Hop a Plane

Without taking a stand on the larger issue, I think the sentiment that "the magazine market will still exist, and you'll still see the newsstands with their endless plane and train-reading options." Insofar as print magazines depend on the plane- and train-reading market to find an audience, they're probably doomed. How far off are we from a point in time when trains are equipped with WiFi or when everyone carries around wireless broadband devices? It might take a little while, but it's surely not going to take forever.

Photo courtesy of Asheboro Public Library

Comments

Well, that would require a device that's as enjoyable to read as a print magazine. We keep hearing that they're thisclose, but I haven't seen anything that's even in the right league. Reading something the length of a typical newspaper story on a computer screen is OK, but when I'm reading a magazine-length piece online, I print it out and read it on paper.

Posted by too many steves | July 19, 2007 12:04 PM

Do you think we'll also bring our wireless devices into the bathroom?

Maybe I'm an old fashioned member of generation Y, but I hate reading on a computer. In fact, I'm printing a 200 page operation manual for some software I just got at work because it only came in PDF form -- environment be damned, i have to protect my eyes!

Posted by chris | July 19, 2007 12:06 PM

I think magazines will disappear at the same time we get the "paperless office". If nothing else, the far greater usefulness of magazines as advertising vehicles will ensure their continued survival.

Mike

Posted by MBunge | July 19, 2007 12:08 PM

Well, that would require a device that's as enjoyable to read as a print magazine.

No, sure, print may continue to have certain advantages over HTML forever. I'm just saying that "you can't get the internet on an airplane" isn't likely to be one of them.

Posted by Matthew Yglesias | July 19, 2007 12:13 PM

Yes, but an airplane is one of the places where a lot of people really don't want to use their computer. A paper magazine is much more convenient in a confined space like that, and you can throw it out or leave it under the seat when you're done with it.

Posted by too many steves | July 19, 2007 12:16 PM

I read the internet -- include newspaper and magazine websites -- while on the train all the time. I consider my blackberry to be a mobile library of newspapers.

Posted by pj | July 19, 2007 12:23 PM

"it only came in PDF form"

PDF is the curse of the internet. Damn those Adobe idiots who think the columnar form of page layout, which is easy on the eyes for hard copy, is suitable for internet reading.

On the internet the layout needs to be continuously scrollable in the direction of reading, ie. down. This means a single text column of half or three quarter page width all the way to the end.

Multi-columnar text layouts on the internet reguires constant down and up scrolling: first down, then up, then down, then up, then down, then up, through multiple pages. This makes it difficult to read and lowers reader retention.

The worst violators of this principle are found on government web sites such as the Federal Reserve, the IRS and the Treasury Dept along with investor relations sections of business web sites.

Posted by ken | July 19, 2007 12:27 PM

Magazines will be with us for many years to come. There's just something more "real" about a publication you hold in your hand. Plus, what am I going to read at lunchtime? - I sure don't feel like lugging a laptop around when I'm out on my lunch hour.

Posted by Virginia | July 19, 2007 12:35 PM

as if to prove matt's point, i am reading this post on a foothill transit express bus in the los angeles area with wi-fi

Posted by Dilan Esper | July 19, 2007 12:39 PM

How far off are we from a point in time when trains are equipped with WiFi or when everyone carries around wireless broadband devices?

Duuuude, you obviously don't ride a commuter train every day. I do. It would be a miracle almost beyond human understanding if trains actually ran without breaking down incessantly and if they provided their riders with a level of comfort better than that accorded animals being shipped to the slaughter house. WiFi? Not in our wildest dreams.

Posted by Peter | July 19, 2007 12:43 PM

The ubiquitous WiFi will come, though it'll probably be through Wimax-type systems that deliver wireless service at longer ranges, thus ending this inefficient and costly nonsense of every coffee house and city bus having to mount its own wifi hardware to enable wireless access.

As for readability of magazines vs. some sort of wireless device, such as a Tablet PC, I think that'll require waiting a generation or two for full adaptation. Too many folks in my generation are emotionally wedded to print media. My kids - who are growing up with cable, wifi and high-speed Internet as facts of their daily lives - won't be so married to dead trees. Their kids will be even less likely to prefer paper to a tablet or other device that can displays millions of articles from millions of publications, that allows searching and hyperlinking, etc.

Then, of course, there's the whole question of the economic model for publishers. But that's a whole other kettle of wax.

Posted by Jay Allen | July 19, 2007 1:03 PM

Hey, I'm not lining my bird cage with my laptop, I don't care where I can get Wi-Fi with it.

Posted by Glenn | July 19, 2007 1:04 PM

Peter, The Capitol Corridor between Sacramento and San Jose is one of the most popular commuter trains in the country--certainly the most in California. (Tells you about the price of land here--people live in Sac and commute to SF, having to take a bus at Emeryville.)

It has WiFi. And it doesn't break down that much.

Posted by ThomasC. | July 19, 2007 1:11 PM

as if to prove matt's point, i am reading this post on a foothill transit express bus in the los angeles area with wi-fi

Reading a blog (or other online content) is entirely different from reading a print magazine--there's definitely a fatigue factor involved with reading text online. I don't know about others, but the longest piece of text I can read online without starting to skim or quit is about the length of one of the "Talk Of The Town" pieces in the New Yorker (500 words? I've never counted).

Whether this will help the survival of print media, or just reduce people's attention span for reading to something more compatible with the limitations of online media, is an open question.

Also, ken, I agree: PDFs are really awkward and I avoid reading them whenever another option is available.

Posted by James Gary | July 19, 2007 1:17 PM

I completely disagree. I have worked in publishing on and off for 20 years. Newspapers, IMO, don't have long.

Magazines, however, will be with us a long time. People like their tactile nature. You can read them on the toilet, on the beach etc etc. You can bond with your 'zine in a way you can never with a laptop or blackberry. You can also share it, easily with friends. People just like the feel of the glossy pages.

They also like what the magazine says ABOUT them. Who they are. How cool or caring or informed. People love having their 'zines lying around the living so guests will get those subtle messages.

There is also a smell from all those perfume ads. Your laptop wont ever give you some aroma therapy.

Magazines are not just about moving information around.

Posted by Chris | July 19, 2007 1:44 PM

Hell, planes are doomed because of Peak Oil. Like, soon, inside a decade. No one has come up with an electric passenger plane. Maybe the flying wing concept or dirigibles will make a comeback

But my guess is that we will have more mag-lev trains. And travel less.

Posted by bob mcmanus | July 19, 2007 1:53 PM

the layout needs to be continuously scrollable in the direction of reading, ie. down. This means a single text column of half or three quarter page width all the way to the end.

There's no particular reason why a PDF can't be formatted this way. And my PDF reader can be set up to stack all the pages in a multipage document, which gives you roughly the same effect so long as you don't have multiple columns per page.

PDF was conceived as an extension of print, and offer a publication designer complete control over content presentation in a way HTML can't. But multicolumn documents aren't a good fit with online readers, so if you have a document meant to be read electronically, it's a major design fault to use a multicolumn layout. This suggests the problem is less PDF itself than it is designers using PDF inappropriately.

Posted by jimBOB | July 19, 2007 1:56 PM

I never get on a plane or a bus or a train without a book to read. Magazines? Newspapers?...pfft.

A handy book is so much better on the eyes and on the fuss and stress factor than dealing with electronic equipment of any sort.

Posted by ellenbrenna | July 19, 2007 2:10 PM

This suggests the problem is less PDF itself than it is designers using PDF inappropriately.

I agree. But there's also the problem of the clunky interactivity of PDFs. I have a fast computer and a big monitor (two of them, in fact), and reading a PDF of any length is just a hassle--there's just a limited amount of text that can fit on a screen, and there's that irritating pause every time you "turn" a page (which is longer and even more irritating with lengthy or graphics-heavy documents) and on and on.

I agree that better design could solve some of the problems with PDFs, but at the moment I far prefer a printed document to a digital one for text of any length or complexity.

Posted by James Gary | July 19, 2007 2:54 PM

Why all the fuss about the medium? When the postage rates went up on non-Time Warner publications, all the little magazines whined about losing an essential voice, a point-of-view.

It's the content stupid. Some day a technology like E Ink will mature to the point where electronic media will be bearable to read. In any case, the net allows more voices to be heard than The New Republic and The Nation. These publications are adapting as well. If Thought goes out of style (further than is curently the case), THEN we should panic.

Posted by Scott Ferguson | July 19, 2007 3:21 PM

"Well, that would require a device that's as enjoyable to read as a print magazine."

For me, that would be any electronic device. I can't stand magazines anymore. It might be different if they could just resist trying to be so clever. Make the damn pages all the same damn size. Eliminate the rain of index cards everytime I turn a page. Stop worrying about author's egos and make the damn stories contiguous. Number the pages sequentially without any myterious hiatus for a 36 page special issue inset. Number the pages! I've seen magazines with ~30 consecutive unnumbered pages. What the hell are they thinking? "Oh, this layout is so perfect a number in the corner would just be so gauche." For 30 straight pages?

Posted by Njorl | July 19, 2007 4:39 PM

"Well, that would require a device that's as enjoyable to read as a print magazine."

For me, that would be any electronic device. I can't stand magazines anymore. It might be different if they could just resist trying to be so clever. Make the damn pages all the same damn size. Eliminate the rain of index cards everytime I turn a page. Stop worrying about author's egos and make the damn stories contiguous. Number the pages sequentially without any myterious hiatus for a 36 page special issue inset. Number the pages! I've seen magazines with ~30 consecutive unnumbered pages. What the hell are they thinking? "Oh, this layout is so perfect a number in the corner would just be so gauche." For 30 straight pages?

Posted by Njorl | July 19, 2007 4:40 PM

Two comments

1. Designers don't design pdfs to be read on the internet because PDFs are digitized print documents. Portable Document Format. The whole point of them is that they are a way to transfer PRINT documents electronically. A document designed to be read on the computer is a web page.

2. I keep hearing about compters that are made of a flexable material that you can roll up like a place mat. I don't think this is allt hat unfeasible. What would make the most sense to me is if they were about 6" tall by 12" wide. It would be pretty easy to carrry that way and you could use it rolled up as a phone. It would be cool too, becasue everyone would look like sea capitain with telescope cases dangling from their belts

Of course, there are the competing ideas of glasses that beam the info directly onto your retina (would this cause more or less eye strain?) and then implants broadcasting directly to the brain.

Posted by cw | July 19, 2007 11:06 PM

I fly a fair amount for work. On long flights I'll watch a movie on my laptop. I don't read nearly as many mysteries and best sellers as I used to.

I think light reading as a way to kill time is going to disappear. And magazines are definitely going to be in trouble. Everything the glossy magazine can do - the fashion and lifestyle things that fill the shelves at airports - can be done better on-line.

Posted by Bloix | July 20, 2007 8:02 AM