To truly understand it, you should get a copy of the print edition. In the meantime, here's how I describe it in the forward to this month's issue.
Where to begin?
Better question: Where to end?
Better still: Where are you, dear reader?
If my suspicions are right, many of you don't read magazines by starting with this column, even though it's at the front and is clearly labeled "Fast Forward." Some of you likely jump right to the back page to read Paul Woolmington's "The New Next." Others dive right into our juicy feature section. Others -- the nerdier among you, no doubt, -- first take a flying leap into "Media Metrics."
That's the thing about a print medium like a magazine: People read what they want, where they want, when they want. Magazines are by definition a nonlinear medium. The problem is that magazine editors are not. In our hubris, we create magazines designed to be read from beginning to end. We start with the cover, turn to the table of contents, an upfront section, a feature package, then the important back-of-the-book stuff, and tie it all up in the nice little ribbon of a thought-provoking but entertaining final word. Sounds like Media, all right.
So when we started planning this month's issue of Media magazine around the theme of nonlinear media, we struggled to come up with a magazine that at least suggested a nonlinear way of thinking. Then it hit us: Magazine reading may be nonlinear, but the content is still bound together from point A to point Z. The solution: Get rid of the binding.
As it turns out, that's easier said than done. For all the advances in publishing technology, modern printers simply are not set up to print a magazine as a series of disaggregated pages. I'll spare you the logistical details, but as you might imagine, there were many, not the least of which was the question raised by our publisher, Ken Fadner: "What are people supposed to do with 52 unattached pages?" For some reason, Ken didn't buy my response -- that most readers would pin all 52 up on their walls.
Ultimately, we opted to distribute only a limited number of this month's unbound issue of Media to attendees at the American Association of Advertising Agencies' Media Conference in Orlando. In fact, those attendees will get a bonus page that doesn't even exist in our bound edition. The page, which features Media's Person of the Year, will also live in other places, including a billboard at 7th Avenue and 49th Street in Times Square, courtesy of our friends at Clear Channel Outdoor. Within 48 hours or so of receiving this magazine, you can find the content posted at www.mediapostpublications.com and rendered in a unique way by TheBrain, one of the new, nonlinear media content delivery systems profiled in this issue by Media editor Tobi Elkin -- the only story, by the way, that runs more than two pages.
This is our way of demonstrating how even a medium as static and analog as print can be profoundly nonlinear, as long as you render it the right way. And the truth is, that's exactly what consumers of media are doing, no matter what content creators intend. Magazines are folded, dog-eared, marked up, ripped up, and torn apart. TV is getting ripped, burned, and passed around. Media schedules, TV day parts, and newsstand dates have all but lost their meaning. Media these days are like these 52 pages of Media: as malleable as you want them to be.
If you weren't one of the fortunate few to get an unbound copy of this issue, we've got a solution for you, too. See those little dotted lines along the inside margins of each page? Take a pair of scissors and neatly cut along those lines. Now mix up the pages. Re-sort them and order them any way you'd like. Use our neat little color-coded tabs, or just use happenstance. Or play my favorite game, 52 pick-up. Now that's nonlinear.