Op-ed: High-tech media, old-style issues

Originally published in the Los Angeles Times, 04/04/10

By Victor Navasky and Evan Lerner

Magazines, like the rest of the media, are thought to be in trouble. This is especially bad news for the conversation on which democracy depends. For magazines are the place where news is put in perspective, analyzed, considered in context and in depth.

But we write at a moment of technological hope, as some of the more affluent magazine publishers have prepared their inaugural issues for Apple’s iPad, which went on sale this weekend. They are betting that it will do for digital content what the iPod and iTunes did for digital music: replace messy free content gotten on the sly with easily accessible, paid editorial content in full-color electronic magazine format.

But even if the iPad turns out to be magazines’ hoped-for savior, if it brings along the values (or lack of values) currently characteristic of much of the new media, a question looms: At what cost?

Read full Navasky & Lerner article.

Read Magazines and Their Websites, the survey and report on which this article is based.