The trouble with print media (newspapers in particular) is it has never forced itself to look into the future, even though its employees were amongst the chroniclers of the future. Newspaper executives never really focused on the reality that as the Internet became pervasive, the idea of a daily newspaper was going to become the subset of an information business -- part of an amorphous goo we call MEDIA. From Facebook to Google to Twitter to blogs, we are all part of a bigger “information” business. Because these new media are attuned to the needs of a new kind of information consumer, it’s hardly a surprise that media’s single largest source of revenues -- advertising dollars -- are getting sliced and diced in pursuit of this elusive, always transforming, info-savvy media consumer. Unfortunately, the media is used to selling page views, impressions and massive audiences: metrics as archaic as drinking on the job and smoking in a doctor’s office. more »

The New York Times tops the list of the top 25 newspapers on Twitter with more than 2.6 million followers. The Times is the “only newspaper from the top 25 with more Twitter followers than print circulation,” reports Journalistics, the blog that compiled the list. The list was released yesterday, the same day the New York Times Co., the paper’s publisher, posted third-quarter sales that fell short of estimates as advertising and circulation revenue declined. more »

My opinion about iPad-based magazines is that they run counter to how people use tablets today and, unless something changes, will remain at odds with the way people will use tablets as the medium matures. They’re bloated, user-unfriendly and map to a tired pattern of mass media brands trying vainly to establish beachheads on new platforms without really understanding the platforms at all.
The fact of the matter is that the mode of reading that a magazine represents is a mode that people are decreasingly interested in, that is making less and less sense as we forge further into this century, and that makes almost no sense on a tablet. more »