In case you’re asking, it’s NOT a zero-sum game. Reverse the publishing process and voilà, print and digital are friends again
Sunday, July 17th, 2011I’m amazed that the question, “Is Print a zero-sum game?” still so frequently pops up in publishing circles, but inevitably it does. (In fact, many major monthly magazines in Asia don’t even have websites because they don’t see value in an online operation.) I don’t believe the two mediums are at odds with each other. More importantly, I believe they complement each other tremendously.
Is Print a zero-sum game? Can print co-exist profitably with new media? Traditionally, print magazines precede their dedicated websites. At Ringier Vietnam, we reverse the publishing process with new titles and publish websites first. The result is a loyal subscriber base, affordable content-generation strategies and a robust database of content to creatively use when we take a digital title to print. The magazine becomes a “byproduct of the brand,” a source of revenue and goes on to further market the digital operation. Digital and print are a cycle of mutual support, not a zero-sum game.
This CMS is for you
Thursday, March 12th, 2009One of the highlights of my time here at J-school has been meeting Cyndi Stivers, currently the managing editor of Entertainment Weekly. Stivers launched Time Out here in New York as publisher and is now teaching a class on magazine production at the J-school.
We met after the “dog-and-pony” show, where professors of spring classes pitch their upcoming courses to fall students, and quickly hit it off on the topic of content management systems. I never thought of myself as too knowledgeable on the subject, but after having helped design an online system in Django, City Weekend, I suppose I’m keenly aware of their power and menace. Stivers expressed interest in me stopping by her class and presenting my former work.
The above slide show is the result. It’s a short dek that simply touches on what is a CMS, what to look out for when choosing one and how the right CMS or approach to database management can help in magazine and web production. As I am so fond of saying, our CMS published a user-generated Web site, that also happened to make a magazine, email update and mobile phone service.
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