Mailbox Anchor

According to the Columbia Journalism Review (12/27/12), the US Postal Service is entertaining the idea of selling hard copy magazine subscriptions.  Although magazines make up only a small percentage of mailed items, CJR says that internally the Postal Service calls magazines "the anchor in the mailbox."  The idea is that customers value magazines and, while checking the mail for them, may also take notice of junk mail in the box.  Without magazines, the logic goes, customers may not even check their mailboxes.
http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/usps_may_start_selling_mag_sub.php?page=all

Birth of a "New Genre"?

In a recent New York Times critic's notebook piece,  Dwight Garner says he's bullish about Kindle Singles. ("Miniature E-Books Let Journalists Stretch Legs" NYT 3/7/12, p. 1) I've previously posted on this Amazon e-reader product which features pieces from 10,000 to 30,000 words which can be read on the Kindle reader or its software and sell in the $.99 to $3 range. This long form, in Garner's words has "the promise of what feels almost like a new genre: long enough for genuine complexity, short enough that you don't need journalistic stretches and fillers." Amazon, in an apparent effort to do for publishing what HBO did for TV, has hired journalist David Blum to curate the offerings. These include such pieces as "Fatal Voyage" by John Hooper and "An Unexpected Twist" by Andy Borowitz.  The Singles program hosts a wide range of fiction and essays, but long-form journalism is a standout among its offerings.  Also see Scott Steinberg's piece in Rolling Stone which has similar hopes for Singles, touting that they "May Rewrite the Rules of Publishing."  By the way, as noted in my previous post, with the proper software, you can read Kindle offerings on a range of devices including old-fashioned laptops.

Surviving Dark Days

A recent David Carr column in The New York Times reveals how Esquire held onto its "narrative horsemen," and brought itself into the iPad era while not compromising its literary heritage (much).

Editor in chief David Granger kept the faith with the long form, but innovatively used the magazine's iPad app to keep the publication from being "just another magazine under glass" as Mashable—the social media news blog— put it. The result is a revived magazine with increased ad pages and page views. According to Carr "Advertiser like to see a legacy brand show muscle in a new realm."

The Values of Magazine Writing

“Magazine journalism requires space: you simply cannot build a convincing and provocative argument in 500 words,"  according to Richard Just, editor of The New Republic magazine.  The Yale Daily News reports on a recent speech by Just in which he states "We, you and I, have to make an affirmative decision that magazine journalism has to live on, even after physical magazines no longer exist." According to the article by Ariel Katz, magazine writers have a value system that prizes uncertainty in the writing and checking of the facts in a piece which makes for "a stronger argument, a truer story," very different than the "smugness and stridency" of Internet journalism. Also valued is artistry in writing and a willingness to passionately pursue arguments and ideas. Read the full account here.

Niche Necessary

Freelance writer Yael Grauer on her blog Yael Writes, reports on a panel discussion  "The Future of the Magazine" in which participants described how they believed long-form journalism will work on various platforms.
According to Grauer, Utne Reader editor David Schimke "recommended new writers brand themselves as niche market writers [and] need to be blogging, tweeting, working with authors, speaking, putting video and podcasts on their website, promoting their won work and writing SEO-optimized copy."
For a report on what Schimke and other panelists had to say, see Grauer's blog entry. Here's also a link to the event which was held in early October in Minneapolis and promises to post video.