While keeping a periodic digital paginated magazine structure you can begin to see the tremendous potential of tablet magazines. The periodic digital content is augmented with daily news.

PM iPad Tablet Magazine Introduction

Now matter how large or small, own your niche in every media channel. The beauty of the magazine brand is that people understand “magazine” media regardless of the channel. The magazine website will continue to the the heart of the brand and should be updated from a graphic design and user interactive experience perspective at least once a year. Next, determine how print, digital editions, tablet editions, podcasts, newsletters, video, events, webcasts, resource directories, and other content and advertising items should be prioritized based on your niche and target readership.

As you develop your iPad or other tablet magazine edition strategy keep in mind how you’ll leverage content across other target audience touch points. And keep it personal. Include social media elements or features that relate to real world personal relationships and connections. Become the the best place for your audience to come and ask niche focused questions or connect people to begin friendships. Get your magazine editorial staff into participating and interacting on all relevant social media platforms.

As geosocial based tools and technology expand, services like Foursquare, Gowalla, and Facebook Places will enable your audience to connect in real life. Be the magazine brand that brings people together.

I still can’t help thinking about the many talented people from these large publishing conglomerates that will lose their jobs.  Plus the vendors that will lose an important client as more top tier publishing and media companies fall.

The Reader’s Digest Association, Inc. (RDA) today filed voluntary, pre-arranged petitions for reorganization under Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code. As previously announced, this move is part of an agreement in principle with the majority of our senior financial lenders to reduce our debt and better position our company for long-term success.

via The Reader’s Digest Association, Inc.

During my weekly meeting with my staff today, I wondered if some of the talented editors, writers, and creatives would join together to start new magazines to replace the fallen media giants… Perhaps we need a special program to help these people get right back into the saddle and keep doing what they do best.

Let’s help these professionals network and communicate.  Please support your colleagues in getting involved with social media and meeting the partners that will put them on the right track to new jobs or their own publishing business.  If you know of good networking sites for journalists, reporters, editors, writers please share them and I’ll pass these links along.

Letter: http://www.rdarestructuring.com/

The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations, published in 2004 Wikipedia – The Wisdom of Crowds

But to reach a mass audience, we still depend on a mass media channel. Magazine publishers own this niche. The periodic cycle afforded to magazines allows for the organization and graphic presentation of a proven popular or developing story.

Publishers must be more focused on the graphic presentation of the news than creating the news. The news will be created and promoted without you in the future. Have you ever seen the EPIC 2014 and update EPIC 2015 video by Making IT Happen UK? This 1990′s video is a ficticious prediction that provides insight about several corporate and technological events (Googlezon excluded) that have paralled reality.

In the year 2014 the New York times has gone offline. The Fourth Estate’s fortunes have waned …What happened to the news? …and what is EPIC: Launch Video EPIC 2015

Understand as a publisher that your job is to design and present interesting information. Provide visual communication that makes any other news source or medium (including newspapers) pale in comparison to your presentation.

Magazine publishers must learn what newspapers have done right and wrong. Publishers must adapt their digital and web brands to functions as the online newspaper equivalent for their niche even if they focus their main revenue and media deliverable in print format.

We continue to watch and learn. We must adapt more quickly than those publishing mediums that don’t act quickly enough. We must understand both our readers and advertisers needs.

Newspapers are dying for a few reasons. Readers don’t want to pay for yesterday’s news, and advertisers follow them. Your iPhone, your laptop, Is much more handy than New York Times on Sunday. And we should save trees in the end. So it’s enough to bury any industry. So, should we rather ask, “Can anything save newspapers?”

Jacek Utko is an extraordinary Polish newspaper designer whose redesigns for papers in Eastern Europe not only win awards, but increase circulation by up to 100%. Can good design save the newspaper? It just might.

via Jacek Utko designs to save newspapers | Video on TED.com.

We must not be so proud of our content that we decide it’s only available to the elderly, affulient, and elite -EPIC reference. We must be taught the value of web traffic and how long term dividends from SEO can greatly exceed the short term paid content wall.

We must learn that if we are designing truly great graphical information communications, the more people that we can expose to our creative work will always outproduce micro-payments results for individual access or short term subscription.