Gardening journalists are starting to get the message. The future of garden journalism lies on the Internet and not in a glossy magazine.
I am uncertain of the business model that online editors are adapting as the curve develops?
The message has to get through to editorial staff - change the way you do business or face a life in the wilderness.
In an article on Haymarket Publishing - Editorial and design heads ask if the web needs magazines - dated 22nd October 2008, a meeting between the British Society of Magazine Editors and the Editorial Design Organisation, discussed the the need to move to digital.
Meeting attendee Mark Porter, design director for the Guardian said: “You have to get used to a world in which your domain is porous. You’re no longer within a wall and people have to come inside your wall to visit you.”
It is this acceptance from Porter that I have been advocating for a considerable time.
However, the reaction I have received from editors have shown ignorance and intent on resisting the inevitable - this is one comment I received from a magazine editor after I published my piece - Paper versus megabytes the future of printing over pixels, what is your take?
'So he has a website and is a self confessed internet freak...Wonder why he's saying this then! "I think he is talking out of his bottom to be honest"
Less than a year later, this magazine launched a digital version - both the Internet site and the printed magazine have since gone.
David Hepworth who launched Heat magazine, was direct with his view when talking about would-be publishers starting on the Internet, saying: “When you enter on the web, you ain’t nothing special,” he said. “It doesn’t matter how old your magazine is... You are on the same playing field as every buffoon out there.”
Wise words but it is the unnecessary addition of the word 'buffoon' that highlights the contempt that traditional media holds towards us pretenders to their publishing crown.
In days of old, the conversation that a magazine provided was completely one sided. Even readers' letters, which would take a week to publish, were manipulated to suit the theme of the story; dditors weeded out anything that did not suit their agenda.
Even now, true conversation does not exist on old-style gardening forums. Blogs like Landscape Juice are passionate about stimulating a conversation. I am not a dictator but the facilitator and it is this concept that editors cannot understand.
There is a second part to the web argument which is a major obstacle to traditional print journalists understanding why digital is king and print is dying.
Advertisers want value for money; no longer will a company want, or be able, to shell out thousands of pounds to reach out to what's fast becoming a restricted and insular print audience, where an advert might cost several thousands of punds and only reach a few thousand readers: website advertisers can now reach many multiples of those subscribers for a fraction of the costs.
What is more, news on the web can be instant and not a week or a month old, as it is when committed to print. There is also an opportunity to rectify mistakes, upload additions and modifications to articles, update stories as more information becomes available and link through to related content. You just cannot do this with a magazine.
A journalist on the web, who writes an online article today, still maintains the potential to reach his growing audience in ten years time - it can remain timeless. Anything committed to paper will be next weeks chip wrapper or fire lighter - all the 'juice' will be lost, and with it, its advertising potential.
The tipping point for traditional print media has, in my opinion been reached and the decline, however loud the disagreement, will continue for the horticulture print industry.
Further reading:
Is the Horticulture printed publication industry in deep trouble
Paper versus Megabytes the future of printing over pixels, what is your take?
Definition of the Tipping Point
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