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Magazines

Rich Media: ‘No Place’ in Magazines?

By Dorian on November 29, 2006 8:33 PM

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We were at the Digital Magazine Forum yesterday, which started two years ago as a place for people trying to put versions of their publications online to gather. Online versions are not websites, but rather the stuff you might see in a “reader” like Zinio or Nxtbook or Qiosk or Texterity or Olive or or or …

And because we were there — moderating a great panel with bloggers Peter Rojas and Om Malik, and Web editoriorial managers Tom Groppe of The Deal and Laura Rich, soon to be of Portfolio — we are catching up today, so we don’t have a lot of time to write.

A few things were revealed:

  • Om’s coming out with a new blog Friday that will be about TV, and another about games.
  • The Wall Street Journal is going to within a week or so launch a blog on work-life balance. And they just bought 10 new video cameras.
  • Time’s Peter Meirs is scary smart and gets to play with the coolest stuff in his job.
  • Cyndi Stivers is doing some sort of entrepreneurial venture. Stay tuned.
  • Bo Sacks is a funny guy, in addition to being smart about the magazine industry.
  • Adobe’s Bill McCoy defines a magazine as “editorial, branded, timely, collected, text-centric content.” And to an advertiser “a vehicle to reach a set of users who pay attention to a particular [content area].” Sounds to us like that could be a blog.
  • Users don’t want to use online readers, and the numbers of subscriptions for at least some of them are going down. People, in Meirs’ words, don’t want “digital facsimiles” of magazines — it is, he said, like trying to look at a magazine with a piece of reflective glass over it.

    Also, Dan Schwartz, our host and a man who’s accomplishments we were amazed to read — certificat from a Parisian institute, Columbia MBA, B.U. JD and a stint as in the Army — said that rich media has “no place” in magazines. OK, but, Dan, what about when someone writes a movie review? Wouldn’t a user like to see the clip in question? Or a critique of George Bush. How about some speech excerpts. And so on.

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