Niche News 8/20/26: Local Mags win dotCOMM & Small Business of the Year
Here’s what’s happening across niche publishing this week:
Small magazine, big trophy
Congrats to this year’s online-only launch SOCKO!, covering the New Jersey film and television industry. With just sockomagazine.com, a Substack, and an Instagram channel, it just won Best eMagazine at the 2026 dotCOMM Awards, an international awards program for websites and digital communications. The website is very cool and worth a look. A quarterly print edition arrives this fall.
Speaking of awards, savvy NPB member Keith Yarber, publisher of TOPS Magazine in Lexington, Kentucky was just named Commerce Lexington’s 2026 Small Business of the Year (The Lane Report). Yarber is a serial innovator: locals who need a LinkedIn headshot will be able to get their picture taken at his new vodcast studio located in Tops’ office, complete with a neon Tops sign, fancy host chairs, and professional lighting and sound. One goal is to engage the audience — and advertisers — by inviting them to the office – old-fashioned, right? We love the idea.
The tony, upscale Jetset Magazine — and yes we mean people who own jets — went a step further unveiling a $2.7 million renovation of its Scottsdale, AZ headquarters (Phoenix Business Journal). The quarterly luxury magazine aimed at high-net-worth readers distributes to nearly 500 private airports, plus private jets, yacht charters and luxury resorts. Jetset also holds events at its own corporate aircraft hangar, including an Arizona Business Aviation Association reception and a Super Bowl party with red-carpet arrivals where guests watched the game on a large screen with founder, Darrin Austin. JetSet’s contests, such as Favorite Chef, America’s Favorite Pet, The Greatest Baker, and Mr & Ms Health & Fitness, have a unique twist. Austin also owns Crow Vote, a digital marketing platform that facilitates cause marketing, allowing supporters to purchase additional votes, with proceeds going to charity.
AI
Thumb on the scales: Most entrepreneurial publishers do not have licensing deals with OpenAI, so we were not happy to learn this week how, according to an OtterlyAI study, those who do have a license earn 48% more news citations on ChatGPT than those who don’t, and five oversized corporate publishers, Future plc, Forbes, People Inc., CondĂ© Nast, and Hearst, account for 69% of all of those citations (Markets Insider/OtterlyAI). Plus ça change.
And Google, no! Your News Initiative’s TechStack Checklist program, which assigns a tech coach and gives $5,000 to some local weeklies via the AAN association, does not make up for Gemini’s content grift. Congrats anyway to Valley Sentinel, East Bay Express, Santa Fe Reporter, Baltimore Beat, Bucks County Beacon, Denver Westword, Pacific Sun, Newsberg, Rockton-Roscoe News, Athens County Independent, North Coast Journal, Georgia Voice, and Seven Days, its first recipients. This industry deserves to be supported in any way, especially by a top content predator.
Reader revenues
Apollo, an international fine art magazine, has launched a digital archive subscription tier of $35 every three months, or $47 with the magazine, powered and hosted digitally via Exact Editions, giving readers searchable access to generations of art criticism. The archive was digitized in 2025 on its 100th anniversary (Press Gazette). For media that do not fit neatly into an AI query, this is an interesting option; we’ll be following how it goes.
Data play
Bobby Bonett, president of Boca Raton-based Sandow, landed a major win for its portfolio of architectural and design magazines (Design Milk, Interior Design, Luxe Interiors + Design, and Metropolis) this year when he purchased Archetonic, a searchable database of 400,000+ industry products with 16 million users (Baker McKenzie). The platform directs users from the product page to the manufacturers’ website.
Here’s where the play gets interesting: another Sandow-owned company, Material Bank, uses the sample box model on steroids as a revenue driver. A designer can search across 650+ brands (think flooring, textiles, paint, wallcoverings, etc), pull samples from several manufacturers, and put them into a cart. Then, in a logistics miracle, Material Bank puts these samples into a box that ships overnight, arriving by 10:30 a.m., for free to approved design professionals. Manufacturers pay for the service. With the Archetonic purchase, Bonett clearly has a tiger by the tail. We’ll be interested to see how he structures the company around these overlapping audiences and models.
Launches
Nashville CityNowNext, a digital only B2B publisher focused on real estate development news, will add a print magazine this fall. Founder Robert Loop’s previous launches include Emerge-Exp, B2B networking events in Huntsville and Mobile, Alabama, and Jackson, Tennessee; The Quick Rundown (TQR), a monthly newsletter that tracks commercial real estate projects for CRE leaders; and, last March, CharlotteNowNext.
