e-Magazines Still Archaic?

The Wall Street Journal was rather cocky about the release of their new lifestyle magazine, WSJ. (with the period) last week, taking slight swipes at their competitions like T Magazine from The New York Times.

After some reflections and analyzing e-magazines, I’m starting to wonder if e-magazines really offer you a different web experience or are they really just spruced up versions of their printed counterparts? We’re now expecting more and more from fashion websites, we want them to be updated daily, we want RSS feeds, we want comment capabilities, forums, and tons of pictures and videos to look at.

Unfortunately, I don’t understand why big reputable newspaper companies such as the WSJ and NY Times cannot afford to give its magazines the same web usability as their newspapers. Granted, these magazines only publish monthly or quarterly, but I believe the extra online features should be added.

Here are some of things lacking from WSJ.

• No comment feature - Are we not allowed to have dialogue in the luxury world?
• Only one RSS Feed of a blog-ish type of daily update called “WSJ. Magazine Today”, of which a couple of the articles don’t show up in the feed, or a few appear in the feed but not on the same page of the site? Where are you pulling your posts WSJ.?
• Videos - Ok. I’m going to rip this apart. What is up with their videos?? I really like Roland Mouret and his interview “The Shape of Things To Come” is a good read. But the videos on this site are little more than decorative and have little to say. I usually like WSJ’s reporting videos on the newspaper’s site, even if they do lack pizzazz. These videos’ intros sound off to the beat of something coming off of MTV’s Cribs. On top of that, you can’t even share the video, not that they’d be worth it… Is this really luxury? I’m not even rich but I know crap when I see it.

I’ve revisited T Magazine’s site and also found a few gripes.

• No comment feature - except for their blog “In The Moment” which I’m starting to believe is really a blog post overload of anything fashion related. Hardly anybody comments.
• RSS only for “In The Moment”, so you’d have to scroll through a maze of articles on the site itself.
• Videos are non-linkable, non-adjustable, and a tad too small for my taste (make it YouTube size at least). I like their “Screen Test” series, and can find a few gems in “Exclusive Films”, but I would do away with “T Takes” of short films, they don’t belong on this site.

I’m split between what e-magazines today should represent. As a print publication, it’s obvious we’re only doing the reading and there’s no interaction whatsoever between the content and yourself. But as a web experience, especially seeing how interaction is now possible between the content and the user, I’ve come to expect this extra feature to be available for online publications (whether they have printed counterparts or not). I suppose magazines don’t want to lose their authority on fashion, and open the gates to dialogue will expose them to direct, unfiltered critique of their content. But so far I think being able to comment and share content has only heightened the interest in fashion and we could get some very insightful opinions from individuals you wouldn’t never hear about. Cathy Horyn’s “On The Runway” blog is a prime example of being able to voice her opinions, and still be respected and receive both favorable or unfavorable opinions from different users. This interaction shouldn’t be ignored and for the fashion industry, reknown as a tough skin industry, to shrivel up so easily to opinionated consumers is sort of an oxymoron.

Fashion TV: Old 2003 clip on Fashion Journalism

Now here’s a channel that I really love watching and am glad that they’re not entirely superficial on the subject of fashion. Fashion Television made a report on Fashion Journalism and asked chief editors and real fashion journalists of their opinion on journalism within their industry.

It’s a fantastic clip and I’m glad that Jeanne Becker took on this bit and interviewed several people in the industry. Among fashion journalists we should look up to is Cathy Horyn from The New York Times, Suzy Menkes from the International Herald Tribune, and Michael Gross who currently writes for several publications. I just thought I would share this with everyone, it may be an old clip, but it’s still very much relevant today.

A museum’s fashion blog

I came across this from Cathy Horyn’s blog recently telling her readers that she will be a panelist to this year’s blog.mode event at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York city. I have never heard of this blog but I was instantly curious to the notion that a museum, of all places, has its very own fashion blog.

Yet museums go hand in hand with the history of fashion, archiving the greatest works of past designers and exhibiting its evolution throughout the years. It’s surprising since museums don’t exactly convey to be such a hip and happening place, yet some of the most interesting fashion collaborations have happened there in the last couple of years. Most notably Louis Vuitton for boldly opening a store within the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles last year.

 

blog.mode is still relatively new, operating since December 2007, it has already garnered quite a following. True to its museum-like self, the blog exhibits a one photo piece with accompanying historical text as if you were reading the small square text on a wall next to the work itself. I think this is a great way to learn about the history of fashion and reading the responses from other readers and their thoughts on the pieces presented. The blog.mode event will be held March 30th at 3pm. I’m starting to believe that I will have to make trips to the Big Apple a little more often!

This is another great step for bringing people around the world to chat about fashion, in virtual museum space. I really like this idea, and find it quite fantastic of bringing everyone along in the conversation. I urge you to check it out!

Image credit: blog.mode of the Metropolitan Museum of Art