What's Hot What's New

The good, the bad and the ugly. You'll find them all here. Each week you'll get my take on the intriguing, and sometimes peculiar, titles to recently hit the newsstand.

Classic Country Life Cover Price: $4.95 www.classiccountrylife.com Classic Country Life is a quarterly regional magazine that focuses on the New England area. Regional publications have become very popular and very successful in recent years. Classic Country Life is following the same blueprint that other regional magazines have used. Classic Country Life is tailored more for people living outside the New England area and presents its content in a way to attract visitors to the area. The content features articles on the art and culture of the region as well as tourist information. Although informative, this magazine is walking a fine line between being a regional publication and a New England tourist bureau magazine. In order to be successful in the long run this magazine will have to alter its delivery to have less of a tourist feel so that consumers will want to subscribe.

Dapper www.dappermagazine.net Cover Price: $3.99 Dapper magazine throws its hat into the ring of new urban lifestyle publications hitting the market. Dapper promises to focus on fashion, film, music and getting money. That is a good idea but ideas don't sell magazines, content does. The delivery of that content is where Dapper falls short. There are already several magazines on the market that deliver the same promise and do a much better job developing their niche. The cover is a good example, it is unclear when looking at the cover what audience this magazine is intended for and the bland design will do little to make it pop on the newsstands across the country. With the publisher's claim of being smart and progressive you would expect more of a commitment to being innovative and fresh in a genre that is becoming increasingly over saturated with the same bland ideas.

UNEQ Cover Price: $4.50 www.uneqmagazine.com UNEQ (pronounced unique) is a new quarterly magazine intended for the metropolitan gay community. The editor of UNEQ claim that the gay community is no longer a subculture but a trendsetter for mainstream society. If he truly believed in that message he would not have tailored the content in his magazine that makes the gay community he covets look like outcasts. Featured are articles on the "Gay Glossary" and "Gay Face Jigaboo", articles that contradict the editor's claims and do more to ostracize than highlight metropolitan gay culture. But all is not lost for UNEQ does provide some quality content and biting commentary. Unfortunately it is lost when placed beside content that is more extreme than clever. Maybe the editors should spend more time further developing their niche and content and less time trying to be cute and queer. Not that there's anything wrong with that.