I am going to continue with somewhat of the same theme that I did for the Newspapers post, only this time with Magazines. And next I am going to write about the future of the news stand. Feel free to Subscribe to my blog.

(This is partially a response to Devin Poolman’s (8020 Publishing) comment)

The main idea here is that magazines should start allowing their readers to participate and have content in the magazine. It is obvious that Time or Sports Illustrated will not become fully written by “the people”, but they can allow people to submit content online and then mix it in with the their current content.

Magazines are wonderful. I subscribe to currently only two magazines: Wired and Time. And its always great to go get the mail and have the magazine sitting there waiting for you to read it.

This is how I started thinking about the future of magazines…

This past summer I discovered Threadless. The online weekly shirt design competition that allows the people to design and choose which t-shirts are printed. This got me thinking about participation in many places such as music, design, television and of course magazines and newspapers. Here was my plan for a magazine that had people participating in the process…

-Create a “creative” magazine with design, photos, illustration, etc.
-Make a website where people could submit and vote on content
-Highest ranking content would make it in the magazine.
-Distribute as a PDF (this was before pdf magazines became big)
-Have a different designer layout and design it each month, costing us nothing to design it.
-Make profits from no intrusive advertising in the magazine and on the website. (based on the same principles that The Deck by Coudal Partners is based on)
-Partner with website for content (Flickr Interesting Photos, Digg Top Sites, Etc.)

-Eventually create new magazines based on certain subject and maybe even print them.
-Allow people to create their own custom magazine with content from the entire line of magazines on different subjects.

So that was the plan, until I realized that I still had to go to school and that I would have no time to do this business. Those were my ideas from back in the summer of 2006.

Then I found 8020 Publishing’s website where they hinted at a magazine like the one I was thinking about. It was exciting to see that they were actually doing this.

Months later I received my first copy of JPG Magazine and was very impressed. The quality of the magazine was great. They are continuing to work on this type of magazine and will be having more titles soon. Magazines should really pay attention to what they are doing and learn from them.

Also, check out Good Magazine The cost of your subscription is sent to a charity of your choice.

Thanks for reading.
Next Post: The Future of the News Stand
Subscribe to the RSS feed!