Marcus Bösch wrote a great text about the future of print and GuteSeiten for Deutsche Welle (sorry, german only): “Lang lebe das bedruckte Papier: Die New York Times wird immer dünner. Die Zeitungslandschaft immer karger. Immer weniger Menschen lesen Nachrichten auf Papier. Komisch, dass junge Kreative weltweit trotzdem munter immer neue Magazine basteln.”
Alexander Brauch and Patrick Müller (aka Gebrauchsgrafikundso, the guys who did this fabulous website) getting horny because of Alain Bieber (left) and Giddyheft.
Above: During the panel; Below: The calm before the storm…
Some weeks ago - on 26th may - we celebrated the official launch of GuteSeiten in Hamburg, at the Kunstverein, with a lot of drinks and magazines. It was really great, thank you very much for accommodating us and thanks to everybody who joined us. Matthias from PSFK organized a great panel about the future of magazines with journalist and consultant Alexander Böker (”Ich glaube, dass das Ausbleiben der Anzeigen ein dauerhafter Zustand bleiben wird und man sich als Redaktion ein bisschen davon löst, immer nur auf die Anzeigenerlöse zu schielen und vielleicht wieder mehr auf den Leser kuckt.” - 93:15), journalist Verena Dauerer (”Wenn es uns ganz schlecht geht, dann drucken wir eben wieder schwarz/weiß und alle denken es ist Kunst.” - 27:56), consultant, publisher and founder of the Lead Award, Markus Peichl (”Wir werden es erleben, dass wir in Deutschald eine relativ große Altersarmut unter Journalisten haben werden.” - 86:15), and journalist and co-founder of GuteSeiten Alain Bieber (”Es werden noch viel mehr kommerzielle Mainstream-Magazine sterben. Und das ist auch gut so, denn die meisten sind völlig überflüssig.” - 9:30). You can see the whole discussion now on video (german only, sorry) - above or here. If you missed this event don’t be sad, we’ll be soon again on tour: The next GuteSeite-Lounge will be probably in Frankfurt. And if you would like to invite us also for a magazine exhibition, lecture, workshop or panel - just drop us a line.
What does it take for a product to sell? Besides an infinity of things, there two that are most important: need and desire. Another couple of questions: why is mainstream media in so much trouble? Because people don’t need it anymore (there’s a lot of all-you-can-eat-information on the net) and most publications are far from being desirable. The last question: why do independent magazines sell? The answer for this is quite obvious but I would love to read your comments here.
The problem with most newspapers across the globe today is that their editors are too ‘closed minded’ to see past the 70’s. People simply don’t need an ‘old’ newspaper anymore. By the time someone gets out to buy the day’s newspaper all the breaking news have been heard or seen or read on a screen.
Do I believe that this is the end of print age? Not really, not even the end of newspapers. What every newsroom must do (and this is asking a lot) is to find the ‘iphone effect’ on their publication. What must one publish to transform the boring, not-needed, old publication into a desire object? Find this and you’ll be publishing a very successful ‘old medium’.
To start – and you MUST start now – you can see a lot of independent magazines and fanzines. Really see and read them. And then start trying; as design thinking can teach you, this is an on going process, a trial and error curve. It’s a fun path to travel and one every reader will appreciate.
What makes a publication desirable? Creativity! Innovation! What makes Monocle magazine ‘sail’ past this crisis is the fact that; not only it’s beautifully written and designed; but also because every page is full of good ideas, of news that you might not even consider to be interested in before reading it. That’s creativity working on a newsroom, to find the different story, the different approach to an ‘old’ story.
The only way to become the object of desire for an audience is to give them your most, all of your sweat and tears on a daily bases. Desire is having every reader eager for the next issue. That’s our goal – for everybody working on a newsroom – and the public has already told us that what we have been doing so far is not working.
Like Apple going back to the drawing board to reinvent the phone, newsrooms must reinvent communication with an audience. To do so, creativity and innovation are the recipes and everyone’s brilliant minds are the ingredients. Working together for something desirable.
Jeff Jarvis, author of “What Would Google Do?”, media blogger and director of the interactive journalism program at the City University of New York’s new Graduate School of Journalism, wrote an interesting article about magazines:
“A few years ago, I was asked to speak on a panel at a magazine industry meeting. A few days before the event, the organizer called me and said, “Uh, Jeff, are you going to say that magazines are doomed? And if you are, could you not come?” So in a rare moment of preparing for a panel, I actually thought about what I thought and I concluded that magazines weren’t doomed. They have the unique value of slickness and focus that their publishers always brag about. And, I reasoned, magazines already were communities and so they should be perfectly positioned for the community-based internet. Magazines are collections of people who are interested in the same stuff. The challenge for an editor is to figure out ways to enable them to share with each other, to become a platform for that community.
Afraid I was wrong. Or at least, it’s hard to name a magazine that has done a good job becoming that community platform. The problem, as I said of newspapers in relation to GeoCities and MySpace the other day, is that magazines can’t stop thinking of themselves as content. They’re not communities.” Continue here.
