http://futurismic.com/2009/01/07/clay-shirky-on-the-very-near-future-of-magazines/ Presenting the fact and fiction of tomorrow since 2001 Fri, 10 Feb 2012 22:03:44 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 http://futurismic.com/2009/01/07/clay-shirky-on-the-very-near-future-of-magazines/comment-page-1/#comment-17548 Madeline Wed, 07 Jan 2009 22:04:59 +0000 http://futurismic.com/?p=5447#comment-17548 This may be true of North America, but in Japan I wandered through newsstands and bookstores rife with niche magazines. It felt much like a living internet: DIY and cat/dog/chinchilla fanciers' publications were everywhere. It might be that the market is shallow (a broad array of publications with tiny circulations), but my guess is that cities with massive public transportation networks still support impulse purchasing of paper texts intended for commuter readership. It may be fashionable to blame "new media" for the death of "old media," but I think the advent of private transport has something to do with it as well -- you can't drive a car and read a book, but trains and buses support daily literacy. Obviously I don't have the numbers to back this theory up, so I may be wrong, but I'd like to see a comparison between sales of periodicals and the upswing in three-car households. This may be true of North America, but in Japan I wandered through newsstands and bookstores rife with niche magazines. It felt much like a living internet: DIY and cat/dog/chinchilla fanciers’ publications were everywhere. It might be that the market is shallow (a broad array of publications with tiny circulations), but my guess is that cities with massive public transportation networks still support impulse purchasing of paper texts intended for commuter readership. It may be fashionable to blame “new media” for the death of “old media,” but I think the advent of private transport has something to do with it as well — you can’t drive a car and read a book, but trains and buses support daily literacy. Obviously I don’t have the numbers to back this theory up, so I may be wrong, but I’d like to see a comparison between sales of periodicals and the upswing in three-car households.

]]>