|
|
Don't Ever Replace My Printed Magazine With A Computer Screen!Aug 20 '04 Write an essay on this topic.
Popular Products in Magazine Subscriptions
The Bottom Line Let my magazine experience be expanded by web coverage, but please don’t ever let it replace the magazine that shows up in my mailbox every month
Come on now, does anyone really think there’s a real comparison between online content and the old fashioned printed magazine? If there were, every magazine would be published online and there wouldn’t be newsstands anymore. Beyond all the hype of the internet and the move of everything to the electronic world, some things just haven’t crossed over, magazines included. While almost every magazine has its own website on the web, it’s not to distribute the content of the entire magazine, it’s to provide basic information on the magazine and act as a teaser to get people to buy the magazine or purchase a subscription. Paper Vs. Electronic To me, it is a hands down victory for paper. Electronic media, no matter how advanced cannot replace that tactile feel and emotional attachment that paper does, especially in books and magazines. There’s just something about getting a new magazine off the newsstand or finding the latest issue in your mailbox. You can take it wherever you want to go and there’s the pleasure of leisurely “flipping through” the magazine. When you have content on the internet, all of that is missing. First off, I need to be sitting in front of a computer screen (or squinting at my PDA screen) to read the content. Web content is nowhere near as portable as a printed magazine. Can you fold up web content and slide it in your back pocket so you can read it on the train? Not really unless you want to be carrying a computer with you wherever you go. Secondly we spend our days staring at computer screens in our jobs nowadays, who wants to come home and spend more time in front of that screen to read a magazine? I for one don’t want to be staring at a computer screen 24/7. I consider the time that I sit back and relax with a magazine my downtime. I can hold it however I want, I can fold pages or rip out something important to me, my eyes aren’t strained by the flickering screen and I’m not listening to any annoying chimes or other computer sounds. It’s just me and the magazine and there’s something special about that. Is Online Good At All? There are some advantages to online content and magazines who wisely use it not only improve their websites, but they improve the overall media experience for readers, both on paper and in the electronic world. The web is great for the latest news and most magazines are published on a monthly time-table, so the magazine’s website is a great place for late-breaking news and stories that didn’t make it in time for the printed page. The web is also great for additional information or more detailed information. For example – there’s a story you really like in a magazine, so you go to the site which provides more news on this item and links to more information on it. In addition multimedia content easily comes through the web, while in a printed magazine it doesn’t. Readers can be directed to the website for multimedia to support the original article. You might not want to read the entire magazine on the web, but magazine websites are also a good place to get an idea about the magazine. Say you come across a magazine you’ve never seen before, by being able to read a few stories from the latest issue and maybe some back issues, you get an idea of what the magazine is like. If you like it, you might go out and get a copy on the newsstand or you might even get a subscription. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to spend a penny. Subscription management on a magazine’s website is also a godsend. Who hasn’t tried calling a reader service department of a magazine and been caught in endless voicemail loops or otherwise cast off into telephone space? By being able to directly manage your subscription through the website, you save a lot of time if you have any problems and you’ll probably skip a headache or two. Full Online Content Some magazines have websites that provide some of a magazine’s contents for free, while the remainder of the contents can only be seen by people with a website subscription. Generally, even if you already have a subscription to the paper based magazine, to access the full-content online, you are required to pay the online subscription price. For those who enjoy getting all their content on the computer, this is a good way to go. The online subscriptions are generally less expensive and you can access that content 24/7 on whatever computer you want. For those of us who like paper, this isn’t all that great and I don’t think I’d ever pay to get the full online content. Final Thoughts For me the best way to present web based magazine content is as an addition and a supplement to the printed page. This expands the magazine in ways that paper never could. You can have a page that gives you more information on an article, another page might have a multimedia presentation on a topic in the latest issue and still yet on another page, you might find current news that couldn’t make it into the latest magazine. There are full online content websites for magazines, but I don’t think they’ll ever really catch on with everyone. There are too many people that enjoy reading a printed magazine, who enjoy being able to take it anywhere and read it anywhere, and who enjoy getting away from the computer world with the old fashioned printed page. Let my magazine experience be expanded by web coverage, but please don’t ever let it replace the magazine that shows up in my mailbox every month.  |
| Read all comments (3)|Write your own comment |
- Top 50
by gaelkm
by dlstewart
by Freak369
