Magazines exhibit bipolar behavior over digital editions

Five leading magazine publishers—Time Inc., Hearst, Condé Nast, Wenner Media, and Meredith—are about to spend $90 million on a "power of print" campaign, according to the Wall Street Journal.

One ad will say, "The Internet is fleeting. Magazines are immersive," while another will feature Michael Phelps alongside the cringe-worthy headline, "We surf the Internet. We swim in magazines." The ads will start running in May.

Meanwhile, a completely different and disconnected department of Condé Nast has revealed the first five magazines that will be available as digital editions on the Apple iPad. From all accounts, they're pretty excited about it.

Confused? Me too. One half of the magazine publishing industry is scared witless about the future of traditional print. The other half is excitedly prepping new technology that will recreate the immersive print experience on e-readers and delivered by the "fleeting" Internet.

It appears that the traditional print camps are actually attacking their digital counterparts—not to mention their own websites—with this "power of print" campaign.

As a consumer, I'd like to say something to the traditional print factions inside these publishers. Listen up, you guys. I've been a huge supporter of magazines for, well, my whole life. I've had subscriptions to more magazines than I can remember. I get what you mean when you say that magazines are "immersive". They certainly can be, but that's not a result of the paper they're printed on. I've read some horribly-designed magazines that couldn't be less immersive if they tried. The method of printing on paper has little to do with how engaging a magazine is; It's all in the layout, design, and concept execution.

Digital publishing isn't going away. It's not "fleeting", and it's probably in your best interest to stop throwing money at a complaint campaign. Instead, spend some of that time, energy, and money learning about the new tools you have at your disposal. They're really quite amazing.

This is your chance to revolutionize the magazine industry! The rules are about to be written for a whole new generation of publishing, and you're in a unique position to help shape the future of electronic periodicals. Of course print can be immersive. But digital publishing is catching up quickly, especially as e-book readers become cheaper and equipped with higher-resolution, color displays.

When did this become an internal competition? Nobody thinks print publishing is going extinct overnight. But you need to be realistic and look at the entire entertainment spectrum. Movies, music, television, and books are all going digital. The magazine industry is not immune to the trend.

If you don't believe me, check out this Newsweek article from 1995. Clifford Stoll seemed to think the Internet wasn't going to catch on, and essentially laughed it off. Do any of his arguments sound familiar?

So here's a little advice. Walk over to the offices where the iPad and e-book developers work. Introduce yourself. Make nice. Right now, they're the ones taking your magazine into the future, no matter how deep you bury your heads in the sand. Running some weird luddite-sounding campaign that slams your own company's digital business model smacks of desperation. Fifteen years from now, how do you honestly think we'll look back on this anti-digital "power of print" campaign?

Just sayin'.

Update 1: I added the campaign's logo at the top of this post. I'm still searching for the ads themselves.