Print – Out to Lunch – It’s Acadiana
We hear a lot these days about how we’re all living in our own bubble. As more of us create our own TV channels with Netflix, our own radio stations with Spotify, and get our news from personalized social media feeds, we no longer have the kind of shared experiences we used to have, where we would laugh about last night’s Seinfeld or agree how lame Brittney Spears new song was.
If you’re a TV channel, a radio station, or a record company, you’ve found ways to adapt your product – now called “content” – to the new delivery system. However, changing the way you deliver content is not quite so simple if your medium is print. You can have an online newspaper or online magazine – but it’s not the same thing. One is made of paper, and one isn’t.
How to navigate these paper and digital demands, how to hold on to readers, and how stay in business in this environment is the sort of stuff James Flachsenhaar spends his days figuring out.
James is Vice President of News for the Gulf Coast for Gannett Louisiana, and Executive Editor of The Daily Advertiser, all of which is a part of the USA Today network.
Not all print is created equal. While people seem happy to get their news online instead of in paper form, there is really no digital equivalent of the glossy magazine. The feel, pictorial beauty, and the sense of luxury is hard to replicate online. But instead of that being a negative, it seems that the unique incomparable nature of magazines is keeping them thriving.
Sevie Zeller is publisher and editor of local Acadiana 337 Magazine, and the co-owner of 337 Media.
Photos at Cafe Vermilionville by Lucius Fontenot.