An insight on the need for home grown magazines in the Middle East.
Designers, Artists, and in general technologists need better magazines that come form the region for the region. Juniors and new entrants need better support and encouragement. Yea, we are deeply in need for real magazines that actual techies write in it, not just a bunch of editors who pickup stories from other sources. We need real web techies to talk about the web, real designers showcasing and highliting an individual’s work and judge. No editors, please.
Tune in and listen to the show. Please leave your feedback which is a key point about tech/art publishings in the Middle Eeast.
Running time: 00:11:21
File size: 7.8 MB
Download: Episode #4: We need magazines!
Related posts:
4 Comments
1 Rida Al Barazi wrote:
Yes we are really in need…
One interesting thing I’ve been reading and hearing about lately is the self publishing, mainly it is for books and technical books specifically. Well I saw few magazines out there (I mean USA and Europe but not yet locally) being published online in PDF or any soft-copy formats, they started like this and then they could grow it better. I think we should start doing it; not only because I believe we “can” but also because I don’t trust that the local publishing firms “care” if they “can” in the first place.
Maybe we should encourage the experts to write, and start something up, there are many tools out there that can really help us. We can use such a tool like print-on-demand and stuff like that.. let’s brainstorm this here and see what can be done about it.
If you found such an interesting magazine available online in soft-copy format and/or hard copy format, would you be interested in buying it? What do you expect to see in it?
2 dotone wrote:
I can’t agree more with you on the subject of self-publishing. However, the region has not yet gained the trust of the communities and not even the blogosphere. Blogs haven’t reached the commercial world in the ME. Blogs are means for self-expression for individuals at the time being. My point, it’s either commercial and backed with the right funds or it’s not going to get enough PR thus noone knows about it.
RE: online magazine, I do buy and read soft-magz, and as I mentioned in the show, what we need is expertise sharing. It ain’t about the content, it’s about the context of the content. The right cover-up!
3 Magnus wrote:
On the subject of publications and syndicated content, today in Gulf News’ Friday insert, there is a spread entitled “Netting the crowds” which is all about MySpace.com. It’s an article from Knight Ridder so it’s clearly written in the US for a US audience. But why publish a two-page article in the UAE all about a web site that is blocked here? Doesn’t make much sense to me.
4 dotone wrote:
Who are they writing for? This is a real mess. Haven’t tech-editors lost their integrity yet? Who’s monitoring all this?