Newswire: Dogue upsets Vogue and an $800 million data deal
Condé Nast is not amused by Dogue, or at least by someone else’s Dogue. Vogue’s publisher is suing the independent magazine, Dogue, alleging its covers and name infringe Vogue’s trademarks (The Fashion Law). Dogue is actually French for Mastiff. The tiny independent dog-fashion magazine was founded in Beverly Hills in 2019 as an Instagram project called Coverdogs, featuring dogs photographed and styled like high-fashion cover models. The social media play has since produced about 24 issues of the print magazine, Dogue, since 2021, and applied for a trademark in 2022.
Founder Olga Portnaya, with help from a small volunteer team, reportedly sells only about 100 printed copies per issue and is paritally funded by a Patreon account. Flash forward to 2024: Condé Nast’s Vogue introduced its own online dog-cover project, also called Dogue, featuring celebrity dogs. Suddenly there was not enough room in the backyard for both dogues to play.
Portnaya argues that her publication is an obvious parody and that Condé Nast entered the Dogue market after she had established the concept. She is crowdfunding the legal defense. DOGUE’s fundraising account.
Ironically these aren’t even the first Dogue parodies. A separate Dogue book parody was published by Main Street Press back in 1986.
In other legal news: Stars and Stripes’ fired staff, including the publisher, editor, and a reporter, have sued the Pentagon and Defense Secretary Hegseth, alleging First Amendment retaliation tied to coverage of deteriorating conditions on an aircraft carrier (Editor & Publisher).
Australia to make Big Tech pay local publishers. The country passed legislation requiring platforms like Google and Meta to pay local news publishers for content, after years of industry pressure (NPR).
Curb your enthusiasm. While thinking through AI initiatives, publishers may do well to check out Tony Upoff On Media, a Substack column on what companies are actually getting back from AI implementations. His answer: not much, but keep doing it.
Another “yikes” AI moment has been buzzing around LinkedIn, after Grzegorz Piechota, INMA, pointed out a looming threat to publishers selling ads on email, or relying on it as a direct relationship with readers. “Gmail, Outlook and Apple Mail — which together control 95% of the email-client market — are increasingly sorting, summarising and acting on messages before users open them. Soon, an AI agent may read your 30 morning newsletters, brief you on the three things worth knowing and suggest just one article to open,” he wrote.
Even for the New York Times, paywalls are problematic. The long shadow of a paywall cuts into all audiences, including email, according to INMA — readers act on the expectation that a locked article isn’t worth trying, before the publisher can even show its offer. “The stronger and more familiar the actual paywall, the longer its shadow,” the article pointed out.
It was enough to solicit a “Holy Cow!” comment from top media audience consultant Patricia McGuiness, of SBM Consulting.
The $800 million data deal
Data, on the other hand, is gaining in value as a source of B2B reader revenues.
We are seeing more publishers repurpose writers: Benzinga’s 52 full-time financial writers now also power a B2B data-licensing business serving 400+ brokerages, including a new Private Markets Newsfeed API (SIIA).
Data found as part of writers’ traditional financial beats is now systematically collected and repurposed for new types of news and revenue streams.
So how much value can a data play add to a magazine company? Take Zonda, a B2B data and print magazine company. In August, Zonda spun off its ten building-industry magazines — including Architect, Journal of Light Construction, and Pool & Spa — to a private, owner-operated 526 Media Group, publisher of B2B LBM (lumber and building materials) magazines.
Then Zonda sold its U.S. housing-market data business a day later to CoStar Group, a publicly traded real-estate and B2B data and media company, for a cool $800 million — what Jacob Cohen Donnelly, writing for A Media Operator, called “an $800 million line between media and intelligence.”
Last year, incidentally, 526 also picked up a small data business, acquiring Blue Book Lumber, now called Red Book Lumber, providing lumber-specific credit reports and business/marketing data.
Look for these opportunities; they may pay off in the future.
Launches
The British are coming. Homes & Gardens, a British company — not to be confused with Home & Garden, a U.S. company — is launching Anthology, a biannual glossy print magazine in the U.S. on Sept. 14. It will feature transatlantic design conversations through essays and expansive home tours (Business of Home).
