More good news and a sign that Apple hasn't played out all of its cards with iPad.
This is good news from my perspective. I'm still convinced that the roll out of iPad was extremely limited and thus Apple has yet to reveal everything about this device and its plans.
As to magazines and news papers, I honestly don't see the iPad saving any of them as the ones in trouble are being rejected for other reasons. Many publications do fine with traditional magazine distribution, that because of the content that people find worth paying for.
Given that, those are the magazines I would love to see move to electronic distribution. It would mean being able to keep issues around without the clutter that traditional magazines have. You could keep issues for years with no dust build up! Along these lines I'm thinking about technical magazines or special interest magazines.
What we won't see is much success with magazines and newspapers offering up creative leftist publishing. Sadly the NYT is now in that group. People like to call it the paper of record but I suspect that was a term suitable a hundred years ago. Today it is often a waste of time to read the NYT or magazines like Newsweek and other weeklies. Being totally out of whack as far as balance goes is one thing, but what is far worst is that they are so out dated by the time you read them.
The tragedy in Haiti is a prime example of what modern media can offer up vs the lag of weeklies and newspapers. In many ways these forms of publishing are really antiquated and are not likely to see a revival. Sad news like this can often hit the web in minutes, with pics and video not long after. Of course this is drastic in the magnitude of the news but for lesser news peoples attention span has dwindled by the time the weeklies are out. Further a news paper will at best publish one or two pics, which is just about useless when there are thousands published to the web before the presses even start up. In effect the papers need to redefine what is journalism, and what it is to publish.
In the end I really don't see the iPad doing any good at all for these sorts of publications. It is the combo of poor management of editorial content, publishing lag, lack of supporting content and a lack of vision with respect to the future that is killing these publications. Competing with the new media is possible but that will require drastic reevaluation of what the news business is all about.
Dave
This is good news from my perspective. I'm still convinced that the roll out of iPad was extremely limited and thus Apple has yet to reveal everything about this device and its plans.
As to magazines and news papers, I honestly don't see the iPad saving any of them as the ones in trouble are being rejected for other reasons. Many publications do fine with traditional magazine distribution, that because of the content that people find worth paying for.
Given that, those are the magazines I would love to see move to electronic distribution. It would mean being able to keep issues around without the clutter that traditional magazines have. You could keep issues for years with no dust build up! Along these lines I'm thinking about technical magazines or special interest magazines.
What we won't see is much success with magazines and newspapers offering up creative leftist publishing. Sadly the NYT is now in that group. People like to call it the paper of record but I suspect that was a term suitable a hundred years ago. Today it is often a waste of time to read the NYT or magazines like Newsweek and other weeklies. Being totally out of whack as far as balance goes is one thing, but what is far worst is that they are so out dated by the time you read them.
The tragedy in Haiti is a prime example of what modern media can offer up vs the lag of weeklies and newspapers. In many ways these forms of publishing are really antiquated and are not likely to see a revival. Sad news like this can often hit the web in minutes, with pics and video not long after. Of course this is drastic in the magnitude of the news but for lesser news peoples attention span has dwindled by the time the weeklies are out. Further a news paper will at best publish one or two pics, which is just about useless when there are thousands published to the web before the presses even start up. In effect the papers need to redefine what is journalism, and what it is to publish.
In the end I really don't see the iPad doing any good at all for these sorts of publications. It is the combo of poor management of editorial content, publishing lag, lack of supporting content and a lack of vision with respect to the future that is killing these publications. Competing with the new media is possible but that will require drastic reevaluation of what the news business is all about.
Dave
