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MagazineShift
Ladies' Home Journal Ventures Into Bold Crowdsourcing Experiment
In 1900, Ladies' Home Journal published an article containing predictions for the year 2000. Though some of the author's predictions were accurate -- Americans are indeed taller, and photographs are now sent around the world -- one key point was missing. The author didn't imagine that in the new millennium, the very magazine that published his predictions would no longer...
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NewspaperShift
For Better and for Worse: The Changing World of Science Journalism
Jeremy Roberts sat still on the shore of the Bitterroot River, photographing a female kingfisher. The chunky, crested icon of anglers would seize a fish, fly away, then return to the same branch to fish again. Time and again she came and went. In addition to the other photos he took, Roberts snapped a picture with his cell phone and posted it to Facebook.
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MagazineShift
Getting a Tablet Is Easy; Getting Digital Magazines Is a Pain
Buying that new iPad, Kindle or Nook for Christmas is just the first step to becoming a digital magazine reader. While shopping for books and movies is a fairly straightforward process, getting your favorite magazines onto your new e-reading device can be trickier. The ways you can buy a magazine are rapidly multiplying, making it harder for readers to evaluate...
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MagazineShift
Finding the Right Blend of Print and Digital at Meredith's Recipe.com
I'll take the Florentine lasagna, please, with a 2D barcode and a mobile app on the side. Food magazines pride themselves on delectable recipes and luscious photography. Recipe.com, whose title is also its website's URL, is a new publication from magazine giant Meredith, and while every recipe is indeed accompanied by a photo, the print magazine's content is thoughtfully integrated...
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Business
Truth and Contradictions: The Global News Industry Looks to the Future
In recent years, the global news industry has been battered by the double tsunami of the economic downturn and technological disruption, as managers of newspapers and magazines struggle to integrate digital media into their business models. Now, over the past two years, the tablet and the smartphone have appeared, promising to again rewrite the relationship between digital distribution and content...
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MagazineShift
Once Magazine Takes the Photo Magazine into the App World
Photographers who might have aspired to see their work published on the glossy pages of a magazine can now opt for the glossy screen of an iPad. Once Magazine, a "visual storytelling" app for the iPad, is a new showcase for photographers' work and related multimedia. The app provides three cohesive photo essays, each with an array of high-resolution photos...
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EducationShift
Teaching Magazine Journalism Beyond the Magazine
While magazine industry professionals struggle to come up with the best ways to use today's technology, magazine journalism educators are working hard to prepare their aspiring co-workers. Journalism schools with strong magazine programs have developed innovative courses and assignments to challenge students to think beyond the printed page. Three magazine journalism educators shared specific innovations and ways of thinking that...
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MagazineShift
Golf Digest Adds Interaction, Depth, E-Commerce to iPad App
It seemed like the first-delivered iPad was hardly unsheathed from its box before News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch, apparently unfazed by a rich past of misguided forays into Internet ventures, announced the launch of The Daily, which was immediately labeled the first tablet-only newspaper. And it was mere weeks -- if not days -- after its debut when media critics...
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MagazineShift
Smartphone Sensors Could Revolutionize Digital Magazines
We've all done those personality and health quizzes in magazines. You know, the ones where you suspect that answer A will categorize you as the personality type you're trying to avoid, so you choose B instead. Everyone does that, right? These evasive strategies for magazine quizzes, though, could be a thing of the past as smartphones and tablet devices evolve...
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MagazineShift
Solving the App Development Conundrum for Small Magazines
Even a small magazine can make a powerful impression with a well-designed mobile presence. In some ways, digital platforms can level the playing field for small publishers wanting to attract readers' attention with innovative content and presentations. But getting onto mobile platforms with apps and optimized websites can be a significant challenge for small publishers. While major magazine companies like...
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MagazineShift
Children's Magazines Cater to True Early Adopters with Mobile Apps
Digital magazines designed for kids are giving new meaning to the phrase "early adopter." Children's magazines have come a long way from those dusty print editions at the pediatrician's office. While adults struggle to join the transition to digital magazines and apps, their offspring are moving seamlessly into the new age of publishing. Kids now have a variety of digital...
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Mediatwits
Mediatwits #5: Who Owns Social Media Followers?; Byliner CEO John Tayman
Welcome to the fifth episode of "The Mediatwits," the new revamped longer form weekly audio podcast from MediaShift. The co-hosts are MediaShift's Mark Glaser along with PaidContent founder Rafat Ali. This week's show is about the various social media policies at news organizations, and how they vary from place to place. Plus, can media companies actually own the followers...
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Social Networking
Susan Orlean Explains How Twitter Affects Her Long-Form Writing
As I spoke to Susan Orlean about the role the social web plays with her long feature articles and books, I couldn't help but compare her to another famous writer for the New Yorker: E.B. White. Like Orlean, White had decided to leave the frantic mania of New York City life for a much quieter one in the country, moving...
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MagazineShift
How B2B Magazines Have Evolved into Multi-Platform Brands
You won't see Angelina Jolie on their covers anytime soon. But like their consumer magazine counterparts, business-to-business (B2B) magazines bring in serious money, and have become far more than just print publications.
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Europe
Romanian Magazine Uses Facebook for 'Crowd-Publishing' Success
It all started over a beer. One evening in April 2009, Cristian Lupşa and four other young journalists were chatting in a pub in Bucharest, Romania about the low quality of the country's print media. They should start their own magazine, someone joked. They could call it Decât o Revistă, which in slightly broken Romanian means "just a magazine." It...
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MagazineShift
Apple Takes Big Bite Out of Digital Subscriptions for Small Mags
With new restrictions on subscription opportunities -- and the large portion of income from them that will now be claimed by Apple (30%), in particular -- some indie magazines are reconsidering their digital efforts, and wondering whether they're still worthwhile.
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MagazineShift
How the Kindle Made Single-Story Sales a Reality for Magazines
I've never seen a "Not for Individual Sale" label on a magazine story. So why can't I buy most individual magazine articles in digital form just yet? Selling stand-alone stories has seemed like a potential business model for magazines and other journalism organizations since the rise of iTunes. Observers hyped an incipient micropayment business model for journalism. But few companies...
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MagazineShift
iPads, Print-on-Demand Slowly Transform Magazines in 2010
This revolution is going to take its time. It's been a year of high expectations but little fulfillment for those who thought 2010 might forever change the way we read magazines. We've seen that disappointing uses of new tools, limited audience interest, and small initial financial returns are going to result in a gradual shift, not a sudden transformation....
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MagazineShift
Are Magazine iPad Apps Profitable in the Long Haul?
Magazine editors and publishers are excited about tablet devices like the iPad. In them, they see a chance to give consumers the best that digital media can offer -- and to be able to charge them for the content. But does the profit from the apps justify the expense of building and marketing them? And even when the apps are...
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MagazineShift
City Magazines Expand Audience and Revenues with Web, Apps
Even back in 1888, King Kalakaua of Hawaii recognized the power of city and regional magazines. His royal charter led to the creation of the magazine Paradise of the Pacific, whose goal was to display the civilization of the islands and to draw tourists and business. Kalakaua would be amazed by the transformation of the publication now called Honolulu Magazine....
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4MR
4 Minute Roundup: Newsweek-Daily Beast Merger; Slate Hurting?
In this week's 4MR podcast, I discuss the recent merger announcement between Newsweek magazine and online publication The Daily Beast. The deal becoming finalized was first reported by Nick Summers, a former Newsweek reporter now at the New York Observer. I talked with Summers about the challenges Newsweek has faced, and his back-and-forth online with Slate's Jacob Weisberg about the current state of Slate.
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MagazineShift
Revamped Forbes Pushes Advertorials, Social Media, Conflict
Earlier this year Kevin Gentzel, the chief revenue officer of Forbes, took a look at what the chief marketing officers in the Forbes CMO Network were doing with their companies. He realized they were becoming content creators -- and that this had big implications for his magazine and other traditional media. Gentzel said this underscored the massive shift that was...
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MagazineShift
Narrative Magazine Takes the Literary World Digital
Poetry on your iPhone. Short stories on your Kindle. Or, if you're not yet into e-reading, how about a complete print-on-demand literary magazine? However you like your literature, Narrative Magazine has you covered. Literary magazines aren't exactly known yet for their digital expertise. This genre of magazines has moved slowly into the online realm, mainly publishing limited web content. But...
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MagazineShift
Activist Magazines Foster Debate Online, Strong Bonds in Print
Climate change. Immigration. Economic crisis. Consumerism. These are all major issues covered by the magazines Mother Jones and Orion, and both magazines have won awards for their high-quality journalism. At the same time, they are nonprofits with tight budgets and ongoing fundraising campaigns. Both magazines have found new energy through digital media, and have developed many opportunities to get their...
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MagazineShift
Gourmet Live, Quilting eMag Rethink Magazines in Digital Form
In an earlier age, we learned new skills as apprentices to master craftspeople, absorbing expertise by working side by side. Today, though, you might be more likely to learn a new craft or skill from a website or through a social media buddy -- or even from a digital magazine. Traditional print magazines that teach hands-on skills are extending their...
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4MR
4 Minute Roundup: Time.com Restricts Access to Print Stories
In this week's 4MR podcast I look at the move by Time.com to restrict access to its print stories online. Rather than set up a pay wall, Time shows abridged versions of print stories and asks you to subscribe to the print magazine or get its $5 iPad app edition instead. That has critics howling. I also talked with PaidContent co-editor Staci Kramer, who considers Time's strategy a "condom" between online visitors and the print magazine.
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MagazineShift
Magazine Writers Are Slow to Take Up Multimedia
An ideal pitch for a magazine story today would seem to require great possibilities for text and for multimedia. Freelance magazine writers, one would think, would be honing their multimedia skills so they could pitch well-rounded stories to editors who could feature them in print, on the web and on an iPad or mobile device. Surprisingly, though, freelance magazine writers...
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MagazineShift
'48 Hour' Births Crowdsourced, Print-on-Demand Mag in Public
The first issue of 48 Hour Magazine, though printed on old-fashioned paper, is one of the most technologically interesting magazine projects today. The staff of 48 Hour Magazine sent off its finished "Issue Zero" to MagCloud, a print-on-demand service, at noon on May 9 after a harried two-day submission, editing and design process. Following weeks of building buzz about the...
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MagazineShift
The Ethics of Digital Magazine Advertising
In my recent discussions with magazine editors, executives and experts, I've heard a lot about how magazines will integrate new forms of advertising, and "monetization" opportunities, into their digital content. From digital editions to social media to mobile apps, magazines are exploring a variety of ways to provide advertisers with novel opportunities to reach audiences, just as they have in...
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MagazineShift
Magazines Require Innovation, Experiments in Digital and Print
Some magazine fans may feel like their favorite publications are dissolving into fragments of their former selves: fractured content distributed throughout the web, social media, digital editions and the surviving print versions. But something unique to magazines does still hold at the center, and a new report on the future of magazines suggests that the future for both print and...
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MagazineShift
How Magazines Use Social Media to Boost Pass-Along, Build Voice
Magazines have always prided themselves on their longevity as a medium and their pass-along circulation -- the additional readers each copy gains when it's passed from hand to hand. Today, social media are providing opportunities for readers to share content and experience their favorite magazines as part of their social activity online. As a result, this is the dawn of...
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MagazineShift
Can Crowdfunding Work for Narrative Non-Fiction?
In 1978, in the middle of a deep economic recession, an 18 year-old girl named Dolly Freed wrote a book about living in a non-monetary economy called "Possum Living: How to live well without a job and with almost no money." The book described how Dolly and her father were able to live happily in rural Pennsylvania on less than...
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MagazineShift
On-Demand Publishing Opens Up Magazine Industry
Publishing a magazine independently used to mean spending a lot of money ordering hundreds or thousands of printed copies, and then hoarding the unsold inventory in dusty boxes in your garage for the next decade. The new pioneers in on-demand magazine publishing hope to save aspiring publishers from this expensive and cluttered fate. Online services that streamline the magazine publishing...
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BookShift
Best Coverage, Tweets of Apple iPad Event
The hype has reached fever pitch on the new tablet device being unveiled by Apple today in San Francisco. You're probably tired of going through tweets, live blogs and photo galleries trying to find the latest and best coverage of the latesty shiny gadget. So we've collected the best coverage around the web in one handy place here on...
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MagazineShift
What to Expect From the 'iTunes for Magazines'
Apple appears poised to introduce a much-anticipated product: the once seemingly-mythical "iSlate" or "iTablet," its first tablet-style touch-screen computer. Though the potential of an Apple tablet thrills many fans of the company, it's also piqued the interest of magazine publishers, who -- long before the device's rumored introduction -- foresaw its possibilities for their industry. The announcement in early December...
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4MR
4 Minute Roundup: Google Phone and Netbook; Kindle Under Attack
Here's the latest 4MR audio report from MediaShift. In this week's edition, I look at Google's various moves into consumer electronics. Rumors abound about a Google phone, code-named Nexus One, that could be out as early as the first week of January. And Google also might be coming out with its own branded netbook with Chrome OS by Christmas 2010....
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MagazineShift
Condé Nast, Hachette Magazines Push into iPhone Apps
Turning a magazine into an iPhone app might seem as simple as shrinking the printed page to about a sixth of its normal size. But as magazines develop iPhone and other mobile applications to supplement their print editions, they're finding that adapting to the new medium is a significant challenge. Years ago, magazines realized that their websites had to do...
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4MR
4 Minute Roundup: Media Company Layoffs; Omidyar Startup
Here's the latest 4MR audio report from MediaShift. In this week's edition, I look at the deep layoffs that are planned at AOL, the AP and BusinessWeek. In the case of AOL, the company plans to shed one-third of its workforce, or 2,500 staffers. eBay founder Pierre Omidyar announced plans to launch a news startup in Hawaii that will combine...
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Social Media
Profiles in Courage: Social Media Editors at Big Media Outlets
During a recent trip to see an editor I work with at The Globe and Mail, a national newspaper in Canada, I passed by the newspaper's cafeteria. My editor looked in and pointed at a man who was sitting with his back to us. "There's Mathew Ingram, doing his office hours," he told me. Ingram is the Globe and Mail's...
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4MR
4 Minute Roundup: Scoble on Twitter Lists; Time, Newsweek Hurting
Here's the latest 4MR audio report from MediaShift. In this week's edition, I look at Twitter Lists and how they allow people to group the people they follow on Twitter. Some say they might replace RSS feed readers. Robert Scoble answers Just One Question about how Twitter Lists have changed his life. Plus, magazines are hurting once again, with Time...
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MagazineShift
Did the Web Kill Gourmet Magazine?
The murder happened in the kitchen with a laptop. That possible explanation for the death of Gourmet magazine sounds like a solution from the game Clue. The 68-year-old food magazine met its end this month when publisher Condé Nast cut it and two other magazines. Some blamed Gourmet's demise on the Internet and its theft of the print audience. It's...
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4MR
4 Minute Roundup: Twitter's Real-Time Search Deals; Bloomberg Rising
Here's the latest 4MR audio report from MediaShift. In this week's edition, I look at the deals Microsoft made recently with Twitter and Facebook to incorporate tweets and status updates into its Bing search engine. Google quickly announced a deal with Twitter too, but why should we care? Also, Bloomberg bought out BusinessWeek magazine, but the jewel might well be...
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4MR
4 Minute Roundup: Google Fast Flip; BusinessWeek Sale
Here's the latest 4MR audio report from MediaShift. In this week's edition, I look at the latest moves by Google to make nice with online publishers. First came word the search giant was working on a micropayment solution. Then came the release of Fast Flip, a visual browsing service for news sites, with publishers splitting ad revenues with Google. Also,...
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4MR
4 Minute Roundup: Editorial Layer at Wikipedia; NYT-ProPublica Story
Here's the latest 4MR audio report from MediaShift. In this week's edition, I look at the recent move by Wikipedia to add an editorial layer to some entries, the so-called "Flagged Revisions" that will only allow changes that are approved by certain editors. Plus, the New York Times Magazine will be running a story co-produced with ProPublica that cost $400,000...
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Thought Leader Q&A
Magazines Need to Embrace Multimedia Storytelling in Digital Age
This is one in an occasional series on MediaShift where I discuss issues in-depth with thought leaders in online media. The format has changed to give you a profile of the person, as well as more of our dialogue -- including audio clips. If you have suggestions for future Q&As or want to participate yourself, drop me a line...
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NewspaperShift
QR Codes Connect Print to the Web
Point your phone at a printed page. Take a picture. Get taken to a website. That's the power of QR codes, codes embedded in print that can link cell phones to specific websites. They've been doing this for years in Japan, and now they are starting to do it in Europe. Sooner or later it will get to the States....
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MagazineShift
Vanity Fair, New Yorker Fan Blogs Give Free PR to Conde Nast
The Twitter user who writes under the handle Vanityfairer would not tell me her real name. She began following me in December after I mentioned the magazine Vanity Fair in a tweet, and for the next few months we exchanged replies and direct messages about the magazine's content and its writers. Though she made no claims to be associated...
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Thought Leader Q&A
How Tech Publisher IDG Grows Revenues During Recession
Patrick McGovern, IDG: "[At InfoWorld.com] our audience numbers and frequency of visits soared. Even though we gave up 40% of revenues from stopping print, we actually had 10% more revenue growth absolutely. The online revenue didn't only make up for the missing print revenue, but we actually had absolute growth."
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MagazineShift
'Printernet' Vision Brings Custom Print Publications to Masses
Imagine networked desktop publishing where the desktops and printers are spread throughout the whole world. Publishing means newspapers, newsletters, books and posters in mass market quantities, but versioned and personalized for specific communities and individual users. From the point of view of a writer, it would be easier than ever to see your story in print. If you're a publisher,...
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MagazineShift
Mother Jones Boosts Community in Site Revamp
As digital technology wreaks havoc on the business models of legacy media such as newspapers and magazines, they are now turning more often to the non-profit model. Can they raise donations, micropayments, or get grants? They might want to check out a magazine that's been a pioneer with the non-profit model, and first went online in 1993: Mother Jones. The...
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Business
Read for Free, Pay for Print or Stuff
The discussion about micro-payments and "pay to read" goes round and round because it ignores a basic fact. Most people, most of the time, do not read newspapers. They view, scan and search newspapers. Selling words to viewers, scanners and searchers is hard, but since viewers and scanners are always background-searching for stuff they might need, selling them stuff is...
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NewspaperShift
I am delighted to have the opportunity to be the new "print correspondent" for MediaShift. Every two weeks or so I will be reporting, discussing, opining and answering comments about how new print technology can help untangle some of the problems facing newspaper companies and the future of journalism. Newspaper companies are looking for ways to profit in a new...
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Thought Leader Q&A
Rufus Griscom Mixes High, Low Brow on Babble Parenting Site
Rufus Griscom: "Online content, if it's not user-aggregated or user-generated, is seen as rather old and creaky. But I would argue that there are lots of shades of gray. All of the online content sites are becoming a hybrid of user-aggregated, user-generated and edited content, because feedback and citizen journalism and ratings and suggestions are becoming part of these sites."
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MagazineShift
Pulp Magazines Struggle to Survive in Wired World
Every year Locus Magazine, "The Magazine Of The Science Fiction & Fantasy Field," publishes a year-in-review of the genre. This summation always includes a rundown of the circulation of the remaining speculative fiction magazines, sometimes referred to as the "pulps" because of the cheap wood pulp paper on which they used to be printed. In their heyday there were dozens...
more »MagazineShift
How PaidContent Succeeded in Mining Digital Media Niche
Rafat Ali was just another freelance journalist back in 2002, and wanted to strut his stuff on a blog, so he started PaidContent to write about his take on the business of digital content. Now he is much richer for his efforts, having expanded the blog into a mini-media empire with venture funding and last week selling it entirely to Guardian Media Group for about $30 million.
more »Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
Why I Left Print Media for Digital
In new media circles, one of the hottest topics of recent years has been the print-to-digital shift. People pundit about it, shout "print is dead" and wallow in the sadness sparked by nostalgia for a day when this wasn't a question. We've also begun speculating on whether a device like the Kindle will really ever take our attention away...
more »Digging Deeper
BusinessWeek.com Pushes into Aggregation, Video, Participation to Stand Out
Business news is often about numbers. And when you check the audience numbers on the various top financial news sites online, the portals such as Yahoo Finance and MSN Money come out on top, followed by a jumble of online magazines such as Forbes.com, wire services such as Reuters, and online-only pubs like TheStreet.com. As of last August, BusinessWeek.com...
more »Digging Deeper
Business 2.0 Closed Due to Corporate Neglect, Ad Woes
When the dot-com boom fizzled, the business magazines that covered that huge story similarly flamed out. The Industry Standard closed, Red Herring went south, and Business 2.0 was on death's door. But in 2001, Time Warner bought Business 2.0 and combined it with its own eCompany Now magazine. Though Business 2.0 finally reached break even after years of struggle...
more »Philosophy
Why We Love (and Hate) Print Publications
In the course of any dinner conversation with friends or colleagues, the subject of media usually comes up, soon followed by The Question: When will print publications become obsolete? If the Internet gives us access to publications from around the globe on topics so diverse they couldn't possibly fit in a newsstand or our mailbox, why bother reading them...
more »Digging Deeper
Hearst Uses Startup Mentality in Revamp of Magazine Sites
Hearst Corporation has a long and storied history as a media conglomerate, starting from the days of old-school media baron William Randolph Hearst and his twin inventions of the penny press and sensational journalism, all the way through its current form as a diversified private media company. In the online arena, it has been more successful as an investor...
more »Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
Food Lovers Become Experts at Chowhound, Yelp
Before the web was in widespread use, food lovers would wait patiently for the New York Times restaurant reviews to come out for the hottest new spot in SoHo, or for hometown papers to write up the little Korean joint that just opened down the street. We relied heavily on that system of stars, dollar signs and bells indicating...
more »Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
Reporting from Afar Might Work, But Not for Local News
While much has been made of the outsourcing of American jobs to foreign countries, until recently the field of journalism had remained largely untouched. Earlier this month local news website Pasadena Now announced its decision to outsource work to India, specifically reporting of City Council meetings. The site's owner, James Macpherson, said the meetings are streamed on the Internet,...
more »Digging Deeper
Web Leads, Print Pubs Improve Environmental Impact
If you've grown tired of answering the question, "paper or plastic?" you can now consider another nagging environmental question when choosing your news source: "Online or print?" Environmental critics have decried "dead-tree media" for decades, saying that print publications rely on clear-cutting forests, energy produced to run paper mills, and gasoline used to deliver publications to each doorstep.While print...
more »Digging Deeper
'Mr. Magazine' Believes We'll Always Crave Ink on Paper
When Lebanese journalist Samir Husni was teaching students at the University of Mississippi about magazine journalism in 1986, one student had trouble pronouncing his Arabic name and took the simple route, calling him "Mr. Magazine." The student eventually gave Husni a plaque with the moniker engraved, and the name was so apt for the lover of print magazines that...
more »Digging Deeper
'Frienemy' Google Not a Threat (Yet) to Traditional Ad Sales
If you browse through Google's job openings, the dozens of advertising sales positions -- from account manager of Print Ads in Chicago to account manager of Google Television in New York -- you'd think Google was a major media conglomerate that owned TV stations and newspapers. Instead, Google has been trying to take its automated online system for selling...
more »MagazineShift
You Deserve More Than Time's Person of the Year
I've had two strong reactions to the big news that Time magazine had chosen "you" as their Person of the Year for 2006. My first reaction is utter amazement that people at Time magazine -- or perhaps, some people -- are starting to understand the digital media revolution, the growing power of average people who can now control and create their own media experience.
more »MagazineShift
Your Blog Here::SportingNews.com Gives Readers Super Platform
If you're nutty about sports, and live in the U.S., you probably spend a good amount of time on the leading American sports website, ESPN.com. It's flashy, it has attitude, it's filled with good info, and it's awash in video highlights. And for fan involvement, there's ESPN SportsNation with its polls and forums. But the sports leader online could...
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