There’s a new consultancy in town and normally this kind of news would just put me to sleep… but since the new company is being run by some names I trust and it concerns the future of magazine technology I decided to check it out. Industry big-wigs Bo Sacks, David Renard, and Nick Hampshire are now mediaIDEAS and they want to help you publish your magazine… or at least help you TH(ink) about publishing your magazine… in a digital world.

Among the company’s subscription based services (which range from $2800 to $7200 per year) are weekly briefs, or TH(ink) Notes. These TH(ink) Notes are billed as “essential notes… providing unique actionable research and insight on technology and publishing to help you guide your business into the future.” Lucky for you (and for me) the guys at mediaIDEAS are kind enough to let prospective clients view two sample notes (one on E-Paper, one on the definition of a magazine) right there on their web site.

While the note on E-Paper is a somewhat hopeful look into the still questionable future of mass market electronic readers, the more interesting and immediately relevant of the two is the note entitled The Definition of a Print and Digital Magazine. In it Renard, Sacks, and Hampshire lay out what they believe are the six key properties that magazines must have if they are to “remain relevant as they move online.” In a nutshell, they feel magazines must be metered (page oriented), edited, designed, date-stamped, permanent, and periodic.

While I can agree that these are a great core six to describe what a print magazine is, they are limited to being just that – a great core six to describe what a PRINT magazine is. To try and graft these properties onto your emerging digital efforts is not only misguided, it could be fatal. I’m not saying that these couldn’t be principles of your digital products in some fashion… some of them are certainly going to be (edited and designed)… but if you make them core principles you are most assuredly courting failure.

Take for example the property of permanence (which by the authors definition is really better termed stagnancy).

in a magazine all the content for an issue is set by its release date; even though the edited content for an issue can be more than what each reader is presented with, to allow for varying levels of customization, once it is created, it is set and can no longer be changed or corrupted apart for minor revisions

In the print paradigm this kind of permanence is pretty much a given. Everything about print is permanent… as permanent as death. The stain of ink on dead trees just wont budge. Nothing grows in print… nothing quickens or breathes or reacts… the idea of a collaborative, evolving document is entirely foreign to the print experience. To a large extent the conversational nature of the internet and digital technologies are a revolution against the stagnancy, the tyranny even, of print. These technologies empower the public voice and publishers who ignore or suppress that voice are playing a dangerous game. Why, after tasting the sweet honey of conversational expression, would I – your reader – ever want to go back to being written at? To do so, especially in a digital environment that is capable of giving me a conversational experience, would be extremely frustrating.

Perhaps the most damaging theme in this paper is the idea that publishers really don’t have to change that much… that, with the right consultants and vendors, they can make a living in the digital world using the same approach they are using right now in print.

Understanding that, though the medium will change and a a number of hybrid solutions will appear, the six critical components (metered, edited, designed, date-stamped, permanent, and periodic) of a magazine will not.

It would be nice if that were true, but it’s not. To stay competitive in the next 25 years and beyond, publishers will need to confront massive, disruptive, explosive change. They will have to realize that trying to take the successful formula of one medium and forcing it onto another will only cause them grief. They will need to jettison ingrained patterns of thinking and learn to see the landscape with youthful eyes. Sorry folks, no matter what you might want to believe, you most definitely cannot take it with you.

Ultimately what this TH(ink) Note… in fact what mediaIDEAS as a company is trying to do – define and capture the essence of a print magazine and apply it to the digital world – is noble, but hopeless. I realize that there are many people in the magazine world who believe in digital magazines, but to me it’s an empty concept. What makes print magazines great, what makes readers fall in love with them, has just way to much to do with the medium of print to ever be recreated digitally. The good news is that print magazines will continue in some form for quite a long while… the tactile experience of reading a magazine, of flipping through four color pages, the scent of paper, is too enjoyable to simply fade away.

The publishers that endure will continue to print titles, if only as ancillary products, but they will generate revenue predominantly via digital information products that take advantage of the conversational nature of the digital world. So to you dear publisher I say, forget the six critical components as described by mediaIDEAS and explore the new and emerging components of digital information. Still, if you absolutely have to have some kind of formula to hold onto in that long dark night of digital transition then try this: keep the components edited and designed, throw out the other four and replace them with these: conversational, continuous, collaborative, concentrated. I know, I know, that’s kind of vague… but stay tuned and maybe I’ll get deeper into them in a future post.