Upon the demise of Gourmet this week, I’ve been pondering the reasons why some magazines have stayed in my life and others I’ve canceled without ever looking back. A few that didn’t make it lost me simply because they published too frequently, despite quality content.
I feel like a journalistic impostor for admitting this, but that sad category of cancellations included the New Yorker and Rolling Stone.
Magazine overload: ur doin it rite. Photo by Flickr user Tiago Ribeiro.
As much as I loved the content of those magazines, I developed a serious problem. There was just too much to read in their weekly issues, in addition to all my other print and online reading.
I tried valiantly to keep up, but a teetering stack of these magazines grew, with lopsided layers of oversized Rolling Stones concealing multiple New Yorkers. The glossy pages threatened an avalanche at any moment. And, when we moved from Texas to California, the entire pile hit the recycle bin. I couldn’t bear the guilt any more (nor another heavy box of paper).
I’m sure I’m not the only one who has suffered from New Yorker Syndrome. In fact, I know I’m not. A college friend and fellow literary magazine editor posted on her blog recently that she sacrificed her New Yorkers to the demands of a move as well. I felt better.
But what if these weekly publications took an alternative publishing approach using digital reader feedback and customization?
I’d like to see weekly and biweekly magazines offer a monthly or bimonthly digest version of their publications that would feature a personalized selection of their articles published within that period. The digest could be standardized for all recipients or (even better) could be customized for each edition based on a pre-publication online form.
For each digest, a magazine could send me a link to an online form where I’d check off the content I wanted from what was planned for that month. Additional items might be included in everyone’s issues by default, such as recurring columns or pieces introducing new authors and topics. Then, I’d be mailed (or would digitally receive) my custom digest, ideally on a time interval that I specified.
Maybe I’d even pay for the magazine based on the number of items I selected from my customization form, with a certain minimum charge, of course. And naturally, it would likely still contain ads (though for an additional charge, I could perhaps opt for an ad-free edition).
The data a magazine could gather about me through this customization process would be extremely specific, allowing advertisers to target me almost perfectly (too perfectly, perhaps). It would be a much more effective customization than what we saw in Mine, that flawed recent experiment by Time. I was actually repulsed by the issue of Mine that I received. It assumed that because I was female, every ad needed to mention how much I liked shoes or how many grocery bags would fit in a Lexus. Incredibly annoying – and that was before I saw how outdated and uninteresting the actual content was.
Magazines need to find some new ways to innovate. Why not let readers suffering from information overload choose the best a magazine has to offer for their unique interests, on a schedule that fits their needs? Advances in on-demand and lower-cost printing technologies can surely make this happen (see MagCloud for proof). A truly customized magazine is a lot less likely to end up stalled in a dusty pile by the bed, like my poor old New Yorkers.
