When You Couldn't Click Away, Magazines Were a 'Place Medium'
A textbook for college Magazine Production classes explains that a magazine brings the reader, temporarily, into its world. Through its masthead, artwork, article tone, advertisers, even weight and glossiness of paper, a magazine creates an atmosphere.
A media producer wanting repeat business is smart to heed this point. "Television," Jerry Seinfeld tells Norm MacDonald in the latter's video podcast, "is a place medium." MacDonald was probing the motive behind a tv set backdrop piece for the long-running CNN show "Larry King Live."
Adapted for the digital era, "peak TV" and beyond, some are calling strides to create place experiences the "Be Here Now 2.0" movement.
In the first hours and days of a personal digital detox quest and its concurrent activity, intentional attention span lengthening (IASL,) it can be a struggle to read or peruse within the bounds of even your favorite magazine or newspaper without clicking away. The East Bay Express, however, offers an online reading experience that immerses the reader in a way most large publications do not.
Along with a traditional open web homepage, the East Bay Express offers via click on its "Digital Edition >>" link, paper-like reading via old-fashioned Adobe Flash. Once "inside," the animated bottom-right corner of the right page beckons the reader to page flip with one mouse click or touchscreen tap. The paper sound effect gives life to the "paper" edition, invisibly redirecting more of the reader's senses away from the digital ephemeral world and into the (simulated) physical.
The old-fashioned yet feature-rich Adobe Flash reader offers something even the advanced Apple-owned Texture magazine app service does not - forward as well as backward reader traversal through one weekly issue or "edition."
Freed from all concern we'd lose our place within this week's EBX, we've no pressure on ourselves to read the pages linearly. Which allows a time-pressed reader to flip forward, flip forward, then flip back to a movie review that catches reader's eye. Zooming is easy and intuitive.
Font is enlarged via two commands: a double-click to zoom in, or a single-click to the zoom magnifier icon in the bottom toolbar tray.
A visit later that day to the eastbayexpress.com homepage provides a very reader-friendly navigation jump directly to the "Movies" subsection, and the web browser version of the review article this reader had started reading via Adobe Flash "paper" is provided in full, back out on the open web. Along with the article text, the online version exploits all opportunities to widen reach with free distribution - single-click spread buttons via Facebook share, Tweet, Reddit submission, Email or even "send to Print."
With industry conference speakers saying journalism faces "many unknowns, except one: we're going to have to do everything differently" it's refreshing to see one under-the-radar publication adapting to the future without throwing out the parts of the past that really worked.
This work by AJ Fish is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
A media producer wanting repeat business is smart to heed this point. "Television," Jerry Seinfeld tells Norm MacDonald in the latter's video podcast, "is a place medium." MacDonald was probing the motive behind a tv set backdrop piece for the long-running CNN show "Larry King Live."
Adapted for the digital era, "peak TV" and beyond, some are calling strides to create place experiences the "Be Here Now 2.0" movement.
In the first hours and days of a personal digital detox quest and its concurrent activity, intentional attention span lengthening (IASL,) it can be a struggle to read or peruse within the bounds of even your favorite magazine or newspaper without clicking away. The East Bay Express, however, offers an online reading experience that immerses the reader in a way most large publications do not.
The old-fashioned yet feature-rich Adobe Flash reader offers something even the advanced Apple-owned Texture magazine app service does not - forward as well as backward reader traversal through one weekly issue or "edition."
A visit later that day to the eastbayexpress.com homepage provides a very reader-friendly navigation jump directly to the "Movies" subsection, and the web browser version of the review article this reader had started reading via Adobe Flash "paper" is provided in full, back out on the open web. Along with the article text, the online version exploits all opportunities to widen reach with free distribution - single-click spread buttons via Facebook share, Tweet, Reddit submission, Email or even "send to Print."
With industry conference speakers saying journalism faces "many unknowns, except one: we're going to have to do everything differently" it's refreshing to see one under-the-radar publication adapting to the future without throwing out the parts of the past that really worked.
This work by AJ Fish is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
