Magpile, a new social site for magazine lovers, offers enthusiastic readers a place to share their favorite magazines and discuss them online. Founder and print magazine fan Dan Rowden, a web developer, noticed that although a number of websites let readers rate and discuss books, magazine fans were lost in cyberspace.

Magpile, still in its invite-only closed beta stage, fixes that problem. With a variety of features, Rowden's growing site might lend new social-networking energy to print magazines.

Features for Magazine Fans

Magpile lets users view a variety of international magazine covers, add more magazines and individual issues to the database, track issues they own in a personal "pile," and save issues they would like to buy someday on a wishlist.

Rowden currently lives in Saudi Arabia, which inspired some of these features. While he also reads magazines from outside the country on his iPad, his true love is print magazines, in spite of obstacles to getting them.

"The post here is quite slow. For example, I'm a Monocle subscriber. Issues normally turn up just as the next one is coming out," Rowden said. "When I come back to Europe, I bring a stack of magazines back with me, but otherwise I have to rely on family and friends to get them."

Rowden found his growing print collection difficult to track, and realized other print magazine devotees probably had the same problem. He coded Magpile in just a few months as a side project and launched it in March 2012. Since then, he's received a steady stream of invite requests, and users have added over 1,000 magazine issues to the site. Magazines and issues can be edited wiki-style by users. Most of the magazines added so far are British and European titles. Monocle is currently the most popular magazine in users' "piles," or personal magazine collections.

Rowden would like for the site eventually to include "every magazine ever."

"I want Magpile to be like the magazine database, or like a portal, for people to go to if they want to find out about a certain topic or to find magazines on a topic," he said.

In addition to managing their personal collections, Magpile users can follow each other's activity on the site. Users can comment on specific issues and discuss them with each other. Rowden plans to add the capability to comment on entire magazines, and hopes interaction will pick up as more magazine fans join the site.

"I don't know that there's another place online where people can yak about magazines, but I think people who are into magazines are quite passionate," he said.

Rowden sees Goodreads, the successful, book-focused social site with more than 8.5 million members, as a potential model for Magpile.

Monetizing and Publicizing Magpile

Rowden doesn't have professional experience in the magazine industry, though he'd like to work in it eventually. Instead, his drive to create Magpile comes entirely from his enjoyment of magazines.

"It's something I enjoy doing in my spare time. Combining magazines and web design is quite fun," he said. He's now developing a variety of ways Magpile can make money.

Some sponsors have already signed on with Magpile, such as Stack Magazines and the magazine Offscreen. "I tried to pinpoint some smaller magazines and some online shops, to give users useful ads," Rowden said.

Because Magpile helps users build their print magazine collections, a future option might be to link issues of magazines directly to publishers' back issue ordering systems, then collecting a referral fee from sales.

"There's a few different ways of monetizing the site," Rowden said. "As the site's so young, there's a lot of development that still needs to happen first."

In the meantime, Magpile's user base is growing through social media -- Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest. Rowden doesn't have an official Magpile blog, so he's used Twitter and Facebook for updates on Magpile's launch and new features. He also used Twitter to distribute a special round of 50 invites announced through the MagCulture blog. Bloggers' posts about Magpile have generally been the most consistent source of new invite requests, Rowden said.

At the moment, Magpile's Pinterest presence is a collection of more than 100 favorite magazine covers on one board. Rowden said although referrals to Magpile from Pinterest are growing dramatically, not many people visiting Magpile from Pinterest sign up for invites.

Digital Love for Print Magazines

While it has the sleek design and features of a cutting-edge, niche social network, Magpile is at heart a celebration of the print magazine. By offering users the chance to inventory and talk about their print magazine collections, Magpile unites new and old media in a surprising way. The name "Magpile" and the use of "piles" as the term for users' personal inventories evoke images of print magazines.

"I don't want Magpile to become somewhere that digital is 'the thing,' because I think print is really important," Rowden said. "Personally, I prefer print. I want to push the print issues as much as possible. It's more about the social impact of magazines."

Magazines with time-sensitive content and less artistic presentation might better serve themselves and their readers today by moving to digital platforms. However, it feels like there's also growing momentum behind a movement to create and support publications with greater print sophistication.

These magazines delight print enthusiasts who, like Rowden, appreciate the medium's potential for "social impact." Magpile might be ahead of the curve in providing an online gathering place for celebrating the best that print magazines continue to offer.

Susan Currie Sivek, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Mass Communication at Linfield College. Her research focuses on magazines and media communities. She also blogs at sivekmedia.com, and is the magazine correspondent for MediaShift.

In the rapidly changing world of digital magazines, we've seen all kinds of variations: multimedia apps, digital replicas, individual stories, single issues, subscriptions, and even the all-you-can-read buffet model. But these variations have usually happened within the boundary of a single magazine brand, rarely blending content from different publications.

Zinio, the company best known for its magazine reading apps for PCs and mobile devices, has launched a project that crosses individual magazines' borders: Content Collections, which pull together articles from different magazines on a similar topic for readers' convenience. While the collections aren't yet available for readers to buy as package deals, Zinio is working on taking the concept in directions that challenge our ideas about magazines all over again.

Discovering Content in Unexpected Places

Zinio has found that its customers frequently buy digital magazines that are completely new to them. About 85 percent of readers who buy a single issue or a subscription through Zinio have never read that magazine in print before, according to Jeanniey Mullen, global executive vice president and chief marketing officer for Zinio.

"People were discovering magazines based on specific content they're looking for," Mullen said. "People were starting to shop by categories [on the Zinio storefront]. They'd see 10 or 20 magazines in that category and spend a ton of time checking out all the magazines."

Zinio wanted to find a way to capitalize on readers' interests in specific topics, rather than relying on magazines' existing "brand cachet," as Mullen calls it, to draw readers.

"We started to look at whether we could help push magazines a little if we could talk about content in them that was behind the cover," Mullen said. "We wanted to help people find content by grouping it into categories that people can respond to."

Zinio is now creating and promoting two Content Collections each month based on timely trends and themes, like the Academy Awards or Mother's Day. Zinio staff highlight a selection of articles from Zinio's digital magazine offerings, mixing and matching stories from a wide variety of magazines within each collection. Even little-known and foreign magazines are included in the mixes. Readers can then preview individual articles in the collection and choose to buy the single digital magazine issue where an article appeared, or even buy a digital subscription to that magazine.

One recent collection focused on the Titanic anniversary and included articles from six different magazines. Ideally, readers of the collection would find new magazines of interest to them because, as Mullen explained, "While you'd expect the articles would come from Smithsonian or National Geographic, you'd never guess that Town & Country would have a great piece on the Titanic."

Magazines whose articles are featured in collections may also be discounted to appeal to readers even more.

Moving Beyond Editors' Choices

Zinio's collections are still limited in some significant ways. While readers might find interesting new magazines to buy through this approach, they can't simply purchase the collection of articles itself in one neat package and read it through Zinio's apps. Readers can preview articles, but must buy the full digital magazine issues if they want to see the rest of a story or read the magazine issue beyond the preview's limitations.

Magazine publishers will have to agree to the sale of individual articles in order for Zinio to offer collections as a freestanding product. Those discussions are underway, Mullen said.

The Content Collections are also not yet available directly through the Zinio iOS or Android apps, mainly due to Apple's requirements regarding in-app purchases.

Despite these current limitations, this model presents some thought-provoking possibilities. Mullen said in the future, Zinio would like for readers to create their own collections of articles and share them with others. Individual articles in Zinio publications can currently be shared through social media using sharing buttons on each article. However, a Zinio user creating a shared Content Collection would be more like an iTunes user publishing a playlist through the iTunes Store. An individual reader would select and share a collection of articles from different publications, making that group easily accessible and purchasable for other interested readers.

"We've been working on the concept of choosing what you love and being able to share it," Mullen said. "We want to make it possible for consumers to do what editors do. We can let consumers build [collections] for us."

The Content Collections concept raises a lot of questions about not only the changing function of magazine editors, but also the power of magazine brands today. Readers do certainly seem interested in gathering their own selections of content. Curation services like Longreads, apps like Flipboard, and reading utilities like Instapaper already let readers identify, gather and redistribute their favorite content via social media. Generally, though, they don't pay for that privilege, and their trust in various curators and friends probably at least equals magazines' "brand cachet" in influencing their reading choices.

If we all become editors for each other, what does that do to the role of professional magazine editors, and the significance of their publications' brands? With every innovation, it seems more difficult to demonstrate the value added to magazine content for readers through the traditional magazine format, whether print or digital.

Susan Currie Sivek, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Mass Communication at Linfield College. Her research focuses on magazines and media communities. She also blogs at sivekmedia.com, and is the magazine correspondent for MediaShift.

Much has already been written about magazines' use of Pinterest. Because the majority of the site's users are women, much of the coverage has focused on how Pinterest has presented opportunities for women's magazines to share content with wider audiences and drive traffic to their own websites. But magazines of all types, beyond just women's publications, can use Pinterest creatively to craft interesting selections of content to intrigue current -- and potential -- readers.

I spent hours on Pinterest looking for innovative ways that magazines -- especially smaller publications, and those on non-lifestyle topics -- are using Pinterest. Here are five creative strategies I found that might also be new opportunities for other magazines.

Pinning More than Pictures: Multimedia

I was surprised to see how few magazines were posting links to collections of videos or other multimedia. Music and video provide a refreshing change of pace from Pinterest's mostly static content. A few approaches to multimedia include:

• Oxygen, the women's fitness magazine, posts collections of music videos for playlists designed by each month's cover model.
• Entrepreneur magazine has a selection of videos on its "Online Business Videos" board, featuring the voices and experiences of real-life entrepreneurs.
• Surfer magazine showcases some of its own videos on a dedicated video board.

Pinning for a Purpose

Some magazines focused on social and political issues are using their boards to curate their own work and other online material related to their causes.

• Mother Jones has created boards that feature its excellent infographics and flowcharts, neatly combining the visual nature of Pinterest with its investigative journalism. (And, more typical for Pinterest: It also has a board of its food bloggers' recipes.)

• Cannabis Now magazine collects infographics supporting marijuana legalization on one of its Pinterest boards, giving visitors the chance to re-pin weed right alongside knitting projects.
• Latinitas magazine, a small digital magazine for young Latina women, uses some of its Pinterest boards to collect poor media representations of women and encourage media literacy.

Pins Offer Insider Experience

Pinterest boards can also collect "insider" content from the magazine to encourage readers' identification with it and make them feel like they have special access to the magazine's inner workings.

• Dance magazine has a board of "Cover Outtakes" that shows the photos that were not selected for their print covers -- but that are still beautiful images that help readers feel like they were there in the studio.
• Lucky magazine, focused on shopping, also has a board of "Models Being Models," showing what models are like when they're not being photographed.

B2B Magazines Get Pinning

Most of the magazines on Pinterest are lifestyle-focused consumer magazines, to be sure. But business-to-business (B2B) magazines haven't ignored the site entirely. Finding the right approach for B2B content on Pinterest might be tricky, but here are a few magazines that have given it a shot.

• Convenience Store Decisions, designed for convenience store owners, has a Pinterest account, with boards featuring food service and convenience store designs. The food pictures blend naturally into the rest of Pinterest's content, though the convenience store interiors clash a bit with the lavish home interiors that generally populate Pinterest.
• Architect magazine, the magazine of the American Institute of Architects, has an appealing selection of building photos, movie suggestions and books on its boards, offering design-obsessed Pinterest users another source of inspiration.

• Challenge magazine isn't a household name for most people, but it's the magazine offered at Flying J and Pilot truck stops for truck drivers who frequent them. It has a variety of content beyond just trucking topics, including sports and news. It is also running a photo contest. The "likes" and "repins" on Pinterest will decide the winner, who -- appropriately -- will receive a GPS device.

Bonus: Going Magazine-Meta with Pinterest

Other fun Pinterest items for magazine enthusiasts:

• Jeremy Leslie of magCulture has a fascinating board of magazine covers and magazine ephemera.
• Condé Nast recently redesigned the website of its U.K. magazine Easy Living with a very Pinterest-esque layout.
• Pinterest might also be a way for new magazines to generate reader interest pre-launch, as Cosmopolitan Latina is doing. As editor-in-chief Michelle Herrera Mulligan told Advertising Age: "We debuted the Pinterest page in early March as a way to begin a compelling, visual conversation with our readers and develop a strong relationship with them before the magazine launches in May."

Despite all of these creative uses of Pinterest, we don't know yet whether the initial burst of hype about the site will really lead to more magazine readers long-term. Consider this comment from a Pinterest user who learned about an apparently short-lived print magazine based on Pinterest content: "[O]ne of the things I love about Pinterest is that it's not in print, no paper, no waste, no junk in my mailbox, no what page, what issue was that. WTF?!"

Susan Currie Sivek, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Mass Communication at Linfield College. Her research focuses on magazines and media communities. She also blogs at sivekmedia.com, and is the magazine correspondent for MediaShift.

Esquire recently released a 46-second video trailer for a story in its March print edition, available on newsstands yesterday: "Animals," by Chris Jones, a feature about the escape and eventual killing of zoo animals in Zanesville, Ohio.

Magazines have been creating videos to accompany articles for a while now. However, Esquire put an innovative twist on the practice by making a trailer-style video and using it to publicize the article before it was printed.

Esquire's trailer experiment might be the first foray into a new method of getting readers to engage with stories and a magazine's brand. The challenge will be figuring out which stories might be suited for trailers and how to create effective, intriguing trailers.

Creating Esquire's Trailer

Esquire's initial plan for Jones' Zanesville story and its promotion didn't exactly work out. Jones said in a recent interview that he learned during his time reporting in Zanesville that another writer was in town, working on the same story -- and not just any writer, but one from Esquire's competitor GQ.

The behind-the-scenes drama of Esquire and GQ's dueling Zanesville stories has been documented elsewhere. Wanting to get out in front, the Esquire team considered ways to bring more attention to their story. Deputy Editor Peter Griffin, who worked with Jones on the story, thought of a promotional technique that hadn't really been attempted before for a magazine article.

"The piece was, in the end, so relentless that it really did feel like a thriller. We knew for sure that other magazines were working on the story, so we wanted to raise its profile relative to other stories that came out," Griffin said. "I suggested that it was like the action movie of the winter."

And so the trailer idea was born, and fortunately, its materials were already either in the works or readily available. Esquire has been producing video for its tablet editions for some time. They had already discussed creating an animation of the planned print layout, which would move viewers up the driveway of the ill-fated Zanesville farm to engage them in the scene. There were also photos, a recording of a 911 call from the incident, and digital audio recordings of Jones' interviews. (Luckily, Jones had recently started using a digital recorder, which provided better sound quality.)

With those materials in hand, creating the trailer was relatively simple. Griffin worked with Scott Mebus, an executive producer in the Hearst Digital Media video department, on the trailer.

"Our graphics person had started creating a fun open" for the article in the tablet edition, Mebus said. With the "great assets" Esquire provided, Mebus' team could go even further.

"We had a 911 call. We had these great interviews with soundbites. The story was kind of written for a trailer, and we had great visual assets from the story itself," Mebus said.

In addition to the 46-second trailer, Mebus' team also produced a second trailer. But circumstances intervened in the original plan for distributing the two trailers.

Griffin explained that the first trailer was going to be released with a brief "preview" story by Jones about his experiences reporting the story. When GQ released its full story online earlier than expected, Esquire rushed its full story to its website as well. The following week, the second trailer was to be released, but the competition between the stories led to a change of plans.

"All that went away because we had to get the story up more quickly," Griffin said. Had the trailer been released according to the initial plan, he said, "we'll never know what kind of effect it would have had."

It's been hard to tell whether the trailer has really driven more traffic to the story, though it has generated media attention, and was also distributed through the magazine's social media channels.

The second trailer -- which is said to be longer and to include the sound of a gunshot -- is planned for release with the magazine's March print edition. Griffin hopes the new video will "refresh attention" to the story.

Griffin said he'd try another trailer for the right story in future.

"It would have to ... have basic materials available -- photography and audio or video. This lends itself to strong, narrative stories," he said. "It will be interesting to see if it's worth doing, or if the novelty wears off."

Griffin sees video trailers as a way to entice people into sampling the experience of great writing.

"It's still true that reading a strong piece of writing is more immersive than watching a movie or a film, because you're so totally concentrated on it," he said. "If there's a way to tease people into a taste of that, I think trailers can be good."

Trailers for Print: Promoting Words Effectively

Though Esquire's story trailer was innovative, short, trailer-style promotional videos for books have been around for some time.

Sheila Clover English, the CEO of Circle of Seven Productions, creates videos to promote a variety of print products. Her videos have been primarily for books, but she sees the introduction of magazine story trailers as a logical progression from existing promotional methods.

"We've done more and more videos for graphic novels and comic books. It's not just novels, not just nonfiction books. We're seeing more and more print material, print companies, looking to video as an outreach opportunity," she said.

English points out that there are other benefits of promotional videos for magazines, including search-engine optimization (SEO) and brand development.

"People spend millions of dollars to be on the first page of Google, but video can put you there without spending that money," she said.

A well-produced trailer can also represent the larger image, style and content of the magazine and its brand. "It lets people know about the kind of articles they can find in the magazine, beyond 'Here's what our big article is this month.' It's an opportunity to let people know, 'This is what we're about, this is what we care about featuring, this is how we talk about them,'" English said.

Trailers may also prove to be an effective way to distinguish magazines' special offerings.

"Print products are fighting to be heard, and there's a lot more noise out there," said Mebus of Hearst Digital Media.

However, there's also a lot of noise out there in that there's lots of uninteresting, low-quality online video. Mebus recommends that aspiring story trailer creators work with only the best content and model their trailers on the best professional movie and TV promotions.

"You have to really make sure you have the right kind of assets. If you don't have the right pieces, it would just be a few graphics and a title," Mebus said. "We put top talent on it. This is not the kind of thing you can hand to a PA [production assistant]. You need a creative mind. Some of the best people in Hollywood are the trailer editors."

Griffin cautions that magazine articles -- as ultimately static, written, print products -- should avoid an overly slick style in trailers.

"I think the more sexy you try to make them, the less effective they would be. Trailers are trying to use advertising and filmmaking techniques to promote print -- words -- and those are two different things," he said. "If you make it too slick, or too much like a marketing thing, that might not sync up right with people. If trailers are simple and going off the actual assets of the story itself, and are put together by people involved in the story, it will connect better with viewers."

Whether or not magazine story trailers end up succeeding in the long run, Griffin sees one more intangible benefit from Esquire's experiment.

"They're fun. They get everyone juiced up around here," he said. "We're making an effort to promote things that we all feel good about, and it gets people thinking creatively."

Film image behind trailer still by Travis Hornung on Flickr.

Susan Currie Sivek, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Mass Communication at Linfield College. Her research focuses on magazines and media communities. She also blogs at sivekmedia.com, and is the magazine correspondent for MediaShift.

Ladies' Home Journal is now venturing into this mostly unknown territory. Starting in March, rather than rely solely on professionals to write articles, editors will work primarily with readers who have submitted their work for consideration.

With a paid circulation of nearly 4 million, the Journal's experiment is the first time a major magazine has embraced reader-generated content in such a serious way. Editor-in-chief Sally Lee said the approach will bring fresh voices to the 128-year-old publication, reinvigorating regular readers and attracting new ones to join the magazine's community.

Providing a Positive Environment for Readers' Stories

Lee explained that there are several ways readers will be able to submit their work for publication in Ladies' Home Journal. One is by tagging a story they've sent into DivineCaroline.com, which consists of "real voices [combined] with guided editorial and the dynamism of an online community." DivineCaroline is also owned by the Journal's parent company, Meredith.

Additionally, as part of a new redesign of the print magazine, Journal readers will see "calls to action" marked by distinctive icons that show where photos, stories or comments can be submitted in response to magazine content. The redesigned cover will feature the word "Journal" more prominently to reinforce the concept. Readers whose work is accepted for publication will be compensated like the magazine's professional writers.

"We know that our readers really are very excited about this, that they really value this self-expression and want to be heard," Lee said. As an example, she described the results of a recent essay contest sponsored by the magazine that garnered 3,000 entries for possible publication in the Journal (1,000 beyond what she initially reported in her February editor's letter).

Lee said Meredith's research into this reader-generated approach showed that readers felt comfortable with the idea of publishing their personal stories in the Journal. Their impressions of the magazine were that it was "trustworthy, authoritative, [with a] deep moral code," and that it offered the right kind of "nurturing and supportive environment" for telling even deeply personal stories, she said. Readers felt a stronger sense of identification with stories written by "women just like them."

Avoiding "Magazine-Speak"

Though Ladies' Home Journal has clearly established a strong identity among its readers over its long history, Lee isn't concerned that the coherence and consistent editorial voice of the magazine will be lost as it ventures into crowdsourcing.

"Coherence comes from many different measures," she pointed out, including the unifying design features of the magazine and the tone of its stories. The magazine will also still include some content from professional writers and experts.

Readers told Meredith researchers that the magazine's reader-generated content felt like "the kind of conversation I'd have with my girlfriends," Lee said. "What we're looking for in terms of tonality is something supportive, authentic. There's an honesty to them. The other thing that came through in testing a lot, and that we had not had in the Journal before, is that people said that this stuff was fun and funny."

At least one observer has questioned how this new strategy will affect the quality of the Journal's content. Lee argued that the reader-generated stories are far from amateurish.

"I'm reading stories that would stand up to any professional writer. Some people have a way of expressing themselves that is very true and clean and unsullied by magazine-speak," she said. "We're getting fresh, clear voices that don't fall into the trap of thinking that they have to write a certain way for a women's magazine ... One of the wonderful things about working with so-called amateur writers is they don't have preconceived notions about what the magazine should be."

While these new voices are intriguing, Lee said that the reader-contributors will need some editorial assistance. Stories will be polished with help from the Journal's editors.

"Of those 3,000 stories that we've gotten [in the essay contest], probably two or three could make it into the magazine as it is. Others will have to be edited and nurtured," Lee said. "We can put writers with them to help them tell that story ... There is obviously going to be a greater editorial role. Editors have to be really sharp to bring these stories out."

Meeting Expectations with New Types of Content

Working with reader-submitted stories won't be the only change to Journal editors' workflow. The magazine also plans to identify bloggers and blog material to feature in the print magazine.

"We've found some incredible material on blogs that we think really needs to be shared with a mainstream audience," Lee said. "We can have semi-famous bloggers in the magazine that the media cognoscenti will know about, but the ordinary American woman in the Midwest won't."

Lee is especially interested in food blogs where bloggers tell how they developed a recipe.

"We have a lot of food edit, and we found out in our studies that people wanted to know the stories behind recipes," she explained. "We created a new column called 'The Story Behind the Recipe,' and a lot of bloggers have great stories ... [It] adds a dimension to have a story that makes you even more compelled to read that recipe. There's a heart and soul attached."

Blog material, however, will definitely require polish before it sees print, Lee said. She described Meredith research in which test readers were given sample magazines with writing culled directly from blogs. The writing was copy edited but still used what Lee calls the "very immediate" style of blogging. The test readers were not impressed. They demanded "more polish" from magazine content.

"There's an expectation from this brand, and from print versus online, that there has to be a degree of polish," Lee said. The Journal had a decision to make. "How authentic were we going to be? What was the language we were going to use? Language used in blogs is very different from what's used in formal writing," she said.

Because the test readers included both regular and potential Journal readers, Lee believes that many of these audience expectations were based upon the print format itself. Readers might accept a casual style or lax editing online, but when they purchase a magazine, they feel differently.

"That's where the curation of the stories comes in. Every story in that issue has to sing. It's not like I'm drifting through Facebook, and some of that stuff is great, some of it's not great, but it's forgiven," Lee said. "With a magazine, it's coming into their home. It's a certain number of pages. There's no sense of forgiveness. You really have to be on your game, because they pay for it."

Creating the right blend of reader- and expert-generated content for an established magazine is certainly a new game. The success of Ladies' Home Journal's experiment will likely set the ground rules for other magazines to follow.

Susan Currie Sivek, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Mass Communication at Linfield College. Her research focuses on magazines and media communities. She also blogs at sivekmedia.com, and is the magazine correspondent for MediaShift.

The ways you can buy a magazine are rapidly multiplying, making it harder for readers to evaluate their choices. Major magazine publishers, digital newsstands and magazine customer service companies are trying to simplify the process of setting up digital magazine subscriptions, but so far, it's still sometimes a confusing process. Here's one strategy to get your digital magazine subscriptions set up for e-reading enjoyment.

Check Subscription Expiration Dates

It's helpful to know when your print magazine subscriptions expire if you really want to switch fully to digital-only subscriptions. If you have only one or two print issues left, you might wait until the print subscription ends to sign up for a new digital-only subscription, if that's offered by the publisher. The reason for delaying the move is that the "midstream" print-to-digital subscription switch is challenging for publishers right now. Some magazines can immediately convert your subscription to digital and stop your print issues from arriving in the mail; some can't.

Zinio, one of the major newsstands for digital magazine subscriptions on iOS and Android, is developing a way to make this conversion easier, but it's still in the works.

"For example, if you had Men's Fitness and you wanted to switch it midstream, you would let Zinio know, and Zinio would contact the publishers to handle it for you," said Jeanniey Mullen, Zinio's global executive vice president and chief marketing officer.

Mullen said magazine publishers might model this process on Canada's epost service, which provides a centralized location for consumers to request e-bills instead of paper bills from a variety of billers.

For now, don't count on being able to immediately go all-digital for your existing magazine subscriptions. Depending on the magazine's policies, you may be better off waiting until the end of an existing print subscription, or may have to continue the print subscription to get digital access. You may also find that some of your favorite publications don't even have digital editions yet.

Investigate Your Options

When you're ready to pursue digital subscriptions, your first step should be to review -- thoroughly -- each magazine's website. Information about digital editions and magazine apps can sometimes be hard to locate, so rather than sifting through the magazine's website, opt for a Google search for its title and "digital edition" or "tablet edition."

"Over time, I'd like to see a standard way of communicating what formats are available and a standard way of getting to them," said Tony Pytlak, president and chief operating officer of Strategic Fulfillment Group, which provides fulfillment services to a number of magazine publishers. "Right now, even a lot of the newsstands that are coming out don't provide things clearly."

You might find that you can access a digital edition for free as a perk of your existing print subscription. For example, subscribers to the print editions of The New Yorker or Wired can immediately get access to their tablet editions for free. Later, when you renew your subscription, you might seek a digital-only option if you find you're enjoying the digital editions more than print.

Publishers are experimenting with package deals, meaning offerings will vary widely among different magazines.

"Our publishing partners are trying to find, for their unique audience, what's the right combination of print/digital, at what price points -- and what does a subscriber to one or the other, or both, actually have access to," Pytlak said.

SFG gathers customers' responses to various print and digital subscription package deals in its database so that publishers can analyze their success. "If you're going to test print only, or digital only, at one price or another, or digital at a slightly higher upsell, capturing the customers' responses to those kinds of offers will help our partners understand them," Pytlak said.

Some magazines have chosen dedicated apps as their only digital content option (other than their websites). That means you'll have to visit the app store for your device (such as the iTunes Store) to download the app, and then likely will purchase the subscription to the magazine's content through the app. You'd then revisit the app on your device to access new content as it's made available.

Additionally, some magazines' digital editions are offered through a newsstand-type app like Zinio, which serves as a storefront for digital magazines. Amazon also sells digital subscriptions for Kindle devices through its Kindle Store, just as Barnes and Noble does on its website for the Nook.

Make the Switch

Once you know what subscription choices a magazine offers, you can either attempt to switch your print subscription to digital by using the magazine's website, if that's an option available online, or -- more likely -- you'll need to call customer service to get help.

"The best proactive approach is to contact the publisher directly, and let them know what they're trying to transfer to digital, and let them know what digital platform," said Zinio's Mullen. "If they've got an iPad, they can say, 'I want to transfer my print subscription to the digital version you have on [the iTunes] Newsstand' ... It will be extremely helpful for the customer service team to know that."

Still, there's no guarantee that customer service representatives will be able to help you. Pytlak said your success may differ from publisher to publisher.

"It varies in how they let their service providers help them," Pytlak said. "Some service providers are not able to handle the transition from print to digital. It's a function of the publisher and the service provider working together to sync those things up and make it easy for the customer to do that."

Form a Digital Magazine Habit

Once you've successfully made the switch to digital subscriptions, it can be hard to remember that you have new issues to read without the physical reminder of a new issue arriving in the mail.

Some magazine and newsstand apps will provide a notification on your device that a new issue is available to read. Those notifications can pile up and become easy to ignore, however. If notifications aren't available, you'll have to remember to reopen the app and see what's new. It can be easy to forget about apps, especially considering app users' habits: 26 percent of apps downloaded are never opened again after their first use. If you're paying for a subscription, though, your motivation to revisit an app might be higher.

Some magazines' digital editions will give you the option of receiving an email notification whenever a new issue is available, which -- depending on your email habits -- might be a more effective reminder to read your magazine.

Improving the Process

Clearly, making the switch from print to digital magazine subscriptions isn't always an easy process. And not everyone is choosing to switch completely just yet.

"I'd call it a shift in consumers' media habits, but not necessarily a transition from print to digital," Pytlak said. He said today, SFG receives more requests from readers to change subscriptions "either print to print, or print to digital and print, more so than print to digital."

Mullen said that rather than just converting existing print subscriptions, many new e-reader users are trying out magazines that are new to them, especially when promotional offers are available.

"They'll buy a single issue of a magazine they've never bought in print before," she said. Additionally, using Zinio, "a very high percentage of people will subscribe to magazines they've never subscribed to in print."

Both Pytlak and Mullen say that standardization of print and digital subscription management is necessary both to make subscribers' lives easier and to improve publishers' ability to gather and analyze data about their subscribers.

"I see 2012 as a big year of change around subscription management on the back end and in fulfillment processing," Mullen said. "It's a very consumer-oriented challenge that we all need to address. A lot of publishing houses are interested in making the midstream switch as easy as possible. The lack of standardization is really the challenge, and where I think we will see advancement in 2012."

Susan Currie Sivek, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Mass Communication at Linfield College. Her research focuses on magazines and media communities. She also blogs at sivekmedia.com, and is the magazine correspondent for MediaShift.

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 with digital tools targeted to cost-conscious home cooks.

Through the development of a unified print, web and mobile strategy prior to launch in June, Meredith crafted an intriguing way of combining these media for value-focused readers who want to plan tasty meals efficiently, using every digital device at their disposal.

Putting It All Together in Advance

Established magazines have to imagine ways that their existing print editions can be extended into digital forms. A new magazine can be developed from the ground up with all the digital tools available today already integrated into its editorial strategy.

Recipe.com is one of Meredith's most recent print magazine launches, but it all began online with its eponymous URL. Meredith bought the URL about two years ago in a "high six-figure deal," according to Dan Hickey, the senior vice president for digital engagement at Meredith Interactive. Meredith was looking for a way to extend its strength in food-related content in its print publications into the digital realm.

"We have a tremendous legacy on the print side," Hickey said. "But on the digital side, we really needed a complementary strategy to drive Meredith into a digital leadership position in the food category."

Hickey said the site had no content at all when it was purchased, so the Meredith team spent several months working on a plan to maximize its potential.

"We came up with a cross-platform strategy that included a magazine, mobile applications, mobile websites, and TV segments on our 'Better' TV shows," Hickey said. "We looked across all of our other brands in terms of the promotional horsepower we could bring to it."

Media Matching Consumers' Needs

The state of the economy was a major consideration for the Recipe.com team. Research in-house at Meredith and elsewhere shows that as consumers have become more price-aware, they are planning meals more diligently, shopping less often, and using coupons more frequently.

Recipe.com, Hickey said, reflects a "360-degree approach," better accommodating today's value-seeking and technologically savvy shopper.

"It's really kind of desktop, to store, to checkout, to countertop, to table. When we think of recipes, we think, 'I'll go find it and print it out.' But we knew the [meal-planning] process was much more involved," Hickey said.

Recipe.com, in all of its forms, was designed to provide tools to these budget-conscious shoppers. The recipes in the magazine, drawn from Meredith's many magazines, are each accompanied by their approximate cost per serving. Most recipes also have a Microsoft Tag 2D barcode that readers can scan with a smartphone app to add ingredient lists to a Recipe.com shopping list. The list is then available on the web or through Recipe.com's own shopping list mobile app.

The shopping list app also syncs with any list items a user has saved on the website. (Both fully featured and mobile versions are available.) More grocery items can be added through barcode scanning or voice recognition. The list itself is then matched to specials at nearby grocery stores, automatically identified via GPS, through the Grocery Server shopping engine. The user can select preferred stores from those suggested, refine the list with the deals offered, and go shopping.

This process makes it possible for cooks to select recipes that look good, then quickly locate relevant coupons and specials, instead of basing meal choices on the deals that are available.

"We wanted to shift the paradigm to digital, but also change the paradigm so [the consumer] starts with what she wants to do, and what we do is go out and find the savings for her," Hickey said. "I want my coupons and store savings tied to what I want to do, instead of the other way around."

Finding the Perfect Blend

Recipe.com launched as a print magazine in June with an initial circulation of 350,000 on newsstands and a cover price of $5.99. According to Hickey, the website's traffic has grown from about 600,000 unique visitors in June to about 4 million in October. There were about 10,000 uses of the QR codes in the print magazine during June alone, and the shopping list app has had about 100,000 downloads since its launch in September.

Recipe.com (the website) also integrates with Meredith's other sites, including Better Recipes, a user-generated recipe hub. Better Recipes also incorporates Mixing Bowl, focused on social interaction among cooks. All of these include links to Meredith's other websites as well. Each site is designed to appeal to a unique segment of home cooks, with Recipe.com's focus on frugality evident in its ads promising coupons and deals.

The Recipe.com strategy was driven by insight into readers' need for different types of access to food information: at home during meal planning, either relaxing on the couch with print, or at the computer on the web; and then on the go, with mobile options.

Recipe.com demonstrates how a magazine can be created today from the ground up to fit consumers' evolving media preferences and uses. Print has its role, offering a durable, visually appealing, familiar resource for recipes. Digital tools, in the form of 2D barcodes and mobile/web access, complement print by providing convenience, flexibility and efficiency in using the magazine's information. Multiple ways to access consumers beckon to advertisers.

Recognizing the persistent utility and pleasures of print -- and the new possibilities offered by digital tools -- is a valuable model. Other kinds of print magazines, new and old, might also benefit from carefully (re-)aligning consumers' real media uses with their print and digital tools.

Susan Currie Sivek, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Mass Communication at Linfield College. Her research focuses on magazines and media communities. She also blogs at sivekmedia.com, and is the magazine correspondent for MediaShift.

"Beyond J-School 2011" is sponsored by the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, which offers an intensive, cutting edge, three semester Master of Arts in Journalism; a unique one semester Advanced Certificate in Entrepreneurial Journalism; and the CUNY J-Camp series of Continuing Professional Development workshops focused on emerging trends and skill sets in the industry.

Though you don't have to use technology to teach effectively, sometimes a little bit of tech can go a long way toward making the job easier. And, of course, teaching media and journalism courses today requires that instructors be familiar with as many different technology tools as possible -- and be willing to experiment with the rest.

I think it's important for me to model for my students a sincere, deep enthusiasm for multimedia and technology, as they're hoping to enter a field that demands that mindset. I teach a variety of media and journalism courses at Linfield College in McMinnville, Ore., and am fortunate to be able to use a MacBook Pro and iPad 2 supplied by Linfield. I use my own iPhone 3GS for some teaching-related tasks. All of the classrooms I use are also "smart" -- either dedicated computer labs or computer- and digital projector-equipped rooms. That means I have lots of opportunities to try out different approaches.

I have often blogged on my personal site about trying out different technology tools in my teaching. This is a lightly updated version of a post that recently appeared there. Though not all of the tools I list below are new, these are the lucky few that have secured a lasting role in my teaching workflow.

In the Classroom

• Attendance iPad app. I used its photo-management feature to take photos of all my students on the first day of classes this semester. It's a great tool for learning names more quickly (always a huge struggle for me) and for tracking attendance and group membership accurately. Though its interface is plain -- taking roll isn't sexy -- it's a valuable app.

• After some experimentation, I've found that it isn't really practical for me to do most of my classroom presentations on the iPad. I thought I'd end up using Keynote on the iPad in the classroom, in lieu of toting my laptop to class. Nope. When I first got an iPad, I had compatibility problems with an old version of Keynote on my laptop, and then realized that my image- and video-heavy slideshows are difficult to create on the iPad anyway. So I'm still just using my MacBook Pro in class for Keynote.

• However, beyond Keynote: The iPad now projects whatever you show on the screen through the VGA adapter. Hooray! I've now been able to demonstrate digital magazines and books to students using the iPad in class.

• Evernote. I create class notes or guest lecture outlines on my laptop in Evernote, then access them on the iPad when needed. I also use this to create access digital notes for committee and faculty meetings, as well as conference events -- incredibly handy, searchable, and paper-saving.

• Caffeine (Mac only) is a simple app that prevents your screen from dimming or turning off during presentations and video viewing. Never have your screensaver interrupt a movie in class again.

• I learned how to use Yahoo Pipes this semester to aggregate my students' blog posts and pull them into our class website (a WordPress.org installation on my own domain) as one feed. It was much easier to do than I thought it would be. Students now have easy access to each other's work online, and I can find all the blogs in one place for grading.

• Associated Press Stylebook. I subscribed to the digital/app version so I never have to take the book to class, and I never leave it in the office over the weekend when I need it for grading at home. It's been worth $24 to have the Stylebook with me at all times.

Grading and Feedback

• I use two apps for simple grading calculations. The iPad app is called GroovyGrader, and it's free (with ads). The iPhone app is called EasyGrader and costs 99 cents. (Both work on either device. I like GroovyGrader on the iPad because I don't have to scroll to see the full list of possible grades.) When you just want to know the grade out of 100 points when a student misses five questions on a 40-question exam, and you don't want to do the math every time or create an Excel spreadsheet, these apps make it easy.

• I used the GradeMark feature of Turnitin in Blackboard Learn for the first time this semester. I have concerns about Turnitin as a company due to its new service that students can purchase prior to turning in their work that alerts them to possible plagiarism. I find this problematic. I found GradeMark so easy to use, though (darn it), that I've decided to continue to use it this year and then explore other options.

The GradeMark system allows the instructor to see Turnitin's originality report information and also attach comments (both unique to that student or pre-prepared from a customizable database) for a student's paper. The standard comments come with explanations of writing concepts (e.g., students can immediately be reminded of what a comma splice is when they view that comment). The comments are saved online for the student to access. The grade attached to the paper is automatically posted in Blackboard's gradebook. The instructor can even see whether a student has viewed the feedback provided. You can download the papers in one zipped file so you always have a backup and a record of what students received from you. In all, I have to admit it's a pretty cool system.

• Something that did not work for me: A couple of years ago, I tried using a Wacom Bamboo tablet (a nice little device that I still use when I weary of a mouse or trackpad) to mark up student papers in Adobe Acrobat. This was a hugely time-consuming process that required me to first create PDFs of student papers, attempt to scribble neatly on them with the tablet, and then email the copy with feedback back to students. Perhaps I just don't have the dexterity to write legibly with the tablet, but this was far too much of a struggle.

Communicating with Students and Colleagues

• I am a Twitter aficionado and use TweetDeck on my MacBook and the official Twitter apps for iPad and iPhone. TweetDeck lets me easily track all the tweets from my current students on their class lists and all the activity around their class hashtags.

• I have used Jing a number of times this semester and in previous years to create screencast tutorials for various online activities students need to complete (such as creating a blog on WordPress.com). These tutorials save me untold hours of demonstrating in person and writing directions in emails. I also have used Jing for providing feedback to students on online work that is difficult to comment upon otherwise. I can narrate what I see in their work (e.g., a blog post), point at and highlight things with the mouse cursor, type into their documents, and then send them a secure link to the online video, which is quickly uploaded to Screencast.com through the Jing software. One caution: My students watched the screencasts so many times this semester that I had to upgrade my Screencast.com account to a pro account ($9.99/month) to ensure that the necessary bandwidth was available. That was a bummer, and I'll be re-evaluating my use of Jing+Screencast.com for tutorials. (I've been told that Screencast-O-Matic might be a good option for creating tutorials for free, but haven't had a need to try it yet.) For individual feedback, though, I think Jing and Screencast.com are a great combination. Students responded positively to it as well.

Productivity

• I learned about Unsubscribe.com this fall, and have been using it to aggressively reduce the amount of automated email I receive. I use Mac OS X Mail and have installed the Unsubscribe plugin. When I receive automated mail I no longer want, I just select the message and click the Unsubscribe button in my toolbar. The service then automagically unsubscribes me. It's pretty awesome. There are plugins available for other email apps as well. (Incidentally, I think I'm also saving money by not getting so many shopping-related emails!)

• Although many to-do list apps and sites are available, I've stuck with Toodledo. It's simple, has a clean web interface, works with my iPhone and iPad, and is reliable. It doesn't interface with my mail or Google Calendar, but that's OK with me.

• Google Calendar allows me to have not only my personal calendar, but also calendars for my individual classes that can be embedded on my class websites (like this). It's helpful for me to see all my upcoming events and deadlines -- and theirs -- in one place.

• I also use Google Documents to create class syllabi and assignments, and then embed them onto my class websites. Though I try not to adjust schedules too much after the start of the semester, inevitably something occurs that requires me to make minor changes. An embedded Google Document is always up to date, and the updating process is much quicker than fixing a Word document, making a new PDF of it, and re-uploading it to BBLearn or the web.

• Dropbox and SugarSync are cloud storage services that I appreciate very much. Dropbox works with many iPad/iPhone apps, making it a central point for storing files I might need to access elsewhere. I use it to store documents for meetings and conferences. SugarSync is similar, but is configured to automatically back up key folders on my laptop ($59 per year, but the peace of mind is worth it). I can also access anything in those key folders anywhere I have Internet access, which has been helpful on numerous occasions.

• TextExpander is a great tool. My students may suspect this by now, but every time they get an email from me that ends with "Please let me know if you have more questions," I've actually only typed "ppl" -- and TextExpander has done the rest. I have used this tool for numerous grading and writing purposes over the time I've had it installed. The software reports that it has saved me over 30 hours of typing during our wonderful time together.

• FocusBooster is a great Pomodoro Technique app that -- when the going (read: grading) gets tough -- allows me to work for 20 minutes, then knit check Facebook take a 5-minute break (or whatever intervals I need). When you just can't bring yourself to work, sometimes settling into just 20 minutes of work (at first) seems much more doable.

Reading and Writing

• I use Reeder for reading RSS feeds on the iPad (after trying many other RSS readers for the iPad). I use Google Reader pretty much solely as a subscription manager at this point, and just sync my account with Reeder for more comfortable reading away from the computer on the iPad or iPhone.

• I use Readability to reformat websites for easier reading, and I use Instapaper (on the iPad and soon on a new Kindle) to save long stories to read later. Interesting stuff gets saved to my Pinboard account for later reference. (Pinboard also automatically saves any tweet I send that includes a link, so I never have to wonder, "What was that article I tweeted the other day?") Pinboard is worth every penny of the $9-something lifetime membership fee I spent on it. Readability, Instapaper and Pinboard all work via bookmarklets in my browser. Instapaper and Reeder both work with Twitter and Pinboard, too.

• I enjoy using Outliner on the iPad to develop writing projects. Though it does much the same things as Inspiration, which I have used on the MacBook for a long time, I find it fun and creativity-inducing to literally move my ideas around on the screen.

Multimedia

• I recently took up photography as a hobby and have been enjoying using Snapseed and TiltShift Generator to edit photos and upload them to my Flickr account. I have Photoshop, too, of course, but editing by touch is fun, and might be a nicely intuitive way to introduce students to photo editing.

• I also have a lot of fun using FlickStackr to look through photos in Explore on Flickr, which is inspiring and educational for a new photographer. Guardian Eyewitness is also a great iPad app that highlights an amazing work of photojournalism every day. I have more apps I could include in this category, but they're not strictly teaching-related tools and are really more intended for mobile multimedia production.

If you like these kinds of tools and want to keep learning more, I highly recommend the ProfHacker blog and Twitter feed. Many of these ideas came from ProfHacker initially. I also learned of others from the fabulous journalism/media educators and professionals whom I follow on Twitter.

Susan Currie Sivek, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Mass Communication at Linfield College. Her research focuses on magazines and media communities. She also blogs at sivekmedia.com, and is the magazine correspondent for MediaShift.

"Beyond J-School 2011" is sponsored by the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, which offers an intensive, cutting edge, three semester Master of Arts in Journalism; a unique one semester Advanced Certificate in Entrepreneurial Journalism; and the CUNY J-Camp series of Continuing Professional Development workshops focused on emerging trends and skill sets in the industry.

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 that are united by narrative text and supplemented by other features, such as infographics and audio clips.

Once's free pilot issue was released in August. Its next issue -- which will cost $2.99 and offer subscription options -- will likely be released in October with the debut of Apple's iOS 5 and its new Newsstand feature. Once is yet another magazine app that challenges our understanding of what magazines are -- and might be. Its founders think it might also represent an important path into the future of photography.

Once's Editorial Concept

Once's strategy is to assemble "stories worth touching," said publisher Andrew Jones, in order to make the most of the iPad's interface and its ability to display high-quality images.

The app's focus on quality visuals means that its editorial process begins with the photography. The editorial team identifies photographers with intriguing work and asks them to participate. After about 20 photos on one theme are selected, the Once editorial team identifies a journalist with relevant knowledge and experience, and commissions text that wraps a compelling story around the photo sequence. Additional interactive elements and audio clips are added to the photos to enrich the reading experience.

The three photo essays included in Once's pilot edition cover a lot of territory, and each depict life in different regions: the far reaches of Greenland; Abkhazia, a region of the country of Georgia; and Sun City, Ariz., a retirement community near Phoenix.

While photographers whose work is used in Once may have taken these photos while working on other projects, the text used with them is newly developed.

"It's a unique editorial model in that the stories are built retroactively. It fits well with our budget and our business model," said Nick Hiebert, Once's communications director. "We don't have to pay journalists upfront to go to these countries. We find journalists who are already in these areas or already have expertise in the area, which makes reporting much easier for them and more cost-effective."

Photographer Andrea Gjestvang, whose photographs of life in Greenland are included in the pilot issue, appreciated the opportunity for a different selection of her images to tell a new story in Once.

"I like the idea that they brought in the journalist who wrote the independent text. [It was] her words, her story, but it went very well with my pictures," said Gjestvang, a freelance photographer who is based in Norway. "Normally, when I have been presenting this project, I've been focusing more on the daily life and social life, whereas they focused more on the hunting side. The selection of pictures was a bit different than what I normally use, but it was nice that one big project can have different stories within the project."

The Audience for Photography

Once's high-end visual concept is based on its founders' observation that the public is increasingly interested in and sensitive about photography, but so far it's been difficult to make photography lucrative.

"Once is addressing a number of problems, we like to think, one of them being that photography is not paying very well," Jones said. Yet DSLR (digital single-lens reflex) cameras and cell phone photography have helped more people take higher-quality photos and in greater quantities, he observed.

"It seems like a real disconnect. More people know more and are exposed to really high-quality photography. Once is trying to leverage that whole shift in consumer habits, toward thinking about photographs being really valuable," Jones said.

Starting with the next issue, photographers published in Once will receive a cut of the magazine's revenues. The $2.99 charge for each issue first will be reduced by Apple's standard 30 percent cut, then the remainder is split: half to the magazine and half divided among the three published photographers. So far, the magazine's writers have received a flat fee, but Once is exploring ways to include them in the revenue-sharing model as well.

Hiebert noted that this isn't usually how photographers are paid for their work. "Typically, photographers are contracted with a set amount of money. Because we have this new data that Apple gives us through iTunes, we're allowed to see how many downloads are coming -- and how much money the magazine is making -- much more accurately than publications in the past that were relying on traditional sales data," he said.

Photographer Gjestvang is hopeful that this model will appeal to a wider audience.

"Many photographers hope that it will bring a new way of publishing work in the future which will also pay for what you are doing," she said. "Of course, you need the audience to pay for the project that you spend so much time on ... It's also important that if you want to have a broad audience, to not only make a magazine for other photographers, but for all kinds of people, to make the audience curious about what's going on in the world."

Once Looks Ahead

The Once concept is likely to evolve to include additional multimedia -- though photography will always play a major role -- and to be available on new platforms.

"We're trying to push a new type of storytelling experience that is only available on the iPad, kind of a tactile experience," Jones said. "That learning experience, that entertainment experience is so much richer when we can bring in the reader through physically touching."

Today's photographers shooting with DSLRs often capture audio and video that can be incorporated into Once. Infographics are also now easier to create with new online tools. The complexity of the app as a whole, though, is still somewhat limited by technical considerations.

"We would love to include as much video and audio in every essay [as we could], but the truth of the matter is that it increases file size and that maybe affects download numbers," Hiebert said. "We also don't want to ... distract from the narrative focus."

The magazine plans to move next to the iPhone, then to explore opportunities on Android platforms, including the new Kindle Fire tablet, which require more development than the shift to the iPhone. The potential for the forthcoming iPad 3 to include a higher-resolution "retina display," similar to that already used for the iPhone 4, would also be an ideal match for Once's content, Jones said.

The new platforms will likely lead to still more innovations.

"The iPad has allowed us to develop a pretty unique product in Once. You don't envision a magazine as a three-essay package," Hiebert said. "But we can reconceptualize what the magazine is, now that there are different platforms for delivering them."

Susan Currie Sivek, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Mass Communication at Linfield College. Her research focuses on magazines and media communities. She also blogs at sivekmedia.com, and is the magazine correspondent for MediaShift.

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 they're implementing to prepare students for careers in a rapidly changing industry.

Classes Move Beyond Print

Students in magazine production classes often eagerly look forward to the arrival of a published print magazine that they have designed as a class. But at Drake University's School of Journalism and Mass Communication, one of the magazine program capstone courses no longer publishes a print magazine.

"We're strictly a digital publication with a focus on an iPad edition," said Jeff Inman, assistant professor of journalism at Drake, describing his students' capstone course project. "We're not doing a traditional website this semester. We're going to try our hand at doing an aggregation site, [and] we're aiming at being a lifestyle website for eight Midwestern states. We'll cull up to 10 posts a day."

Inman said these digital experiences are a better fit for the types of careers students are entering. Three students in the capstone class will focus on marketing, because many of his program's graduates are finding jobs in that field.

Drake's faculty have also created an application development class evocative of Hacks/Hackers meetups. Six journalism students, six graphic design students, and six computer science students will team up to build complete apps. Inman said the goal of the class isn't so much to focus on the technical details, but to help students learn to participate in this type of collaboration.

"We focused the class not so much on the actual building, but on the arguing," Inman said. "These groups don't have a common language, a common set of ideas, so how do they talk to each other and get things done?"

Inman said Drake's magazine writing classes have also been updated to include new technology, while still maintaining a focus on storytelling. Students now learn to incorporate SEO (search engine optimization) into their work, to revamp long-form stories for the web with additional multimedia, and to design social media marketing strategies for their finished work.

Teaching Not Just Skills, But Attitude

The kind of mental flexibility required to use all of these new tools is also a major focus at the University of Missouri magazine program. Jennifer Rowe, an associate professor at the Missouri School of Journalism, said instructors now ask students to extend their concept of the magazine and content.

"Even in classes like our magazine writing classes, obviously we're still covering the basics of writing and reporting and storytelling, but with the idea of technology in mind," Rowe said. "Many of our professors are requiring that for those stories, [students] have elements of multimedia that go with them. In some instances, students are doing that themselves, or sometimes are paired with other students that have those technology skills, depending on classes they've already taken."

Yet while students need to know how to create multimedia, they also must have the ability to examine media content critically from the user's perspective, Rowe said.

"There's definitely that shift, in not just 'Do you know HTML?' but 'Do you know how to post?' Can you critically analyze a site, what works and what doesn't work, what can make an experience more fulfilling for a reader?" Rowe said.

In addition, Rowe and her colleagues work to develop students' mental agility. Rowe said the top characteristic magazine journalism students need for success is what she calls "nimbleness."

"You should be quick enough and sharp enough to adapt to whatever environment you're going to be in, because as soon as you get stuck, you'll limit your options," Rowe said.

Rowe cites Missouri's emphasis on real-world production experience as the key to teaching students problem-solving skills and adaptability. Because students go through the process of creating media many times during a semester, they are repeatedly exposed to the varied challenges they will face as professionals, and know how to think through the complexities of each situation.

Thinking Audience-First

Rachel Davis Mersey, assistant professor at the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern University, also emphasizes digital technology and adaptability in her courses, but with a slightly different approach.

"I object to the idea that all new products have to be digital products. I'm pushing my students to not be content-first, not platform-first, but audience-first," Mersey said. "My classes are designed around selecting an audience and researching it, using mostly secondary sources, and some primary research techniques."

Mersey encourages students to "think about crafting products to solve problems that the audience has, or doesn't even know it has," arguing that the key factor in designing a new media product must be the audience's needs and preferences. Mersey uses a persona approach, primarily used in marketing, to help her students develop a deeper understanding of the people they want to reach with their work. While sometimes this understanding might lead the students to create digital media for the audience, it might also lead to print or to other media, such as websites or online games.

Another key component of Mersey's courses has been helping students understand the functioning of the businesses they seek to join, including magazine publishers.

"We can't put students out there who don't understand the larger picture beyond their own production," Mersey said.

For example, many magazines now organize events, but Mersey notes that magazine journalism students don't automatically know how to "work across boundaries" to participate in those kinds of projects. "They don't always understand the business side, the way organizations work, the way they can become a part of an organization," she said.

The new components these educators have incorporated into their programs reflect a developing concept of what magazines are and will be. As Mersey describes it, "When we think about the expansion of magazines ... the engagement doesn't just come through narrative. It may come through services, games, events. That piece is very important to me, to broadly define content and to say that journalists should be involved in all of those things, because they're all content delivery mechanisms. We're pushing magazine students to think about engagement as more than just long narratives."

Susan Currie Sivek, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Mass Communication at Linfield College. Her research focuses on magazines and media communities. She also blogs at sivekmedia.com, and is the magazine correspondent for MediaShift.

Everyone does that, right?

These evasive strategies for magazine quizzes, though, could be a thing of the past as smartphones and tablet devices evolve to incorporate a variety of new sensors that will keep us honest. While they might not be able to assess your personality yet, sensors are rapidly becoming capable of detecting all kinds of information about you and your surroundings. These sensors will not only change digital magazines' editorial content and advertising, but also lead to entirely new ways of authoring content and serving readers.

Location Services Have Room to Grow

Many consumers already use location-sensing tools, such as GPS features on smartphones, to find nearby businesses. Some magazine and media applications have also integrated location-based features that display relevant content for a user's local area. But there's a lot more that can be done with location information as sensors improve, and as media companies take fuller advantage of what they will offer.

Location-based services still have space to evolve, said Wayne Chavez, an operations manager for the sensor division of Freescale, a semiconductor company that is developing a variety of sensors for mobile devices, among other products. Chavez said improved location sensors and related applications will combine both GPS data and magnetometer readings to determine the device's orientation and know which way the user is facing. That detail allows greater customization of information.

For example, imagine a tourist taking a picture of a notable building. The picture can easily be geo-tagged already with today's GPS sensors, but new sensors and related applications could gather more information, including "what direction you took the picture from. It can tell you based on your previous interests and queries what's around you near that building. You might be around the block from another historic building," Chavez said.

Software on the device -- such as, perhaps, a local magazine's app -- could then use the sensor's data to push to the user details of how to navigate to that next location of potential interest, as well as ways "to read more about a historical marker, at any length, with instant access to that media," Chavez said.

Magazines' editorial content could even dynamically change to reflect more detailed location information. Joseph J. Esposito, an independent media consultant, offered an example of how it might work.

"If you're reading a future edition of The New Yorker, maybe a story about a young couple that falls in love in New York, and you're walking along, then the story changes because you just walked in front of a Mexican restaurant," Esposito said. The story could update its content to harmonize with the reader's location and activity.

While some digital magazines have already experimented with contextual advertising based on location data, Esposito said the use of this sensor information eventually "will start to have an editorial direction as well."

There's room to improve contextual advertising based on location, too, for digital magazines and other media applications. Chavez suggests that location data could eventually be combined with information from "the cloud" -- online compilations of user information -- for more precise targeting.

"I see many providers saying, based on the location of your handset and your history, I can pre-filter and stream to you information that might be relevant to you," he said.

Sensor Publishing

Esposito's example of the dynamically updated New Yorker story, mentioned above, is just one way that sensor data might alter magazine content. As Esposito puts it, our phones are, in reality, sensors that we carry everywhere we go. Users of sensor-equipped mobile devices could serve as passive authors of projects that gather, analyze and present data from these sensors. Esposito calls this "sensor publishing" to distinguish it from crowdsourcing because it doesn't require participants' active involvement.

Digital magazines and other media applications could collect sensor data -- such as location, temperature, ambient light or other readings -- and find ways to incorporate the data into stories, or to make them stories in themselves.

"We become carriers or hosts, collecting data passively all the time," Esposito said. "It's different from how we like to think about our phones, but there's also passive use of the phone, when it picks up temperature or humidity. When you're collecting information from 350 million phones, now it's starting to get meaningful. Those little data aggregation points start to mean something."

Esposito noted that all types of sensors -- anything scientists use in laboratories, including spectroscopes or Geiger counters -- could eventually be incorporated into mobile devices, making all kinds of data-gathering opportunities possible for the creation or enhancement of digital magazine content and other media.

Sensing Health Information

Sensors might also mean the end of cheating on magazines' health quizzes, along with new ways of experiencing health-related content. A range of health sensors are already available and, as their cost falls, media companies could distribute them so that the data users gather about themselves as part of daily life could be integrated into various types of content.

Carré Technologies is a Montreal-based company developing health sensors that can be integrated into clothing. The sensors will interact with mobile devices to collect and analyze health information, and could have intriguing media-related uses.

"People in general are taking more responsibility for managing their own health," said Pierre-Alexandre Fournier, president of Carré Technologies. "It's going to help preventive health [care] ... A lot of this monitoring can be done remotely now because of the Internet."

Fournier said health sensors like his company's are useful for a variety of fitness and health applications, such as games, biofeedback, and health observation.

"The sensors we make are meant to be worn 24/7, so there's a huge amount of data created by just one person," he said. "There are a lot of creative ways to show that data, to make it useful for the users."

One way to experience that data might be to have it integrated with media content. For example, a digital magazine application that collected health data from a reader using these sensors could then offer customized diet or exercise recommendations within the context of the magazine, as well as pool data from users anonymously to produce sensor publishing projects. Articles could describe the activity patterns of the publication's audience, contextualizing the individual reader's activity level within that broader picture, and then offering suggestions for improvement.

This approach to providing personally relevant health information might be an opportunity for health-related magazines and other media seeking to capitalize on demographic trends in their mobile applications.

"One of the megatrends here is our aging population," Chavez said. "As our baby boomers reach their mid-60s now, many of them are very tech aware, and looking for telehealth solutions, whether that's out of personal interest or clinically driven."

Naturally, there are privacy concerns related to the collection of health and other personal data. "I'm not sure how much people want the media company to have access to their physical data," Fournier said. "Media companies already collect a lot of data on people. I'm not sure how far people will be able to go before they start to react."

It seems inevitable, though, that we'll see more integration of varied sensors into our mobile devices, and more creative applications for them in magazine and media applications, for both editorial content and advertising. What we've seen so far are just the earliest stages of sensors' uses in the media world.

"We [just passed] the fourth anniversary of the iPhone, and it's been transformative. The first app for reading books on a phone came in July 2008," Esposito said, offering a reminder of how recently these digital possibilities have evolved. "All this world we're talking about here is so preciously new. But it's difficult to imagine turning back the clock."

Maps and graphs image by Courtney Bolton on Flickr

Google Earth image by Miki Yoshihito on Flickr.

Susan Currie Sivek, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Mass Communication at Linfield College. Her research focuses on magazines and media communities. She also blogs at sivekmedia.com, and is the magazine correspondent for MediaShift.

But getting onto mobile platforms with apps and optimized websites can be a significant challenge for small publishers. While major magazine companies like Condé Nast and Time have resources for research and development and can dedicate employees to digital innovation, small magazines are often run on a shoestring by limited personnel. That's why some small publishers have turned to external app development companies, hoping that outsourcing their apps will lead to better results at a lower cost.

App development companies -- and some rising challengers -- say their services can help small publishers save time and money, and also keep their apps in step with the latest technical developments.

In-House App Development Difficulties

The best-known magazine apps have set a standard that small publishers are eager to emulate, but aren't equipped to create.

"When they look at Wired, they say, 'I want a magazine like that,'" said Jon Maroney, senior vice president for mobile publishing at app developer Handmark. "We ask, 'Are you going to dedicate five people every month?' That's when the rubber hits the road."

App creation tools are available that integrate with popular magazine design software (for example, WoodWing combined with Adobe InDesign), which can make it easier to create a magazine app. Unfortunately, these tools are still rather expensive for small publishers, and they take time to learn.

"The magazine industry kind of breaks down ... to rich magazines that have the money and ego to want their own custom solution, and they're going to end up with Adobe and WoodWing," said Martin Hensel, president of Texterity, an app developer that has worked with numerous magazines. "Then there are others who just want a great app and ROI (return on investment)."

App development also isn't the forte of some publishers. Their strengths may be in editorial, design, and traditional print magazine business decisions, while the digital world remains somewhat more opaque. Dealing with hardware, software, and tech companies' ever-changing policies adds layers of complexity.

"It's a very hard set of problems, as the number of platforms proliferates and the requirements change, particularly at Apple and at Google," said Hensel. "Keeping up to date with that stuff ... is far beyond what most publishers do."

Facing this set of challenges -- especially at small magazines already strapped for cash and resources -- also drives some publishers to seek outside app help, after giving up working on it independently.

"When people start thinking about mobile, they think themselves into a hole. The biggest roadblock is not moving because of thinking yourself into inertia," Maroney said. He said that an outside developer is able to draw upon the publisher's existing expertise and determine how to express it best using mobile platforms.

What External Developers Provide

External developers are also able to help small publishers develop advertising techniques for their mobile apps. Many magazine publishers have struggled to incorporate mobile ads into their overall advertising strategies. External app developers have experience with this issue, and build ad networks into their apps.

"We work with a number of mobile ad networks, and always put the highest value ads up [in the app]," said Maroney of Handmark. "We take the complexity out of it and make it very simple to generate revenues from mobile apps."

Remembering to promote the app to magazine readers is also critical. "I encourage people to redefine what a subscription is. It's not a print product. It's a subscription to a brand," said Texterity's Hensel. "You get the content of that brand in all the media: web, app, print."

Advertising and promotion are just part of the shift magazines make when they go digital. Publishers may be too overwhelmed by technical details in the app development process, and forget to think about its creative possibilities. External developers' experience with multiple publications and projects can offer a fresh perspective in the design process.

Hensel counsels publishers to think beyond what's possible in print when developing their apps.

"It's how to add dimensions to the flat magazine," he said. "How could you make a director's cut out of this magazine? What additional pictures could you put into this slideshow? Could you create a 360-degree panorama of this scene? Are there videos of interviews you can routinely include? Ultimately, what we're trying to build is the amount of time that individuals on average spend with the magazine brand."

Cheaper, Simpler In-House Possibilities Coming?

While publishers of all sizes have used the help of external app developers, new options could make it easier -- particularly for smaller publications -- to have a mobile presence as an app or in an HTML5 mobile format.

An intriguing possibility is OnSwipe, a startup launching June 21 with publishing partners "you have definitely, definitely heard of," said Jason L. Baptiste, its CEO.

OnSwipe is promising that publishers can integrate their existing content management systems, such as WordPress and others, in its system to produce an HTML5 mobile site that works on any platform and functions just as well as an app, including multimedia features. The startup claims this integration will take just three minutes and can be customized to suit the publishers' preferences.

"Apps don't make sense for publishers of any size, but especially small publishers," Baptiste said, who feels apps are a poor way to deliver media content. "We direct all traffic to the web. If you ask people to start downloading apps, they're not going to go to them so much, and it's a really expensive proposition."

OnSwipe also expects to be more of a two-way social experience than most magazine apps have been so far. It will integrate social content from Instagram, YouTube, Quora and other social networking services into the mobile site based on publishers' customization, while allowing users to send content out to social networks.

Baptiste said this social aspect will help construct what he calls the "content graph," similar to Facebook's so-called social graph, showing "how people are connected to content and what that says about them."

In addition to generating a significant amount of data, OnSwipe will provide ads that it sells itself -- with a cut going to publishers whose sites display them -- or allow publishers to show their own advertisements.

Baptiste hopes that the ads included in OnSwipe sites will take full creative advantage of the mobile platform. "Online ads never really delighted anybody," he said. "We can change that because these devices are going to let us change that."

Another option not yet fully demonstrated is PadCMS, from open-source software specialist Adyax, which promises an open-source platform for making Apple and Android apps. One magazine so far -- the French-language Rue89 -- has been released using PadCMS, and details are scarce. While a free tool for developing apps could be useful for small publishers, they would still have to contend with Apple's submission process on their own, and would be responsible for all updates to the app. Still, publishers are apt to welcome any tools that ease the app creation process.

However they make it, having a mobile-accessible magazine seems more and more critical for publishers of all sizes who want to satisfy readers' and advertisers' demands.

"The engagement that we can get [for a magazine] as an application is usually 10 times the number of page views you can get from a website," said Maroney of Handmark. "It becomes pretty clear. If you want to be a player in this space, you need to have an application."

Susan Currie Sivek, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Mass Communication and Journalism Department at California State University, Fresno. Her research focuses on magazines and media communities. She also blogs at sivekmedia.com, and is the magazine correspondent for MediaShift.

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 publications and related apps at their fingertips on the iPad and other devices.

Both established publishers and startups are experimenting with new ways of reaching this audience, while reshaping what it means to be a young reader by creating new interfaces and social tools. Their creativity should inspire those working on digital magazine products for adults, and also shows us what today's young magazine app users may expect as they grow into sophisticated, experienced readers of digital media.

Playing, Educating, Informing with Apps

Though many parents are familiar with kids' games offered for mobile devices (and the easy distraction they can offer at key moments), children's magazine publishers are moving beyond them.

The app Timbuktu, for example, is an iPad news magazine developed for kids that offers news in fun ways. With text, videos and graphics developed by a global group of contributors, the app is cleanly designed and offers creative presentations of news for children.

Timbuktu editor in chief and founder Elena Favilli said the magazine's goal is to "combine education and technology to display everyday news." She said news is typically presented only for adults.

"Children are usually completely cut off from it," Favilli said. "We tend to think ... that children only like fantastic and imaginary tales, but the themes we read every day in newspapers also have great potential for [children's] personal growth and learning."

The publisher of the Ladybug and Cricket print magazines for young readers is also extending those brands through the development of educational, reading-focused apps. The Ladybug's Bookshelf iPhone app offers stories with animation and sound so that kids can either read on their own or have the story read to them, along with other interactive features.

"To my mind, nothing replaces the parent at the bedside reading the story, or looking at picture books in the library, but I think more and more of these different platforms and options give children different ways of connecting with literature," said Alice Letvin, editorial director for the Cricket Magazine Group at parent company Carus Publishing. "The imaginative engagement can be heightened through these apps, [as well as] the pleasure of being in control of your own learning, doing it at your own pace. It's something that can be very motivating."

Bringing Digital Magazines into Children's Worlds

Some might question whether even the best-designed children's magazine app or game can offer a valuable experience for growing minds.

Allison Druin, associate dean for research at the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park, researches children's use of technology. She believes that digital magazines won't even register with today's children as distinctive from reading experiences in other media.

"It's not just going to be one medium or another. It's going to be a technology ecology," Druin said. "Sometimes they're going to be reading on one form of media, sometimes another. Kids do not care what they're reading on, as long as they can curl up in their bed, on the floor, in a corner."

Druin suggests that the main concern in designing reading-related apps for kids is "whether the interface gets in the way." Accessibility and ease of use are key, as well as maximizing the capabilities of the digital device.

Making Apps Accessible for Children

Publishers and developers are striving to make their magazine apps intuitive, immersive and fun for kids.

KidsMag is a brand-new iPad app released in early May that includes a collection of informative and educational games, such as number and letter games and an interactive audio-based story about firefighters.

KidsMag's creator, Gabriel Pasqualini of Portegno Apps, was inspired by watching his own children, ages 1 and 3, interact with the iPad. The children test new games before they're released.

"The relationship they have with the iPad is incredible, the way they handle it and play games," Pasqualini said. He's found that kids can do more than expected using the iPad interface, challenging assumptions about his target audience of 3- to 9-year-olds. He's also used advice from teachers to make the app age-appropriate.

Translating Print Mag to Digital

Finding the best way to translate an established magazine brand into the digital platform can be challenging. Highlights for Children, one of the best-known American kids' magazines, doesn't yet offer a digital edition, but has licensed its name for iPhone games created in collaboration with an outside developer.

"Our initial apps are an extension of the magazine in that the art assets originated in print. Our focus, however, was to create the best experience we could for [the iPhone and iPod Touch]," Christine French Cully, editor in chief of Highlights, said via email. "It just so happens that our Hidden Pictures puzzles translate very well to this platform."

For Cricket, part of the appeal of creating apps was finding new audiences for their magazines' content. Letvin says they wanted to "go beyond the PDF" of digital replica editions, and capitalize on their publications' unique strengths.

"We felt we had distinctive content, and a lot of fine art -- not just cartoon art or computer art," said Letvin. Future content for their Ladybug's Bookshelf app will include a rebus and original music based on the work of author Edward Lear.

Advertising is also a challenge when children are the target audience. Timbuktu, a free app, will likely begin to include more contextual advertising from carefully selected companies that fits the editorial content.

"It's something that, together with editorial content, contributes to the stories, and so to the growth of children," Favilli said. "Of course, advertising, and especially advertising for children, has a negative perception among people, but we think a good form of advertising can be just another instrument of communication and learning for children."

Young Readers Interact Socially, Globally

One of the most exciting possibilities of kids' magazine apps is the potential for children to enjoy reading with each other. Interactive magazine apps potentially offer a new social environment for young readers, where they could discuss stories and play educational games together. The ease of circulating digital magazines globally can draw readers from many countries into the discussion.

Letvin of Cricket says kids love the magazines' Letterbox sections. They enjoy reading what other children have written and contributing their own thoughts.

"Children's magazines are wonderful for creating a sense of community," Letvin said. She anticipates a time when "digital magazines are able to do some of these things, including some social connections, particularly if it involves international contexts with other schools."

Timbuktu includes a section called "Ask Auntie Rita" that uses letters from children. Favilli says they hope to open the section to readers' letters in the next issue, which could be written by Timbuktu's worldwide audience and submitted within the magazine app.

Kids are also increasingly taking control of their own digital experiences. "When our first apps came out, they were primarily downloaded by parents and 'passed back' to children. Since then, more and more kids have been getting their own devices," said Cully of Highlights.

This means that many children now have direct access to apps developed especially for them -- apps that are offering sophisticated, interactive reading experiences, which will soon be social and globally interconnected.

These truly early adopters of digital magazine technology are growing up with high expectations for the media they consume. The question is whether publishers will anticipate this youthful audience's demands and fulfill them.

Susan Currie Sivek, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Mass Communication and Journalism Department at California State University, Fresno. Her research focuses on magazines and media communities. She also blogs at sivekmedia.com, and is the magazine correspondent for MediaShift.

Business content on MediaShift is sponsored by the weekend MA in Public Communication at American University. Designed for working professionals, the program is suited to career changers and public relations or social marketing professionals seeking career advancement. Learn more here.

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.

Consumer magazines get plenty of attention, showing up in everyday locations and featuring our favorite celebrities. Business-to-business magazines are also significant, if less well known, pulling in $7.5 billion of ad revenue in 2010. B2B magazines provide highly focused information on industry-specific topics. For example, United Business Media, one of the largest B2B media companies, publishes the specialized titles Packaging Digest and Air Cargo World. B2B magazines attract advertisers whose products and services are of interest primarily -- and maybe only -- to professionals in a certain field.

Information on such specific topics, of course, isn't available only through print media anymore. Like consumer magazines, B2B magazines are working to prove their unique value to advertisers and audiences, and have found some effective ways to maintain their businesses during challenging times.

Redefining the B2B Media Business

Today's successful B2B magazines have redefined themselves as multi-platform brands that provide a variety of information and services to their audiences and advertisers.

"We wouldn't be here if we continued to say we wanted to be a traditional print magazine," said Rich Reiff, CEO of Advantage Business Media, which produces a variety of technology-oriented B2B magazines and web media.

Publishers are now applying their B2B magazine brands to a variety of products that serve their already existing audiences in new ways. Some are developing webinars, sponsoring trade shows, and creating online databases of information related to their topics, in addition to the now-commonplace websites, social media outreach, and digital editions. For example, Reiff's company is creating a "self-service digital directory" that will list industry-specific companies and the products or services they provide.

The role of actual print B2B magazines has shifted as well. Most of the news that these magazines once offered can now quickly be found online, so their publishers have had to focus on other kinds of content and find ways to play upon the unique strengths of print.

"We have to be very careful that what content we provide in the print property will stand the test of time and also be very valuable. It has to go in depth on something that's going on in the industry," said Reiff.

Case Studies, Better Print Design

Reiff's magazines often feature case studies of improvements made in a particular workplace that provide models readers can use at their own jobs. He noted that readers also especially appreciate quality photos and graphics in the print magazine. (Some say, however, that design is an area where many B2B magazines have room to grow.)

The best uses of print might also depend on the B2B magazine's target industry. In the fast-changing world of fashion, for example, the personality and tangible nature of a print magazine are especially appealing.

"Most of the people who advertise in the magazine are showing clothing of some sort," said Stu Nifoussi, executive vice president of Business Journals Inc., and publisher of MR Magazine, which is focused on the men's fashion industry. The company also produces custom-published magazines. For these advertisers, Nifoussi said, "the magazine is the right medium to show...what things look like and to create an aura or a mood or positioning for the product...[In contrast,] the web has become a much better medium for branding, getting your name to be seen and recognized."

Nifoussi's magazine also includes more feature-style stories to create lasting value for readers. Though its website is newsy, the print product is mostly feature stories, and is "more people-oriented -- all the things people want from a magazine," Nifoussi said.

Revamping Lead Generation

What advertisers want from B2B media is solid leads on potential customers for their products and services. In the past, these magazines could easily measure some part of their success in generating leads by using "bingo cards" in the magazine -- those once-ubiquitous "Reader Service Cards." If they wanted more information on an advertiser, readers could mail in the postcards after circling numbers shown in ads.

Though the cards are still around, B2B media companies that go beyond print now have to find new ways to determine how many readers took action because of ads on their various platforms.

"We no longer consider ourselves verifiers of circulation. We consider ourselves verifiers of the brand," said Glenn Hansen, president and CEO of BPA Worldwide, one of two major auditing organizations in the magazine industry. "We've changed from providing what we used to call circulation statements. Now they're being transitioned to brand statements or brand audits."

Hansen said that this brand analysis process now includes all of the different forms of media and activities that a B2B publisher might produce: print magazines, website content, digital editions, e-newsletters, events, mobile apps, social media, among others. All of these platforms might create new customers for an advertiser, so publishers need to be able to demonstrate the value of their brand across all platforms.

"A salesperson for what was the magazine needs to go in and have a conversation with a marketer and design a solution using multiple channels," Hansen said.

Uniting Small Communities with Focused Content

A reader looking for ways to improve a very specific kind of business may have a hard time locating specialized information about that business on the Internet. As Reiff points out, as compared to the targeted "vertical" content offered by B2B magazines and media, "you're going to get a pretty horizontal view of how to run your business better if you type that into your search."

While the information is especially relevant to these targeted audiences, B2B magazines and online media offer more than just facts. "What makes any of these media go is their ability to immerse themselves in their businesses and become part of it," Nifoussi said.

That close relationship between publishers and the industries they cover makes these magazines able to offer a "social aspect in print," Reiff said, because readers feel that they're "typically about people like me, doing what I do."

Social media can provide some of that camaraderie, but finding people in your own specialty can be tough, since the magazines' target audiences are often "pretty tight, enclosed communities. So they like the magazine. They consider it an old friend," Reiff said.

Audience Participation

Some B2B media companies have created opportunities for their communities to participate in their content. Nifoussi's MR Magazine had a video contest in which retailers and vendors submitted videos. Five selected videos will be featured prominently on the magazine's website. While Nifoussi's editors often use Flip cameras to produce short videos themselves, the demands of making both a news-oriented website and a print magazine prevent them from spending too much time on video.

"Figuring out how to use personnel effectively is much more difficult," Nifoussi said, especially with the fashion industry's demanding seasonal cycles. "During those two months when the magazine is very busy, either we go without on the website, or we put a lot of pressure on the editors. If we get participation from the outside...it's a good thing."

While their style and content might differ from consumer magazines, B2B magazines are doing the same kind of experimentation to continue engaging their audiences and being relevant.

"You still have to do what you do better than the next person, but have to be more open and flexible," Reiff said.

Susan Currie Sivek, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Mass Communication and Journalism Department at California State University, Fresno. Her research focuses on magazines and media communities. She also blogs at sivekmedia.com, and is the magazine correspondent for MediaShift.

Business content on MediaShift is sponsored by the weekend MA in Public Communication at American University. Designed for working professionals, the program is suited to career changers and public relations or social marketing professionals seeking career advancement. Learn more here.

Business content on MediaShift is sponsored by the weekend MA in Public Communication at American University. Designed for working professionals, the program is suited to career changers and public relations or social marketing professionals seeking career advancement. Learn more here.

Digital publishing seems like a great opportunity for independent magazines. Getting a new, highly focused print magazine onto the newsstand and into wide distribution is a huge challenge for independent publishers, especially on a tight budget. Being able to reach the public directly through digital technology would appear to be a great way to get around these limitations of print.

Some independent magazines have tried to do this kind of outreach by creating digital editions and even dedicated apps for their publications. But 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.

Outsourcing App Development

Independent magazines, unlike larger magazine companies, usually don't have the resources to build their own digital editions or dedicated magazine apps in-house. They may instead work with external companies to create these and make them available online, often through Apple's iTunes Store.

One example of this situation is The Bark, an independent magazine about "modern dog culture." The Bark's magazine app was created by the company BlueToad. The app allows non-subscribers limited access to the print magazine's content, while subscribers get full access.

Right now, The Bark pays BlueToad 20 percent of the subscription revenue it generates through the app. Under Apple's new plan for managing subscriptions through apps, an additional 30 percent will go to Apple. For The Bark, then, half of the money made by the app will go to Apple and the app developer.

The Bark's main focus, as a small magazine, is boosting its print circulation.

"We're using the app as an ad for the print magazine," said Claudia Kawczynska, editor in chief. "The reason that the apps are so appealing is that it's a newsstand, a platform where people can see this and try it out."

"People are so app-conscious these days -- and I can see why -- but it does hinder the development of good content to spread around," Kawczynska said.

Delaying the Digital Edition

Stephanie Wilkinson, publisher of Brain, Child, a literary magazine focused on motherhood, said that readers have asked for a digital edition of the magazine for Kindle or iPad. The magazine has been exploring possibilities, but hasn't yet created a digital version.

"When we see announcements like Apple's that look so punitive, it kind of disheartens us for jumping into the market right now," Wilkinson said.

Small publications also just don't have the staff, time, or resources to explore every digital option available. Larger magazines and their owners often have entire divisions or subsidiaries that are dedicated to handling digital development and strategy.

"Having so many different options for us to research slows us down," Wilkinson explained. "We can't devote one person full time to doing that kind of thing. If there was a clear path, it wouldn't be so much of a financial obstacle, but primarily a division-of-mind problem."

Knowing Independent Magazine Readers

It's critical for highly targeted, small magazines to know their readers well. Independent magazines finely hone their content and advertising to attract a specific readership.

That makes Apple's iPad subscription plan a particularly hard sell for small magazines. Apple requires readers to opt into sharing their personal data with publishers, and many readers will likely choose not to share. Indies need that information for marketing, promotions and customizing content.

"Subscriber data is our lifeblood. If they're going to shield that from us, it's not going to work," Wilkinson said.

Kawczynska doesn't think the value of having a presence as an app outweighs the loss of subscriber data.

"It's such a restraint of trade," she said. "The advantage is you're able to be on the app -- isn't that sexy? But if you can't get the product out there, it's really quite worthless."

The Android Option

Google's One Pass program, announced soon after Apple revealed its subscription plan, seems likely to provide publishers more of that valuable information. It requires readers to opt out of sending their details to publishers, rather than opting into sharing. Plus, Google only takes a 10% cut of subscriptions.

But Google doesn't yet offer the slick shopping experience and familiarity of the iTunes Store. It also lacks the valuable, one-click access to the credit cards of the 160 million existing iTunes users.

The App Dilemma

Both Apple and Google's plans seem to offer an opportunity for independent magazines to be available to readers on new platforms and spread reader awareness of their publications. But the additional costs, demand on limited resources, and lack of subscriber data may outweigh these potential benefits.

"Those things probably are more advantageous to larger publishers than to smaller publishers like us," Wilkinson said. "The way we reach people is not a broad, scattershot approach."

Brain, Child's target audience of literary-minded mothers represents "the intersection of two markets that make a pretty small sweet spot. It's a challenge to try to reach those people," she said. "We would have to do a very careful calculation to see if the advantages outweigh the expense."

Both Kawczynska and Wilkinson are hopeful that additional competition will bring better alternatives for digitally distributing their independent magazines.

"We hope our readers are patient as we sort it out," Wilkinson said. "We have to see what makes sense for us as a business while maintaining our great connection with our readers."

Susan Currie Sivek, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Mass Communication and Journalism Department at California State University, Fresno. Her research focuses on magazines and media communities. She also blogs at sivekmedia.com, and is the magazine correspondent for MediaShift.

Business content on MediaShift is sponsored by the weekend MA in Public Communication at American University. Designed for working professionals, the program is suited to career changers and public relations or social marketing professionals seeking career advancement. Learn more here.