Magazines go online

The article in the Foreign Correspondents' Club magazine

Last week (Jan 8) one of Japan's major newspapers, the Mainichi Shimbun, reported that later this month (from Jan 27) a group of fifty publishers will launch a joint website which will have articles from up to 100 magazines available for a fee. It's the latest attempt, in Japan, to deal with the changing world of publishing.

Whether it'll succeed or not is unpredictable at this stage. (There'll be "experts" suggesting yes or no. But how you become an expert in the fluid field of print vs online is unclear, there can be few claimants to the title.) The "herd instinct" may help or hinder - certainly, left to individual devices there would be a number of magazines who'll fall by the wayside if the number of closing magazines in Japan - or in the US - is anything to go by. (Last year, Japan saw the end of the print Studio Voice after 30 years, just for example, as well as the imported Esquire.) Perhaps collaborating will save a greater number.

(By the way, on this subject, Huffington Post reported the closure of I.D. magazine. They've corrected the article now - a benefit of online! - but originally they got the wrong I.D., picturing the UK's style mag rather than the US's design mag. The UK's style I.D. has been going for years - though how it maintained popularity, even before the online threat to print, I've never been exactly sure.)

Mainichi is perhaps a little slow, or maybe they're just bringing out the article closer to the site's launch date - I laid out an article on the same thing in the in-house (print) magazine of the Foreign Correspondent's Club of Japan last month, written by the venerable Henry Scott Stokes. (Also online - or in PDF form - here.)

As a natural print lover and natural online user the articles do highlight a particular problem with the changing world of publishing, one I came across myself only last weekend. Browsing The New Yorker in a book shop, I found an article on Andy Warhol which I wanted to read. However, in the Tokyo shop, the import magazine was priced way too high to buy it for one article (1,400 yen = approx 14 dollars or £9.50) so I didn't buy it. (Though at it's US cover price I probably would have.) Back at home I checked The New Yorker site and the article is available for subscribers only.

The problem is, I've never been a magazine subscriber - preferring the joy of browsing and picking individual issues, even of magazines I read (or did read) regularly. That's just me: perhaps it DNA - a hunter/gatherer of magazines?! But, anyway, I didn't subscribe and didn't read the article - no magazine purchase, no online purchase, no article. I'll get by. But will the magazine? (I hope so.)

So, meanwhile, a pay-per-article solution by a banded group of publishers may be more of a solution to pick up the likes of me - a browser,  pick-and-choose reader - even if I personally would prefer the magazine in my hands. For example, I did buy an earlier New Yorker for an article on Polanski's situation - a thorough summary which I read in three stages, returning to the left magazine to pick up where I left off in any room in the house and without switching on electronics. Are such days now truly numbered?