Web 2.0 is all the rage. Everyone wants to talk about how the new generation of online
applications will change everything. I
tend to agree, but I also think it’s important to look at what should be done
on the print front to better leverage it as a platform.
First of all, let me note that although I’ve been outspoken
about the decline of the newspaper and magazine industries, I strongly believe both
print products will survive well beyond my lifetime. Look at the railroad industry. It wasn’t that long ago that trains were the
preferred means of travel in the United States. Then the airplane arrived on the scene. Did that kill the railroad industry? No, but it changed it quite a bit. Trains still run today, mostly for the
purpose of carrying freight from one point to another, but they didn’t
disappear…the industry evolved into what it can do best, and so will newspapers
and magazines.
The most important consideration for print is that it needs
to be reoriented to embrace, complement and connect to online
content. What does that mean? To answer that question, let me start by
saying what it doesn’t mean. It doesn’t
mean that you simply insert notes “to read and comment on this article on our
website, click here” all over the paper/magazine. It also doesn’t mean that you apply the same
old rules of editorial control on something as dynamic as your columnists
blogs; I discovered that the editor posts for my local paper’s “live blog from
the pressbox” at the Colts game has to be processed by his editor before
appearing, delaying them unnecessarily and killing the whole “live” aspect of
the idea.
Rather than cramming this into one long article, I’ll
follow this post up with three others focusing on embrace, complement and
connect.
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