Friday, October 17, 2008

Are magazines dead?

No!

Maybe I'm a dinosaur but I love magazines. Right now I subscribe to Portfolio, Fortune, Harvard Business Review and Wired. As a member of IEEE I also get some magazines from them.

I also get a huge amount of my daily, weekly, monthly information from the web. But, you know what? I don't want to sit down in the evening on my couch with a laptop. I want a magazine. If I'm sitting out in the car waiting I don't want the hassle of having to bring a laptop. Give me a magazine any day.

You can fold it over. Mark pages with dog-ears. Write on pages. Tear out pages. The ads are even better!

Will electronic devices like the Kindle replace magazines or even books? My belief is no. A relatively small niche market will go electronic but most people will stay with paper. As much as I like technology, paper is just easier to use.