Print publishing needs to play to its strengths

Partly because of our current work for The Daily Beast and also because I have an inky past of my own – I am watching with fascinated horror the burning pyre of the news and magazine publishing industry and wondering what the Pheonix is going to look like. While the old world collapses there are new models emerging. An old print colleage of mine has launched Mind Food, a hybrid model leveraging the low cost base of operating out of Aukland and Sydney, working a series of content content syndication deals and blending online’s many benefits with a lush printed product that is a mashup of Vanity Fair and Monocle – both titles whose imgery and subject matter suit the glossy printed page. Monocle’s editor, Tyler Brulee argued in a recent article (sub req.) – print is very good at some things and to make the most of these, publishers need to fall back in love with the printed product. The sentiment was echoed by Clay Shirky in a recent interview; “The great advantage magazines have is glossy pictures. It’s better to read on paper than on the web but it’s much better to look at pictures on paper than on the net. Brides magazine is going to be the last one standing.”

I know this from my own experiments with SydneyIs, a hybrid web print and handheld (it was 2000 – gimme a break!) that we launched at IPMG in Australia – some things just work better on paper. It just doesn’t look like news is one of them.