Google to take on magazines

As if Google doesn’t have hands in nearly everything, the company now wants to allow individuals to publish personalized magazines. Recently, Gilbarco introduced a kiosk system that enables Google local search, maps and coupons to be accessible in gas stations, convenience stores and the like. In addition, Google, with its patent filed in May of 2006, shows interest in expanding this type of “on demand” content by introducing itself to the magazine publishing industry.

Though do-it-yourself publishing is now available through services such as Lulu.com, Google’s vision takes on a very different user-generated content model. In the article, Google looking at DIY Magazine Publishing, puts together coherent details of the project:

You will have the ability to create your own ‘customize publication’ that contains the content (and advertising) that you have chosen. There is the ability to search content to add to your ‘personalized’ publication as well as suggestions generated through user history. The system can track a given topic a user is monitoring and update/suggest new related content as it becomes available. Content could also be searched by price, topic and dates for example, or any other information ‘deemed to be useful to either a user and/or a content provider in locating content to be provided in a customized publication’. You could also set updates on a given frequency (weekly, monthly) and set which content items you wish to have updated for that given period.

Overall, the idea seems more like a novelty than an actual product. Considering Google’s constant drive to gather up as much content as it can get it’s crawlers to capture, the aggregation side-note to this seems plausible for their business model. However, convincing the magazine subscriber that this model is ‘better’ because of its customizability will create a challenge. And in all seriousness, who wants to take the time to physically publish information that is probably available through online subscriptions. We’ll have to see how this plays out – if it ever does…

Newsweek to cut paid circulation

Falling revenue, the rising cost of postage as well as reduced paid advertisements have prompted Newsweek magazine, owned by the Washington Post Co., to cut paid circulation by 16 percent, equaling about 500,000 copies.

Newsweek cited rising postal and other costs in explaining its decision, according to a media buyer who has been briefed on the plan. “Obviously people are also migrating online for news and information,” said the buyer. “It’s hard to maintain current subscribers and attract new subscribers.”

Newsweek is but one of a number of publications that has decided to cut circulation in recent months. Newsweek’s largest competitor, Time magazine, cut its base earlier this year as well as others such as Playboy, Reader’s Digest and BusinessWeek.

New model for the Magazine? BusinessWeek thinks so…

The fully re-designed, re-developed BusinessWeek magazine is set to launch this week. Bruce Nussbaum explains the new layout and content in his article, “Business Week Reinvents The Magazine–Make Way For Curating The Conversation Through Aggregation, Briefings, And Story-Telling.”

We’re introducing this type of open source aggregation into the new magazine, with blog items, quotes, and content from unusual, global sources surrounding stories, sometimes enhancing them, sometimes disagreeing with them. It’s a conversation, not a lecture.

If all goes as planned, could this really be the new model for the magazine publishing industry? Could the introduction of narrative and “conversational” content provide the link between web and print? If it works for BusinessWeek, and others within the magazine industry in the future, could a model like this work for newspapers as well?