Still courtesy of Radar
Wow, them kids at Radar are quick - almost as soon as the previous post went up publicist Drew Kerr forwarded an excerpt from Maer Roshan's editor's letter, explaining why print? Why Radar? Why now? Here he is, in his own words:
"Who needs another magazine?"
It's a question I'm often asked by cynical media reporters (and occasionally by my mother). I started Radar four years ago because I believed there was a place in the world for a smart, subversive title that didn't pull its punches. After five issues and a few bumps and scrapes, I still do. Whatever they're saying this week about the demise of print, I think great magazines of the kind Radar aspires to be are essential as ever.
Certainly it would be more economical to hire pajama-clad post-collegiates to snarkily blog on content produced by others. But if your mission is to break new ground, dispatching actual reporters and photographers to cover actual stories still has an essential power.
Not to disparage the Internet: Our new site, radaronline.com, which launched last September, now draws more than a million visitors a month and breaks news every day. But while there's something undeniably thrilling about responding to news as it happens, there's also much to be said for taking your time. With magazines you don't get second chances (not usually, anyway), which compels a more thoughtful and nuanced approach.
Roshan definitely shows his old-world mag stripes here, and that's fine — he makes a great point about nuance and an obvious one about original reporting. Note the dart lobbed at Denton & Co. — "Certainly it would be more economical to hire pajama-clad post-collegiates to snarkily blog on content produced by others" — which is less messy than a pie, to be sure, but if Roshan gets a do-over with 3.0 then he's got to acknowledge that blogging's hit 3.0, too; the pajama-clad meme is played out and, with every newspaper and magazine launching blogs, inaccurate (and totally undermines his own property, Radar Online, which does its own share of news aggregation). A million visitors a month means something; Roshan will be wise to pay attention.
Earlier:
Hard To Kill, Indeed: Radar 3.0 Is Back In The Game [ETP]
Media Winners of 2006: Radar [ETP]
Of Karma And Disclosure: Radar, Page Six, and The Grace of God [ETP]
Back On The Radar: Radar [ETP]
