The Big Debate

I attended a debate last night in central London titled “The web needs magazines more than magazines needs the web.”

Organised jointly by the Editorial Design Organisation and the British Society of Magazine Editors (BSME) the six-member panel consisted of David Hepworth, editorial director at Development Hell; Mark Porter, design director at The Guardian; Simon Kanter, editorial director at Haymarket Network; Jon Bains, chairman of Lateral, Lateral.net; Colin McHenry, group art director at Centaur; and Paul Kurjeza, creative director at Redwood. The debate was chaired by Andy Cowles, editorial development director at IPC Media.

It was an interesting session which did stray from the topic. It was more about opportunities on the web, with a bit of why print is good towards the end. The main concern seemed to be around how make money on the web while maintaining current readership levels.

Mark Porter concentrated more on the role of art editors and art directors in the future. Instead of just concentrating on just print or just online, the art editor/director will be responsible for all material – video, audio, pictures, words, etc – and make them work together. This was good stuff, something that I have been trying to do for a while.

“It is essential to represent the visual quality of the brand.”

Basically, if you have a print product you can't replicate it online, but you can represent it by using some of the same design features – be it the colour palette, space, etc.

Jon Bains said that it was essential that content was created "media neutral", ie. write something then repurpose accordingly. Something we've been doing here for a while.

David Hepworth thought that a lot more could be done with the spoken word via podcasts. Interestingly, when he asked how many people in the auditorium were bloggers, only a small handful of us raised our hands (there were 150-or-so people attending).

One intersting point was everyone's dislike of digital magazines. They were seen as more of a way to get money than offer anything useful.

The hour and a half was over just as the debate was getting going. There was no real conclusion (or vote) to the title of the debate. There was nothing really new, but it was interesting to hear other people's experiences.  

The hour and a half was over just as the debate was getting going. There was no real conclusion (or vote) to the title of the debate. There was nothing really new, but it was interesting to hear other people's experiences, not least because it seems that consumer publishing is where we were here at RBI towers a couple of years ago. The arguments being raised were all familiar.

It seems to me that because B2B publishing has to deliver essential content to a readership/audience who use it in a professional environment and to enable them to do their job, (ie. they had computers at work before they had them at home), the B2B world embraced the new technology (well not all, but that’s another story) and made it work. Now that a lot of consumer-oriented things are now part of every day life (You Tube, iTunes, RSS) the consumer mag world is trying to get on board.

It seems that some would rather be the dominant, or only, magazine in the market. So will they succeed if the "last man standing” attitude is prevalent?

Comments

[Robbo]

I like your point about computers being widely used in the work place before they were used at home. I guess the next big changes will come as domestic broadband speed increases over the next couple of years. I guess that consumer publishers will find new and exciting ways of interacting with their media users faster than those in the B2B space. That's because you've got to be able to justify to your boss that using the internet is important at work. Using the internet at home, has only got to be justified to your wallet.