The New Yorker Digitalized - Research Paper Example

The New Yorker Digitalized The New Yorker is an American weekly magazine publishing reportages, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, comics, and poetry produced by Condé Nast. It is published approximately once a week which results in 47 issues annually. The magazine was launched in 1925. The New Yorker was first published on 21st February with financial support of General Baking Company by Harold Ross. Regency dandy which became a symbol of the magazine was first drawn by Rea Irwin for the first issue. The 32-page edition at the price of 12 cents focused on public with the developed artistic taste and established new standards of magazine literature with its skillfully written stories, brilliant essays, intelligent humor, self-sufficient caricatures, reviews of uncommon books, performances, movies. Mr. Ross wanted to create the magazine of a subtle humor. Having taken in partners the businessman Raul Fleyshmann Ross founded F-R Publishing Company, and remained the editor of the magazine till the death in 1951. Though the magazine did not lose sense of humor, it soon won reputation in the serious journalistic environment with its cartoons and unexpected reviews of uncommon books, performances, and movies. Speaking about New York`s cultural life The New Yorker was meant to become a visit card of Big Apple, however, it is highly demanded throughout America generally (The New Yorker history 2). The New Yorker has published the stories of many popular writers, and some stories from the magazine were transformed into the film scenarios. Among The New Yorker`s writers there were Vladimir Nabokov, Roland Dahl, Haruki Murakami, J.D. Salinger, John Updake. Such films as Adaptaion by Charlie Cauffman or The hours by Michael Cunnigham have appeared after the stories were adapted to the screen (The New Yorker history 2). The edition uses specific spelling with application of diaresis marks over repeating vowels in words where they are said separately is allocated, without forming a digraph as in the word “ reelected”. The New Yorker along with Technology Review published by MIT, are one of the few editions keeping this practice. Besides, record of numbers by a copy-book, including rather long ("for the-seven thousand" instead of "47000") is accepted. The New Yorker, as a rule, does not use italics tracing for record of names of books, movies, and other works. Instead they are quoted. Though italics are used at the mention of other printing editions, it is used only for the name of the edition while the name of the city is typed by a usual font (Norris 1). The magazine is famous by its covers to which most of attention is drawn. Most covers are dedicated to political or cultural issues. Most of the covers become widely recognizable and exemplary (Bump1). Saul Steinberg created around 50 covers for The New Yorker, taking into account one of the most famous which is titled View of the world from Ninth Avenue (History of The New Yorker 2). There also some controversial covers, such as depicting president Obama or gay couple, which have been disputed in American society. The New Yorker was conceptualized for elite target audience. It was created to meet the expectations of well-educated and intellectual middle and upper class adults interested in cultural life of the big city. Thus, its main readers are college graduates with stable jobs between 18 and 55. Most of the readers are married with children and having stable income. As for the most recent data collection The New Yorker has more than one million of regular subscribers (CondeNast overview 1). Nevertheless, having such a great and stable audience The New Yorker decided to go digitized to keep up to date alongside with the other American papers and magazines. The US printed papers first appeared on the Internet more than 30 years ago. The Times and The Sun Francisco Examiner were among the first papers to explore the digital world (Hernandez 1). This action was aimed to examine how digital media would influence the readers, and the experiment was conducted to help the stuff be involved in the modern processes. Wide appearance of personal computers did not make digital papers more popular as it took more time and money to upload them than to buy (Hernandez 1). In the recent years great part of influential printed media went digitized. According to the review published by American Newspaper Association the profit from the printed papers declines by approximately 5 % each year. In the recent decade the total revenue from the printed media has declined in 40 % and now does not exceed the profit received by Google. Moreover, slow declines in printed media were accompanied by online revenue loss. The significant shifts in the top management of the most influential papers, such as New York Times, MediaNews, USA Today, Los Angeles Times have proved the dramatic state of the printed media in the United States of America. According to Edmonds, now printed media has faced the ultimate problem of simple survival, and papers going digitized is even not enough to preserve the revenues(1). Most printed media editors predict that in the next five years papers will be printed only on Sundays as this type of papers remains profitable. The auditory is more likely to allow additional expenditures on Sundays as Sunday paper has become quite symbolical for most readers. Some papers also offer “Sunday select”- a package directly to households. Such initiatives allow covering some holes in the budget of the newspapers and remaining in touch with customers (Hernandez 1). Involvement the readers into buying digital content has become one of the most accessible initiative for the newspapers to remain actual and profitable. The New York Times was among the first papers which has launched this initiative successfully. More than a hundred of small, mid-sized and grand daily papers have established variations of metered model that The New York Times used or offered premium paid sites. This option permits reading of a limited quantity of articles online thus the sites preserve the audience by social media recommendations and the results of the searching engine links. There is also a possibility for the readers to subscribe for a month and receive unlimited access to all the sources. Many papers utilize an additional proposition for print subscribers to get free access to the digitized variants of the papers and magazines on their laptops and tablets for a minimal formal price. This initiative encourages readers to stick to print papers, which is important to editions receiving much revenue from advertisement. At The New York Times, for example, a reader who receives printed version of the paper on Sunday only has a possibility to read everything digitized (Edmonds et al. 1). According to Kramer, paid content introduction is inevitable as mobile traffic has increased in almost 50 % in 2012 if evaluated by the pages views on smart phones and tablets. The most recent studies on mobile applications revealed that a quarter of tablet readers follow directly to a news organization’s app (if compared to the searching through Google). Mobile applications are considered worthy to pay. Such tablets as Kindle and iPad have gained enormous popularity among the American citizens especially at high shopping seasons, which proves the necessity to launch relevant applications. The adaption to reading content with the help of mobile applications is incredibly fast (Kramer 2). Thus, The New Yorker as well as any other respectable paper in America was doomed to go digitized. Well and richly designed pages, bright and colorful covers, and heavy texts could become an obstacle for the magazine to launch in digitation. However, cooperation with Adobe and Apple has resulted in creation of convenient applications. The designers have managed to preserve The New Yorker`s distinct features except for the covers. Most readers mark that minimal icon depicting the covers can be the only disadvantage of reading the magazine on iPad. With the assistance of HTML it became possible to maintain flexibility required from such a frequent edition as The New Yorker. The New Yorker has enhanced its digital performance significantly and enlarged its overall auditory due to launching applications for telephones and tablets. The magazine has utilized wise strategy which connected social networks to mobile platforms. The New Yorker regarded its site solely as the way to publish the stories; however, taking into account the most recent global changes in the industry, it put some ambitions on the digital sphere (Bilton 2). One of the most essential goals of going digitized is to attract more clients to the printed paper. Working with social media has increased the popularity of the edition incredibly. In 2012 more than 3 million people visited Facebook page of the magazine, which resulted in the enhanced metabolism of The New Yorker in general. According to Bilton, almost a quarter of page views of the paper are guaranteed by mobile applications. The magazine`s general mobile platforms readership reached 563,000, which is 27 % of increase. The success of The New Yorker can be explained by the fact that the editors suggested that people would prefer reading long stories on their phones rather than on their computers. And they were right. Most readers admit that using mobile applications for reading long essays is preferable (2). There is also one more advantage of The New Yorker mobile application, which allows reaching the required section or article without passing the whole issue. Thus, the experience of The New Yorker with digitization can be evaluated as incredibly positive. Despite the fact that the magazine was positioned as elite and exclusive from the conception recent changes in the mass media industry made it optimize its content for mobile platforms users. It allowed increasing the auditory and encouraging the auditory to subscribe to printed variant. The only negative side of reading The New Yorker from a tablet is inability to appreciate the cover in full colors. The press was forced to take innovative digital solutions with the introduction of the Internet. The process of printing turned out to be time consuming and expensive compared to digitation. In the times of permanent increase of news production the demand for consumption increased respectively, and the existence of the paper in its literal form was put under question. Thus, most of the influential printed media have switched to digitized variant, prepared their application for mobile platforms, and have placed their content into social networks. The process of information boost and the date transferring to digits cannot be stopped thus it remains for the printed media to adjust to such innovations. Works Cited Bump, P. The New Yorker goes digital-but leaves its iconic covers behind.Columnists.2011. Retrieved from: http://www.mediaite.com/online/the-new-yorker-goes-digital-but-leaves-its-iconic-covers-behind/ Bilton, R. Inside The New Yorker digital strategy. Digiday. 2014. Retrieved from: www.newyorker.com/magazine/apps Hernandez, D. Tech Time Warp of the Week: Newspapers Go Digital. 1981 Wired. 2014. Retrieved from: http://www.wired.com/2014/01/tech-time-warp-newspapers/ Kramer, Staci D. News Right Launches with 29 Publishers. Paid Content. 2012. Norris, Mary. The Curse of the Diaeresis. The New Yorker. 2014. Retrieved from: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/04/the-curse-of-the-diaeresis.html The New Yorker history overview. The New Yorker. 2014. Retrieved from: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/aboutus/ Read More