Digital initiatives by magazines increase by a third

Digital initiatives by magazines -- at least in the U.S. -- have increased 33% over the past year, according to a tally maintained by the Magazine Publishers of America (MPA). A full tally by year for the past couple of years is offered on the MPA website.

207 initiatives were announced in 2007, compared with 155 in 2006. The tally has to be viewed in context: the MPA represents consumer magazines and bigger titles mostly. But there is no reason to doubt that the useful compilation represents the growing, unstoppable integration of web and print in magazine publishing generally.

And readers may not be regarded as readers anymore. As Matthew Nelson points out on the blog ClickZ:

Howard Polskin, MPA's senior vice president/communications & events, told me he started a file some year ago to save and monitor digital initiatives which grew into the results he announced today, and that the move for magazines into digital video, blog, podcasts and other content is to be expected in 2008.

"[Magazines] are using whatever platform they can to touch their. . . and I'm not going to use the word 'readers. . . to touch their users 24-7," he said. "The people that used to consume magazine content used to be readers and now there is the subtle shift that it's more important to call them users."