There are an endless number of apps and services that will help you refine and bookmark reading for whatever topic or genre you want. Columbia University Director of Athletics Peter Piling just showed me Instapaper as a bookmarking tool, and many, myself included, feel that Twitter used right is really a great resource to track and save all that you are looking for on subjects far and wide. It is one of Twitter’s great underappreciated resources, being able to bookmark, save and share with rarely missing a beat.
However there is another “thing” that remain invaluable to me, and to several others I know of in the communications area, for generating new ideas, authors, and topics; perusing the massive, and still full, racks of magazines at any bookstore, especially your local Barnes and Nobles. I make it a habit, at least once a month, to find a few minutes to walk into a B and N, especially when I’m on the road, and see what the latest covers look like for publications large and niche, and also take a few to flip through and see who is writing, and editing what these days.
Can you use tools like Cision to rapidly cull mailing lists for editors and writers for topics from around the world? Yes. Can you also create your own lists of topics to pull articles and read when the moment strikes you on whatever device you choose? Yes.
Even with all that cataloguing, there is still something to be said about seeing and flipping the magazine from the stacks; seeing how they are arranged, even seeing, literally, trends emerge with what subjects, or even talent, are on various and sundry covers at any given moment. There was a time in 2001 when I was at the USTA, when I remember walking out of Le Parker Meriden on West 57 Street during the US Open and passing the newsstand just on the street. On the side of the newsstand were probably about 20 magazine covers, and more than half had a women’s tennis player on the cover; that certainly served as a physical bell ringing that the popularity and the diversity of the stars of women’s tennis at the time had hit a very special level. Had I had a camera on my phone at the time it was an image I would have bookmarked.
Speaking of cameras, our ready to snap array of photos also gives s great access to cull key names and topics from dozens of publications sitting on shelves to research later as well. It also lets you move pretty quickly through varied topics on the shelves and see what may appeal, and maybe what doesn’t. The shelves are also a great testament to still see who is buying, physically buying what, and also spot new publications…yes they are there, especially niche ones, that may fall by the wayside. When you have any number of proactive stories to tell, the magazine rack is still a great memory jogger.
Have newsstands becomes fewer and maybe less effective as ways of catching trends and engaging media members? Yes. There is no doubt that the digital first world isn’t going anywhere but up, and it’s hard to find some really key video sites sitting in a stagnant pile of print. However the 20 to 25 minutes it takes to walk around, thumb through, even, gasp, purchase, a publication or two or three always serves a great purpose for me to unlock new ideas, new thinking, do some trend spotting and find new ways to engage, albeit with an old school medium.
Laugh away, but for a quick stop, there is still no better place than the magazine racks.
