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.
