As the world kept him thinking in turns so would the blank, empty, undiluted space in the upper right corner of his unimaginative American blog. It left itself for last - as if it knew it was much too smart for him - as if the search bar that had once been there was an overture to another space in time - as if that corner meant more than it really did.
More Advice For Magazine Publishers
Because something is happening here but you don’t know what it is, do you Mr. Jones?
There’s a lot of talk about the ways in which emerging technologies are changing the newspaper business… and for good reason… but there’s something equally interesting and slightly less talked about going on in the magazine industry. Magazine publishers, unlike the ugly situation in daily news, aren’t being killed from without. No, strangely enough, they seem to be dying from within.
Put simply, magazine publishers are dying from addiction. Yes, friends they are addicted to solutions, to bridge technologies that may do a great job of fixing that digital jones, but do little to help publishers face the truly difficult questions. Like the raconteurs of Gutenberg’s time who made a quick living reading books to the illiterate public, these stop-gaps that graft the old model onto the new (digital magazines for instance) may prove fruitful in the short term. Yet, if the slumping raconteur industry has taught us anything it’s that model grafting can only get you so far. At some point the people will learn to read.
It seems to me that the current publishing model based on copious display advertising revenue has more than a few holes in it when it is imposed onto emerging media platforms. While this fact is hovering in the air wherever magazine publishers gather it is rarely attacked and there has yet to be anything even approaching a solution offered. Currently the digital models that find harmony with the trends of a digitally networked world are not big money makers… at least not on the level that magazine publishers are used to. Finding the model that works is going to be difficult… and it just may be that publishers are going to have to dramatically adjust their concept of success.
In any event it is clear that what magazine publishers need more than anything is a source of counsel that does more than just advocate the extension of the current model to new platforms. Publishers need to break free of model protectionism and start to take a holistic view of new technologies and devices. Doing this means more than just looking at new toys… it means taking a good long look at your organization… it means re-inventing operations… it means developing new types of relationships with advertisers… it means getting closer to the reader, the customer, the transaction… it means studying not only what technologies are on the horizon, but most importantly studying how those technologies can and do change the behavior of the people they touch.
That last point is the key. I can’t state emphatically enough how important it is to take a behavior driven, person oriented approach to parsing emerging technologies. In fact the changes in technology are the least of your worries… it’s the changes in people, in the culture and behavior of your workers, your readers, your advertisers, that will really blind-side you if you’re not careful. If you fail to understand the hows and whys… fail to comprehend the ways in which human beings respond to technology… fail to grasp the anthropology of what you’re deploying… then you might as well fold right now.
Listening To
- Railroad Earth – Warhead Boogie
- Keller Williams – Freeker by the Speaker
- Dave Stein Bubhub – For Those Who Wonder Why
- Ass Ponys – Untitled Track
- Ape House – Tired Of Style
- Glen Hansard & Markéta Irglová – Leave
- Louis Armstrong – Hold That Tiger
- Phish – NICU
- KISS – Detroit Rock City (Live Alive II Version)
- Steve Earle – Days Aren't Long Enough
Comments for “More Advice For Magazine Publishers”