Maghound, already hilariously misnamed the “Netflix for magazines” from Time, Inc., wants to give you an easy way to subscribe to magazines, in one central location, with the ability to swap out subscriptions from one magazine to another on a whim. The service will enable subscribers to explore magazines at the subscription price, rather than paying news stand prices.

But, from early reports of what the service will offer, I think they’re already heading into murky territory.

The price point stinks. According to USA Today, “users will pay about $5 a month for three magazines, $8 for five, $10 for seven and $1 for each additional. About 10% of titles, including some weeklies, will cost more.” That’s 3 magazines for $60 per year. What? Quick grab some subscription cards from your favorite magazines. Most cost less than $20 per year, right?

Let’s look at some numbers:

The best selling fashion and style magazines on Amazon are as follows:

1. GQ - $12/year
2. Vanity Fair - $15/year
3. Glamour - $12/year
4. Marie Claire - $8/year
5. Lucky - $12/year

The price for these subscriptions totals $59. That’s two extra magazines for a dollar less than what Maghound will offer. In other words, with Maghound, you’d pay a 35% premium for the top three magazines, with the option of picking up one of the other two magazines in place of one of three you’ve already subscribed to.

At the $8 price point, or $96 per year, you’re in worse shape with those five magazines, paying a 38% premium on the subscription price. If I just went ahead and subscribed to the top five, that’s $37 I could spend on impulse magazine buys on the news stand.

To be fair, if you move further down the tail into more boutique subscriptions like Metro.Pop ($23 from their Web site), Gay Parent ($32 from Amazon) and Foreign Affairs ($44 from Amazon), you can save some serious cash. But you can save some serious cash by reading magazines that post their content online already (Atlantic, Wired and more magazines already do this. And many magazines have some of the most interesting bloggers on the net, so why bother with with the print product at all?)

Is the tail of any value without the head to drive large subscriber numbers? Time will tell.

There are more points I’d elaborate on, but Stephen J. Dubner has them all covered at the Freakonomics blog.

I have quite a few opinions about this Kurtz piece. If you haven’t already, you should read it before moving on with my disjointed rant below.

Regarding the Web stuff at the bottom of this article: I think fear of what others in the community have to say is not an excuse to try to quiet their voice.

By simply turning off a blog on your site, you don’t do much. There is absolutely zero cost involved for a blogger to a new site. They can set one up for free. Then they’re competing for the same attention every site, newspaper or otherwise, is vying for. To me, embracing blogs is more important than trying to compete with them in the long run.

Because some projects fail (by what measure?), does that mean newspapers shouldn’t try new things? No. Dozens of television programs get canceled every year because they don’t meet audience expectations. But that doesn’t mean TV programmers necessarily fall back on producing the same types of content over and over. Each new program tries to serve a specific segment of the overall market. You have winners and losers and hope that the balance keeps you in the black.

First: Be the best source to the most valuable markets, then branch out

Sometimes I feel like the newspaper industry tries too hard to be all things to all people, but ‘all people’ really turns out to be current, vocal subscribers.

There’s too much talk of ‘The Readers’ when we really mean ‘Some Readers.’

I’m tired of the vague subtext from editors that readers read the entire paper. I have never seen evidence to back this up. In fact, it’s quite the contrary on the Web.

People have habits, cater to them

Each section, each piece of content (articles, comics, games and even advertising) is serving only a segment of the entire readership. Most people don’t say ‘I want to be informed of the world around me.’ They say ‘what happened in last nights Twins game?’ ‘What stupid joke does Mallard Fillmore have today?’ ‘Why did Playmakers change it’s name?’ ‘Why were the police on my block yesterday?’ Readers want to know about content that is relevant to them in some way (individual interests, subjects, proximity all play a role).

I think the serendipitous nature of learning something new about the world from a paper or a Web site is secondary to the reason people actually pick up the news. It comes after they’ve done the crossword, checked the box scores, cut coupons, read the obits or scanned the front page.

The real ’silent majority’ don’t read your product (yet)

The man who talks about the ‘silent majority’ of subscribers is probably right. But, personally, I don’t think that group of people should be the largest slice of readers. Think of it like a pie chart. This man represents only a slice. The business objective is to grow the overall diameter of the pie, regardless of why people read the paper or go to a Web site. The way to do that isn’t to just listen to your readers. Listen to the people that aren’t reading, too. The San Jose Mercury News is on the right track.

None of this changes the fundamental role of the newspaper. We are still providing information to people who need it. We have to ask what information people want and package it in a way that serves a segment of the community.

Somewhere along the line, this industry forgot to ask that on a daily, monthly and quarterly basis.