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.

Kiwi Cover Price: $3.99 www.kiwimagonline.com With a title like Kiwi you would expect something fresh and new to sink your teeth into. Although the idea for a magazine dedicated to the health and well being of children is admirable, what are the chances that a magazine featuring yoga exercise for kids will really catch on? Feng Shui for children's bedrooms and counting the amount of Omega-3 vitamin intake for kids are things that most consumers could care less about. What 10 year-old girls care about her bedrooms feng shui, she just cares about her Justin Timberlake poster on the wall. Kiwi's editor says her goal is to help streamline the efforts of consumers to maintain a healthy lifestyle for their families. This is where there is a problem because most mothers are busy and rely on convenience. Kiwi is specialized in its approach of targeting family health, especially kids, but it will be difficult for them to establish a consistent following.

Good Cover Price:$4.95 www.goodmagazine.com Good is not good. In this case, it is excellent. With the goal of providing information in a way not to insult the reader's intelligence, Good Magazine has delivered on that promise. With practical and thought provoking articles, Good is a bright spot among this year's new magazine releases. The unconventional cover and design of the magazine is refreshing and adds to the overall feel. The problem for Good is that I don't see a long-term future for the magazine. It has a kind of intellectual nobility about it with articles on "Innovative projects revitalizing America" and "The attack on the American family," Good has noble ideas, but I don't believe that it will garner enough of a readership to survive. But don't let my bleak outlook for the magazine scare you off from picking up what may be this year's hottest release. It would be Good of you to give this magazine a try.

Jamrock Cover Price:$3.99 www.jamrockmagazine.com Jamrock Magazine feels that the time is right for a magazine on the Caribbean. They are targeting the Caribbean people dispersed in the United States with the hope that Americans will catch on to the magazine. With more and more magazines coming out targeting one racial or religious group, the editor and the people at Linkup Media felt it was time to start a publication like Jamrock. But this magazine does not distinguish its look from Hip-Hop magazines that are currently on the market. The articles are basically the same as to what you see in hip-hop magazines with the exception that they are about reggae artist and not rap artist. And although the editor of the magazine claims to be targeting the many Caribbean scattered across the United States, he is clearly going after the hip-hop market. Unless Jamrock can find a way to set itself apart from the other urban style magazines on the market it will find itself out of business very soon.