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.

Alef Cover Price: $10.95 With the goal of highlighting the distinct style and beauty of the Middle East, Alef Magazine has a truly unique concept. The editor's mission is to provide the world with a view of Middle Eastern culture contrary to what's seen in Western media. It features articles on Middle Eastern fashion designers with plenty of pictorials of their work. The magazine has a beautiful look and feel, but it is similar to most fashion magazines in that it's hard to tell when the ads stop and the content begins. If the editor's were truly trying to counter the negative images in Western media then why did they copy the style of Western publications? The editors claim the premiere issue is the first step on a long journey. They have a good concept but they need to refine their approach to be true to the niche they are trying to capture or else the long journey will turn into a short vacation.

Bride & Bloom Cover Price: $5.95 www.thebrideandbloom.com Wedding magazines seem to be coming from everywhere these days and few of them stand out. Bride & Bloom certainly qualifies as one that stands out. Bride & Bloom, a quarterly magazine, takes wedding planning to another level with its quality content and superior design and feel. Detailed articles about color pairings, wedding locations and choosing the right wedding coordinator provide the kind of content missing in most wedding magazines. Bride & Bloom also features articles by newlyweds about the problems they faced in planning their wedding and provides information on how to avoid those same problems. So give Bride & Bloom a try, I assure you that it will not leave you at the altar.

Hip Hop Weekly Cover Price: $2.95 www.hip-hopweekly.com The world of hip hop magazines just got a new entry with the debut of Hip Hop Weekly. Hip Hop Weekly is brought to you by the creators of The Source Magazine. Their goal is to cover the entire hip hop culture, from clothing style, gossip and music reviews. The creators of Hip Hop Weekly were quite successful with Source Magazine. Now they are hoping to parlay that success into a weekly magazine. The idea of the magazine is that people will not want to wait until the end of the month to get their hip hop fix. If they believe that consumers will not want to wait until the end of the month, what makes them believe the public will wait until the end of the week? With television and the internet, people don't have to wait to get the information they want. Their target audience desires instant gratification and fresh news, it remains to be seen if they will wait a week to get that information.