New.Journalism.Review

Exact Editions has launched a website selling subscriptions to "e-editions" of various paper magazines. Titles include: The Spectator, Dazed & Confused and err…Kite World.

There’s nothing innovative going on here. The e-versions are just copies of the paper editions. It’s just normally cheaper to subscribe to the e-version. A paper subscription to Press Gazette costs around £100 a year, the e-version is half the price.

Exact Editions states: "Exact Editions is bringing magazines into the digital age. It turns out that if
you treat them right, magazines work fine on the web pretty much exactly the way they
are." Unfortunately, it seems few publishers really understand how to "treat" e-mags "right".

The Guardian (with G24) and Dennis Publishing (Monkey Magazine) have been brave and done something a little different. It may not be "right", but at least its not just chucking your paper edition online.

1) G24: This includes the very latest breaking stories from the Guardian (there’s an excellent media edition). You print the PDF at the office and read it on the train on the way home. You’ve got something to read  when it’s cold, late, and all the London Lite sellers have buggered off. Result!

2) Monkey Magazine: Dubbed "Nuts magazine for the MySpace generation", it’s celebrating its tenth issue this week. The idea is sound in theory -  you can make a sexy looking magazine with absolutely no budget.

What’s good about Monkey:
It attracts interesting interactive advertising cutting edge youth brands, such as Lynx. The editor gets to know precisely what people read (that’s the ‘great unknown’ in paper publishing). Monkey seems to be learning what works and what doesn’t. The latest issue has ditched the Q&A interviews with porn stars – people just don’t read large amounts of text online. But this leads me on to… 

What’s bad about Monkey
The interviews have gone, so it really is just  "page" after "page" of video clips. A lot of the clips seem to have been pinched from places like YouTube and m90.org. God knows how the copyright lawyers deal with that.

If you’re into that kind of thing (and who isn’t), wouldn’t you just hang out at YouTube?

I still find Ceros to be clunky (Ceros is the e-edition technology used by Dennis). Where in the navigation bar does it allow you to zoom out? Why does Firefox always crash? Ceros suffers poor usability.

The ultimate problem with Monkey
It’s a lads’ magazine that fails the 3B Test -  you can’t read it on the "Bog, Bus or in the Bath". I would be more interested if it could be downloaded to a Palm or iPaq.

To conclude, it’s probably possible to get e-magazines right. But magazines, like paperback books, are pretty convenient after all.

Links:

You can find part 1 of my  Monkey comment here

Trusted Reviews - Very detailed review. This bloke reckons Monkey is very "Web2.0" -  not sure I agree.  But it’s a detailed and generally supportive review of the user experience.

lyingonthecovers – very interesting blog by a Ceros developer. 

The BBC Journalism Training College is set to launch a new site, boosting the amount of journalism training material it makes available for free online.

According to an article in Press Gazette and blogged at The Editors Weblog yesterday: "The site launches with 500 pages and over 40 video clips with both
practical exercises, how-to guides helping journalists of all levels to
improve their skills, and theoretical discussions on the practice of
journalism aimed to stimulate debate."

It adds:  "The BBC says the greatest amount of interest in the site is coming from
outside the UK and the site could be of use to journalism schools as
well."

The project is being headed by Kevin Marsh (pictured at NewsWatch 06 /  Bournemouth Uni)

Here are a few old links on the BBC Training site that may prove useful for journalism students. I didn’t find this amazingly exciting…. hopefully they’ll add some better material soon.

1) Interviewing for radio – 4 modules – a useful free interactive how-to guide.
2) BBC News Style Guide – 92 page guide in PDF format. It covers everything you would expect – reporting speech, jargon, troublesome words etc. There is also an interesting discussion in the forum about BBC Style and  you can find links to other style guides from newspapers such as The Times and The Guardian. 
3) Interviews with journalists – like this one by Danny O’Brian about online journalism.

CoolEdit Pro users will find a lot of free training at the BBC site.

I get asked this question a lot. The Uni won’t be upgrading from Quark 6.5 to 7and  tutors are being encouraged to switch to teaching InDesign CS2.

So which DTP software has the largest market share in UK publishing? Unfortunately, I don’t yet have a definitive answer….I’ll update this article if I do!

Here’s what we know…

A few points:

• Quark says it retains "80% of the layout market" (it doesn’t state whether this is UK, Europe or global).Its been touting this figure around for a few years now and it doesn’t seem to ring true to me. The figure could be correct if it includes usage of any Quark version. For example there are some publishers in the UK still stuck using Quark 4.

• Quark is very much a "one product pony". If you pay the full commercial price for Quark 7 (around £800) – you’ll probably use it!

• Unfortunately, the same logic can’t be applied to InDesign. Lots of people will have InDesign on their machines. It comes bundled as part of Adobe’s Creative Suite (CS). For around £400, you get InDesign, Photoshop, ImageReady and GoLive – not a bad deal! But it still doesn’t answer the question – how many people are really buying CS to use InDesign?

• Newspapers and magazines are very different. According to people I chatted with at a recent NCTJ meeting, it’s clear that many local newspapers use early editions of Quark. For example, Quark 4 is still popular because it’s very stable. Some local newspapers simply can’t afford to upgrade.

• It’s not just about new toys. Designers tend to appraise software in terms of new features. Editors of newspapers and magazines look at it in terms of "automation and collaboration".

An article on the rather brilliant Quark Versus InDesign site states: "Indeed, while most
designers look for ways to expand their creative choices in the next
version of QuarkXPress or InDesign, newspapers fret over how much they
will be required to change their procedures while addressing
long-standing needs.

• Quark is getting more competitive (at last). During recent interviews with the press, Quark  admitted to mistakes in the past which annoyed a lot of customers. Quark 5/6 were lazy upgrades. The buzz around 7 is more interesting.

• According to a survey of 700 readers carried out by MacWorld UK (May 2006) The majority of  InDesign using readers would not move to Quark 7 when it shipped.

• But Quark is improving customer service. "Quark are nicer than Adobe these days – which is a big change," one
  reader wrote in the MacWorld survey.  "Quark blew it, but it’s now doing an
  amazingly good impression of a company that has learned some massive
  lessons, while Adobe seems to have gone downhill in a big way," said another reader.

• Currently Quark 7 is retailing at the Uni Education Store for £100 (a bargain when compared to the commercial price). Although for what you get, CS2 is may well be a better deal at £180-200 According to an article in US mag Business 2 last year:

"Quark has started offering discounts for educators–a key market, since
the tools used by design students strongly influence purchasing
preferences later in their careers. But is it too late? At schools like
Massachusetts College of Art and UCLA, QuarkXPress has faded from the
curriculum"

None of this really answers the main question. One way to look at this is to total up the number of job adverts in Media Guardian which mention Quark or InDesign. I also plan to conduct a small survey among magazine production editors in the new year – the results of which will be published here.

It could be the case that both products have approx equal market share overall – which is good news in terms of competition. However, it’s tough for us people trying to work out what we should be teaching.

Some more links:
InDesign’s market share (discussion on Google Groups)
Blatner: InDesign is the future of DTP 

Dennis Publishing has launched a rival to Nuts and Zoo called Monkey. What’s different to Dennis’ other mags, which include Maxim and Bizarre, is that Monkey is Internet-only – it’s an e-magazine for the ‘MySpace generation’.

A subscription is free. Whilst the design is impressive, much of the content seems to be culled from other Dennis titles (e.g. there’s plenty of ‘cross-promotion’ and pics from Bizarre). It’s also encouraging readers to donate their content for free.

What is probably most interesting is its use of Ceros Digital Editions, a product from UK e-publishing firm Applecart. Digital Living, a recent technology magazine launch from Emap, also uses the technology for its sample edition.

In most cases, users will have to download the pluggin. Once loaded, I found it quite clunky and slow, – even over my Blueyonder broadband connection. I liked the handy ‘clipping feature’ which allows you to save cuts from the magazine. Ceros also allows the user to ‘search’ a magazine – although this handy feature is disabled on Monkey.

Ceros provides publishers with stats about what pages are viewed and what interactive content is being clicked at – which is obviously pretty useful info to have. With paper-based magazines you’re never quite sure what the readers are actually looking at.

Maxim has struggled to compete with Nuts or Zoo, yet I doubt Monkey is going to take off in any big way. Dennis claims to have signed up 250,000 subscribers prior to the launch,  but people sign-up to anything if it’s free.

The whole experience of browsing takes some getting used too. On the net we like to be able to hop around a site using navigation bars, yet the Ceros technology seems to assume users will read the magazine from the front to the back in a very ‘linear’ way. But I guess the content may well appeal to teen boys who are too young or too shy to buy Zoo or Nuts in a newsagent  or perhaps they are targeting an international audience?

A blog from the creator of Monkey

Dennis launches odd online only lads mag – Serendipity Blog
 

Steven Jago, 36, a management accountant,  has become the latest person to be charged under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act.

On 18 June 2006, Mr Jago carried a placard in Whitehall bearing the George Orwell quote: "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." In his possession, he had several copies of an article in the American magazine Vanity Fair headlined "Blair’s Big Brother Legacy", which were confiscated by the police. "The implication that I read from this statement at the time was that I was being accused of handing out subversive material," said Mr Jago.

Read the full feature at VanityFair.com