It’s amazing what you find when you search for “collection” on Flickr.

I have a new post up at PBS MediaShift, covering a new development at digital magazine company Zinio. Zinio is now creating Content Collections:

Zinio staff highlight a selection of articles from Zinio’s digital magazine offerings, mixing and matching stories from a wide variety of magazines within each collection. Even little-known and foreign magazines are included in the mixes. Readers can then preview individual articles in the collection and choose to buy the single digital magazine issue where an article appeared, or even buy a digital subscription to that magazine.

The idea of blending content from different magazines into one package (eventually purchasable as a single deal) is interesting, but even more compelling is the idea that individual readers will eventually be able to create their own collections and share them with friends.

“We’ve been working on the concept of choosing what you love and being able to share it,” Mullen said. “We want to make it possible for consumers to do what editors do. We can let consumers build [collections] for us.”

What will the role of the magazine editor be in the future? With editors at Ladies’ Home Journal now editing user-generated content, and readers soon generating their own collections of content, we’re clearly seeing some major changes in editors’ tasks and roles.

Read more about Zinio’s new innovation at MediaShift.

Eh, not so much.

I flipped past those pages in record time to get to something more interesting.

Why? These recipes had no story.

Most of my recipes today come from blogs and from cookbooks written by those bloggers that I’ve purchased. Admittedly, since adopting a plant-based diet, I’ve found that most magazines’ recipes don’t work for me — but I’m still intrigued by unique concoctions and, more importantly, the stories of chefs and home cooks who have developed fun food. I will loiter on even the meatiest magazine recipe when something more is provided — something that helps me see the human experience of the food that is being shared with me in the magazine’s pages. After all, we love sharing food with each other as a social occasion and as an opportunity to bond. Sitting down with a magazine and reading about food within it ought to be a chance to get to know the people behind the recipes, to hear their voices and stories.

Food bloggers offer the stories of their recipes all the time, which is part of what makes them so popular — so much so that publishers go to them in order to capitalize on their existing audiences and brands. (Food bloggers even have their own conference!)

Sharing recipes online with friends is now another way we bond through food. Finding a friend’s post of a recipe with the comment “Here’s what we made for dinner!” opens up conversations and new possibilities. In 2011, 49 percent of adults in one study said they’d learned about food and recipes from social media. I certainly have, and when I do, I get to thank my friends for leading me to great new tastes. Magazines can’t offer that direct social interaction, but they can do it through good storytelling around food and recipes.

Even the most beautifully photographed recipe in a magazine can’t build a sense of emotional connection with another human, if the story of the recipe is missing. Without a story, the recipe is a commodity, interchangeable with any other.

And, alas, the same is true for some other categories of magazine content these days.

I have a new post at PBS MediaShift this morning, examining some creative ways magazines are using Pinterest. I tried to go beyond the standard boards that it seems every major magazine has created on the site to find some different strategies, particularly those used by different types of magazines that you might not expect to see on Pinterest — in other words, not lifestyle magazines, and not women’s magazines.

I included activist magazines (an interest of mine for some time, which I’ve also covered for MediaShift and researched (PDF)] and B2B magazines (also previously covered on MediaShift).

I hope there are some useful ideas for all magazines among these diverse uses of Pinterest.

Here’s what my browser windows looked like while researching this story:

It was real punishment, I tell you.

Anyway, I found some fun and different approaches, including some involving convenience store bathrooms and cannabis (not in the same magazine). Read the full story at PBS MediaShift.

Photo mashup by me, using magazine cover photo by Font Shop on Flickr.

I was on a panel with two other terrific magazine researchers and professors, Erin Coyle of Louisiana State (who also organized the panel – thanks, Erin!) and Yanick Rice Lamb of Howard University. I enjoyed hearing about Erin’s research on trends in magazine course syllabi and about Yanick’s study on uses of digital technology by major women’s magazines.

Here are my slides from my presentation. I think they’re self-explanatory, but if you have questions, let me know in the Comments!

My story about Esquire’s creative new approach to marketing a major story – a video trailer – is now up at PBS MediaShift.

Though a few other folks have covered this story, I was able to get a little more behind-the-scenes info from the Esquire and Hearst Digital Media crew that put the trailer together. I also tried to give a bit more context for the development of trailers for magazine stories as perhaps the next step from book promotions using video.

Is this a promising new step in magazine marketing, or just a one-time success? Let me know what you think in the comments!

Photo mashup by me using film image by Travis Homung on Flickr.

Yes, I’m blogging about paper. My digital magazine conversion, a conversation with a student yesterday, and this article from Folio – about SPIN’s new print/digital strategy – are making me think more about the dead-tree stuff. What do I miss, even just a little, about paper magazines? What qualities truly can’t be replicated in digital formats (always with the caveat…yet)?

I think that print magazines will become more and more rare, and those that persist on paper will be the few whose content either truly necessitates or successfully capitalizes on the unique qualities of paper that cannot be replicated in digital forms.

To me, those unique qualities include:

• Physical feel of the texture of paper: dependent on the paper stock used by a publication; could (or even should) be distinctive for different types of magazines; adds another layer of sensory experience that can interact pleasantly with content
• Immediacy: no power switch, no downloading, no crashing, no delay; content is immediately available
• “Flippability”: the ease of flipping through pages; currently tedious with digital formats
• Status symbols: the desire to display one’s magazines publicly; the iPad’s Newsstand icon just wouldn’t satisfy if this were a concern
• Collectibility: the ability to create a visible, physical collection of a magazine’s issues, for the sheer pleasure of gathering them; may or may not overlap with their status symbol function, depending on the magazine and the individual
• Visibility: the physical presence of a magazine in a room has an effect (I have been known to finish reading, but not immediately recycle, fitness-related magazines because leaving them around the house reminds me to strive for good health, and because I’m weird like that); physical presence may also be a more obvious reminder to engage with the magazine/brand (e.g., simply to read it, as opposed to having to check with an app for a new issue)
• Shareability: the capacity to easily give someone else the ability to read content; still not fully integrated into many digital magazines
• Contemplation: related to visibility; some content may lend itself better to sustained viewing on paper rather than a backlit or E Ink screen, such as art
• …and others?

A number of these qualities are reflected in Folio’s description of SPIN’s new strategy. Despite the advantages that an all-digital format would so obviously provide a music magazine, SPIN will continue publishing in print, alongside various digital products. However, it will use heavier paper stock (enhancing its physical feel); it will publish less frequently (enhancing its perceived value for status/collectible purposes); and it will aim for a blend of magazine and “coffee table book” (enhancing the status, collectibility, visibility, and contemplation qualities). To me, all of SPIN’s moves make sense as ways to anticipate both the diminishing role of paper and the intensifying need to justify the expense and environmental impact of its use.

Are there other qualities we should add to this list to capture the specific aspects of paper that only it as a medium can provide to a magazine, from the reader perspective?

Cognitive dissonance. Photo by me.

I’m not sure I’m completely ready for this, but I’m going to try it anyway.

I’ve been slowly making a significant transition in my life: I let each of my print magazine subscriptions expire, one by one. Only two have a couple of issues remaining, as best I can tell from those obfuscatory subscription reminders and mailing labels. Print editions have nearly stopped arriving in my mailbox, and a few more trees have kept on breathing.

I’m making the switch to digital magazines. All of them. Starting now.

I subscribe(d) to quite a few magazines: at least 14 within the last year. I have found it increasingly difficult to keep up with the flow of paper magazines, finding that they pile up in a basket in my study at home far too quickly. I also increasingly dislike tossing most of them into the recycle bin immediately after finishing them.

Part of my dissatisfaction with print has to do with the lack of enduring, lasting content in most magazines today, or at least in those I’ve patronized. There’s just no reason for me to keep paper copies. Even my fiber arts magazines (about knitting and weaving, for example, including patterns and references) rarely feature articles that I wouldn’t be just as happy to have in digital form — or would indeed prefer in that searchable format.

Part of it is my changed reading habits, which have more and more focused around the iPad and Kindle, with which I can comfortably delve into numerous blogs, Twitter, e-books, and a constantly refreshed Instapaper collection of long-form journalism. The capacity to instantly share and bookmark material is also something I now crave when I’m reading print. (Not every digital magazine will offer those features, but some do.)

I have been frustrated by the difficulty of switching print to digital subscriptions — so much so that I even wrote an article about it for PBS MediaShift. I understand now why the process has been difficult for publishers and their customer service providers. However, it seemed easier to wait for my print subscriptions to end and then re-evaluate my commitment to each one and the best digital format for obtaining it.

Some of the magazines are available as replica editions, some as standalone apps, some through Apple’s Newsstand for the iPad. I’m more inclined to get magazines on the iPad than on my black-and-white Kindle Touch because I love magazines’ color and photography.

However, given my budget, some of my format decisions (and, actually, whether I renew at all in some cases) will be determined by price. For example, Runner’s World is available as a replica from Zinio for $25/year; a one-year subscription through the magazine’s own app is $14.99, and apparently offers added features. It’s $1/month for Kindle, as it is in print. I think I’ll go for the iPad edition.

I think I’ll be OK with this transition. But perhaps I’ll miss stuffing a magazine into my purse on the way out the door to an appointment, or will find reading on the iPad less enjoyable in the long run. I’ll report back and let you know how it goes!

Well, that whole “weekly posting” thing hasn’t exactly materialized. I’ve been teaching a fast-paced January term Intro to Mass Communication class, so things have been a bit busy. However, I did have a chance to learn more about the new user-generated content experiment at Ladies’ Home Journal, and wrote about it for PBS MediaShift.

I asked editor Sally Lee if she thought working with inexperienced writers was going to be challenging for her editorial team, and she noted that working with experienced writers isn’t always a piece of cake either. Moreover, the “amateurs” bring something different to the magazine:

 ”We’re getting fresh, clear voices that don’t fall into the trap of thinking that they have to write a certain way for a women’s magazine … One of the wonderful things about working with so-called amateur writers is they don’t have preconceived notions about what the magazine should be.”

Recipe.com, Hickey said, reflects a “360-degree approach,” better accommodating today’s value-seeking and technologically savvy shopper.

“It’s really kind of desktop, to store, to checkout, to countertop, to table. When we think of recipes, we think, ‘I’ll go find it and print it out.’ But we knew the [meal-planning] process was much more involved,” Hickey said.

As a geek who was once a diligent meal planner – and could never find the right software to make it work – I find new tools like this especially intriguing!

I have a new story up today at PBS MediaShift about Once Magazine, an iPad magazine that focuses on visual storytelling, especially photography. It’s great to see experiments like this one that help photographers find new ways to use their work and earn a living from their art.

Read more at MediaShift!