Apparently, people still publish magazines in print form! I recently came across a new magazine called Nodalities, which intends to cover the Semantic Web. Here is the magazine's vision statement:
Talis has launched a magazine called Nodalities that bridges the divide between those building the Semantic Web and those interested in applying it to their business requirements. Supplementing our blogs, podcasts, and Semantic Web development work, Nodalities Magazine is available - free - online and in print, and offers an accessible means to keep up with this rapidly evolving area.
From what I can tell, the magazine will follow a monthly release schedule, and is available both online (using a pretty slick reader "powered by flexpage" - a google search turns up zip on this) and in print. I will probably comment on content in the near future, after I get a chance to really read through the mag. What I want to focus on in this post is the question of the appropriateness of the magazine format in covering a rapidly changing topic.
Traditionally, print magazines have deadlines 2+ months ahead of their distribution. I don't claim to be an expert on the magazine publishing world, but with this basic fact in tow we can see that it is devastating for a magazine's pertinence to a reader if the magazine is covering two month old news and views. Even in webzine form, the process of article writing and compilation and then simultaneous publishing, greatly lengthens the time from story origination to story publication. I think this limitation of magazine format forces the content through a filter, where the emphasis of topics must be slightly less time-sensitive.
In addition, how does a magazine not tread all over itself when it provides online-only content, such as reviews, and archives its old articles digitally?
One of my favorite print mags is Maximum PC, a monthly-release for PC enthusiasts. Maybe 9 months to a year ago, MAXPC began publishing many of their reviews online and NOT in the magazine. This bothered me quite a bit - I was reading their 2 month old stories, paying money to get the stories in paper format, and yet online, for free, was half the content I wanted. I am still subscribing to Maximum PC, but honestly, I don't know if I will renew. And I've subscribed since the first issue in December 1998.
This brings me back to my main point - the web has largely marginalized the time-sensitive magazine. Print magazines that purport to cover technology have no choice but to publish some content online and provide archives of some of their articles. And we all know that asking users to pay for access to these archives can only bring the magazines ruin (pay for information, in the Wikipedia age?). Ultimately, I think there is no way for print magazines to avoid stepping on themselves in the digital age. But by publishing online, especially selected and supplemental material, it is possible for publishers to reach a wider audience than ever before, and that is, of course, a very good thing. Now there's just the question of how to significantly monetize this online arm of a print magazine...a big question, indeed.
