Evolution of the online species - print periodicals versus online periodicals

Brandweek, March 5, 2001 by J.C. Herz

THE NEXT GENERATION OF MAGAZINES ON THE WEB NEEDS HIGH UTILITY AND SOME GOOD GOSSIP

Like motion-picture pioneers filming stage plays or early radio announcers reading newspaper reports on the air, the first generation of online magazine publishers imagined the Web as a channel for what had come before. Hence the early spate of image-heavy "magazine" spreads that took forever to load, reams of chin-scratching editorials by noted intellectuals and literary anthologies by techno-savvy bohemians who 10 years ago would have been hand-stapling quarterlies in the gradschool lounge.

Whether it was original material from scrappy upstarts or repackaged content from the media behemoths, the Online Magazine version 1.0 was a paper product, based on a paper business model, repurposed for the screen. A media amphibian, it was adventurous but fragile.

Six years and hundreds of millions of dollars later, magazines are starting to evolve lungs and legs in cyberspace, based on an understanding of what networks are uniquely positioned to deliver and on the fact that online media and paper media are complements rather than substitutes. For the smart money, it boils down to the distinction between entertainment and utility.

For entertainment value, paper magazines are far superior to their pixelated counterparts. The resolution of the text, the saturation of the images and the sense of indulgence one gets from flopping onto the couch with a fragrant, perfect-bound publication makes it a premium experience that will not be matched on a screen for the foreseeable future. There are very few people who are willing to read a 4,000-word article on a monitor, much less pay for it.

If anything, electronic documents are a marketing mechanism for their paper counterparts. When the National Academy of Sciences put all its books online in PDF format free of charge, sales tripled. MIT Press implemented the same strategy with similar results. Essentially, those readers didn't pay for the information, they paid to have it printed in order to enhance their reading experience. Ask yourself whether you'd rather read a five-page article online or pay a buck to have it on paper. Digital-rights-management software can do this. We have the technology.

But printing out magazine articles is still conventional dead-tree publishing, on demand. And while putting magazine articles in a browser does drive subscriptions (herein lies AOL Time Warner's much-fabled synergy), the real question is: How do you design a media product for networked information space? What exactly are the genetic markers of a successful online magazine?

For better or worse, the axiom is utility. Any form of information whose use value (including social use) exceeds its experience value will probably work online. If you look at the subscription models that succeed on the Web, they are attached to publications with supreme utility: the Wall Street Journal and Consumer Reports. The former charges 300,000 people $59 a year (or $29 if they already subscribe to the paper version), on the theory that the information provided can be used to earn a thousand times your subscription fee. The latter charges half a million people $3.95 a month, or $24 a year, on the theory that the information will prevent you from wasting money on inferior merchandise.

Consumer Reports online is, in fact, a better magazine than its paper counterpart because it's searchable and because the ratings are updated as new models reach the market. And as the front end to a database, dynamically generated Web pages are better than dead trees.

With both of these examples, what you do with the information is more important than the information itself. This principle also applies to advertising-supported models (yes, they can work, if you structure the media correctly). Witness Time Out the lifestyle guide for hipsters from London to Los Angeles. The magazine is a satisfying read, but more important, it's a tool--the Swiss army knife of urban consumption. Almost every piece of information in Time Out points to a purchase, be it a restaurant meal, a movie ticket, off-Broadway theater, a concert or sample-sale frocks. And because so much of this information is timely, and because so much of it is geographically based, Time Out is a home run on Vindigo. Movie times and record reviews are worth more on a handheld device, on the verge of a purchase, than they are on paper--to consumers, and to advertisers.

Time Out is at the end of the continuum. Like Consumer Reports, it's a database and, therefore, very Net friendly. But even magazines that include lavish visual experiences have room to evolve into successful hybrids that marry the leisure experience of paper to the utility of online media. It's lovely to pore over beautifully photographed Tuscan landscapes, but when you want the bruschetta recipe, it's easier to find it online (especially if you can download the shopping list onto your Palm). While the fantasy of a Moroccan getaway is more satisfying on paper, the reality is easier to achieve on a travel magazine's Web site because it likely would link to all sorts of information on airlines, hotels and more. In fashion, Conde Nast's Lucky is completely through the looking glass: a shopping book with nothing but small photos, URLs and 800 numbers, with little stickies to bookmark coveted items. It's an online magazine printed on paper. May a thousand flowers bloom.