Finite FTW

There is joy in limitations. And that is one reason people are returning to print.

Since the day my wife and I launched Like the Wind, we have been learning. Because we had no publishing experience when we started. So since day one we have read books, asked questions, watched videos and made mistakes. And one of the aspects of publishing a magazine that I have had to learn is what it means to be an editor.

What I have understood is that editing a magazine is a multi-dimensional role. With one of the most important functions being choosing what gets published and what doesn’t. And the art of choosing is part of what makes ink-on-paper publishing great. I believe it is one of the reasons so many people are coming back to magazines. Why (some) people are turning away from - or spending less time on - social media. To make my point, please indulge me while I use a running analogy.

Imagine what the experience of running a race would be if there was no finish line. How would you manage? There have been races which have toyed with the idea of an undefined distance – the Piece of String race is one example from the UK. Big’s Backyard Ultra is another. But still, there are limits – in the case of the former, the participants know that the event will be over within a maximum number of days. In the Backyard Ultra race, the finish comes when there is only one runner left and it’s easy to count how many runners remain. But still, both of these events have created ripples in the running universe, because not having a fixed distance is so difficult for most runners to wrap their heads around.

Getting back to publishing, what would happen if there was no limit to the amount of content available to us? Well, we are all in the process of finding out. In 2006 a digital designer by the name of Aza Raskin came up with an idea that completely upended the way people read: the infinite scroll. This was revolutionary. Suddenly as long as a social media user was logged in, the content would be served in a never-ending stream. Keep scrolling and the posts would keep coming. Facebook adopted the infinite scroll in 2011 with Twitter and Instagram following suit in 2011.

In a world where attention – your attention – is the product that social media networks sell, the infinite scroll was a miracle. It has opened the doors to unfathomable advertising revenue from brands climbing over one another to insert themselves into the hours that people are scrolling down a never-ending series of posts. To give you an example, in 2010 Facebook’s revenue was $1.868bn. The year after the infinite scroll was introduced, the same platform grabbed $4.279bn of brands’ ad budgets. That is quite a leap.

Today there are side-effects of the infinite scroll that I believe are driving people back to analogue media – one of which is quality (and the lack thereof). Which brings me back to the job of an editor: making choices.

Like the Wind magazine publishes around 110 stories per year: 25 to 30 stories per issue, four times per year. That’s our limit. And between the contributions and pitches we receive and the stories we uncover that we want to tell, we end up with far more pieces than we can fit in the magazine. So the editor has to choose, based on factors that include the available space, the voices we want to elevate and the topics we want to cover. We can’t publish everything, so we have to think about what is important – to our readers and to us as publishers.

There is another aspect to print’s finiteness (and the demand that makes on an editor to choose) which I believe is important. The edition comes to an end. Once you have read the 25 or so stories in an edition of Like the Wind, that is it. There is no more. The same goes for a newspaper – once you have read all the stories the editor deemed fit to include, there is an end. Fold the paper, pop it in the recycling bin and allow yourself the luxury of absorbing what you have read and how it has made you feel (rather then immediately moving on to the next post or story which amplifies your emotions continuously).

 In a recent post by Laura Hazard Owen on Nieman Lab the journalist described how infinite scrolling – whether that was of content that elicited positive or negative emotions – had become obsessive and had taken over her life.

“For the last eight years, I’ve spent hours with my children while simultaneously also on my phone. If I read bad news while I’m with my kids, my reaction to their normal kid behaviors is disproportionate”

And then …

“When the news is good, I’ve also ignored the kids, because I’m busy reading the good news and want to gloat, to read more and more of it, to read reactions to it — happy reactions, from people who agree with me; sad or unhinged reactions, from people who don’t agree.”

Understanding that infinite scrolling was distracting her during the precious time she had with her children, Owen realised something needed to change. Her solutions? Well one is returning to print.

“I have re-subscribed to print newspapers because they are finite; when you’re done, you’re done.”

The last benefit of the limitations that are an integral part of print is how the medium demands higher quality of the stories published. In an infinite scroll, quality doesn’t matter. What matters is quantity (and speed). More wins over better. In a magazine or a book (or theoretically in a newspaper), there should be no space for bad or even mediocre contents. Print titles that did not understand that and tried to compete with the internet on its terms, are either empty shells or have died. The magazines that have either survived the “digital age” (the New Yorker, Architects Digest, Monocle, The Surfers Journal … the list goes on and on) or have emerged since the arrival of web 2.0 (I include Like the Wind in this list) understood that doing something that online publishers wouldn’t or couldn’t was essential. And if online could not be beaten on quantity or speed, then the advantage print would have to rely on was – still is – quality. An editor knows that the only reason people are going to pay for her or his magazine, is if what is included in their few precious pages, is really, really good.

Back to running. When you start a finite run – whether that is a 45 minute or a 10km training session or a marathon or even a 200 mile ultra – you know where the finish lies. You can apportion your effort accordingly, to get to the end (perhaps in a specific time or perhaps not). And once the run is done, it’s done. That’s it. Have a break. Analyse the experience. Think about what happened. Look forward to your next run or race.

The same goes for a magazine (or a book, a newspaper, a film or an event). Once you get to the end, that it is. You will have enjoyed a measured dose of really good quality storytelling. You can analyse the experience. Discuss it with family and friends. Look forward to the next experience. And go do something else now. That feels more natural, doesn’t it?

Simon

Simon Freeman
LtW co-founder and (current) story-chooser