Over the past few months I’ve noticed a crop of new Internet based, and digitally published magazines like Road and Drivers Republic. Being a bit of a petrolhead generally new car websites are a good thing… but for some reason these new online magazines haven’t really clicked with me and I’ve not really been sure why.
It hit me earlier that it’s not the content that I don’t like – most of it is very good, its the format. In most cases either the whole magazine or individual articles are presented in what are essentially glorified PDF files. For me at least that format just isn’t nice to use. What works in print doesn’t necessarily translate into digital media. Perhaps it’s just me, but I’d rather have articles published in a blog like format – something I can subscribe to, search etc. in my view Car magazine does a much better job. Sure the PDF style approach has its purpose, and I can see the benefits for the publishers, but I don’t think it works for publishing content online.
On the plus side, it’s great to see such good content being available for free. Drivers Republic in particular has some fantastic features and it’ll be interesting to see how it develops over time.