Is it just me or does anybody else also think that any publication that’s online only, isn’t as serious as something in print.
I’m sorry but there’s so much free shit and other pay shit on the net, why would I take your piece of shit any more seriously than just a list of links posted on facebook?
What makes it a magazine, and not just a bunch of pages that link to each other on a website?
It just seems lame and pathetic. Not cohesive at all.
If it was ‘an experience’ of some kind other than just linking from one article to another so easily pulled away by an errant ad placed here and there, I might be more inclined, but every magazine on the web is like every other magazine on the web. Just a bunch of free floating content to be found by google.
Which I guess makes the point: A print magazine is physically cohesive. You can’t accidentally look at an ad and end up reading a different magazine. You can’t find an interesting phrase and easily look up the phrase in the search bar and get drawn away by the wikipedia article on the subject. A magazine is a lot more than just a paper collection of articles. It’s a grouped pile of related information that is logically and physically tied together.
That exclusivity of grouping and physical attachment is what makes a magazine attractive over jumping from link to search box to link to search box.
Magazines that go online only do so because they can’t afford to print paper given that most of their readers are giving up paper for randomly flitting about … well, let’s face it… facebook. And it’s a dying art form and get used to it yada yada yada.
But I bet you won’t see the economist or the new york times going online-only until well after my generation is dead.