I just read a good article, but you’ll never know. The problem is it wasn’t online or on the Kindle so while I’d love to share it with you it was in a magazine. Yep, print, paper, ink and it was still a good story, but how will you ever know?
Contrary to popular belief print still has good articles. My wife even told me the Tribune on Sunday said something insightful that wasn’t political! (something about Mom’s in California wanting proposition 19 to pass for tougher penalties, blah, blah…) The question is why in this digital age of advancement and Twitbook, Facer, blogs, pogs, etc… you would think someone would use a link shortener or 2D code and put it on everyone of their print articles so that friends could share/spread the news of their story. When I want to save a blurb I photograph it. This is easy enough for the daily horoscope, but not a 3 page essay. Wired Magazine actually does a pretty good job at aligning their content from the magazine to their website, so if you know some of the text you can find the article again online. Although, still no direct link.
All it takes is a number or shortener that can be appended to the root domain and people can see the article online too. You had to type it up so it is not like there is a conversion process from print back to digital. I imagine something like this:
“Hey, I just read this great article in Esquire. Check it out: 234ght”
Now the user would simply type: http://www.esquire.com\234ght. That should be it! There is already room at the end for the editor’s names and some follow-up. How hard is a lil extra text? There are more advanced procedures like scanning/photographing 2D codes and such, but then you need to have a camera all the time and on a plane your phone is supposed to be off, therefore no picture taking. Scratching down the name and code should be simple.
Newspapers, journalists, media types there still are ways to get your message out and be heard. Don’t tell me you audience is dwindling. You are just being stubborn and not moving to keep pace with them.
