There’s no doubt that magazines are once again relevant, and there’s even less doubt that the medium owes a huge debt of gratitude to the advent of blog creation. Blogs have influenced the how publications look, the content inside — even the very way we read articles. The lines between blogs and magazines get even fuzzier when you consider how many publications were near extinction and then were brought back to life by morphing into a blog/online magazine. Now the online magazine has returned the favor and is in fact influencing the way we blog.
The best magazines, both the old hand-held paper kind made from trees and the digital variety, are the ones with content we can’t get enough of. We find ourselves reading every last article and waiting for new issues to arrive. The publishing world has taken this style and married it with blogging techniques to create delicious online reading with that magazine feel. Consider the following examples for a moment. GOOD magazine has always been a dynamic read. Covering arts, social issues and technology with an incredible amount of style has always been GOOD’s specialty. The online version can explore an even wider selection of topics and feature a heavier rotation of images that their traditional magazine simply couldn’t handle. Plus, when a magazine adapts blog practices, it allows them to talk to their readers, which is something GOOD clearly enjoys doing.
The Hollywood Reporter is great example of how journalism practices can help a blog. THR, as the kids call it nowadays, is more than a little influenced by those much-talked-about Hollywood insider blogs but also uses its reputation as a decades-old industry journal to give its articles a legitimacy that the do-it-yourself Tinsel Town blogs don’t have. On the flip side, the cool fashion magazine NYLON has certainly benefitted from the casual look and feel of blogging. Its Tumblresque design and sassily scribed posts are a thing born of blog-world and have made the publication more popular on newsstands as a result. Clearly both magazines and blogs are continuing to change the way we enjoy both forms.
What’s fantastic about all of this mutual stealing… er, I mean “influencing”… is that every business blog can now look like a magazine and every magazine can now interact with its readers like a blog. So, readers, we want to know is this: What are your favorite blog/magazines?
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