Thoughts on iPads and e-editions

I shared some thoughts on The Californian's iPad edition on the fine blog of Steve Yelvington, a web visionary whose post on newspaper replica editions prompted a related thread on Twitter that caught my attention. 

I'll share more on in the future on our work with e-editions of The Californian, but Yelvington's post is a good start for people who are in the business of producing replica editions of printed publications. There's life in these editions that many -- including myself -- once considered substandard products. 

Newsweek goes retro but a few slackers ruin the vibe

A retro advertisement for Domtar Paper.Props to Newsweek for its "Mad Men" issue, which took on the magazine's 1965 design as an homage to the hit show's setting in an advertising agency. 

The issue's March 26 & April 2 double issue contained news pages and retro-style ads in a design format straight from that era. The magazine even took steps to give its website a retro flavor for the issue, hosting a reader contest to vote for their favorite ads, a photo gallery of covers and ads from the era, and more specifically, a gallery of sexist ads from the magazine's archives that help illustrate a strong theme of the show. 

For a once-influential magazine struggling to remain relevant (more on that in a future post), I applaud Newsweek for taking a bold risk to win readers and advertisers. As Spam goes psychedelic. Groovy! Tina Brown writes in her editor's note, "The content of this issue is new, and about today, but

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Welcome back, Speed Sport News!

National Speed Sport News, the granddaddy of American motorsports journalism, is back from the dead. Hallelujah! 

Speed Sport News had been a weekly newspaper until last year, when it folded after 77 years of chronicling all forms of motorsport, from Formula 1 to your neighborhood short track. After the newspaper died, the NSSN website continued to deliver daily updates with many of the same voices, but there's nothing like a print package to curl up with while watching a day's worth of racing. 

Which brings us to the new monthly print version of Speed Sport Magazine. 

Motorsports announcer Ralph Sheheen is among a small group of investors who brought Speed Sport back to life. Rather than dumping money down the drain with a weekly newspaper, we have a monthly magazine that delivers less of the detailed race reports and more of a focus on features and analysis. 

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