The New Yorker has been the last word in writing for the whole of its existence. Its legendary editors (Shawn!), house talent (EB White) and roster of great writers (Updike, Cheever); the cartoons, the art, the erudition, the playful, the serious, led to envy everywhere. Of course, it was almost unfinishable many weeks because there was too much to read and too little time.Yet they resisted change. Fiercely.

This Christmas however, Barnes and Noble, for example, are touting a 70 dollar, 8 DVD-ROM collection of every New Yorker edition published. (That's over 4000 of them). BarnesandNoble.com  have a onsite video about it. But the New Yorker also has a website. Astutely, their online store offers 20 bucks off the next purchase if you buy from them.

The website offers articles from the current newsstand magazine. And a $5.95 podcast.  But, no blog. Maybe soon?

As turning a dollar from traditional sources gets harder and harder, as consumers have less and less time to invest in a single publication, publishers like the New Yorker are turning to new ways to keep consumers in conversations.

A conversation, any contact at all really,  allows the monetization of some part of the the brand and thus a chance to survive for a few years more.

Better that than having to publish their last words.

This entry was posted on November 28, 2005 at 8:45 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Posted in Brands Main Page by Richard McKinnon No Comments Yet