Digital Magazines - Neither Fish Nor Fowl

Oct 25, 2009 — Erik

OK, so we all know that the print media industry is slowly, painfully, contracting... and perhaps ultimately dying.  One need only look at the once bountiful page counts of publications from Maxim to Popular Science to see that advertisers have fled print media fast, and in droves.  And thanks to Craigslist, newspapers including even the Los Angeles Times and San Francisco Chronicle are, well, not doing so hot.

Far smarter people than yours truly can provide thoughtful insight into the way forward for these publications and their talented editorial staffs. Perhaps it will be websites with premium (paid) content sections, or selling content through affiliate networks, rights managed content, timed content delivery, or a half dozen other ideas.

But the one solution I know will never, ever save print publications is the "digital magazine." Haven't seen a digital magazine? Lucky you. These are Flash-based "replicas" of a print magazine, with animated pages that actually turn and make "whooshing" noises, and navigation which makes Flash websites circa 2003 seem intuitive and easy to use (and that's saying a lot). The "pages" of these magazines, sans proper re-layout for a different medium, most often require zooming in and zooming out continually — a weird modern equivalent of your grandfather and his bifocals.

Of course, it's easy to see the allure of digital magazines for nervous print publishers. They can simply turn over their finished PDF files to Speedy Digital Magazine Vendor Inc., have the pages animated using a proprietary Flash-based system, add a few links, and -- bam -- they're off to the races. No messy HTML coding, re-layout of information, or need to lift a finger. And they can email the digital magazine link to their subscribers and tout larger "worldwide" circulation numbers to potential advertisers. It also gives them something of an "interactive" presence, so to speak.

Unfortunately, as far as most readers are concerned, this interactive experience sucks. Yes, digital mags offer the ability to navigate their pages via thumbnails, to link to websites, and to incorporate video and motion graphics.  But other than that, they are diametrically opposed to everything that digital information delivery (i.e. the web) is supposed to be about.

Namely, the web is about linking, about commenting and interacting, about searching and finding, about opening new worlds through infinite windows and communities – not containing them in some kitschy "it's like a magazine, but it's not" format, unseeable to search engines. Furthermore, billions of people already have a proven tool to navigate information on their computers; it's called a web browser, and whether you're using Firefox, Safari, or (gasp) IE, at least the buttons are all roughly in the same place, and they all pretty much work the same way. We don't want or need to devolve back to quirksville Flash navigation. That already happened in 2001.

Make no mistake. I love magazines, I grew up on magazines, I still read magazines (at lunch and in the bathroom at least). And the talented editorial staffs at many magazines and newspapers, due to tough economic times, are now working twice as hard, with half the resources. The best-researched, most useful articles I read every day are still written by these same people. Only now, these articles appear online, and they're called "content." I look forward to a better solution for all parties involved.