Prophetic magazine cover

Timing can be everything in the print publishing world. In an age of 24-7 media, printed publications work hard to stay ahead of the news, to present fresh insights a day, a week, a month after publication. 

Sometimes fate can intervene with a good idea, as in this 417 magazine cover whose main headline screams,"What it Feels Like to Ride a Tornado." I picked up a copy of the magazine while visiting Columbia, Mo., earlier this week, and just a day after flying into tornado-ravaged Lambert-St. Louis International Airport. 

417, for those who don't know, is the area code for southwestern Missouri, not far from St. Louis and other Southern states ravaged by an incredible swarm of twisters that killed hundreds. And Missouri is considered part of "tornado alley," a multi-state region that's a hotspot for tornadoes in spring and summer.

So I suppose this edition of the magazine was right on target on highlighting a relevant angle for a series of stories on "what it feels like" topics like riding a tornado, getting robbed at gunpoint, or surviving a skydiving accident while pregnant.

Sadly, sometimes good ideas interfere with unpredictable news, and leave one feeling just a little bit queasy.

Redlining newspaper subscriptions

Profiling has a negative connotation these days, but it's a tool some publishers use in search of the "right" subscribers to pitch their advertisers. Demographic information such as incomes, education, families with children, likelihood to make major purchases in the coming year, etc., are among the factors that attract advertisers to specific media, whether it's print, online, broadcast or billboards. 

Makes a lot of sense to fine-tune your product, right? Yes and no. Such profiling can be misused, such as when banks or health providers discriminate against people in areas home to higher percentages of minorities. Such discrimination is termed "redlining" (think of using a red marker to draw borders on a map).

Given that sensitivity, it's not often such profiling hits you in the face, as it did me recently. 

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Radiohead becomes newspaper publisher

Open publication

The rock band Radiohead has been many things in its two-decade career. Add newspaper publisher to that list.

Radiohead this week released "The Universal Sigh," a print and digital "newspaper" that's a companion to the band's new album, "The King of Limbs." For reasons that only Radiohead can figure out, the band has termed "The King of Limbs" "the world's first newspaper album."

There's not much "news" in "The Universal Sigh" and no one is really sure what the goal of the publication is/was, other than an odd form of promotion and to share some alternative voices with the world. But that's Radiohead for you.

"Soundcheck" chatted with Brooke Gladstone, co-host of NPR's "On the Media" (stream below) and she wasn't able to add much insight from a journalistic perspective. The only real takeaway appears to be that for the first time in ages, people were lined up to get copies of a newspaper. Oh, for a return to those days.