Article: Print and Online Work Together, Not Apart

Online presence is an opportunity that magazine publishers cannot afford to ignore for long! But an online presence need not merely be restricted to putting your latest issue and archives on the web.

My colleague is working on an end user technology website for a magazine publisher. As we were discussing the possiblities and scope of the portal, we realised that this particular media house and also other print publishers in India have not really leveraged online medium to build a community focussed around an area of interest. The only two good examples we could come up with are techtree and Channeltimes by ITNATION.

Today's opportunity is for the publisher to leverage a magazine brand as the host of a vibrant online community where people not only can find content that they need, but also interact with editors, vendors, and each other.

The magazine sites that do this best end up looking very little like print publications.

Bob Carrigan's article Log Off: Print and Online Work Together, Not Apart from OMMA Magazine's May 2006 issue provides some food for thought for magazine publishers and media consultants.