Blog Intrapreneur
By Kristina Loring - December 22, 2010
In 2010, it seemed everyone was eager to declare that print was finally dead, even before a proper funeral. The economic recession shed light on the outrageous cost of production (printing the New York Times costs twice as much as sending every subscriber a free Kindle) and led to threats of pay walls as solutions to covet content. Meanwhile, both the industry and icons of web journalism speculated about whether or not the iPad would be able to save our favorite magazines from vanishing entirely. And all this because of the Internet, where you don’t just look for news but the news is able to find you with the aid of real-time social sharing tools courtesy of powerful social networks. Curator Lauren Cornell focuses on the implications of these shifting flows of data in her new exhibit Free at the New Museum in New York. In a statement about the exhibit, Cornell comments on the power behind our growing digital culture "The internet is not just a medium, but also a territory populated and fought over by individuals, corporations, and governments; a communications tool; and a cultural catalyst."
So instead of fearing such a powerful cultural catalyst, long-time print publishers must embrace and harness it. In order to stake a claim in this growing digital territory, magazines will have to re-imagine their identity and disrupt their current content and advertising model to appeal to new hyper-social audiences thirsting for interactive media.
