Why Digital Magazines Don’t Have to Suck

“Digital magazines suck,” proclaimed a media executive friend of mine recently. “They’re not print, and they’re not Web. It seems like a lazy way to get online instead of investing in a really good Web site.” Perhaps he has a point. We’ve all seen those PDF/Flash/whatever-based replicas of print. Many are clunky to use, slow to load and have type so small that you’re constantly zooming in and out. No wonder some publishers haven’t seen their efforts pay off. I call them digital replicas, not digital magazines. Publishers often default to recreations of the print product since...