Blog Pattern Language
By Sam Martin - October 18, 2010
Having just sent the November 2010 print issue of design mind to the printer, I think it’s an appropriate time to ask, “What the heck are we still doing in the print business?” It’s not easy building a magazine, I can tell you that. And it’s not cheap (though that depends on how frequently one publishes and what kind of creative resources one has access to; we go to press two times a year and have a company full of creatives with plenty of diverse points of view). So what’s the deal? Why do we bother, especially when the iPad and other tablets seem to be starting a new, lucrative, and broadly appealing chapter in magazine publishing?
Blog Pattern Language
By Sam Martin - November 30, 2009
Should content be free or should readers have to pay for what they read and see and listen to? This question has been asked more frequently over the past two months as Steven Brill, the founder of Journalism Online and a proponent of the idea that not all content should be free, has been engaging audiences around the country to promote his new pay for play model called the Reader Revenue Platform (he launched in April ’09). Zach Seward at Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab has an excellent breakdown of what the model offers. As far as I can tell, media sites can choose from a variety of options, but ideally a good chunk of the revenue will come from committed readers — those who visit the site on a regular basis.
