Are magazines prepared for the digital era?

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Permalink Reply by David White on May 28, 2009 at 5:12pm

Kerry Smith Dec 7th 2008 said ~ It's not a question of whether print is going out of fashion. The question is how print and the web can be used to compliment each other by providing content via each medium in a way that recognizes how readers consume information, and therefore reinforce each other.

Hit the nail on the head!

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Permalink Reply by Michael Illian on May 28, 2009 at 4:49pm

I do tech support for most of my friends and one of the biggest requests is for me to install some sort of ad-blocking technology (just picture a web page with black blocks over the ad content). As this technology becomes more prevelent and more advanced, how will anybody make money putting their content on the web except to drive more readers to the print editions?

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Permalink Reply by Henry Blaufox on May 28, 2009 at 4:52pm

Long form journalism won't die out, so there will still be demand for print (and ultimately digital versions with enhanced features on portable readers.) The enhanced features will affect content, adsvertising and circ oriented analytics based around whoa nd how many are browsing what stories, what ads, for how long - and so on.

Established publishers who can build out their websites around their brands (rather than just reporoductions of the print editions) will provide added value to subscribers, transient readers, and advertisers. They'll just have to experiment and be ready to change rapidly as technology and trends develop, then fade. Flexibility will be a crucial character trait, since time to market in the digital world is so much fasterthan what print focused executives are used to handling.

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Permalink Reply by Michael Lonier on May 28, 2009 at 4:59pm

This today and he is Mr. Reader the Word Man, too. Not magazines exactly, but who is more qualified to speak than he of that? I remember Charles rollerblading around the New Yorker offices pushing manuscripts between staffers in the Gotleib era before we replaced their typing pool, their old Wang word processor, and RRD Chicago typesetting.

Inveterate Reader Meets Kindle
By Charles McGrath
Published: May 28, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/books/29kind.html?emc=eta1
ON a recent golf trip to South Carolina I showed off to the rest of the foursome by taking along my brand-new Kindle 2. No one seemed impressed that I had already stored on it practically all of Trollope and six volumes of Gibbons’s “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” along with the latest Lee Child and Dennis Lehane. But I got a reaction when I pressed a button and the slim, envelope-size device read aloud to us, in a bossy, robotic female voice, from “Leadbetter’s Quick Tips: The Very Best Short Lessons to Fix Any Part of Your Game”: “As you stepup to the ball, breathe through your nose, then exhale and whistle as you start the club back.” For the rest of the weekend my playing partner referred to the Kindle, somewhat warily, as “The Future.”

It’s not. The reading device of the future will surely be backlighted, unlike the Kindle, so you can read in the dark. It will have different typefaces, and will reproduce photographs and illustrations in something better than a murky gray wash. The read-aloud voice will learn how to pronounce “Barack Obama” and will have mastered a tone more expressive than that of the tiresome know-it-all who talks to you from inside your car’s G.P.S.

In the future airlines will also conclude that you don’t have to turn off a reading device during takeoff and landing. On the way back from South Carolina I had to dash into an airport bookshop for a backup paperback, which sort of defeats the whole point.

But if the Kindle isn’t the future, exactly, it’s a precursor...To say you appreciate written language more when it’s transmitted this way, without the familiar delivery mechanism of paper, print and binding, would be a stretch, but after a while you don’t appreciate it any less.

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Permalink Reply by Hugo E. Martin on May 29, 2009 at 4:20am

Not prepared! Just look at magazines digital retail shelves, either they are rather empty and/or stuffed with boring, staled, homely and turn-off shelf warmers. Isn't prepared, about of how attractive, convincing and selling your offers is to your customers and not what you intent to do, or hesitate to do?

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Permalink Reply by David White on May 29, 2009 at 5:14am

Let's not judge by one site Hugo, many publishers using digital editions are not using a 3rd party magazine rack so results are very hidden at the moment. If I was making a huge success from it, I certainly would not go shouting about it so my competitors start doing it straight away.

People are not prepared as they are scared and skeptical and many are denying the truth.

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Permalink Reply by FOLIO MediaPRO Team on May 29, 2009 at 9:48am

Just a reminder to all users: Forums are for discussions of topics, not self promotion. Due to several complaints by users, several posts have been removed that promoted specific companies and their products. Some were admittedly borderline, but to be fair they were removed along with the ones that were more clearly direct promotion.

If you have questions for vendors, even if they relate partially to the forum topic, please contact them directly to help avoid those issues.

Thanks
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Permalink Reply by Kenneth Tan on June 2, 2009 at 9:51am

whatever the magazine publisher is providing, it is important that the advertisers value that services or that communities, if not, most of the magazine died even if it has excellent editorial quantity.

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Permalink Reply by Alex Hambleton on June 2, 2009 at 12:45pm

Bart, I just completed attending a convention with about 60 publishers. This publishing community is people and places focused and understand the importance of providing content in a user specific format. Many different idea's some success some retooling. Everyone is on board with digital in one form or another.

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Permalink Reply by Terry Matz on June 2, 2009 at 6:36pm

It's really interesting to hear this discussion come around again. When I was first involved in repurposing print content from magazines to digital format in 90s, I heard over and over that the printed book was dead and would be long gone before 2009. I heard someone say (and I'm sorry I don't remember who) that the printed word would not be dead until electronic publications solved the 3Bs - Bus, Beach, and Bathroom. The printed word is often still more convenient and readable in the most environments -- and not dependent on charge or batteries. And I say all this as somone who has been a web professional from the beginning and as someone who loads most of my books on my Palm and takes it everywhere. I'm not saying that print won't change or might even disappear eventually. I agree that print pubs will have to partner with digital but I think digital still has a long way to go too.

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Permalink Reply by Andy on June 3, 2009 at 6:04pm

To me it's not a matter of print vs digital. It's a matter of content vs. hardware. Right now, hardware and software companies (and service providers) are collecting more than their fair share of revenue based on the content that we are creating.

And hardware/software has all the excitement. Publishing continues to give tons of free publicity to the competition. We are competing for people's time and excitement. Everytime we plug the iPod and Twitter, we drive people away from our text-based media. And, we encourage people to be excited for a product that is not ours.

If a person defects from loving ideas to loving technology, we are losing the battle. Even if that person consumes the same amount of media. If she is getting a bigger kick out of her technology than she is out of our content, the technology has become more valuable than the content in her mind.

Last year Steve Jobs said People don't read. There was no protest from Publishing. Why? Because we have no Steve Jobs. We have no unified voice. We have no apparatus to excite people about Language. Language is the most important technology humanity will ever experience. Most technology is a flash in the pan compared to the power of language. Publishing is influence. Publishing is authority. Publishing is persuasion. Publishing is the information in the Information Age. People want to learn. We can win market share away from television. We can win excitement back from technology driven entertainments. If we could have a unified voice, if we can harness our own channels to aggressively assert our value, we can influence the public imagination. Communicate the benefits of text-based media. Give people reasons to be excited about long-form thought. Give humanity selling points and we can win share. (Then maybe we'll figure out how to make a little more revenue online. Maybe if people get a bump smarter, they will seek out higher quality content?)

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Permalink Reply by Alex Hambleton on June 3, 2009 at 6:26pm

Andy, excellent comment. Let's get you fitted for the Steve Jobs publisher role.

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