Graham did, however, and he gave us the opportunity to explore homelessness and tell its stories in a visual and narrative way that we think pushes the conversation about homelessness a step further. So we did 12 Basket Magazine. What do you think?

We charged MLF nothing for this magazine. First of all, as a digital magazine it costs us a fraction of what a print magazine would have cost. Second, we don’t intend to get rich from nonprofit client’s funds. It can’t happen.

Really this is an experiment: Can we create a custom publication for a nonprofit that’s so engaging to the nonprofit’s community that they read and interact with the content and advertising. Is that something we can sell to advertisers who want to tap into our readers’ commitment to socially responsible, community-focused businesses?

We’ll see. In the meantime, please let us know what you think.

Open 12 Baskets Magazine now.

Alan Graham asked us to make something provocative, so that’s our number-one goal. The idea is to prove MLF’s thought leadership in homeless issues, which is evident to anyone who’s ever worked with the organization.

Right now, the issues is slated to publish in April, but we’ve already enlisted a team of super-talented magazine contributors, the first and foremost being Robin Finlay, a former Austin Monthly art director and one of the best they’ve ever had. She brings not only her talent, but her ideas and her passion for the issues we’ll cover. She’s already a regular volunteer and community advocate, and we can tell it’s going to be fun to work with her.

Thanks to Alan for giving us the opportunity to work on this little experiment. Stay tuned!

It felt like we were the only ones thinking about this stuff back then. Even the digital magazine vendors we worked with couldn’t understand why we were worried about “readability.”

Since then we’ve discovered many like-minded people all working on the same issues we are. It’s very gratifying, on the one hand, but on the other it’s really frustrating because they have access to resources we never did.

Lately, though, it’s mostly been gratifying. Surely you’ve seen demos of the new Tablet/Reader/Pad-type things out there. No? Oh, FFS, please plug in! Okay, if you haven’t seen them, check these out:

1. The Sports Illustrated version: There are lots of things I like about the user interface of this model, but at the same time it sure has a lot going on. Part of what makes a magazine so fun to read is that you always know where you are in the magazine – front stuff and the front, features near the back, etc. This SI model seems easy to get lost in. 

Another thought I had in watching this video was – how the hell do you manage production? So feasibly you could have the print, the website AND this e-digital-tablet thing. I’m a managing editor so I’ve done this kind of stuff before, but this gives me a heart attack just thinking about it. What do you even CALL these pages?

2. The Wired version: Totally lame. Hardly worth looking at, from this video at least. Next!

3. The Bonnier version: This one made me want to kill myself and come back as a digital magazine.

You just have to watch this one and compare it to the other two, listen to the reasoning behind it, read about the ideas it’s trying to preserve, to see the amazing difference between something created by people who love magazines and something created, as above, by people with an assignment and no imagination.

Lots of talk around digital magazines has been around the device and how that’s going to be the thing that helps digital magazines take off. Right now, I admit, most people don’t get it. And when they start to get it and see digital magazines on these concept devices, they tend to ask why someone would want a device just for reading magazines: Shouldn’t digital magazines work on devices we already have? Shouldn’t the devices do other things than let us read digital magazines? Who cares about magazines anymore anyway?

Well, I’d love a device just for reading magazines. The whole point of magazines anyway was to give you a little time away – not just from the screen – but from email and the Web and Twitter and everything else that distracts you. The great thing about putting it on a device is in the distribution – digital passalong, digital sharing, digital timeliness…

Conde Nast has every right to be trying to make its own device and own the distribution tool. As the respected and experienced John Garrett says, it’s about owning the distribution, not the content.

But somebody somewhere is going to have the passion for magazines, the clarity of thought about what makes them so wonderful, and the resources (ugh! it’s always about who has the resources!) to figure it all out.

There’s plenty to read about how journalism has to change, how writers have to learn programming, how print’s dying, etc. The bottom line to all this doom and gloom is just that – the bottom line. The fact is it’s expensive to keep journalists on the payroll, especially when the content they produce isn’t particularly marketable. We’re losing quality content to marketability.

But advertisers are in trouble, too. What happens to department and furniture stores when the newspaper goes away? Where are local restaurants going to advertise when regional magazines fold? They can follow the content and go online, but even that medium’s in trouble because ad rates don’t match expenses for these sites. Just because they’re not printing doesn’t mean it doesn’t cost money to put content up there.

Plus advertising on the Web means you’re fighting with all that noise. It takes three seconds for someone to click away, and often less time than that.

So advertising has to get clever. We’re talking to a very clever company called Clatterhead about its application, which uses “word of mouth” and “consumer-to-consumer” pass-along to take a client’s message to an exponentially wider audience than a single ad alone can garner. Incorporating these new strategies can not only help take advertising to the next level, it can take digital publishing to the next level.

If advertisers aren’t thinking of new strategies like this now, they’re already losing ground.

It’s just kind of tiring, all the whining, which goes something like this: “We’re extremely important, and no one else is qualified to do what we do. And we’re out of work, and no one will hire us, and I might have to take a job in PR, FFS!!!“ 

While I agree that “serious journalism” is important, I disagree that non-professional journalists can’t do what professionals do. I agree that not all amateurs DO do what professional journalists do, but I think there’s one major reason for that. But first, more whining from professional journalists….  

 This story in particular is pathetic: The Future of News

Will citizen journalists ever replace their traditional counterparts? “No,” said Howe, bluntly, since they lack “a deep network of sources,” editing staff, legal services, and the fine points of reporting know-how, such as filing information requests under the Freedom of Information Act.

But “some successes” are possible, he said, and there are signs of “a great process of professionalization going on.”

Sproul acknowledged that the future of the news “is an inclusive one,” with media organizations acting as final “curators” of reportage.

Baron said citizen journalists will never replace in-depth newsgathering, but they can be useful in supplementing the act of reporting. They might supply “one photo, one fact, one opinion,” he said, but “journalism is more than that.”

 Here’s the only thing different between a professional journalist and an amateur one: A salary.

And I don’t mean that in the tritest way. I mean it like this: If you’re getting paid a salary to interview, hunt down facts, file Freedom of Information Act requests, and do all the hard work it takes to put together a story worth a shit, then you don’t have to worry about doing something else to pay your bills. Amateur journalists don’t do all that because they don’t have the time… they have to go to work.

One reason I say this is because I have worked alongside many professional journalists who went to professional journalist schools and got their professional journalist degrees… and I would say less than half of them cared to meet all the professional journalist criteria, as defined by the aforementioned article.

And the more I do editing, writing, assigning, and – I’m just going to say it – journalism…. sometimes for great pay but most of the time for little-to-no pay, the more I see what it all comes down to, and that’s time. I would love to spend all day working on a single story… or better, like some magazines, a couple of months working on a single story. But like a lot of freelancers/amateur journalists… I have to produce content to get paid. And I don’t get paid unless I produce content.

And maybe that’s what drives me nuts about the whining. It’s the same whining we heard from pro journalists when we asked them to blog or at least create some content for the Web site. Boy, did they whine! Yet they had time to write a foot-long e-mail message about how they don’t have time to contribute to the blog. Interesting.

Here’s a business model that’s going to revolutionize journalism: From now on, professional journalists, you get paid for every piece of content you produce. Online, on Twitter, on a blog, on paper, as a speaker, in a video, in a podcast… you get paid by the piece. And probably not that well.

Professional journalists, you are all now freelancers.

In the latest issue of GivingCity we ran a story about the thousands of state employees who donate millions each year to Central Texas charities. We made this sample of different organization’s contributions from a random selection of agencies. I thought the contrast between the different agencies was shocking – even after you take into account the number of employees per agency. In the magazine I had to make this graphic fit to the spread, but I made this version so that I could show all the information unhindered by the page-size. After realizing I had all this empty space on the right, I also decide to place the actual pages from the story on the graphic – they remain readable. You can see the original after the jump, or download the whole issue here.

Check it out! Become a fan! Yay for social media! Here’s the link.

Get the new issue here!

Inside this issue:

John Thornton launches the new Texas Tribune website, the $4 million nonprofit. Learn how you can help reduce the number of high school dropouts in Austin. Sara Hickman offers the merits of volunteering with your children. Thousands of state employees in Central Texas give millions to local charities every year – who knew? The Lance Armstrong Foundation is a global organization with a local commitment. Just because you’re unemployed doesn’t mean there’s not work you can do. Dozens of small churches are cropping up in Central Texas, ready to serve. Finally understand what all this Obama “call to action” business is about. Alissa Magrum starts a nonprofit with a jersey and a dream.

Not “bad” so much as wasted opportunities. What other digital magazines seem to forget about the format are two main things:

1. It’s on a screen
2. It’s still a magazine

I know these points are obvious and so don’t mean much on their own, but let me explain.

It’s on a screen. Why are you creating your magazine in the same way you make the print magazine and just uploading the PDF? First of all, the dimensions are all wrong – it’s a portrait image on a landscape screen. No one likes to scroll up and down on each page. Secondly, in order to read anything - because people still read magazines – you force people to zoom in and then out again to see where they are.

So we’ve got two really bad experiences going on in a single screen: scrolling up and down repeatedly and also zooming in and out. It’s no wonder people don’t like to read digital magazines.

It’s still a magazine: Then there are those that create the PDF for the screen (thank you) but then make this hideous, boring, flat, amateur-looking “magazine” with clip art, and try to compensate by running annoying Flash videos and audible page turns. The latter is a gimmick, the former attribute has yet to be proven as something that will attract and engage readers. We link to videos outside the magazine, but I’m not sure you want to watch it within the magazine.

Wait, scratch that. Watching it within the magazine would be great, but we have yet to see this function well. If it loads quickly, the video screen is usually very small. And if it’s big enough it takes forever to load.

The thing is, this digital mag thing has potential. Here’s a list of its top attributes:

1. Cheaper to print. Because you don’t print it.
2. Cheaper to distribute. Notice on these first two I didn’t say “free.” They still require a lot of work, but the cost is exponentially lower.
3. More… pass-along-able. Yes, you can hand your print magazine to a friend or float it in a doctor’s office for a month, but you can post a link to a digital magazine on Facebook, Tweet about it, email it, add it to a comment, add it to your LinkedIn page… think of the reach.
4. Linked up. Think of the potential of “link journalism.” And think of the power of an ad with a Web-specific call to action a reader can actually act on with a click.
5. Long-form content mixed with compelling design. You can’t get that on the Web the way you can in a magazine.

We’re obviously fans. If you think you’d like to explore the benefits of a digital magazine for your organization, please let us know.

The attendees seemed to tolerate me. It surprised me that most of them were already plugged into social media, especially blogs. This is good news for writers, especially, because I believe blogging can demonstrate your ability to write, your passion and knowledge for a subject, and your traction with readers.

The gist of my message can be boiled down to a few things.

1. Build your brand with social media. Don’t be scared to get a little personal but be sneaky strategic about it.

2. Pitch yourself, not your story idea. Chances are editors have lots of story ideas; what they need are professionals to write them.

3. Go beyond magazines you can get on a newsstand. There are millions of magazines out there for every niche you can think of. Seek out custom publishers, especially. They have clients with nice budgets and lots of content needs.

That’s just my two cents. I also had to bring up my pet peeves – call the editorial office with questions, don’t just wonder…. read the magazine to see what they usually write about…. don’t take rejections personally; editors are busy people. Hopefully this inspired some of the Freelance Austin members to go out there and get some new work.

There was a PowerPoint that went with the presentation. Not sure how useful it is but you’re welcome to download it here.

NOTE! We hope to be hiring soon, so if you’re an Austin freelance er/illustrator/photographer/designer, please make sure we know about you.