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.

‘Tis the season to be green. This segment of what’s hot what’s new is going to cover three new green magazines or so they look. Of course all of their logos are green and so is the content. But these three titles are a reminder of the environmental magazines that were published in the late 80’s early 90’s when magazines like E and Garbage were at the center stage of the environmental movement. Now, it seems like green has replaced the word environment and everything we are doing these days must and should be green. Of note, it’s funny that it used to be said that green is the worst color to be used on your covers if you want to sell your magazine on the newsstand. Now, it will be fun to see how we can publish a magazine called green with green in its title and not use green. It will be interesting to see how many magazines we can sell from these copies. One thing is for sure, if you want to help the green movement, you should go pick up one of these magazines and have a green day.

Boho: a New American Spirit www.bohomag.com $4.99 Boho is a new quarterly magazine that just launched. It celebrates the new bohemian movement, hence the name Boho. It has a lot of similarities with the magazines that were used during the hippie movement, but Boho is targeted at what we can refer to as upscale hippies of the 21st century. It’s a magazine that’s really fun to look at and flip through. Rather than just talking about peace and love, it talks about peace, love and fashion. For a magazine that labels itself as the first green fashion magazine, I think that they have succeeded in providing that image and feel. It has intriguing design and nice friendly photography. It gives green a down home feel. It’s definitely worthy of taking a look at. I would however love to see more in-depth articles in the coming issue in terms of explaining or elaborating on the concept.

Positively Green: Good Simple Solutions www.positivelygreen.com/ $4.99 Positively Green has info on how to make just about everything green, including kids, beauty and home. This magazine tries to answer the question about why green matters. While the magazine is well designed and well focused, it can easily fit in the category of a general interest magazine, but with a specialty in green. It tries to cover every topic you can imagine whether its books, movies, fashion, life or home from a green perspective. It also provides the reader with a lot of good nuggets of information. Not to mention the fact that it has a section devoted to eco gossip, so even the gossip has a part of this green magazine. For the environmentalist or the environmentally conscious, this quarterly is positively worth a read.

Green: Lifestyles on Planet Paradise www.greenplanetparadise.com $6.95 Green is yet another example of a hodge-podge collection of everything green from body, mind, spirit, communities, escapes, travel, movement, outdoors and food. You name it and it’s in Green. But what differentiates Green from the other two magazines is that it feels friendlier in terms of the topics. It’s more down to earth in terms of the way it relates to the audience. While the design and the presentation are not as interesting or as intriguing as Positively Green or Boho, the information in the articles in the magazine feel more at ease with the content than the other two.

Three new green magazines that are worthy of your money to check them out and buy them at your nearest newsstand. Have a great green week!