In the day job, I produce Newcastle University's alumni magazine, which goes out to 26,000 graduates in print and a further 52,000 online. Until recently, its digital presence had only comprised an RSS-driven website and an Issuu widget. So when our design agency, Infinite, offered us the chance to experiment with the iPad, we – quite literally – swiped it.
Infinite uses QuarkXPress to lay-out the print edition of Arches, and a plugin called the App Studio Xtension to adapt the spreads into an iPad ready format – with rich content including video, audio and hyperlinks to enhance the reading experience. I was really chuffed with the results, and send my thanks to David Whitfield and the team at Infinite for all their graft.
Although it's not certain whether tablets will be the platform of choice for magazine readers in the future, they certainly offer a user experience which fuses the tangibility and portability of print with the rich content and versatility of digital. And, behind the scenes, readership, circulation and feedback are much easier to monitor and evaluate. I, for one, am sold.
You can download the Arches app for free from the App Store, and read a case study on the Infinite Digital website.
The girl's been on fire recently. Here's JesmondLocal's latest radio podcast, produced by Sophie Bauckham, and featuring the talents of Bob Cooper and Nathan Buck – on the back of a couple of live shows we did a few months back.
I help to run a hyperlocal news website called JesmondLocal.com with a team of volunteers. Aside from the local news beat, we've been dabbling in some independent media projects too, like the 48 hour magazine we created when the Turner Prize came to Gateshead last year. This summer, a filmmaking team led by Sophie Bauckham made a documentary about running in Jesmond Dene – our local green belt/vegetative utopia. Here's the result.
Writers, photographers, illustrators & data interpreters needed for Thinking Digital's first magazine – in print!
Thinking Digital always produces a wealth of digital content – speaker videos, delegate blog posts and exabytes of social media goodness (well, nearly). So how about translating it into the tactile page and immortalising it in print form?
We're assembling a team of delegate volunteers to help us plan, write and produce a magazine. It's an experiment in user-generated content and crowd publishing, and where better than TDC to try it out? Here's something similar we did for the Turner Prize at BALTIC last year, and more info on our 'pop-up publishing' work.
Add your story ideas (and comment on others) on our public Google Doc – then we'll get together at Wednesday's conference dinner and sketch out a page plan. We'll set the copy deadline for the weekend, then design, print and post it out to all TDC delegates by mid-June.
Grab @DanHowarth, @NellyStav or @SocialiteEvents (aka Lindsey) if you'd like to get involved in the project. We'd love to have you on board.
**UPDATE** Despite getting some great submissions, the magazine unfortunately didn't go ahead. It was a combination of funding, manpower and extraneous issues that let the project down in the end. We do still, however, have all the content in our files, and we're hoping to do something interesting with it at some point in the near future. Thanks to everyone who got involved.
The BBC College of Journalism held its first conference for hyperlocalists on 24 May at its new northern HQ in Salford, MediaCityUK. People came from around the UK, and as far away as Detroit in the US – with a mix of journalists, students, academics and everyday enthusiasts.
Jon Kingsbury, who heads up the Destination Local initiative at Nesta – the innovation agency poised to inject £500k into 10 British hyperlocal startups – gave a rallying keynote speech, prophesying a world where local content is king. 'Local' meaning relevant and specific, not necessarily geographic. He was followed by Jan Schaffer, director of US funding body J-Lab, who discussed approaches to collaborative journalism in the States.
Along the way, we heard about a talking newspaper which delivers user data back to the web; an Aboriginal community who've transformed into digital video storytellers; and a project in Pakistan which rewards journalistic integrity.
An army of hyperlocalists listened, participated and hatched their own plans – the atmosphere was electric. I'm with Kingsbury: 2020 could see a very different media landscape.
Huge thanks to the BBC's David Hayward and his team for organising the conference. Here are some selected tweets and links from the day, Storified:
Our hyperlocal experiment, JesmondLocal, has a funding application in with Nesta – an innovation agency which believes locality will rule the web by 2020. Its 'Destination Local' project is offering up to £50k to 10 hyperlocal media projects which are dabbling with mobile technology. After seeing some of the excellent submissions on YouTube, I think we're in for some serious competition. Successful projects announced at the end of June.
**UPDATE** We didn't get the funding, but we're looking forward to seeing what comes out of the 10 projects that did. We did, however, get a visit from BBCR2's Today programme.
I was lucky enough to do an interview with the mighty Jeremy Leslie of magCulture – one of the magazine industry's most respected designers – for issue seven of independent North East mag, Novel. Here's the text, but I recommend picking up a copy of the mag, which is stocked in a number of bars, cafés and shops in Newcastle – and it's free. Photo by Sam Ashby (with thanks).
Print is dead. Long live print.
Every once in a while, Novel lifts its head above the relentless North East media machine, and casts an eye on our less prosperous neighbours. In London, a former inland port near Slough*, bright-eyed media hopefuls spice-up their CVs in preparation for that vital pilgrimage up the A1.
(*we jest, of course. London remains an active inland port, and is home to the UK's third largest container operation – source: The Economist.)
Jeremy Leslie is one such hopeful. The veteran design impresario – who counts entertainment bible Time Out, Sky: The Magazine (then the biggest-circulation magazine in the UK), and a 2010 redesign of FHM among his seed – is now turning his hand to iPad apps, with a particularly slick number for independent men’s title Port in the bag. Elsewhere, he runs publishing events (including Printout!, Making Magazines and erstwhile conference Colophon) and writes an influential blog on editorial design, whilst crafting his own work, under the banner of magCulture. Naturally, he's been trying to wangle a placement at Novel for months. Dan Howarth asks him the frankly silly question, "Is print dead?", and is relieved to get a serious answer.
“It’s certainly not dead and it’s never going to be,” Leslie proclaims decisively. "It might make a sexy headline, but people have been saying it for so long that it's becoming anachronistic. Print refuses to die."
I only have to glance beyond Leslie’s trademark silver locks into the pixelated background of his office for evidence: a wall of magazines, collected from all over the world, stands in defiance of our web-enabled interview.
“This call is a case in point: we couldn’t earn our living without the internet,” he says. “My work is still print-orientated, but the web is essential for it to happen. Print and digital are absolutely interdependent, they’re not replacing each other.”
Leslie points out that instead of strangling print, the web has brought about its democratization. As software like QuarkXPress and Adobe InDesign took complex practices like typesetting away from the factory floor, allowing nimble-fingered punters to achieve often better results on desktop computers in offices and bedrooms alike, the web has opened up another previously elite practice to the masses: distribution.
“When I was at university I produced a music fanzine with a friend, and the only way I could sell it was to hang around outside gigs in South West London,” he says. “We used a manual typewriter, photocopier and stapler to put it together. It was pathetic really, I wouldn’t be able to get away with that now. The quality of fanzines has improved significantly. And now instead of reaching a few hundred readers in South West London, you can reach a few thousand spread across the world.”
But with all the noise made by countless bloggers and indy publishers online, isn’t it a myth that the web gives you access to this vast global network of salivating readers? It all comes down to quality, says Leslie. “If you make something and it’s good enough to be of interest to people, then you really have to fuck up to not get it in front of them. Whether or not they’ll buy it and allow you to make a living out of it is another question.”
So the web may be no passport to riches, but nor was traditional publishing – as an independent at least. Like all businesses, profits come with economies of scale. And for mainstream publishers, high-circulation magazines have long been a licence to print money.
“The magazine industry, just like banking and property, had a great time over the last 20 years. There was a massive boom, and the industry was commanding enormous advertising rates in the nineties and noughties,” says Leslie. ”But many magazines ended up losing sight of quality in favour of quantity, and publishers became greedy in some respects. Now they’re frustrated that markets are closing, but that’s part of the ups and downs of being in business.”
Times are particularly hard for lads’ mags. February’s ABC figures show a 20% drop in circulation for FHM, Zoo and Nuts, and a 30% drop for Loaded – a continuing decline that’s already claimed the scalps of Maxim and Arena in the UK. It’s present elsewhere too, albeit less dramatically, with trade body, the PPA, announcing an average drop of 1.4% in sales of consumer magazines as a whole.
“Behind the percentages, these magazines are still selling a lot, though not as much as they used to. They’re suffering for all sorts of reasons, and some things like celebrity gossip are undoubtedly served better online – MailOnline being a prime example. Should you assume, for instance, that Heat deserves to forever be a success because it did so well 10 years ago? Magazines have to respond to the world they’re in.
“If you look back at early Loaded and its ilk, they were very funny magazines. They caught the zeitgeist of the era, and were far more intelligent than Nuts and Zoo, which pander to the lowest common denominator. Does this mean men have changed? With the ABCs, you could make a case that as Private Eye, The Week and The Economist are all increasing their readership, while lads’ mags nosedive, then everyone must be getting more intelligent. It’s not the case at all – what once was new and titillating has become a rough and tough industry, and people are getting bored of it. The reality is that most things fail for a good reason, and I don’t think anyone will be depressed to see them go.”
As old titles close, new ones are born, and the web is cultivating a diverse independent print industry – notably with the help of businesses like Stack Magazines, a curated subscription service, and Newspaper Club, which lets people make magazines in newsprint.
Tellingly, “the end of print” was coined as a phrase in reference to the work of David Carson, whose unique approach to typography – showcased by RayGun magazine in the early 1990s – inverted the traditional conventions of print design. Now independent titles like Wooooo (a paperback), Monocle (a veritable tome) and Afro (your guess is as good as ours) are doing the same with print formats. Likewise, the iPad presents a new wave of opportunity which Leslie is exploring.
“There are massive differences between designing for print and designing for the iPad. Some basic techniques are the same, it’s about graphic design after all, but the tools you use and the way you encourage the reader to interrogate the content are completely different.”
If developing an innovative yet functional magazine experience for the iPad was his first challenge, then Leslie has clearly cracked it with Port. Its smooth interface and reflection of the print magazine’s slow reading style are a triumph of subtlety. But again, the business model proves elusive – beyond the industry, few people have downloaded it.
“No one is yet making any money out of selling magazine apps,” says Leslie, “and whether they’re selling for £1.99 or £3.99, they’re not covering their costs.”
Publishers vary between fully-interactive apps and crude reproductions of print editions, but it’s too soon to judge the best approach, says Leslie. “We’re so early in the process of development that it’s difficult to know. Publishers have different models and they’re still trying to figure it out. Condé Nast’s Wired was the archetype – an experimental app with lots of effects – which many tried to emulate, but with talk of the iPad 3 coming with a screen twice the resolution of its predecessor, and file sizes therefore being up to 35% bigger, even Wired realises it may have to tone down in favour of speed.
“The magazine business can be slow to respond to things. Early in the first internet bubble, a lot of people got their hands burned with plans to do magazines as websites. So people have been reluctant to invest, with a few notable exceptions like Condé Nast. There’s a bigger question mark now than there ever was.”
Until the web can cough-up a business model that consumes print publishing, it seems like the tactile page is safe. And it stubbornly remains a format which engenders the most innovation.
“If you’re clever with magazines, you’re taking advantage of print – either in a subtle way in terms of binding or adding a bit of gold foil blocking on the cover, or it might be a completely new format that no one has ever seen before,” Leslie concludes. “The trick is to be new and different, not just in terms of look and format, but also quality of content. Quality is the key to success.”
Like the trees that bear them, printed magazines are here to stay – sustainable forestry permitting of course. It’s the trite ideas that are dying, and maybe the ‘print is dead’ argument should be one of them.
You can follow Jeremy Leslie’s magazine insights on his blog at magCulture.com
Here's an interview I did with Anna Jones, Chief Operating Officer at Hearst Magazines UK, for the Newcastle Uni alumni newsletter in February 2012. Hearst owns the likes of Cosmopolitan, Men's Health, Good Housekeeping and Digital Spy. Thanks to Phil Adams for the photo.
What is “Art is:”? Turnaround reporter Callum McGlade explains the “Art is:” feature in the 48-hour magazine. Filmed and edited by the skilful Matthew Philip Smith.
Behind-the-scenes at Project Turnaround, the North East's first 48-hour magazine. Film by the talented Nathan Buck. Not sure who the gormless-looking bugger on the left is...
It's #48hrmag weekend, but before we kick-off proceedings, I'd like to thank some of the people who've made it possible.
As the project is completely self-funded, it was touch-and-go whether we'd get it off the ground until our sponsors came on board this week. Huge thanks to Newcastle University, Newcastle Science City, Waitrose, Pan Haggerty, North P&I, Carruthers & Kent, Little Angels, Newspaper Club, Newcastle Arts Centre, Tweed and Country Clothing, Sharpe Recruitment, Simply Segway, Jury's Inn, Victory Tea, and Newcastle University's alumni-sponsored Student Initiatives Fund for their support.
Thanks also to our host, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, and – most importantly – our army of contributors, whose eyes of the tiger make Rocky Balboa look like Teddy Ruxpin.
Over the weekend of 25–27 November, we're making a magazine... At BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead... About ordinary people and the effect (if any) that art has on them... With a team of volunteers... In 48 hours... Now, who's up for it?
BALTIC is hosting the Turner Prize, for the first time ever in the North East and outside a Tate venue, and it's shattering records, with nearly 5,000 visitors per day. That's a lot of opinions and a lot of stories, which we hope to document in 20 pages of silky newsprint.
The team so far comprises students and creative types in the North East, with appearances from JesmondLocal, Novel Magazine, Warm Design and the Cloud Commission.
We're producing 10,000 copies, which we'll be dishing out over the following weekend, in the lead up to the Turner Prize award ceremony on Monday 5 December. It's completely non-profit – any money we make (and we're definitely hoping to make some) will be donated to local charities and under-funded arts projects in Newcastle and Gateshead.
The project is funded entirely through sponsorship and ad sales (with the exception of a kind grant from Newcastle University's alumni-supported Student Initiatives Fund), so we're looking for local businesses and organisations to support us. If you have a business with an ethos that prizes a sense of community, the sharing of knowledge, and showcasing North East talent, then please take an ad... Contact our business development manager, Elizabeth Shaw, for more info: [email protected]
Otherwise, if you'd like to get involved, please have a gander at JesmondLocal, give me a tweet, or email me at: [email protected] – or pop into BALTIC over the weekend to get your thoughts and mugs in the magazine.
I made this yonks ago (well, summer 2010), and it coincided with an interview in the Guardian with digital soothsayer Clay Shirkey, who said that 15 years from now, the newspaper will be as archaic as a Western Union telegram is today.
I disagree. But I will predict that media conglomerates will have as little hold over news as Western Union has over long-distance messages today.
Simple, beautiful, useful formats don't die, they just become less exclusive. I made this newspaper at work (Newcastle University alumni communications) with Newspaper Club – a clever company which produces small-run newsprint for all sorts of organisations who upload PDFs to its website – and the tasteful chaps at Warm Design.
As interest in mainstream newspapers continues to dwindle, the industry seems to be finding new blood in niche products. That's evolution, not extinction.
Nothing too different from what we’ve heard before here, but I’m always fascinated to hear the thoughts of decision makers in the media – especially from the likes of Rusbridger, whose Guardian.co.uk is, for me, the best online newspaper offering in the UK.
The interview is from an event at the Institut für Medienpolitik in Berlin. Thanks to Carta for posting it.
So just to summarise a few of Rusbridger’s points:
Reader comments from the web are valuable for harvesting information to improve newspaper content
There will be a concentration of media ownership in the future
Quality journalism will need to be subsidised
The Victorian chain of newspaper distribution is a broken model – too much money is lost in the chain of supply, falling ad revenues and declining audiences
Modern journalism is about dialogue, not monologue
Twitter is useful for crowdsourcing information for content, and then distributing that content
So are media houses in the future going to be like ‘recycling points’ for content? Taking junk from their readership, recycling it into attractive and digestible content, and then re-distributing? I guess this is arguably how the media has always worked, but now the relationship between producer and consumer is more explicit.
It’s clear that no-one still really knows what the digital age has in store for the future of media. Some of my favourite soundbites from Rusbridger: “Occasionally we see glimmerings of how it’s going to work” and “There’s a blurring of the distinction between journalist and reader”.
Vaguity at its best, and this is from one of the best minds in the industry. But I find this strangely comforting, because the digital age is redefining journalism, and redefining the distribution and consumption of news as we know it. And we’re still really at the beginning.
