A Magazine for Bloggers Will Either Be a Screaming Success or a Total Dud

I read today on Scobleizer about the new Blogger and Podcaster magazine.

You can subscribe to its twelve annual issues in one of three ways:

• Online with “magazine-esque” technology.
• Via Podcast
• In print

The print edition costs $79 per year, while the “magazine-esque” online version and podcast are free.

I think this is a bold move on the part of the publishers. A magazine for bloggers and podcasters is definitely an unfulfilled niche. The question is whether or not bloggers will pay attention to a news source that only updates once a month. Of course, the magazine also has its own blog.

The big upside I can see to this is that the magazine is available in print. Why is this an upside when so many paper and ink publications are struggling? Because we bloggy types spend all day every day staring at some varity of computer monitor. I, for one, love to read information on paper sometimes. It allows me to focus on one thing at a time. Sometimes I even use a pen and hi-lighter. You can’t do that with a computer unless you want to mess up your screen bigtime.

In an interview with blogger Joe Wikert, B&P publisher Larry Genkin answered some of those concerns:

Instead of “swimming upstream” we decided to make it easier to succeed by publishing the magazine in 3 formats: Print, Digital and Podcast. I believe we are the first in magazine history to do this (and another reason why my editorial team is about ready to string me up.) Each edition is different too. The digital edition uses cool software that gives our readers a magazine-esque feel with pages flipping on the screen and also allows us to embed audio and video into it to add to the experience beyond what you can get from the printed magazine. Then our podcast edition includes some of the actual interviews we conducted in writing our stories, to give subscribers even more detailed information from the industry experts we interviewed. In addition, we’ve also started a blog, written by our editors, so we can have a more regular and intimat? dialogue with our readers.

In time, I might sign up for the print edition, but for the time being I’m signed up for the online print version. I’m looking forward to seeing what this magazine has to offer. I have a funny feeling that I’ll be linking to some of their content sooner rather than later.