It's Tuesday: Are You The Customer? Or The Product? - Issue #48
A few years back I wrote a post for my blog called “In Praise of Analog”. It was inspired because the home we were living in at the time was celebrating a birthday and a host of it’s systems, all technological marvels of their time were suddenly in need of repair and/or replacement. Allegedly state of the art flat screen TV’s were aging out and glitching. WiFi routers were not routing. A built in security system was having a nervous breakdown and alerting us to its discomfort and failure. Programmable thermostats were dying and our rather expensive, all electronic washing machine was freaking out and declining to do its job. And of course, our smart phones, tablets and laptops were reaching their premature end of life stages.
Meanwhile, in our basement a 20 year old plain white refrigerator was quietly doing its one job: Keeping things in one compartment cool and in the other, frozen.
The point of the post was not that things were better in the days of vacuum tubes and gears. It was that the desire for “frictionless” tech and commerce often creates the exact opposite result. Consider what happens sometimes after you update to a new OS. Think about all the spam and unwanted pop-ups you get if you click on an ad on one of your social networks. We citizens of the new digital era have significantly less privacy than our counterparts did many years ago. What I find even more interesting and, frankly, frustrating, is the amount of work we all now do for companies, apps and websites that are supposed to work for us.
This happening in both my professional and personal lives and it's pretty frustrating to feel so powerless. Because this is the third decade of the 21st century and we're supposed to be living like the Jetsons, and we're not. What is harder to accept is that our personal and professional lives are merging. In many cases, the professional life is taking more precedence than it should. People I speak with feel like they're always working, always thinking about work, always a cog in the machine.
Are you seeing this too?
1___In less surprising news, Dotdash Meredith is targeting "small" pieces of print
Exclusive: Dotdash Meredith targeting print investments — www.axios.com Moving forward, print brands will be "smaller in circulation and much more luxury."
My first thought is to think about how many additional copies of the Harry Styles BH&G issue they could have sold had they alerted a chain like B&N or Books A Million that this was on its way.
My second thought is, "Define 'target'."
In the meantime, here's a thoughtful follow-up from Media Posts' Tony Silber:
New Print Investments For Dotdash Meredith? Actually, Probably Not. 06/02/2022 — www.mediapost.com New Print Investments For Dotdash Meredith? Actually, Probably Not. - 06/02/2022
2___Meanwhile, in pivoting news...
Conde Nast Sets Course For The Metaverse With Its Magazine Brands 05/31/2022 — www.mediapost.com Conde Nast Sets Course For The Metaverse With Its Magazine Brands - 05/31/2022
I suppose this could make some sense presuming that the upcoming "Web 3.0" thing isn't a giant crash. I may be wrong, but pretty much every book I've read about living in some sort of "metaverse", at least in fiction, takes place in a dystopian environment.
Maybe I should go down to the basement and camp out next to my old white fridge.
3___Following along, Peter Houston would like a word with Conde Nast
Condé’s comparison of magazine readers to web and social audiences makes no sense. One of these things is not like the others - Media Voices — voices.media I get it. I really do. It’s tough to do print profitably at scale. But a ‘print is dying’ narrative …
Houston is right on several fronts. As I point out to my mostly small and medium sized publishers: Their subscribers and newsstand buyers are actually investing their money in what the editors have put together. It's actual validation of their work.
However, Houston also points out, correctly, I think, that many larger publishers who work more in the mass market should go where the profit is. For them.
4___Jill Biden is the first FLOTUS to make the cover of Harper's Bazaar
Jill Biden covers Harper's Bazaar as magazine's first FLOTUS, talks family, 'fexting' and independence — www.usatoday.com For the first time in its 155-year history, Harper's Bazaar put a FLOTUS on its cover, first lady Jill Biden, who also has appeared on Vogue's cover.
Speaking of the power of print...
5___In really awesome news, Creem Magazine is back for the 21st century!
Creem magazine, Detroit-born rock bible, makes big return with digital archive, print edition — www.freep.com More than three decades after the demise of the cheeky, Detroit-bred rock publication, Creem is back with an ambitious print and digital effort.
In last weeks' newsletter, I mentioned my very first job in the magazine world. We had several "rock and roll" copycat titles and Creem Magazine was our "comparative" title.
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