The Magazine: The Book (Year One), Free Download | Hacker News Reader

The Magazine: The Book (Year One), Free Download

the-magazine.com

20 pointsFlenser4 comments

In case you missed it they are also shutting down. [1]

It's unfortunate, I think, since the model for a publication was interesting.

[1]: http://glog.glennf.com/blog/2014/10/8/the-magazine-is-making...

And notable they were profitable the entire time, no less. Very sad to see them go. Consistently high quality. If anything, there was too much high quality output to keep up with...

I'd love to understand the declining subscription rate more fully. I know that for me, though I am a The Magazine subscriber, and enjoyed the writing immensely, it never even had the mindshare that a paper magazine had. Maybe it was because it didn't require that I pick it up from the mail each issue and at least see the cover, maybe flip through it. I also don't ever just happen to see it lying around the house and pick it up to read. I have to intentionally go looking for it. And notifications feel very different, very intrusive and not serendipitous at all. Not sure what the solution is, just my observations.

I had a subscription in the beginning and cancelled it. I was expecting something along the lines of a high-tech New Yorker, but The Magazine never met my expectations.

There was also a level of pretense and hipsterism in The Magazine that was really off-putting (it starts with the name even!). Of course, the New Yorker is even more guilty (cf. diacritics and refusal to acknowledge the existence of "flyover country"), but in the case of the New Yorker, the quality of the long-form reporting is phenomenal. I guess you could say I came for the reporting, and stayed for the rest. With The Magazine, there was an article every other issue or so that was of great interest, and the rest were "meh".

When I look at the list of authors for The Magazine, I see many forming a loose-knit group of friends and associates. I think that kind of sums it up for me: it was a product written for each other, not for the wider public.

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