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It hasn’t transformed my life. But some things are changing.

I got my iPad last week, a few days before the start of classes. I immediately procrastinated on finishing my syllabi by spending the better part of an evening setting it up with apps and files.

I’ll focus in this post on how the iPad has changed my experience as a reader so far, and follow up next week with a post about using the iPad in teaching after I’ve had a few more classes to test it out.

Screenshot of my Pulse setup; these are the first 3 of 20 feeds I've chosen.

News. I set up the slick Pulse app with feeds of local news from my local newspaper, the state news from the Sacramento Bee, investigative stories from California Watch, and a variety of other tech, higher ed, and knitting topics. (Yes, there is such a thing as knitting news.) These feeds, in combination with a perusal of the New York Times, BBC and AP apps, pretty much satisfied my morning news needs.

I experimented the first morning after setting this up by reading the newspaper after completing this iPad news routine, and found in it little I’d missed – the obituaries, letters to the editor, local lifestyle news. And, I can tweet an article from my local paper directly from Pulse without having to go to my browser, find the story (if I can), copy and paste the URL to Twitter, etc.

I am still debating whether I want to continue my newspaper subscription, but probably will out of loyalty to local journalism. That loyalty is still victorious over my desire to be more green. We’ll see how long it wins out.

Magazines. This one is an easier call. My magazine subscriptions are all going digital ASAP. As they expire, I’ll shift them over to the digital versions. I think almost all of my subscriptions are accessible digitally, and since most of them are digital replicas anyway, I don’t feel I’ll miss much besides the weight in my recycle bin. Even those I used to keep around – such as the occasional copy of Yoga Journal for a particular sequence, handy to have in print by the yoga mat – can be more easily stored and located on the iPad, which sits on the floor just as well.

Books. I bought one book on the iPad through the Kindle app. I am a heavy user of my local library, which efficiently brings requested books to my nearest branch. The free use of library books is much more appealing to me than the purchase of digital books from Amazon or Apple (especially for guilty-pleasure fiction I will never re-read). The one book I bought has a library waiting list of 600 people at the moment, so I was willing to spend $8 for the Kindle edition to avoid months of delay.

Using the iPad. I find it comfortable to read on the iPad, despite its weight and backlighting. I like that even with my severe myopia, I can make the text big enough to read without glasses – something I haven’t experienced comfortably since about sixth grade. The only challenge is reading on my dining table, where I have to turn the overhead lights off due to glare on the iPad’s shiny screen. Otherwise, I love having so much reading material on one device.

How has the iPad changed your reading experience? Am I the only one ready to end the print subscriptions, despite a lifelong love of print magazines? Please tell me I’m not the only traitor to the medium out there.

Forgot to mention here that I have a new post up over at MediaShift. This one covers the innovations that Interweave Press and Gourmet are trying out for their new digital products. I think these are both pretty exciting projects that are exploring the “kinesthetic” potential of digital magazines, while also experimenting with social functionality and the possibilities for exciting user interfaces. I’m looking forward to seeing how these evolve.

But do they link to magazines' web sites? Photo by Annie Mole on Flickr.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism has posted a summary of its recent study “New Media, Old Media: How Blogs and Social Media Agendas Relate and Differ from the Traditional Press.”

The study compares the variety of topics included in news-related blog posts and tweets with the range included in mainstream media coverage, and found that:

Social media and the mainstream press clearly embrace different agendas. Blogs shared the same lead story with traditional media in just 13 of the 49 weeks studied. Twitter was even less likely to share the traditional media agenda – the lead story matched that of the mainstream press in just four weeks of the 29 weeks studied.

I don’t find these results particularly surprising, but – as a magazine person – I wanted to know how often social media users linked to magazine stories online. I checked out the tables summarizing the PEJ data [PDF] and found that they had added newspapers and magazines together in their breakdown of the sources of links provided by bloggers and Twitter users. Unfortunately, this means that the study – unless the raw data can be broken apart once they’re made available – doesn’t tell us much about whether social media users are linking to magazines’ sites in their conversations about news.

The researchers note that:

In producing PEJ’s New Media Index, the basis for this study, there are some challenges posed by the breath [sic] of potential outlets. There are literally millions of blogs and tweets produced each day. To make that prospect manageable, the study observes the “news” interests of those people utilizing social media, as classified by the tracking websites. PEJ did not make a determination as to what constitutes a news story as opposed to some other topic, but generally, areas outside the traditional notion of news such as gardening, sports or other hobbies are not in the purview of content.

So though newsmagazines’ web sites might be included in the analysis, we probably won’t see many other magazines in the dataset. That’s an understandable limitation of the study, given its specific interest. Magazines are also likely to be less represented because they don’t usually relate to breaking news, as Twitter users would most often be interested in sharing. But if magazines aren’t offering even slower-paced bloggers something to write about, perhaps publishers should be concerned.

I would guess that magazines’ web sites are also rarely linked to by social media users due to their typically poor layout and usability. But I’d like to see some data on social media users’ links to magazines – and think it would be helpful to the magazine industry to see how far they’re being left behind as web users share information and favorite stories using social media. (Or not. But I’m pessimistic.)

Photo by Ethan Hein on Flickr.

My iPad should be here any day. I’m looking forward to testing out the magazine apps that have been released. Though I’ve been underwhelmed by demos I’ve seen so far, I think we also have to give the magazine publishers a little credit: after all, the iPad has been available for, oh, a month now? For an industry that’s rather set in its ways, the response of many major magazines within a few months to this new medium has been somewhat remarkable. They have a long way to go to truly innovate with the tablet format, but at least they’ve made a start.

One of the things I’m most interested in for magazines on the iPad is the possibility of greater access to international magazines. I recently wandered the magazine shelves at a bookstore and pondered the variety of English-language publications from abroad that I’d love to buy, but that cost $12-15 for the imported paper editions. It would be fabulous to be able to access many of these on an iPad or similar device for a lower cost than the print edition.

An example: I’m a knitter. I especially like the British knitting magazines for their sense of style. Not that I’m a fashionista, but some of the American knitting magazines seem to be tailored (no pun intended) for an older audience, whereas the British publications I’ve seen include patterns and ideas for younger knitters. One of my favorites – The Knitter – is available at a local big-box bookstore for about $13 per copy. A U.S. subscription would cost over $100/year, which would be save some on the bookstore cover price, but still too pricey for this knitter.

Screenshot of The Knitter magazine, as shown on Zinio's Web-based digital replica.

I investigated on the Web to see if I could get the magazine in an electronic edition for less money. It would seem that an electronic edition of a British magazine could cost me the same as an electronic copy of an American magazine. I found I could buy a digital replica-style subscription to The Knitter via Zinio – a company that assists publishers in creating digital editions – for the grand total of…wait for it…about $100/year.

This makes no sense. Why wouldn’t a publication take advantage of the low cost of digital distribution to build its readership overseas, as well as within its own country? Surely it would make no difference whether a digital-edition reader is in the U.K. or in the U.S. Perhaps there is an advertising angle or other concern that I’m not considering, in which case I hope someone will set me straight in the comments. I have ordered yarn from a British supplier (yes, I am a dedicated knitter!). It would seem advertisers, especially those with online stores, would be happy to reach an international readership.

I’m hoping that magazines around the world will rapidly innovate to create new multimedia products – beyond just digital replicas – and then will make them affordably accessible to global audiences. Not only would doing so make it possible for their magazines to be read more widely, but it would also increase the flow of information around the world, in multiple languages and with a variety of topics, and that’s always a good thing.

I’ve recently come across a number of projects that are called magazines, and yet don’t seem like what we normally think of as magazines. For example:

• Pop-Up Magazine: “the world’s first live magazine, created for a stage, a screen, and a live audience. Nothing will arrive in your mailbox; no content will go online. An issue exists for one night, in one place.” It’s a 75-minute program, organized like a magazine with short pieces up front and a “feature well.” Its contents include photos, writing, live interviews and more on a variety of topics. It’s had three issues so far, most recently on April 16, and has hosted an impressive line-up of participants.
• Rotary Magazine (info here; view it here). Its creators bought 200 random slides from eBay and edited them into an organized experience, including themed sections and typography. They showed the magazine in an “old audio visual shop” in Bath, England, for a week, and it also is available online. The editors note that many people could view the magazine at once at their own preferred pace, and that the lack of paper made the magazine more sustainable.
• 48 Hour Magazine. Though it will result in a print product likely resembling a standard magazine in some ways, this project is not following a traditional magazine production process. Instead, after announcing a theme, writers, photographers and others worldwide will collaborate on a magazine that will be edited, designed, printed and shipped within 48 hours: “No long commitments. No pitches. No grinding editing process. You make good stuff fast; we publish it with other good stuff.” The leaders of the project say that though they “don’t have a ratio in mind…people from outside the industry are essential to the vision.”

So, do we count these projects as “magazines”? Let’s note the qualities they’re keeping, deleting, and adding to the magazine concept.

Keeping:

• Selectively edited content
• An organizing concept or theme (i.e., a “content proposition”)
• Specific sense of audience
• Visual and text content

(Is this section enough to define “a magazine”?)

Deleting:

• Print format (except for 48 Hour Magazine)

Adding:

• Spontaneity and the opportunity for surprise
• Audience participation (reacting live to Pop-Up, controlling pace of Rotary, contributing content to 48 Hour Magazine)
• Fast turnaround and immediate relevance, rather than delayed information and experience

What can traditional magazines learn from these new projects? (Admittedly, 48 Hour Magazine hasn’t happened yet – we’ll see it in about a week – but the concept is instructive.)

First, these projects are not static. They break boundaries. They experiment. They can surprise us. How often does a magazine today really surprise anyone? I pretty much know what to expect from each magazine that comes in the mail – which is comforting in its way, and which keeps its identity consistent for advertisers, but is also a bit dull. Maybe some of the new digital experiments have been intriguing or exciting, but I haven’t found much that I’d call surprising just yet.

Second, these projects engage the audience in significant ways. If you attend Pop-Up Magazine, you’re buying a ticket* and committing to an evening with its performers and fellow attendees. You cannot access its content online later. If you participate in the 48 Hour Magazine project, you’re going to want to see its print edition. These are powerful methods of getting people to embrace your project. Yet most magazines demand little of us beyond our subscription payment. Even their uses of reader-generated content and ideas have been pretty minimal so far.

Finally, these experiences offer immediate satisfaction. True, not all magazine projects should be completed within 48 hours. There’s still a demand and need for carefully researched and produced journalism that takes months. However, is there really any reason today for magazines to stick to a rigid publication schedule? Why not feed content all the time to your readers, especially in digital formats? Today’s on-demand publication tools, such as those 48 Hour Magazine will probably use, could even create occasional special print issues as bonuses for subscribers. Certainly many magazine Web sites have embraced blogs and online-only exclusives, but bigger stories could be available more frequently than just once a month. I’m sure that would disrupt the standard schedules that magazine staffs use, but increasing readers’ sense of constant engagement with the magazine might be worth it, not to mention the more vibrant conversations about the magazine that would go on all the time.

I think it’s time for traditional magazines to learn from these projects that are on the boundary of our current understanding of a magazine. It’s time to consider all the new ways the essential qualities of “a magazine” can be expressed.

Edited to add: this post was inspired by this one by Elisabeth Soep at BoingBoing on Pop-Up Magazine; I couldn’t help but think about her challenging question, “What can print mags steal back?”

* I previously posted that the Pop-Up Magazine tickets were “costly” – turns out, they are quite affordable, so much so that even this lowly professor might be able to attend. An amazing value, considering the participants they feature. The notion of buying a ticket and “buying into” the magazine’s content, however, is relevant regardless of expense.