

Oh thank God, I’m not the only one. What in the world happened to the internet this year, you guys? The internet had, heretofore, been so delightful! Filled with all manner of fascinating learnings and point-and-stare characters and all those exclamation points!! Exclamation points for days!!! An embarrassment of exclamation points!!!!

It seems, however, that this year brought a new internet. A sullen one. A teenaged one, but without any of the fun teenaged antics like kegstands or unwanted pregnancies. This internet was all moderate-to-severe acne and monosyllabic responses.

There were, however, a few shining stars among the constellation of internet pimples in 2012. Among them this delightful pinboard devoted to CATSES!!!! But even CATSES is not enough to brighten us all in perpetuity, and so, in the interest of making 2013 a better year on the internet, we’ve gathered up a few contributors to share the things they’ve been enjoying while the rest of us have been suffering through the internet’s Ayn Rand phase. These favorite internet things will be appearing here over the next weeks. My own contribution to the Internet Relief Society effort is a Spotify playlist that Awl Pal Katie Baker-Bakes brought to my attention in early November. It’s called “Diamond Joe Biden: Vice Presidential Jams” and it’s a revelation. There’s no better description for it than the one proffered by a friend to whom, in the spirit of paying Katie’s good deed forward, I’d sent the link: “This playlist is so utterly ridiculous and yet here I am, listening to it at work.”

It’s got everything: Thin Lizzy, Bad Company, a version of “Black Betty” from the Dukes of Hazzard Motion Picture Soundtrack.

There’s a bit of Whitesnake to slake your rolling-around-vixenishly-on-luxury-automobiles thirst.

ELO is represented.

There is some Queen.

It’s brought to a rousing conclusion with “The Star Spangled Banner” by KISS.

It is perfect in every possible way.

But the most perfect part about this playlist is that you can totally imagine Joe Biden listening to it in the car on his way to Costco, getting amped up on Alice Cooper, snickering boyishly to himself over all the things he’s gonna buy because Jill isn’t there to stop him. “A food dehydrator!” he’ll exclaim excitedly to the state of Delaware plush toy hanging from his rearview mirror, because Joe Biden has apparently stashed all of the internet’s exclamation points in Dick Cheney’s now-unused underground bunker, “I’ve always wanted one of those! I bet Michelle will love my homemade turkey jerky, since it’s low-fat and stuff. Maybe she’ll finally teach me how to do that Douglas dance I keep hearing Sasha and Malia teasing her about.”

I love it so much that I sent its creator, Sean Gentille of the Sporting News, a thank you note for taking the time to put it together.

And then I wrote 500+ words about how much I love it for the internet, which will undoubtedly repay my kindness by mouthing off to me about how its curfew is so unfair.

Jolie Kerr can mostly be found on Twitter, answering questions about barf and other personal fluids. Photo of Joe Biden courtesy of the White House Flickr Feed.