thoughtsignals

Warren Ellis has a short, but insightful, set of points on what he’s calling ‘burst culture.’ None of this, as he points out, is new. But many, many people in traditional print media still don’t get it. It’s all basic economics: low barriers to entry, easy monetization, etc.

I love print. I love magazines that commit and pay for long articles and long fiction. The web rewards neither approach. It’s a packeted medium, a surf medium. Short bursts are the way to go. The web isn’t a replacement medium — it’s *another” medium. That said, if your concept of a magazine is something designed in one-page bursts, or three pages that only carry 500 words due to the mass of images, then, really, you’re not doing anything the web can’t do better, are you?

Despite the success of magazines like the New Yorker in the last few years notwithstanding, many print publishers seem to believe the future is in imitating the kind of content the Web does best. Maybe we should be rethinking that approach.

Link.