John's Tumblelog

Scott Crawford, who launched the digital music magazine Blurt nine months ago, has created a print edition, ignoring predictions of demise of paper magazines. The initial print issue. The first issue, which appeared in March, counted Sony Music among its advertisers. According to the Washington Post, Crawford says people just like the feel of a real magazine (versus laptop): “When we launched Blurt-online, everyone else was going under or going strictly digital; we’re doing it backwards,” Crawford says. “But I get e-mails all the time from people who say, ‘Hey, the digital magazine is great, but I can’t curl up with my laptop at night and really thumb through the pages.’ I think that by doing the print magazine, we’re reaching those people, too.”

The ranks of bloggers has almost matched the number of lawyers, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. And while only a miniscule number of bloggers make a good income from blogging, nearly 10%—1.7 million out of 20 million bloggers—report making some money from the activity.

Interestingly, the New York Times reported a big drop in ad sales revenue for the first quarter. While most of the decline was concentrated in the company’s newspapers, ad revenue from the Internet operations dropped 8%,

Here’s something on the dark side of Twitter: too many followers is not a good thing.

Some major magazines are looking at raising their subscription prices to make up for lost ads.

Given the economy, it may not be “a propitious moment to launch this,” said Victor S. Navasky, chairman of The Columbia Journalism Review, but “to the extent that the publication is aimed at a segment of the population that can afford it, why not?” according to the NY Times story.

Will hyper-local web sites fill a gap left by disappearing newspapers? A few are trying, according to today’s New York Times. Most telling for me were readers’ comments, several of which point out that hyper-local news sites don’t have the fact-checking and editorial resources that are in place at newspapers. And while some local web sites have attracted funding, many are struggling to attract advertisers. Other commenters say the focus is too local to support advertising.

Well, it looks like Twitter will become even more mainstream, as it arrives on television, courtesy of a widget developed by Yahoo.

Here’s some interesting numbers on the thinning ranks of magazines and the move to digital.