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."