Digital and print are two different mediums–what works well for print, doesn’t work on the web and vice versa. That’s why I get so agitated at these new “digital” magazines that try to replicate the process of “flipping” through pages. People turn pages because they like the tactile sensation of TURNING PAGES (he shouts); clicking a mouse to “turn” a page isn’t the same thing.

For the same reason, people gravitate to digital media for what it can do–it’s immediate, it’s interactive, it’s fluid. My philosophy is to give readers more, not the same. A Q&A with the author or subject of a printed piece. Audio narration. A behind-the-scenes “how I did it” account of reporting a story.

Soon, we’ll be launching an Editors’ Forum blog in which we’ll be talking about these ideas in advance of the conference, and then we’ll be live-blogging the conference, itself.

As far as best practices goes, hopefully we’ll have a lot of good discussion about that. In addition to the Marzorati keynote, we’ll have cross-platform sessions featuring Gabel (as I mentioned), the art director of The Atlantic, some folks from mStoner, and the editor from Stanford, who will be launching a new digital magazine in the coming year.

I’ll ping you when our blog is launched.

That Case Editors Forum looks interesting. I’m curious about best practices for creating magazine’ish experiences for an online audience, and methods of adapting/editing/condensing/presenting printed articles for the web.

I’ve also been reading the comments from the “Death of Print” post I linked to above. Some interesting thoughts there.

like:

“More print publications need to reexamine their approach to online vehicles instead of attempting to regurgitate all of their content into some cramped frankenstein of a CMS and banner rotater.

They’re not taking into account the difference between how people flip through a news paper versus how people digest information over the web.”

AND

“Print magazines without editorial design, or with content just carelessly dropped on a page, would be a mess and likely wouldn’t last very long. This mentality wouldn’t fly in the print publications, and it won’t fly online. If they are publishing in a specific medium, they need to understand the strengths of that medium in order to succeed.”

As you can probably tell, I’m a far bigger proponent of cross-platform publishing, in which institutions produce dynamic print AND digital magazines that complement rather than duplicate. I’ve lined up Gerry Marzorati, the editor of the New York Times Magazine, to speak on this very subject at the next CASE Editors’ Forum.

For some good examples of this, check out http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm .

And on a much leaner budget: http://www.stopsmilingonline.com/

The editor of Stop Smiling, JC Gabel, will also be leading workshops and discussions on cross-platform publishing at the Editors’ Forum in March.

You make some good points. Dependency on ad revenue casts an entirely new shadow on a print-to-digital switch. However I’d argue that less than 10% of university magazines depend on ad revenue.

As to startup costs, yes I can see how trading printing costs for the labor costs of web developers could be a negative. But that depends. There’s enormous time spent laying out, proofing, troubleshooting with printed media. Things have changed alot in the last 3 years with web publishing and content management. Any web team worth their salt could setup an open source cms and then pick an appropriate theme or template off the shelf as a starting point for a great online publication.

Sure, print media is established, and proven. But if I were a print designer, I’d start honing my web skills. Times they are a changing.

In the case of the magazine I edit, we’d save on printing and postage cost, but we’d lose all ad revenue. And we’d still have to pay for contributors–our ad revenue has covered this in our current model–and our creative fees would increase since we would need a lot more content for a fluid, digital magazine that seeks to be relevant. And then there are the inherent design costs at start-up, which would be significant, as well. So in the first few years, you’d be looking at cost INCREASES–not something easy to stomach in these economic times.

And this doesn’t even begin to touch on the effectiveness of a print publication versus a digital one. People turn to digital media when they want immediate news. They turn to their magazines for more intimate engagement. They do so in the comfort of their home, free of distractions. Or on their subway commute. Or while waiting for an appointment in a doctor’s office.

At our institution, 90 percent of our readers (we have a circ of 44,000) say that the magazine strengthens their connection to the College. Few would say that about a digital publication that they had to go searching for rather than one that comes into their home. In fact, survey after survey show that readers love, even demand their printed magazine; comments specifically–and pointedly–caution us about completely abandoning print in favor of digital. To tap into this loyalty, we plan on launching a voluntary subscription program that will add to budget relief. (Again, something we couldn’t do with a digital mag, as they would already be getting it for free.)

Digital media has a HUGE role to play in college/university communications, but not at the expense of established, proven media. And as I say above, if you’re being short-sighted and looking strictly at “cost to produce,” you wouldn’t be saving money, anyway.