Magazines on the iPad: Please Consider Your Loyal Subscribers

Dear Time Inc, Hearst, Conde Nast, Here Media, Meredith, and all the rest of the magazine publishers moving to the iPad,

I get almost a dozen magazines delivered to my door and read almost every issue cover to cover, coveting old issues until I have time to go back to them.  Conde Nast, Time Inc, Here Media Inc, I am your ideal customer, your fanatic, and the person who said that no matter how thin the issues get and how much the media world suffered, I would always find a way to get my New York and New Yorker on Mondays, as well as another magazine almost every other day of the week.   I'm one of the magazine readers that boosts "the average time a person spends with a magazine is 45 minutes" statistic (as well as a bevy of other statistics).  I take all your surveys, I renew on time, I talk about your finest articles, and I feel cheated.

Time, Wired, and a few others who have moved to the iPad, you are leaving your subscribers out of your media revolution.  Wired Magazine's June issue has reached the iPad for $4.99 and after they had to go back to the drawing boards because of Flash incompatibility issues, I'm dying to know what it looks like.  Not only because I'm a Wired fanatic, but because I care about the future of publishing and want to know what at least a part of the future is becoming.  

I do not though, believe that I should have to subscribe to the print version of the magazine and then buy every issue from the app store at newsstand prices.  I understand that the app needs to make money and we're trying to teach people that good journalism is not free.  These are important points, but did you completely forget your loyal subscribers when you moved to the iPad?  What happened to acknowledging and rewarding the customer who has paid to be a part of your brand for years?

Maybe I'm out of line.  Maybe I should have to pay full price for every version of the magazine that I read but I won't.  In my ideal world, when I got my iPad I imagined having the flexibility of a tangible magazine first thing in the morning and last at night, with the portability of access to the same words on my iPad on the go.  I imagined that I would be able to enjoy your media property as a full brand experience that just gets better as technology advances.

But now I must choose.  

Instead of having me on both sides, reading the magazine like I have for years and then showing off the crisp reading experience of Wired on the iPad to everyone I ever see, I'm frustrated.  I'm your loyal fan, your influencer, the customer who will spread word of mouth recommendations to people who trust me, and you just lost me a little bit.  

There's still a chance to change.  Email your subscribers a promo code for a certain number of free issues on the iPad, give us a loyal customer benefit for digital/iPad access the magazines we happily pay for in print.  Use us to bolster your app download numbers, let us spread your enthusiasm and help you through this tough time.  Give us that 360 degree brand experience and value us the way it felt like you did for years.  I'm telling you, you'll keep us forever.  

Choose to ignore us though, and you'll force us to choose.  And if it gets to that point we'll both be losing something important.

Signing off with a hopeful Always,

Lauren Proctor

 

 

 

Posted via web from LaurenProctor's Thinking Posterous

A Rant On Editorial Integrity

My grandma started buying me Time Magazine for Christmas years ago and I've been a religious reader ever since.  My young college days are filled with many a weekly memory of me sprinting to the mailbox just after the mail delivery person so I could fetch out Time Magazine and begin catching up with the world.  Alright, the sprinting hasn't stopped, and I still look forward to Time, but today I have a rant.

Because I'm at the age where friends are starting to get married and have kids (or worry that they'll never find everlasting love beyond Gloria Estefan) Time's July 13 issue of "Unfaithfully Yours" sparked my interest immediately.  What I read first though, was "Warm Weather Words," a list of reading recommendations for the summertime reader.  I sidled up to my computer, opened up my New York Public Library account and readied my reading eyes and keyboard happy fingers.  Time did encourage a few new holds but I read the word "Kindle" enough times to make me squirm.  The sidebar of eight celebrity "Quick Picks" included five blurbs on the Kindle, including blatant plugs like, "Musician John Legend, who carries his Kindle everywhere he goes..." and a list of other forced mentions.  

This reeks of some sort of effort by Time Magazine's editors to push the Kindle and I don't like it.  Yes, of course, they're trying to stay up on the times and keep cutting edge with technology, but this crosses the line.  I want to know how Time is benefiting from this, other than the fact that they sell themselves on the Kindle.  Has advertising seeped a little too far into the editorial department?  I read "Warming Words" for the cold hard books, not the hot technology update of who reads The New York Times via their Kindle.  

I suppose I have little to complain about.  I'm still excited to settle into the infidelity article and remain thankful that Time is still ticking.

***

Now that that's done, check out Brooklyn band A BIG YES... and a small no.  Bouncy, playful and eternally dynamic, these guys serve jazzy ska infused pop worth checking out before passing go or collecting $200.

173 Billion Chances

I read the most recent New York magazine atop the atmosphere (aka on a plane) yesterday and found myself enamored with Sam Anderson's article "In Defense of Distraction". Anderson acknowledges our crackberry crazed worlds constantly interrupted by Facebook, Twitter, email and everything else, and then makes the case for why all of these new innovations and tendencies for multitasking might not be such a horrible change.

I don't know if Einstein or Lennon would have benefited had they been children of today's technological world as Anderson suggests, but this article is certainly worth the read. A day later I'm still deciding whether or not restlessness will be an advantage in our society of "techno-cognitive nomadism" as Anderson puts it, and I'm still wrestling with the effects of the world we've created for ourselves.

Regardless of whether or not I can completely jump on board with his thesis, Anderson made a point in this article that I hope will stick with me for the rest of my life. In refering to Winifred Gallagher's new book Rapt, he talks about the importance of attention. Gallagher argues in her book that the ability to focus your attention is essentially the secret of life. Whether it's an attentiveness to what you're eating (which can supposedly help you lose seven pounds in a single year) or the fact that you're able to pay attention to your loved ones, attention is Gallagher's Holy Grail.

It seems to me sometimes that distractions don't matter because there's all the time in the world to pay attention to what's important. "I can find peace in Central Park tomorrow or read that literary masterpiece in a year," I often tell myself. But our time, even for the long living, is more limited than we sometimes realize. A person can absorb 110 pieces of information per second. The average person then, is limited to the absorption of 173 billion bits of information in a lifetime (not even three times the amount of dollars Warren Buffett has to his name). Suddenly what I'm reading or the time I spend learning about any given subject is much more significant.

At the end of the day, or at the end or our lives for that matter, we are ultimately made up of the things that snagged our attention. Some, fleeting distractions, others, lasting obsessions and unending dedications. How we leave our mark though, is all about where we focused our attention.

You may not be able to learn everything or see every beauty, but you have 173 billion chances. How will you live with those chances? What will you do with yours?

***

Today's music recommendation is Matthew Barber, a singer/songwriter with a knack for a low key sound and breathtaking lyrics. My favorite Barber song is "And You Give." Give it a listen; it's well worth the 25,080 bits of information you could process in the time it takes to drink this song.

Matthew Barber - "And You Give"



Wasn't it worth it, if only for the line "Then came fall, babe, and we fell hard. Bruised our bodies, skinned our knees and our hearts."

Absolutely Incredible, Absolutely Dizzying

I was introduced to this video yesterday. It immediately burned a place in my mind and now it is impacting(and will continue to impact) almost everything I do. Kristen Wiig will make you laugh, Judy Grimes will tell you how to travel cheap, and a Korean baby singing "Hey Jude" will make you melt. But if you watch only one online video this year to date, make it this one:

I won't say much because frankly I'm still speechless, but this video speaks so much to Chris Anderson's recent blog on the power of scale in Wikipedia, the acceleration of our world as spoken by Fortune Mag's article on adaptation in the business environment, the potential of computer power in the future as spoken by Wired, and just about everything else that touches our worlds and my academic studies.

I kind of feel like I just saw the best Apple product to reach stores, read a bunch of incredibly informative journalism, and crashed into a world of amazing uncertainty. I'll admit, I have goosebumps.

***

If you weren't blown away, check out Army Navy. They're a happy hardcore pop band. In this day and age who can really get enough uplifting guitar licks and inviting melodies? The band's new album just released so give them a listen and enjoy.

The Idea of Libertarian Paternalism

A RANDOM MUSING

I was reading an excellent article about the postmodern idea of fluid identities ("Plural Sense of Selves") in The Atlantic by Paul Bloom, and in it I found an especially interesting term.

Bloom introduced the idea of "libertarian paternalism," which he defined as "a movement to engineer situations so that people retain their choices (the libertarian part), but in such a way that these choices are biased to favor people's better selves (the paternalism part)."  

Bloom illustrated this concept by proposing that individuals be automatically enrolled in retirement plans with the option to opt out (rather than the other way around which may leave indecisive or procrastinators without retirement funds).  By doing so policies can support default decisions that speak to the "better" and "more ideal" sense of self.

Another example of this had to do with organ donors and the idea that public policy and law might actually adapt to take into account this idea of libertarian paternalism.  Thaler and Sunstein, who both act as political advisers to Barack Obama, propose that this could take form, for example, when it comes to organ donors.  Public surveys show that most people approve of being donors, yet of this percentage that claims to support donating their organs, very few actually follow through with becoming donors on their driver's license.  Assuming that this isn't about people publicly portraying something they don't believe in, the way we write policy could change this significant gap for the better of our society.  If people had to opt out of the idea, Thaler and Sunstein argue, we would have a much larger percentage of donors and therefore more medical opportunities.

To me this is fascinating.  I won't provide too much commentary, but this seems to say so much about our society, not to mention how important wording is.  Frame something one way and people will react with a certain vehemence.  Manipulate the same concept though, and you might find yourself with a pool of people who will take what you've written perfectly for granted (or simply not offensive enough to do anything about it).

I'm curious as to what this says about the ways that we process information and accept certain things as is simply because there are "more important" battles to fight.  

***

In the spirit of music for thought, or thinking for music, today's recommendation is Blind Pilot, a band that sounds like the way it might feel if David Gray and Jack Johnson crashed into each other in a warm, acoustic coffee shop.  

My favorite song off of his most recent album Three Rounds and a Sound is "One Red Thread" but everything from Blind Pilot is worth listening until you can feel the Oregon band's guitar strings cutting into your own fingers and flowing through you like the blood that is essential to life.

Blind Pilot - "One Red Thread"

Magazine Meltdown

Radar Magazine recently folded (see Print Is Dead party invite to the left). Time Inc. cut 600 employees, Conde Nast endured a round of layoffs yesterday, Portfolio is struggling, and Men's Vogue just died. The economy is bad but this is the worst time ever in what was once the mostly recession proof magazine industry.

I want to know where the glamour of the magazine industry went. It's certainly not online because no one really knows how to monetize Internet based magazine type content effectively, and I'm not seeing it anywhere else. Apparently it discintegrated in the mist.

I've been told that magazines work better than any other media in the three B's (the beach, the bathroom, and the bedroom). We might be moving toward a Kindle like device that stores video, books, the electronic version of the New York Times, and all your necessary feeds, but you probably wouldn't ever take your Kindle to the beach. If only for that reason, and that reason alone, magazines should continue to thrive.

You can give me the recession but please don't take away my magazines. The best will undoubtedly survive, but when they do I hope these media empires leave room for an aspiring hard worker and dedicated fan.

Always a reader,

Lauren Proctor

***

A Fitting Music Recommendation

Tobias Froberg (Bjorn Yttling Remix) - "A Brickwall"

"Doing Alcohol, Drugs, and Racing Vehicles..."

In a recent blog I revealed my addiction to magazines. To share the reading experience I might start posting pieces I find interesting. The New York Times recently had a nice snippet about Cambodia's prime minister. The piece is below:

"CAMBODIA: LEADER SEVERS TIES WITH GAY DAUGHTER
Prime Minister Hun Sen said he planned to legally disown his adopted daughter, who is a lesbian, so she cannot claim any inheritance. Mr. Hun Sen made the disclosure about his closely guarded family life in a speech at a graduation. "My adopted daughter now has a wife,” he said. “I’m quite disappointed." At the same time, he appealed to people not to discriminate against homosexuals, adding, "Most of them are good people and are not doing alcohol, drugs or racing vehicles.""


1) Phew. I'm glad to know that most gays are good people who don't do alcohol, drugs, or race vehicles. I was especially worried about the racing vehicles part. We wouldn't want gay people peeling out of Diva's on Saturday nights, their knuckles white from gripping the steering wheel and putting the petal to the metal.
2) Don't worry, adopted daughter of Prime Minister Hun Sen. You've got real family now. You and your wife are formally invited to holidays at my place.


Since Sasha Frere-Jones' sidebar in one of the most recent New Yorkers I pulled out some of my old grime music. Grime launched in London in the early 2000 and is known for a combination of 2-step beats and double time rapping. Grime has quicker, heavier beats than America's rap, and many claim it parallels the feeling you get when boxing. One of the most recognized grime artists on this side of the pond is Dizzee Rascal, but he comes from an extensive pool of talent in the UK.

Although some consider grime hardcore rap, it's actually embraced by a large number of nerdy music enthusiasts who embrace the genre for the way it plays with language. Some of my friends have literally labored over grime songs to understand every word. Before jumping into grime here's a quick guide to some of the British slang you'll need to master before truly appreciating this rap:

1. Nekkle - Great, uberkewl
2. Bare - Lots
3. Trainers - Sneakers
4. Jumpsuit - Sweatshirt

Below you can watch a little grime if you care to...

Please note, the opinions expressed by the rappers above may not express my own personal views.

Magazine Security

I am obsessed with magazines. My coffee table is lined with the latest issues of The New Yorker, Time Magazine, OUT, Inc., Wired, Rolling Stone, Blender, Atlantic Monthly, and a pile of other publications. All said and done, I'm a subscriber to 16 magazines, and I scour around until the mail comes each day so I can verify the arrival of each new publication.

My magazines arrive at a mean time of 3:53 p.m. on their designated days via USPS, and as soon as I grab them out of the box, my number one priority in life becomes reading the most recent issue cover to cover. I excuse the antisocial behavior that naturally ensues by claiming I'm simply attempting to "stay abreast of all the going ons in the world" or saying that reading will, "improve my writing substantially."

The aforementioned may be true, but I'll be the first to admit I have a problem. Whether I'm going to the club, the softball field, or the classroom, it's nearly impossible for me to leave the house without at least one periodical in hand. To do so gives me anxiety, as if I decided to stroll outside naked. Keeping a magazine or two on hand at all times makes me feel safe though, like a bullet proof vest or security blanket.

When I bring periodicals to social events I don't sit in front of a group of friends and casually delve into my magazines as everyone else chats. And while I used to read in the dugout between innings, I've learned that's a little eccentric in itself as well. Instead, I carry periodicals with me for that coveted moment when no one is around and I can steal in a few informative paragraphs.

Perhaps I need therapy to help me deal with the flood of media constantly invading my space and beckoning for me to read it? Or maybe one day I'll finally achieve full clarity regarding what's really going on in the world. On that day I envision myself writing like one of my idol columnists, Lauren Collins, Patricia Marx, or many other brilliant writers. Even then, you couldn't force me to cancel my subscriptions.

Before I head off to read some more of Wired, one of my musical obsessions is Bonde Do Role. Loosen those hips, strap on your dancing shoes, and give "Solta O Frango" a listen below: