His “little black book” is filled with numbers: 685 in 2008; 704 in 2009; 170 in the first quarter of 2010. But what do they mean? We discuss the print industry’s commitment issues with Mr. Magazine.

Q: To many of us in the industry you are known simply as “Mr. Magazine,” a champion for the printed word and director of the Magazine Innovation Center at the University of Mississippi. While that’s true, you’re also one of the industry’s harshest critics, saying that major media companies are “in a coma” and “not living in this world” if they think things are going to go back to the way they were. Since we’re not going back, what needs to change?

A: The No. 1 thing is to stop the “welfare information society.” We have been giving our content and our experiences away for free for years. We’ve put people on this information welfare model for so long that they have now the sense of entitlement; they expect everything to be for free. I laugh when I now hear media companies saying, “Oh, we need to start charging online. We need to start putting up paywalls.” How about you start charging for print first?

Take Cosmopolitan magazine, which is the No. 1 selling magazine on the nation’s newsstands. We sell more copies of Cosmo, 1.7 million, every single month on the newsstands—more than any other magazine on an issue- by-issue basis.

But even that is a fraction of the amount of money Cosmo generates. Almost 70 percent of the revenue comes from advertising. So even our No. 1 magazine does not generate enough money or even 50-50 from the selling of their content.

That model worked well when advertisers had no other medium…

So now how can you take somebody who is used to receiving O, The Oprah Magazine or Esquire or GQ or Time magazine for $5 or $10 for the entire year—how can you get them now to pay $40 and $50? How can you get somebody who, for 10 years now, has been getting all this information for free on the Internet to start paying for it?

That’s where I see the major problem in our industry. That’s why we need to be in the business of looking for customers who count rather than just counting customers. We have to find a way to make money from our readers. Charging $20 and $30 and $40 for a subscription should be the norm and not the exception. We have made our print products neither a necessity nor sufficient. In fact, what we [as an industry] are doing is not dying; we are committing suicide.

Q: Who is succeeding in looking for customers who count?

A: The Economist. While everyone is talking about Newsweek dying, The Economist is doing very, very well and still they charge $99 for a subscription. If you deliver content that goes after customers who count, customers will pay. But the problem is we have no content. We keep on cutting and cutting and cutting, thinking that cutting is a good strategy for profitability. It’s not. Because what we are doing is we are reducing the experience. And the minute you have less—or you devalue that experience for me—I’m not coming back.

Q: Does it have something to do with people being willing to pay for content that they deem of “higher quality”?

A: No. People are paying $4.29 for Cosmo on the newsstands, 1.7 million of them. People are going to pay for what they deem relevant to them. It’s more about relevancy than quality. It’s more that we have lost that engaging experience that people are willing to pay for. We have devalued our content so much that we have nullified that experience. That’s why magazines like Everyday with Rachael Ray and Food Network Magazine are doing very well.

They are enhancing the experience of those people who are watching Rachael Ray on television or watching the Food Network. All that they are saying is “I want my membership card. I want something to validate that I am a member of the Food Network.” The magazine is actually that validation, that membership card. And they will pay for that.

Q: Recently Procter & Gamble launched a new custom publication, Rouge, which aims to reach 11 million households. Take that news, coupled with a recent article in the Financial Times pointing to a boom in branded magazines. Is custom and branded content the way of the future?

A: Yes. And we are going to see more—in print not only online—because of this: Human beings thrive on three basic “ships” that cruise through all human behavior—ownership, showmanship, and membership. We all love to own things; we all love to have tangible things.

We thrive on that sense of physical ownership. And virtual is not going to do it. You want a physical boyfriend, you want a physical husband, a physical wife. You can have 500 virtual ones, but you’ll never have a kid. So that physical ownership is very important.

The second one is showmanship. You want to show your membership card, you want people to see that, hey, you know, “Procter & Gamble is great—I am a member of their club. Look, they are sending me their magazine. Here is their magazine in my hands. Here it is on my coffee table.” People can see it without having to come over your shoulder and look at what you’re reading on the computer. It’s like if you are on a plane reading War and Peace, people will say, “Oh, this is an intellectual person” as opposed to you are reading a book on the Kindle, and people will say, “Oh, yeah, that’s a nice device, but what is this person reading?”

Lastly, it’s that sense of membership, the sense of belonging, that you are not alone. And it’s not unlike what I call “isolated connectivity.” Sure you have 800 friends on Facebook, yet you are home alone. Yeah, you feel the sense of connectivity, but you are still isolated.

When you have that magazine, when you have that physical aspect, you feel like you know so many other people have that card.

When I interviewed the publisher of Food Network Magazine, she told me they surveyed the 100 million households who watch the Food Network. The consensus was they wanted a paper magazine to complement their experience.

Q: You believe magazines must work harder to ensure their “print future in a digital age.” Who is doing that well, and who is failing?

A: Anybody who is killing their print editions saying, “Oh, everybody is online, we are going to be online now,” is failing. Look at magazines like Teen People and Elle Girl that supposedly folded to go online. When was the last time you heard of them? Using digital as an escape mechanism for a failed magazine is a nice excuse.

On the other hand, there are magazines that are leaders in innovation and doing really great things, like Esquire. David Granger, the editor-in-chief, is doing a lot of things to complement the print and digital worlds—not substituting one for the other. He’s using electronic covers and iPhone applications and other things. But if you read his editorial in the March issue, he said, “I’m not buying that [these things] define our future. I believe they will provide new streams of revenue and help us reach substantial new audiences. But, having worked at this for a while now, I think all these things will end up supporting and enhancing what magazines do, rather than replacing them.”

Wallpaper did the same thing, and so did Colors. A lot of magazines that are smart magazines are reversing the trend from sending their readers to the web from print. [The key is] that you have to add value—you have to give me something in print.

Q: How is the current media landscape affecting your teaching style at Ole Miss?

A: I tell my students: We are no longer just journalists who deliver news. News is free. So we are now experience makers. How can you create those experiences based on what happened? The biggest shift is that I am no longer [teaching] the five Ws and the H. I am more interested in what I call the “WIIFM factor.” “What’s in it for me?” Anybody can tweet in 140 letters or less that an accident took place down there or a tornado hit or did that or the grunions are marching and whatever. What I want my students to be interested in is: How can you explain what just happened and make sense of it to benefit your readers?

Q: Are your students receptive to this shift? Embracing it? Do you see a difference in what they’re bringing to the table now than in years past?

A: The students now, I mean, the 18- to 22-year-olds, are the prime example of the information welfare society. They grew up on the computer, they grew up online, they get everything for free. I asked them, “Where do you get your sports information?” and the majority of the class said they get their information from ESPN.com. I said, “Next month, ESPN.com is going to start charging $19 per month for their website. How many of you will pay?” Not a single person raised their hand. They said, “We’ll find another source.”

See, that sense of entitlement, that’s what we need to change. Yet, half of the class buys or reads Cosmo every month.

Q: So, the age old question, is this a societal problem or a publishing problem?

A: It’s both. Publishing is reflecting our society. Is the media dumbing down the society or is the society already dumbed down? It’s a two-way street. Isn’t it a shame that we sell less than 100,000 copies of Time on the newsstand, yet we sell 1 million copies of People, or Us Weekly? What has the more “quality” journalism? So whose fault is it that?

Q: Let’s talk numbers—685 magazine launches in 2008; 704 in 2009; 170 in the first quarter of 2010. Care to make any predictions for the rest of the year?

A: I’ll give you my standard answer. Two people can tell you the future—God and a fool. And I know I am not God, so here is the answer that’s coming from a fool. I have no earthly idea. There is no rhyme or reason. The numbers go up, they go down. It’s always like a rollercoaster.

But I think what we are seeing on the newsstands is defiance. Defiance from the publishers, defiance from the entrepreneurs who are refusing to believe that there is no room for print, that people are no longer interested in print. The truth is, people are no longer interested in print that has devalued or diluted content.

Q: Last year you said now is the time to launch a print publication. But look at Newsweek, which redesigned and is now something like $29 million in the hole.

A: Disaster.

Q: Do you still believe now is the time?

A: Yes, yes, now is the time. But it’s not the time for magazines like Newsweek. …

Once a magazine loses its relevancy, no matter what you do with it, it’s not going to sell. Newsweek is probably better off being a monthly magazine. How come The Economist did not have to go and reinvent itself and it still is doing very, very well?

Q: Because people deem that content of higher quality.

A: Yes. Not only of higher quality but also of higher relevancy. I mean, The Economist will never have, what’s-his- name, Stephen Colbert editing an issue on Iraq. All due respect to Stephen Colbert and everything, but to distill a major war issue to a comedy?

Q: Random question, but how many hours a week do you spend reading magazines?

A: Let’s put it this way—I sleep between, like, maybe four, five, six hours. So multiply that by 7. That’s 42. Subtract how many hours of the week there are. Meaning if I am not reading a physical magazine, I am imagining a magazine and flipping the pages in my head no matter where I am. Whether I am in church or I am teaching or—so I am in a constant magazine reading situation.

Q: When I went to journalism school, I was asked what I loved about magazines, and I equated them to a best friend, a buddy, mainly because of that sense of camaraderie and familiarity. I know some people have that with websites, but it’s much easier for me to jump in the tub with Real Simple or Vanity Fair than it is with my iPhone.

A: Yes. Or go on the beach or whatever. You can create a relationship with your magazine. Like you said, I humanize magazines. I believe people have one of three relationships with their magazines.

Some magazines, you will have a one-night stand with. You pick up In Touch Weekly or OK! magazine, you read it on the train, you leave it. Gone. Some magazines you have a love affair with. You are getting married, you buy every bridal magazine, you dig into every page. You are so excited, you are looking at all these wedding dresses, then you get married—boom. You stop getting that magazine. And some magazines, you want to establish this lifelong relationship with, this partnership that you get excited every time you see them.

You get excited every time they come to visit, every time they knock on your door, you say, “Oh, great, Cosmo is back.”

And then if the relationship starts to get cold a little bit, hopefully they’ll do something to spice it up and bring that excitement back. You can’t really experience that online. The magazine comes to you. The web, you have to go to.

Q: Who are your best friends?

A: I don’t differentiate among my children. Any Vol. 1, No. 1 that just reaches my hands will be my favorite magazine for that minute. Any magazine that innovates, that does something, that makes me say “Wow.” I recently showed my students the cover of a magazine that I work for in Belgium called Goedele. With no exception, everybody said “Wow.” When was the last time you said “Wow” when reading a magazine?

Q: The last time I said “Wow” was when I picked up the redesigned Worth. And I was glad I did since it’s smart and gorgeous but costs $20.

A: You are a customer who counts. How many people are willing to pay $20 per issue?

Q: I guess those of us who say “Wow” and don’t mind shelling out the cash. (Worth sends a group of high-worth individuals the magazine for free; the rest of us pony up the $20).

A: The model is interesting, but the model has to find customers who count, people who are willing to pay that amount of money.

Q: Speaking of pricey publications, do you have issues with what Tyler Brûlé is doing at Monocle—having come under fire last year by The New York Times for blurring the lines between advertising and editorial?

A: Who cares? They need to get off that high horse, whether it is the American Society of Magazine Editors or the Magazine Publishers of America or The New York Times—our readers look at the experience as a whole. They don’t say, “This is an ad, this is an article.” As long as we don’t practice prostitution journalism, as long as we don’t tell advertisers, “You give me an ad, I will run an article for you” then who cares whether we run “advertorials,” whether we run advertisements?

Do you really buy Brides magazine to read the articles on how to get married? Or do you buy it to look at all the ads and all the pictures?

So are we blurring the line? Let’s give the readers some credit. Readers know what they are looking for; they know how they differentiate.

Q: If you would just sum up the state of the industry in a couple of words, what would you say?

A: Things are changing. I see this fear in the industry combined with stubbornness. It’s time for us to shake off this fear, re-believe in what we are doing, and do it better. The sad part is the majority of the industry is going backward, the opposite. They don’t believe in what they are doing, and they are doing it worse. If they invest half of the money they are investing on digital and online, print would be well alive and thriving.