Idea of the Year: Reader-Generated Content
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Well, duh. Personal story: Back in February, I assisted in an event for a national magazine. The event was pretty basic – invite loyal readers to attend a diner with their favorite columnists, editors and writers. For a reasonable fee (basically, the cost to rent a hotel conference room and the price of a meal), readers got to hear short speeches from the editorial staff (roughly five minutes each) and participate in a Q & A. The event was a resounding success.
You’re kidding, right? Magazine ad sales increase?
Ad pages in the monthly magazines’ January through September issues had fallen 7.4% from 2007, according to Media Industry Newsletter. The first nine months of 2007, by comparison, slipped only 1% from 2006. Before that, we’d seen a few years of gains.
Okay, so maybe it is not all bad.
The Economist… presented a crisp example of excellence in editorial, ad sales, circulation and marketing. Women’s Health continued its ascent…. Every Day With Rachael Ray even reversed the newsstand decline of first-half 2007.
Can intelligent literature survive in the digital age?
A transatlantic debate is currently raging about whether a decade of staring at computer screens, sending emails and text messages, and having our research needs serviced instantly by Google and Wikipedia, has taken a terrible toll on our attention, until our brains have been reconfigurated and can no longer adjust the tempo of our mental word-processing to let us read a book all the way through.
NOTES:
1) Andrew Cowan, “Books special: Can intelligent literature survive in the digital age?,” The Independent, accessed September 18, 2008, https://www.the-independent.com/arts-entertainment/books/features/books-special-can-intelligent-literature-survive-in-the-digital-age-926545.html
Coffeehouse Junkie 