A Brief Rant about Virtual Magazines
I subscribed to The New Yorker awhile ago. They had a promo available where the print/online combo was cheaper then just subscribing to the paper edition, so I gave it a shot. Canada Post is notoriously slow with any delivery, especially scheduled, routine ones – and my hope was that I'd be able to read the magazine exactly on its publishing date and then deep-read the paper copy when it eventually arrived.
How plussed was I to discover that the online portion of my subscription was in actual fact just full access to all the articles on their website. There is a dedicated app for iOS, but If you have Android, tough love. You can get it on Google Play News Stand, but if your a paranoid freedom-loving commie like me, you don't have the neccesary Google account to log into the app (let alone even have it installed on your phone).
This brings me into a larger topic, that being: Why don't News Publishers understand the internet? Most of them, from your local fish-wrap all the way to massive publications like Vogue or Wired, outsource their digital publications – their website, digital subscriptions, etc. – to external providers like PressPad or Magzter, companies who – A, don't spend a lot of time making sure the digital version looks great, and B, don't really give two shits about customer service.
All I want is a readable, digital magazine, like issuu does. I want to turn pages, scroll around, and zoom in on text. It doesn't have to be perfectly optimized for my phone – that's not what matters. What matters is I'm getting the same information as the print publication, because if I'm not, I feel ripped off.
It's no secret in the world of journalism that the budgets are getting smaller and newspapers are dying. I feel a major portion of this crunch is from the inability for publications to get with the times. Spend some money, New Yorker! DIY a digital version. Hack the Planet!
#general #rant #media #newspaper #magazine
Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash
