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.

Not only reputable in bringing some pretty compelling articles on Fashion, The New York Times have acknowledged and expanded their style section into the newly baptized “T“.

On the front cover: Natalie Portman

Combining the classic New York Times design with a serif font for text, and using the bold gothic lettering as its logo, T renders the online experience a little sassier than most online fashion magazines. It doesn’t use flipping pages, nor does it compact information in several columns, but flows horizontally echoing the scrolling headline ticker (!!) of their new blog “The Moment” on the bottom .

Ads are effectively placed where they are dominant as the single ad on the page you’re reading, like a full page ad in a magazine. This allows us to keep reading the article without being overwhelmed by a barrage of ads flanked left and right, in different sizes and disruptive of the reading flow.

Editorial photoshoots are transformed into a slide show, scrolling by hovering over the arrow on the right or left of the screen.

What’s fun about T Magazine is that each article is an experience in itself. The articles aren’t just confined to horizontal scrolling, some allow vertical, some allow viewings in all directions. Instead of telling you what you should be looking at, T lets you choose. You’re in control of what you want to read, how you want to read it and how fast. My biggest (and perhaps envious) pro of this site is the scrolling news ticker. Who doesn’t want to see constant headlines about fashion? I mean come on! It’s brilliant!

“The Moment” has earned a spot in the RSS Feed section. Enjoy and do check out the site!