Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Print to Online: The Magazine Graveyard?
PaidContent.org's Staci Kramer covers the move of Hachette Filipacchi's Premiere from print to online only, and sums it up with a great line: "dropping print for online only is the new brown."
(I'm assuming brown is somehow 'in' these days, and that UPS is now fashion forward.)
Staci continues: "In the past, magazines just disappeared; now they hang around as bits and bytes. What remains to be seen is how many of these online-only titles will be around in a year and whether they will be advertising shells or real magazines online."
I like her distinction between advertising shells and "real" magazines online. As you know, I think that the idea of magazines transcends whatever format (print, online) they happen to inhabit.
However, moves to online-only that are driven by the corporate spreadsheet approach to publishing are only just short delaying steps on the road to the magazine graveyard. Reminds me of the "Bring Out Your Dead" scene in Monty Python and The Holy Grail.
Comments
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(I'm assuming brown is somehow 'in' these days, and that UPS is now fashion forward.)
Staci continues: "In the past, magazines just disappeared; now they hang around as bits and bytes. What remains to be seen is how many of these online-only titles will be around in a year and whether they will be advertising shells or real magazines online."
I like her distinction between advertising shells and "real" magazines online. As you know, I think that the idea of magazines transcends whatever format (print, online) they happen to inhabit.
However, moves to online-only that are driven by the corporate spreadsheet approach to publishing are only just short delaying steps on the road to the magazine graveyard. Reminds me of the "Bring Out Your Dead" scene in Monty Python and The Holy Grail.
