I have cribbed about this on Twitter earlier. But I believe this is worth a blog post.
Years ago, I used to look forward to Fridays because that was the day of ‘The World This Week’ from New Delhi Television (now NDTV, of course). This was a weekly news program on Friday nights and it had captured perfectly the TV version of weekly news round-up like how a good magazine does.
Then we started getting 24 hour news channels and the beauty of a well-curated weekly news program was lost in the din of real-time news.
If you notice the print version of the same phenomenon, we have the weekly magazines that offer deeper insights and perspectives on the same stories served by daily newspapers as quick updates in most cases.
But this post is not to rue to death of long form journalism. It is rather about content marketing around long form journalism.
For example, I love OPEN magazine – I find at least 5 to 6 good stories worth the read every week. I used to buy the print copy religiously when it launched first, but lost interest after I noticed that I did not have the time to sit and read the print copy every week. Plus, the entire magazine was available online in emag version and normal web version too. I have it bookmarked, but notice that I don’t open that bookmark for the same reason as why there’s no interest in a weekly news round-up program – there are too many other ways to get updates on individual news updates all through the week.
Sometimes, these leads to news updates are for long form pieces from OPEN magazine too. It may be from Twitter…or as links shared by someone on Facebook or LinkedIn. Or via RSS feeds.
With multiplicity of sources to get news and leads to thoughtfully penned long form articles, I feel we’re back to the same situation – many sources to ‘get’ updates, but all competing with each other for time.
This is especially annoying in case of weekly magazines from dailies – the likes of Mint Lounge and Hindustan Times Brunch on Sundays.
I don’t subscribe to the print editions of either newspaper, to make things worse! The reason is simple – almost 98% of all my reading is happening on a device – my phone, tablet (I don’t own one yet – my Galaxy S2 doubles up as a superb mini tablet that remains ‘on me’ all through the day!) or my PC/laptop.
So, to sum up, here are the problem statements,
1. I don’t have time to sit and read a magazine and don’t spend more than 5 minutes with a newspaper
2. I hardly read anything in print and prefer to read on a device
3. I have many, many sources to get leads on what to read, but they are all over the place and not predictable
So, how can I know what OPEN magazine (for example) has in store this week that I would be interested in reading? If I find it cumbersome to go to their website (more than cumbersome, it is just lack of patience to do it consistently week after week), what is the equivalent of my stumbling on a magazine hanging in a book store…looking at the cover for the top 3 stories that week…and perhaps getting interested enough to buy that issue?
The issue is with packaging, or the lack of it, in digital formats. Just because it is now in digital format it doesn’t mean content can start selling (or moving – not the monetary sale action) individually. Yes, there are tablet apps like Pulse and Flipboard, but they are essentially multi-source aggregators.
Here’s a simple thought – why can’t Hindustan Times Brunch create an index of that week’s stories, with individual links and crisp summaries and reach out to the reader in assorted formats – an email (with an unsubscribe option, of course); text message; banner ads in other, most-used online services (like gmail, for instance) or even an RSS feed, where the user doesn’t have to subscribe to the whole Hindustan Times feed, but to one weekend feed that summarizes the Brunch contents in a ‘here-is-what-we-have-for-you-this-week’ tantalizing package?
I’d assume this to be the true equivalent of how a magazine cover (the imagery, select text etc.) hanging in a book store invites a random passer-by to invest time to flip the pages and if he/she likes what they see, buy the magazine. This is not a simple assembling of links/URLs, however – just like how careful thought goes into making a magazine cover (that has to sell the entire magazine!), media needs to invest in crafting this collection of links with interesting summaries.
Know of any publication that does this? Do share in the comments – I’d love to see what they do.
Photo courtesy – Michiel Gaasterland’s blog.