There’s no good way to have a conversation on Tumblr, is there? This will have to suffice
I almost exclusively read on my laptop using readability. While still not laid out, and still a “template,” it makes reading online SO much more pleasant. Once you start you can’t go back.
It is an interesting point, though. We have always laid out the pages of our magazines and newspapers using templates as a guide - customizing almost everything. Why don’t we do more of that online?
There is no good reason as far as I can tell.
There’s no technological barrier. Creating a template that allowed for more freedom in design, I think, would be remarkably easy. It’s the practicality of it. Maintaining that kind of site would require skilled producers, an art director, designer(s), front-end developer(s), editors who understood what is and is not feasible. It would certainly be a far more complex publishing process than is typical.
As I mentioned earlier, I believe the biggest barrier is financial. A site like this would just cost more to upkeep than your typical editorial startup. But I think there is a good business there. Slow down your production cycle, create high expectations and therefore real demand around your content and sell advertisers on the content’s high quality and the audience’s high avg. time on site and I think you have a winning formula.
Today, a very familiar thing happened.
I’m reading a story about Tina Brown by Peter Stevenson, the former executive editor of The New York Observer. He was born to write this piece. It does not disappoint. (“Under a black suit, she wore a white shirt unbuttoned enough to display the cleavage that inspired Private Eye to dub her a ‘buxom hackette’ when she was 25.” Nice.) And yet, I’m left wondering, what does this piece look like in the magazine? It’s not that I want to see a pdf (yuck!) of the magazine version or that I’m yearning for the tactile comfort of the printed page. It’s that I’m bored. Not by the content, mind you, but by the design. It’s a 5,000-word profile that probably involved weeks, if not months of work, and cost the Times a nice chunk of change to produce, yet it’s squeezed into the same template as practically every other piece of content on nytimes.com. (Witness my incredibly helpful side-by-side comparison of the Stevenson article with a 750-word piece about Michael Bloomberg.)
The why is fairly obvious—ease of production and speed, advertising constraints, cost, competing functionalities, etc. Templates serve an incredibly important function in online publishing. It’s an integral part of any website that hopes to keep up with a daily news cycle. And there’s nothing wrong with the template per se. It’s the philosophy around templates that is wrong. Templates need to be more flexible to allow for the kind of creativity we have come to expect in print and, at this point, online.
How can we expect readers to treat online content with the same amount of respect and reverence as we do print content, if we don’t even try to treat it with the same amount of attention to detail online as we do in print. It’s time editorial sites start experimenting with more flexible templates.
This is not an issue of time, mind you. At this point, a trained front-end developer, knowledgeable in CSS, could lay out a custom article design as quickly as someone trained in InDesign.
It’s an issue of money. (Isn’t it always?) Publishers don’t want to pay for the personnel. They are expensive—just like their print counterparts. They are also worried about the return on investment, which is entirely fair. Why invest in more personnel when even the most optimistic advertising projections can’t cover the cost? The reason is that this is how you increase the value of your product.
Another reblog simply for emphasis. Here’s the full quote:
Online journalism was (and is) the only thing we do. For us, the web is not a side business—something we’re doing because we feel like we have to or because we’re worried that our traditional business may die. Unlike print and broadcast companies, we don’t have a “core business” cash cow to protect, so we are free to let the capabilities of the medium take our product development wherever we think it should go. And, from the beginning, that has allowed us to take advantage of short-form real-time commentary, community participation, aggregation, real-time programming, millions of information sources, social media, and direct contributions from thousands of expert contributors—most of which are irrelevant or impossible in other media.
Has the meta news cycle already run its course on Osama? Yes. It’s this post
Nothing in my experience suggest that a major news story must be accompanied by some equally major turning point in the creation and dissemination of news. But such is the race to go meta that it even rivals the race to break news. Witness: A post Monday morning that throws water on all of the people clamoring to crown Twitter and social media as the new kings of all things news. It had been less than 12 hours since we had found out that Osama Bin Laden was dead and already we had reached the backlash of the backlash. Crazy!
(Wait. OMG, what the fuck does that make this post? Holy shit. I’m feeling a little nauseated now, but it’s too late to turn back now. The momentum of the meta is too much to resist. Save yourself!)
Is the death of Osama Bin Laden a litmus test on the current state of news? Yes. Does it just feel like my patience for that kind of story is going to be a little bit less this time around? Definitely, yes. That being said, some smart things do get written. My vote this morning goes to Capital New York.
I heard it from my little pocket computer, via Twitter, and as the continuously updated mass consciousness streamed at me, I thought, not for the first time, that it was a blessing that we did not have this technology 10 years ago.
—Andrew Rice, “War Against Bin Laden Ends Not With a Bang, But a Twitter,” Capital New York
And here I’ll make a bit of a pitch for print against an old enemy to which it used to be compared but isn’t much anymore: cable news. I don’t think television can offer these kinds of sustained narratives outside of documentary-news shows
—Tom McGeveran, “The Second Draft of the Killing of Osama Bin Laden,” Capital New York
An introduction to Orbital Content
To quote the author, Cameron Koczon:
Bookmarklet apps like Instapaper, Svpply, and Readability are pointing us toward a future in which content is no longer entrenched in websites, but floats in orbit around users. This transformation of our relationship with content will force us to rethink existing reputation, distribution, and monetization models—and all for the better.
Koczon does a very good job of describing a trend that is very real. The article is worth reading. A summary will not do it justice.
Koczon, however, does not address one other thing this trend will force us to rethink: Editorial web design. While smart publishers will be happy to have their content liberated to be read and shared wherever it is most convenient for the users, they will not be happy to see traffic decline on their sites. They will (or should) be motivated to come up with even better reading experiences to entice readers to want to enjoy their content on their sites, where they can exercise full control over its distribution and monetization. Like movie theater chains that invested in bigger screens, stadium seating and surround sound to combat the advent of home theaters, online publishers need to capitalize on the advances in CSS and html to compel readers to read their content in its original format. I think editorial sites have barely scratched the surface of what design is capable of.
What did Condé Nast learn from the Web?
Somehow I missed this Ad Age story on Friday about Condé Nast slowing down its rollout of iPad apps. With 8 already launched, the higher-ups don’t feel as if the medium is mature enough to handle the kind of scale that advertisers are looking for. Simply put: The apps aren’t making enough money (if any at all).
This sounds like an entirely sensible idea. They’ve made 8 of these things. They’re not as popular as they had hoped, so they’re slowing things down to reevaluate their strategy. The real question is if internally they believe this is a referendum on the technology or its application. Thankfully, for innovation’s sake, the president of Condé hinted it was the latter.
“They [the publishers] don’t want to go the way of the web again,” Bob Sauerber said.
Smart. Wait … What does he mean by that?
Does he mean they don’t want to simply repurpose print content in another medium? Does he mean that they don’t want to just create brochure-ware for their magazines? Does he mean the publishers don’t want to be restricted again from selling ads against their own digital products (which was the case until last year)? Any of these would indicate Condé was going the “way of the web again.”
It doesn’t appear Sauerber was referring to any of that. Nat Ives suggests, by way of an “insider,” that what what the CN president means is that “the company doesn’t want to invest significantly more time and resources in the platform if the ground isn’t sufficiently fertile yet for a broad swath of readers and the advertisers that need big reach.”
Oh, right, that’s it. Not enough people are downloading the apps to make it a viable advertising vehicle. Well if that’s the case, then yes, I agree with the publishers. Don’t make the same mistake you did with the Web—don’t assume that the print business model applies. Maybe you figure out how to leverage your talents in the new medium and sell a product that people would be willing to pay for (or that more people would be willing to download like Gourmet Live, which I thought has been a success). Maybe you create a magazine app publishing tool that you can license to other magazine publishers who would be happy to pay you so they won’t have to pay to reinvent the wheel. If nothing else, this means looking beyond repurposing your magazine content. It didn’t work on the Web and it won’t work as an app (until you reach that tipping point of readers you reference).
P.S. The one person missing from the Ad Age article is Scott Dadich. Remember him? He was brought in last August to oversee the production of apps. I wonder what he thinks about all of this.
I have been a fan of Dustin Curtis for some time. It’s been a while, however, since I visited his website. (He doesn’t publish regularly. Maybe every couple of months or so.) But I try to make a point to every so often and I was not disappointed by my most recent trip, which yielded a two-part series on quotes by accidental presidents.
To put it bluntly, Dustin Curtis knows how to design the fuck out of the written word—online. It’s a beautiful thing to behold.
It’s especially exciting for someone like myself who sees in Curtis’ work a way forward. What if editorial sites slowed down their publishing cycles and paid more attention to design? What if each story was a uniquely designed, self-contained editorial morsel of perfection? Is this sustainable? I think so.
I don’t know Dustin Curtis, otherwise I would ask him directly, but I’m very curious what his traffic is like. Do these stories have peaks? What’s average time spent on each article? I would just love to get my hands on his analytics.
MONEY, CASH, HO’S by David Cho: The Awl is now two years old.
Yes, haters gonna hate. “Phony jerks,” as Cho calls them, who specialize in self-promotion are the unfortunate byproduct of any startup heavy industry. When raising money and getting attention are pivotal to success, the culture is going to create many more obnoxious, self-aggrandizing assholes than quality products. Sadly for venture capitalists, its very hard to tell which talented self-promoters have got the goods and which do not.
Yet I wonder if David could have taken the opportunity of The Awl’s second birthday to tell us something about The Awl’s success that would challenge the current rules. There are as many people out there rooting for The Awl to succeed, as there are condescending d-bags who think they know better.
Perhaps the assumption is that The Awl’s continued existence is argument enough. But I wouldn’t mind some insight into what has and has not worked for it. Are advertisers warming to boutique sites? (Do you hate being called a boutique site?) Is there a path to success that doesn’t involve SEO and link baiting? Do you have to become Gawker to ultimately succeed?
I understand why David would probably not want to answer these questions. I understand how answering these questions might make him feel like he’s emulating the people he loathes. But I think sometimes its lost how the dominant narratives created by the Arianna Huffingtons and Nick Dentons of the world can easily shape how people think about the Internet and create the condescending a-holes he describes. I just wish there were more narratives out there to arm the ones who wish to take them on.
What a way to launch!
Byliner debuted today with an 89-page (pdf!) exposé by THE Jon Krakauer on Three Cups of Tea author Greg Mortenson. The article is making the rounds. Haven’t cracked it, yet. Looks good, but it’s not what I’m primarily interested in.
I am most interested in: Who and what is BYLINER.com?
Well, don’t expect the site to tell you. There’s no “About Us” link. A little snooping around (read: Google) however, lead to me John Tayman, editor of Techland, Time Magazine’s technology blog, who takes credit for Byliner on his personal site (which looks like a Tumblr, but sadly is not).
The Byliner homepage promises stories by William Vollman, Bob Shacochis, Anthony Swofford and David Rakoff at “proper length.” It does not come right out and say that you’ll have to pay for them, but the suggestion that all proceeds from Krakauer’s story will go to charity suggests that a paywall is coming.
I am intrigued. Paying for long-form has a lot of potential, but format is a big concern. It makes sense in the rush to get something up that the site would rely on PDFs—they’re cheap(er) to produce and you have complete creative control—but I wonder if that is their long-term strategy. You can’t categorize PDFs. You can’t keep people from sharing them. It’s harder to make them interactive—obviously versus something designed specifically for a tablet (like what Atavist is doing), let alone something designed specifically for the web, ie no comments, share functions, related links, etc.
But I get a head of myself! The name of the game is to get something up, right? And not only has Tayman done that, he’s made a splash. People will be talking about Byliner, which means investors will be talking about Byliner. So what are you going to do about it, John? I’m curious to find out.
Design of Jay-Z’s new lifestyle site Life+Times flaunts its lack of headlines beautifully, but does it do it at the expense of its content? The site is so designed that it overwhelms the content, making it almost feel like an afterthought, a thing meant to service the elegance of the design and nothing else.
The more I think about it though, the more I like that the design forces the reader to spend time exploring the site. It doesn’t give up the goods immediately. While this may not be good for SEO or bounce rates, it rates high on boldness, which is Jay-Z’s stock and trade.
And I can only imagine the time and energy it took to get this thing to work and look right. Definitely a heavy lift.
[Thanks Food Is the New Rock for the inadvertent tip.]
