Tradional and eMagazines

With the rise of the Internet, along with the rise in the number of people who have access to the World Wide Web - in the United States alone, 82 percent of Americans are connected to the Web and spend an average of 19 hours online (Cyberjournalist, 2010). As such, there is a lot of potential in reaching audiences through the web, especially for magazines and newspapers.

Currie Sivek (2010) writes about how traditional print craft and gourme

t magazines are turning to creating online versions of their magazines that offer a variety of graphics and visuals such as videos and user-friendly interfaces. While these online versions are more expensive, they are more interactive than print magazines, giving users more options.

When going through information in a website, readers will have a lot more choice as to how they gain meaning from the page as there are a lot of different pathways depending on their interest (Walsh, 2006). There are a lot more options to be had with an eMagazine as, with the use of touch screens, issues can be carried around with them in portable devices such as iPhones and iPads. The following image shows the visuals of an online magazine.

Image from downloadsoftware.com

This could explain why eMagazines are getting more popular than their traditional print counterparts. A survey conducted by the Magazine Publishers of America showed that 12% of all new yearly magazine subscriptions came from the Internet (Leggatt, 2010). In comparison, newsstand sales have fallen by 9.1% in the United States and magazine distribution has reduced due to cost reasons (Krashinsky, 2010).

Hence it can be seen that online magazines are steadily rising in popularity. A combination of more attractive elements and the modern technological changes are the catalysts of this shift from traditional print magazines to online variations. In order to keep up with the times, print based companies should look into moving their businesses online.

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References

Currie Sivek, S 2010, ‘Gourmet Live, Quilt eMag rethink magazines in digital form’, PBS 9 August, viewed 14 November 2010, http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2010/08/gourmet-live-quilting-emag-rethink-magazines-in-digital-form221.html.

Krashinsky, S 2010, ‘Magazine sales hit hard at newsstands’, Globe and Mail 9 February, viewed 14 November 2010, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/magazine-sales-hit-hard-at-newsstands/article1460947/.

Leggatt, H 2010, ‘MPA: Internet largest subscription source for magazine’, BizReport 13 July, viewed 14 November 2010, http://www.bizreport.com/2010/07/mpa-internet-largest-subscription-source-for-magazines.html#.

New report: Internet more important than newspapers but still not trustworthy 2010, Cyberjournalist, viewed 14 November 2010, http://www.cyberjournalist.net/new-report-internet-more-important-than-newspapers-but-still-not-trustworth/.

Walsh, M 2006, ‘The ‘textual shift’: Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts’, Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 24–37.