An item that literally sailed through the blogosphere and onto the web yesterday was the introduction of a new fire service-related magazine. What makes this one unique is that it is online only. No printing, no mailing, no pile on the floor. If you haven’t seen it yet, log in here: http://urbanfirefighter.com/ and then click on Read the Magazine.
Urban Firefighter Magazine appears to be aimed toward the more experienced firefighter and the website is very well designed, pleasing to look at. The co-publisher and senior editor is Erich Roden who is noted for his fine blog the Housewatch. He is joined with the other co-publisher and senior editor Ray McCormack who was also a contributor to Housewatch. With the introduction of this new web-zine, Housewatch is being discontinued.
Besides the introduction of what looks to be a quality production, it leads us into a new era of publishing. I don’t know if you’ve noticed it, but traditional magazines have been dying off during the past few years. This has been going on following steady increases in postage to the point where many magazines just could not afford to pay to have them delivered.
For about 100 years postal rates for magazines and newspapers were kept very low by being subsidised by the federal government. The policy was to ensure that everbody had reasonable access to news and information. But beginning in the early 1970′s, this policy was scrapped and the post office was required to charge for the actual costs of delivery. That coupled with the rising costs of printing and preparing for mailing (such as labeling and pre-sorting) pretty much did in most of the smaller-circulation, specialty magazines.
With the wide-spread usage of the internet to deliver news and other timely information, the remaining magazines had to drastically reshuffle their content, dropping the Latest News sections and expanding the commentary and in-depth reporting. Now with this new digital magazine format, it can all be covered online – instantly. No waiting for monthly copies or an unreliable delivery schedule.
You say that you want to have a paper copy to use elsewhere or take with you? Take a look at the tool bar on Urban Firefighter, click on Print and you will have the option to select whatever page(s) you want printed out. That was a wise move to put that feature in there. The next aftershock of the digital earthquake has just jolted the publishing family.
But we still have to physically approach our apparatus and manually check it out. So let’s get started and I’ll go make some more coffee. See you back in the day room.
Also on FireGeezer…
- Morning Lineup – May 8 – May 8, 2012
