Sports Illustrated Tablet Demo is Not a Magazine

You may have seen the video promoting how Sports Illustrated may be delivered and consumed on a soon-to-be-announced tablet computer. In all, it represents a new level of digital delivery way beyond the simple page flipping technology that is commonly available today. However, it is not a magazine.

After viewing the video, it is clear that the creators spent a lot of time and effort leveraging the strengths of the digital platform. There are many nice features – the integration of video, sound, games and fantasy leagues. There are also some great sharing capabilities built in. It delivers a lot of power to the user. Partly because of this, it is a very different experience than consuming a magazine.

I found myself thinking: this is a lot of work to navigate through all this stuff. And, as much as I love digital media, I also enjoy the more thoughtful experience of consuming a magazine produced by a team of great editors and designers. I want to see what the editors think I would enjoy in the very best Leading Off photos. I want to consume little morsels of information packaged for me in the front of the book. I want to be drawn into stories about sports I don’t really follow. I want to reach the end of the book and be rewarded with some insight and entertainment. And, I want to see the ads – for the hot new Nike shoe or a car I wouldn’t have thought of – sitting alongside a story I didn’t know I wanted to read.

The experience I’m describing requires a top publishing team that knows how to pace the readers’ experience, entice them to explore different stories and lead them through a magazine. It is this experience that builds strong relationships between readers and their magazines. And to me, it is one that is lost when the publisher puts the reader in the driver’s seat.