Biting Into the Post-Cookie Era

My former colleague and long-time min editor Steve Cohn was fond of characterizing the magazine industry as a “people business.” I believe he meant a number of things. On the most basic, transactional level, much of the trade was centered around a small patch of Manhattan real estate where everyone seemed to know one another, and regularly ran into each other at any number of watering holes or subway stops. A lot of large and small things got done in these sometime impromptu meet-ups. People were hired, companies merged, stories were given inspiration and later written and jealousies were stoked just by the core intimacy of the industry. But on another level, the “people business” of magazines was about creating a real connection with our audiences. The great periodicals of pre-mass circulation America like The Atlantic, Harper’s and Scribner’s spoke directly to the “gentle reader” in their pages. This highly personal mode of address carried over into the more raucous golden age of mass-consumer magazines in the tradition of the “letter” from the publisher or editor that opens most print magazines to this day. It's hard to imagine in the age of streaming video and algorithm-driven media rabbit holes. Today, subscribers have been largely replaced by eyeballs, where readers are “users” and where audiences are “data.” Let’s not mince words: the very nomenclature of digital media has always carried with it a tendency to dehumanize and mechanize the people on the other side... Continue reading at 'Folio Magazine'

[ Folio Magazine | 2020-01-23 15:41:48 UTC ]

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