This is a guest post from high school student Ethan Eirinberg about his experience learning to code, and how he’s now encouraging other students to do the same with his recently launched creative coding competition, CreateHS.

When my brother was a freshman in high school, he wanted to create an iPhone app. Much to his surprise, building a simple iPhone app was a complex task. To get him started, he bought lots and lots of boring books. After 2 years and 19,000 lines of code, he finally released his app to the Apple app store.

His app inspired me to learn how to code. But two years, five huge books, and 19,000 lines of code didn’t sound appealing. So I went online to learn, but I didn’t know where to start. This process was extremely frustrating to me.

I waited until high school. Much to my surprise, when I entered high school, there was no programming class that I could take. In fact, there wasn’t even a club I could join to learn coding. In the meantime, while looking for solutions, I saw an article that said that Treehouse was giving away accounts to their website. Unfortunately, it was only available to college students. I passed it on to my brother.

About a month later, he called me to let me know that he had won! He was ecstatic. As was I. As soon as he returned home from college, I begged him to let me try it. I must have spent hours that night watching video after video. I’d learned more in a couple hours than I had with all the other websites I had tried.

I had finally found a solution to my problem. I began to think… “if I had this problem, I bet other kids in my school did too”. I set off to create a club. But who could teach it? I surely wasn’t good enough yet. So I called Treehouse to ask if we could use their website to teach us. I was ecstatic to hear that they were as interested in teaching high school kids as I was. I went to the student activities coordinator at the high school to get the club started, but I needed a teacher sponsor. After months of searching and planning, we finally started the club. We were so lucky that the only computer science teacher (AP Computer Science is only available to upperclassmen) agreed to sponsor it.

Last year there was a total of 40 members, but I hope for it to continue to grow this year. This past summer, I spent time thinking of new ways to motivate the club members. I thought it might be a good idea to get the members involved with competitions, but as I looked for competitions in which they might want to participate, there were none that encouraged creating. They were all based on solving problems.

So I decided to create my own. CreateHS is a website that encourages high school students to submit entries to the monthly challenges provided. The beginning challenges are to create websites with specific functionalities. The entries are judged on creativity, challenge requirements, and design. With the continual support from Treehouse and other companies, I hope to grow CreateHS to a global scale.

To learn more about CreateHS, check out its featured article on ReadWrite.

The post Student Success Stories: Ethan Eirinberg appeared first on Treehouse Blog.

The following is a guest post by Shane Osbourne (@shaneOsbourne) from England. Besides being a musician, Shane is also an open source developer. Shane has developed a tool called Browser-sync for making CSS injection work across a wider swath of browsers than you might assume possible. And it does more than that, I'll let Shane tell you about it.

The ability to inject newly-modified CSS on every file change (without reloading the page) is the type of workflow-enhancement that you never truly appreciate... until you lose it.

This is exactly what happened to me recently.

For at least the last 12 months I had been using Grunt and the LiveReload browser extension to inject CSS when my files changed. It felt like a really nice workflow until I had to work on a project that required IE7 & 8 support. The LiveReload plugin I was using simply didn't support older versions of IE. For the first time in over a year I had to resort to manual page-refreshes every time I made a change to my CSS. It was painful. It's also why I built Browser-Sync

Introducing Browser-Sync

Browser-sync is a tool that gives you cross-browser CSS injecting. It will watch over your files and the moment you make a change, it will inform all connected browsers to reload (inject) the new CSS. This all happens without reloading the page. Most importantly, it works in every browser I've been able to test it on.

How Browser-Sync came to be

I knew from the outset that simply inserting new CSS into browsers is easy enough to do. The issue I had to solve was how to communicate a file-system change back to the browsers. The Grunt + LiveReload combination I was using previously relied on Web Sockets. This is why there was no support for old IE.

Say hello to Socket.io

I had my lightbulb moment when using Karma for running unit-tests. Karma allows you to run tests in multiple browsers. While testing in IE8 one day, I realized that Karma was automatically re-running the tests on each file save.

Bingo. I had found something that was able to watch the file system for changes and inform browsers all about it. I started to dig into the Karma source code. Eventually I discovered they were using Socket.io to achieve this.

Starting to come together

Everything was in place. With the pain endured from manual page refreshing as my driving force and the discovery of Socket.io as my inspiration, I was well set-up to build a tool that I would use myself on a daily basis.

Getting set up

This guide assumes you already have Grunt installed inside a project and know how to use it. If you don't, then you can learn about it on the Grunt site.

Browser-sync can be installed as a stand-alone command-line tool, or as a Grunt plugin. Because of the current popularity of Grunt I'll focus here on how to set it up as as Grunt Task. If you would prefer the command-line only approach, please checkout these instructions.

From the same file directory as your Gruntfile.js:

npm install grunt-browser-sync

This will install Browser-sync locally into your project. Now you can make sure it's loaded by Grunt by placing this near the end of your Gruntfile.js:

grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-browser-sync');

Finally, like all Grunt plugins, you'll need to provide some configuration. At a minimum, you'll need the following:

// Inside the Gruntfile.js config object
    browser_sync: {
        files: {
            src : 'assets/css/style.css'
        }
    }

With your config set up, you can run the plugin with this command:

grunt browser_sync

Now you should receive an HTML snippet that you can paste into the footer of your website. Place that there. Now whenever you change that CSS file (or it's changed by another build process), it will be automatically injected into all browsers.

Note: there are ways to specify multiple files and you can use wildcards (*) too. Please see the Readme on Github for more information.

A more automated approach

The example above is great for those situations where you already have a server. Building a site with WordPress or Rails, for example. But the downside is that you have that manual step of copying & pasting a snippet into a file. If you're working with static files (HTML, CSS, & JS) then you can use the built-in server instead. The built-in server will automatically insert any HTML snippets needed so you don't have to.

To use the built-in server, just set your config like this.

// Inside the Gruntfile.js config object
    browser_sync: {
        files: {
            src : 'app/css/style.css'
        }, 
        options: {
          server: {
            baseDir: "app"
        }
      }
    }

Files will now be served from the app directory and all the magic needed to inject CSS will be done for you.

Going even further

If you use the server option above, did you notice the IP address and port that is used? Normally something like 192.168.0.8:3001? Browser-sync tries to figure out a good external IP address to use for the server. That means you should be able to connect to it from any device/computer on the same WiFi network. The cool thing here is that the CSS injecting will work across all mobile devices and tablets too. When you see this type of automation in action, you're going to find it hard to live without it.

If it doesn't work for you

In my tests, I've found that on typical WiFi networks, Browser-sync does a fantastic job of getting the correct IP address. However, in a large office setup, you may find that it chooses an IP that is not accessible to other devices/computers. If this is the case, and you know what the correct one is, just provide it as an option like this:

// Inside the Gruntfile.js config object
    browser_sync: {
        files: {
            src : 'app/css/style.css'
        }, 
        options: {
          server: {
            host: "192.168.1.1",
            baseDir: "app"
        }
      }
    }

Beyond CSS injecting

Being a guest post on CSS-Tricks, I've focused mostly on setting up the CSS-injecting part of my tool. But Browser-sync does a lot more than that! It has something awesome called Ghost-mode.

Ghost mode will keep track of all connected browsers and keep the following in sync:

1. Scroll Position - extremely helpful when developing with multi-monitor
2. Form Fields - fill out a form in one browser and all others will be populated with that data.
3. Links - Reviewing a few pages of a newly built site? Have it open on all your devices and when you navigate from page to page, all the browsers with follow you around!

Conclusion

I hope this all sounds pretty cool to you. I loved building Browser-sync. I welcome feedback and issue reporting so that we can improve it as a community.

Remember Browser-sync can be used two ways:

• Stand Alone - installed globally, use anywhere
• Grunt Plugin - installed locally, configure as grunt task

Cross Browser CSS Injection is a post from CSS-Tricks

AMST 422: Preserving Places, Making Spaces in Baltimoretrains students to complete research in cultural history and develop related public programming working with a community in Baltimore city. For spring 2014, we are working with the historic industrial community of Baybrook, which includes Brooklyn and Curtis Bay and the “lost neighborhoods” of Masonville, Fairfield, Wagner’s Point, and Hawkin’s Point. AMST 422 students have been working with residents of the community since 2009. The course incorporates the skills of social entrepreneurship—using entrepreneurial methods to produce measurable social outcomes. The culmination of the course is a public event in the community. Students complete numerous hours of community service, including attending community meetings, park cleanups, citizens on patrol walks, college fairs, and community gardening events to build relationships with residents. AMST 422 students will work with Professor Steve Bradley and his ART 390: Imaging Research Center (IRC) Fellows students on the final community event and populating the Mapping Baybrook digital exhibition with content: http://mappingbaybrook.org/  

During the semester, Students will research the environmental history of both industry and the green space in the community. We will also work with “green businesses” emerging in the area and with Jason Reed, who runs the Filbert Street Community Garden in Curtis Bay. Reed received an Open Society Institute (OSI) Fellowship in 2011 to continue his work with the garden and connected projects—which he calls the Curtis Bay-Brooklyn Urban-Agriculture and Stewardship Program (CUSP). The project uses urban agriculture to improve the health of residents, foster community pride, and increase awareness of the need for land stewardship and good nutrition: http://www.filbertstreetgarden.blogspot.com/ 

Central questions the spring 2014 classes will explore are: What is environmental justice? What are the parallels between the disciplines of art and history? Can students develop hybrid methods of inquiry? What does true interdisciplinary collaboration look like? How does collaboration complicate and enhance the learning experience? How can art and history be used to enhance justice in urban communities?

Course funded by seed money from a Kauffman Faculty Innovation grant and a Breaking Ground grant.

On Monday, November 4^th, UMB is hosting Nobel Prize Laureate Dr. Craig Mello for a lecture followed by a Q&A session.  Dr. Mello is the Blais University Chair in Molecular Medicine and Co-Director of the RNA Therapeutics Institute at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.  He has been a Howard Hughes Medical Investigator since 2000.  His pioneering research on RNA interference, in collaboration with Dr. Andrew Fire, has been recognized with numerous awards culminating with the prestigious 2006 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

When:                  November 4^th, 2013 @ 9:30 am – 11:00 am

Where:                 Medical School Teaching Facility Auditorium

                              685 West Baltimore Street

                              Baltimore, MD 21201

 

The lecture is being sponsored by The Nobel Prize Inspiration Initiative, AstraZeneca/MedImmune, and the University of Maryland, Baltimore.  This interactive session will be filmed by The Nobel Prize Inspiration Initiative as part of its global program to help Nobel Laureates share their inspirational stories and insights. 

Check out fellow MCSer Marissa Piegols'  blog post about her summer internship experience with the Office of External Relations within the Office of the Inspector General at Social Security Administration. Here's a quote from the post:

"On the surface, an unpaid internship at the Social Security Administration might sound boring to someone with aspirations of working at a company like Google or Apple. You might be surprised at how much SSA can offer you in terms of valuable experience and learning opportunities! Regardless of the office you work for, I strongly believe that with an open mind and a good attitude, any internship with SSA will be an experience you will never regret."

Marissa has informed me that they are currently "looking for applicants with strong writing and/or graphic design or video editing skills." She has also kindly offered to pass along your resume to her contact there. Please email her at marissa5@umbc.edu if you are interested.

The goal of responsive web design is to seamlessly adapt the look and UX of a website to different platforms. The technique is still very young and in many areas outstrips the available technology.

Trilibis has announced the launch of SNOW — Software eNabling One Web — that aims to improve our ability to deliver responsive design by making websites truly device-aware, and by addressing the problems that have slowed its adoption:

• Responsive sites are slow
  A recent Akamai study of 347 responsive websites, found that 86% had the same data load regardless of their destination screen. This means that both a desktop computer and a bandwidth-limited iPhone are processing the same amount of data.
• Converting to Responsive Design usually means a complete website rebuild
  Often, both layout and architecture must be completely rethought to support fluid content.
• “Responsiveness” refers only to screen width, and no other parameters
  You can’t use RWD to target content by device or browser type, or otherwise optimize the experience for specific mobile use-cases.
• Inconsistent browser support
  Not all devices and browsers support Responsive Design the same way. More than ever, users pop from platform to platform while exploring a purchase decision: keeping responsive sites consistent remains a chore.

SNOW is HTML5-compliant server-side software that allows web designers and developers to create truly responsive multi-device websites. Based on a single code-base, using one URL, sites built with SNOW load fast across the full array of devices and seamlessly adjust their layout and user experience to different platforms.

Two of the main claims of SNOW for web designers is that it maintains and draws from a constantly updated device library and can augment existing web assets and code, rather than requiring a total rebuild.

SNOW is available as a free developer version or enterprise license. To find out more about how it works, visit the Trilibis website, or download their white paper.

Have you developed with SNOW? How do you solve these responsive design dilemmas? Let us know in the comments.

Featured image/thumbnail, snow image via Shutterstock.

100 Professional Hotel Icons + 58 Scribble Social Icons – only $5!

by Jacki Stone

It is clear that the ongoing dramatic transformation of the media industry in all its formats (audio, video and text) leaves the door open for a complete reinvention of the publishing business. This transition has opened up opportunities for experimentation, and many players are trying to define the future of media in general, and journalism in particular.

In this article, we will discuss several recent such experiments, with special focus on new forms of storytelling, as well as new business models for publishers — a fascinating recent trend called “subcompact publishing” will be our main reference.

“The publishing ecosystem is now primed for complete disruption.” – Craig Mod

The Media Industry As We Knew It Is Gone

The traditional music industry is on the verge of disappearing because iTunes, and then Spotify, contributed to a radical shift in audiences’ music consumption habits: from physical packages to digital-only ownership to cloud-based subscriptions.

In terms of movies and television shows, Kevin Spacey, who starred in Netflix’s own hit series “House of Cards,” spoke recently at a broadcasters summit in the UK about how the movie studios and cable TV channels are having the rug pulled from underneath them by online streaming services and audiences’ increasing preference for ongoing, complex character development.

Due to a multiplicity of financial and societal factors, deep character development falls beyond what Hollywood is willing to provide these days (and, to be fair, perhaps even beyond what a feature-length movie is able to deliver). TV series are best suited for that kind of storytelling, to speak nothing of the new behavior conditioned by the “anywhere, anytime” character of Internet services such as Amazon Instant Video and Netflix: We now binge on series, not wanting to wait for the following week to see what happens next.

Newspapers (and, to a lesser extent, magazines) have been struck the hardest by the ubiquitous availability of news and analysis on the Web. Their circulation figures have been plummeting for decades; but in the past few years, newspapers have suffered a vertiginous advertising decline that is affecting their quality of coverage and their adoption among young audiences.

Backing up this troubling diagnosis with research and figures no longer seems necessary, but here are three data points from “The State of the News Media,” published by The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism (2012 numbers):

• “[Newspaper] print advertising revenue is now just 45% of what it was in 2006. The growth in online ad revenue has been slow.”
• “More than three-quarters of print classified revenue has been lost since 2000.”
• “[Magazine] newsstand sales continued to decline for a fifth consecutive year. Single copies dropped about 8% compared to the same period last year.”

The recent and surprising purchase of the historic Washington Post newspaper by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos caused in the industry both deep nostalgic lamentations and earnest (if uneasy) hope, at a time when audiences have grown accustomed to getting their news from somewhere else.

The Washington Post. (Large view)

In a recent interview, Bezos declared his belief in an upcoming “golden era” at the Washington Post. He knows the quality of the product and is ready to experiment to find out the best and most viable way forward for the journalistic enterprise. However, his optimism is not Pollyannish:

“The Post is famous for its investigative journalism. It pours energy and investment and sweat and dollars into uncovering important stories. And then a bunch of Web sites summarize that [work] in about four minutes and readers can access that news for free.

One question is, how do you make a living in that kind of environment? If you can’t, it’s difficult to put the right resources behind it.… Even behind a paywall [digital subscription], Web sites can summarize your work and make it available for free. From a reader point of view, the reader has to ask, “Why should I pay you for all that journalistic effort when I can get it for free” from another site?”

The Rise Of Native Digital Journalism And Subcompact Publishing

Media companies that are native to the Web, such as The Huffington Post, The Daily Beast, Gawker and Buzzfeed, to name a few, seem to have been able to thrive in the current news-as-a-commodity world, despite all odds. The Huffington Post even won a Pulitzer Prize for its extended national reporting, at a time when these new media companies are criticized for being long on commentary and short on reporting.

Innovation is sorely needed in newsrooms worldwide. And innovation is what industry outsiders tend to be good at, because they look at existing problems with fresh eyes and no preconceptions or baggage. Their natural mode of operation is to start from scratch, which is what seems to be called for with newspapers and magazines.

The way stories are told and sold is, therefore, in the process of being expanded, if not reinvented, by many different players who are armed with digital technologies, from startups to individuals to established media companies. One such example of innovation is a relatively new trend known as subcompact publishing. Started by a few seminal articles written by former Flipboard designer Craig Mod, subcompact publishing is a cri de coeur for simple, delightful reading experiences delivered at a good price. It’s that simple — but then there’s so much more to it.

Subcompact publishing has been defined as a method of digitally publishing focused HTML-based content targeted at carefully identified audiences, primarily via mobile devices, in small, weekly (or so), mainly text-based issues, adhering to simple user-interface and navigation principles. Each issue may be free or may demand a small payment. Monetization happens via Apple’s Newsstand, Amazon’s Kindle platform and more.

Based on this definition, calling this trend “fresh” may seem unjustified. What’s the big deal? After all, advocating for simple navigation and standards-based coding is nothing new. But this collection of attributes represents nothing less than an entirely new mentality, birthing a new experience and, in the end, a new business model to support it, a business model centered on digital-only publishing (selective even to the point of using just iOS or Android), with low overhead and operational costs.

The reading experience is built on long-form content, delivered to the right audience — a public thirsty for it — primarily via mobile devices and wrapped in a delightfully uncomplicated user experience. It represents the minimal viable product, an experience that’s satisfying precisely because it’s both tailored and trimmed, a product that includes no extraneous or dubiously useful features. It fits its context and purpose naturally, like a glove.

At this point in the evolution of digital experiences, people are wary of flashy websites and apps. They just want something that works, that delivers the content and functionality they need without frills, anywhere and anytime they want it. Users are no longer amused by excessive navigational flights of fancy. They appreciate design for what design is good at: solving problems smartly, elegantly and beautifully, without excess or complication.

This pragmatic philosophy of design contrasts starkly with the majority of magazines currently available for tablets, whose issues can take a long time to download because of their heavy graphics and excessively dense contents. Publishing only once a month — a print-based schedule of production — requires that these magazines include a lot of articles in each issue. In essence, they are glorified PDFs — print layouts crammed into a very different platform and experience and, thus, unsuccessful in their attempts at attracting an audience.

Examples Of Subcompact Publications

Are there any examples of this minimal viable product, these subcompact publications? Craig Mod often mentions Marco Arment’s “The Magazine” (Arment is famous for having cofounded Tumblr and creating Instapaper) and Matter, a Kickstarter-funded publication that sells individual, high-quality, long-form stories at $0.99 each, for consumption on any device, alongside extras such as participation in the publication’s community and even access to authors.

The Magazine’s introductory description. (Large view)

The digital-only publication Quartz, whose publisher is the venerable Atlantic Media Company, seems to fit the idea of subcompact publishing quite well, too. Launched a little over a year ago, it has already gathered a reputation for solid content in a fresh package. Its HTML5 interface is optimized for tablets, and it shows: Its designers have dispensed with traditional global navigation and static taxonomies. Instead, the website features its contents using just a couple of templates that don’t significantly morph from desktop to tablet. Quartz’s smartphone experience is very minimal and effective for browsing and discovering content as well.

Quartz’s home page jumps right into an article. There are no section fronts. (Large view)

Another new and interesting media experiment in subcompact publishing is exemplified by Epic, a magazine founded by two former magazine writers with Hollywood experience, Joshuah Bearman and Joshua Davis. Epic aims to provide a platform for Hollywood studios to find great true stories, like the one on which the Oscar-winning movie Argo was based (whose script was written by Bearman). The publication also helps writers showcase their work and gain access to studios.

Epic’s article page. (Large view)

The Elements Of Subcompact Publications

The user interfaces of all of these subcompact publications have some commonalities — a few imperatives, if you will.

1. Flat Hierarchy

These publications avoid layering content, in favor of as flat a hierarchy as possible. Bring the audience directly into the story that you are highlighting, rather than ask people to “shop around” to find something they might be interested in reading and then have to click on successive levels of detail before getting to the heart of the matter.

The Magazine’s home page is the first story of each issue. (Large view)

2. Scrolling

Scrolling is favored over pagination to move users through content. And multi-column layouts are avoided. Layouts with vertical scrolling and single columns are easier for audiences to use on smartphone and even tablets, and they are certainly easier to design.

The Magazine’s single-column vertical-scrolling layout. (Large view)

3. Minimalism

The navigation is very minimalist: a simple table of contents per issue, with at most a link to previous issues, all tucked away in the now ubiquitous hamburger menu. This menu does not even need to be persistent, because the navigation drawer can be invoked by a familiar touch gesture (in this case, a swipe to the right). Trusting the user’s command of their own device’s interface means respecting the user enough not to burden them with excessive visual cues.

The Magazine’s drawer navigation. (Large view)

4. 7-Inch Tablets

Craig Mod notes that 7-inch tablets are the ideal form factor for consuming long-form content. Utility-based apps might have a different optimal size and shape but would ultimately also benefit from the “minimal viable product” mentality of subcompact publications.

The Magazine’s portrait layout on tablets is the same single column as on smartphones. Simplicity is paramount. (Large view)

5. Typography

Beautiful custom typography is quickly becoming the norm across digital experiences. Featuring it on the Web has been difficult for years, but no more. Subcompact publications that rely on HTML5 embrace the best that the typographic tradition has to offer — myriad typefaces to choose from and optimized tracking and leading, line widths, contrast, sizing, ligatures, old-style figures and more. In fact, The Magazine considers text to be its main design element, recognizing its essential role as a vehicle of narrative and also a pillar of all Web content.

The Renaissance Of Long-Form And Multimedia Journalism

As we’ve seen, subcompact publishing is a good vehicle for another new trend in online media: the renaissance of long-form storytelling, as exemplified by Web platforms such as Medium and Longform. While the visual Web (think Instagram, Tumblr, Vine, data visualization and infographics) is in ascendancy, an almost contrary — or at least complementary — text-focused way of creating and consuming media is also on the rise.

Subcompact and long-form publications don’t shun photography or illustration, but they clearly favor written pieces over photo essays and videos. These long-form articles may be original or culled from in-depth journalistic and literary writing found online.

Medium’s home page. (Large view)

The popularity of long-form pieces on the Web flies in the face of research by Chartbeat. Technology writer Farhad Manjoo recently summarized the research’s conclusions for Slate. In essence, half of the people who visit a Web page tend to leave (or bounce) without engaging with it at all. Of the remaining users, only about 25% read past the mid-point of a typical 2,000 pixel-tall Web article. Slate was the subject in this particular study, but the results reflect reading patterns elsewhere on the Web. Given the coverage and interest that long-form journalism is getting these days, the audience for it must be large enough to support it, despite what this research suggests.

A different but equally interesting publishing experiment is Cowbird, a beautiful and inspiring collection of story units. Each of these units — or sagas, as the website calls them — comprises one or more photos plus brief essays to form a self-contained, deeply personal narrative that can be delightfully navigated via almost infinite horizontal scrolling. It’s a refreshing format, built on an economical yet impactful combination of photos and text. It speaks to the increasingly common yearning for a less overwhelming Web (a “slower” Web), one where discovery is serendipitous, not algorithmically powered, and where content is carefully curated, rather than firehosed. The website is fully supported by the donations of members of its online community.

Cowbird’s home page. (Large view)

As of late, we have also witnessed the revival of an old trope: multimedia storytelling. Since the ancient time of the CD-ROM, the dream of a digital format that mixes modes of expression — text, photos, video, audio — has been pursued by publishers, including the famed Voyager Company. The time then was too early, and the technology never caught up with the vision. Or perhaps it never took off because it was an instance of additive (rather than innovative) thinking, trying to arrive at a wholly new medium by mixing together all previous media formats.

The New York Times rekindled that old multimedia flame when it published “Snow Fall,” an impressive multimedia experience that mixes words, photo galleries, infographics, audio and video, and laid out in tall single-page sections with parallax background effects. It took online publishing circles by storm. Twitter was buzzing with panegyrics, and some observers intimated that we might be witnessing the future of online storytelling. Since then, we have seen similar examples from ESPN and others. The New York Times itself followed up with another feature, titled “The Jockey.”

The New York Times’ “Snow Fall”. (Large view)

ESPN’s sports feature package. (Large view)

The New York Times’ pieces were impressive feats of narration, design and engineering, to be sure, but I feel a little overwhelmed by stories that present such a plethora of diversions from the main narrative trunk. Furthermore, in an era when most publishing enterprises are increasingly templated and automated by content management systems, pieces such as “Snow Fall” likely require a significant amount of manual design and coding. Publishing them regularly might be too expensive for most publications.

For instance, ESPN’s feature packages appear to be templated, and it shows. As beautifully designed as they are, they aren’t quite as rich, fluid and organic as their New York Times counterparts. This is all speculation, because I don’t know how the Times and ESPN approached their productions. However, on the occasion of Slate’s recent redesign, editor David Plotz compared its own plans for long-form content to the Times’ “Snow Fall”:

“We’re not a site that is going to invest six months of someone’s time to create a single beautifully designed story. I don’t think that is a sensible way to allocate resources at a spare and efficient magazine like ourselves.”

On a separate note, to touch on the purely pecuniary, let’s next examine an ingenious new take on an old and perilous business model: donations. Flattr offers a way for users to support individuals whose content they enjoy, all in a seamless experience and paying per item according to a monthly budget that they set up when signing up for a Flattr account. When a user likes, favorites or stars an item in Instagram, YouTube, SoundCloud or another digital content platform, Flattr automatically credits the author of the piece.

Flattr recognizes that audiences are as or more loyal to particular writers and filmmakers than to the outlets through which their work is featured. Those outlets lend authors their credibility, but Twitter has contributed to the popularization of individual creators, and now audiences have developed an affinity for that level of personal brand. They literally follow them.

The problem with a model like Flattr’s is that, at the end of the day, it relies on a certain philanthropic impulse in the audience. Only a small proportion of people normally feel inclined to pay for stuff they can get for free.

Subcompact Publications In The Marketplace

Returning to our theme and to conclude, subcompact publications are not ubiquitous yet, particularly on platforms such as Apple’s Newsstand. The trend is less than a year old, but I would have guessed that many publishers would have by now adopted this smart and economical way to feature stories and to deliver issues automatically in the background to subscribers.

Part of the reason, perhaps, is that Apple’s Newsstand remains an underexploited digital ecosystem. TypeEngine is a company that is trying to facilitate the monetization of content on Newsstand. And there are others. In a way, it’s never been easier to start publishing long-form pieces and to charge for them. If the quality of the content is high and the publication is properly positioned for the given audience, authors can greatly benefit from direct access to their audiences.

The Future Of Journalism

While these business models and narrative experiments are encouraging and very much needed, the jury is still out on whether quality journalism, particularly the kind of expensive investigative reporting that made newspapers such as the Philadelphia Inquirer famous, will be commercially viable in a future of even more fragmentation of channels and audiences and of even more commoditization of the news.

Will investigative reporting and expensive foreign coverage find a new home in these all-digital subcompact publications? Can these activities be supported by these new publishing models? They might be in some cases, but will those be enough for a thriving civic society?

The democratization of amazing publishing avenues such as Newsstand is leading to increased competition and noise in the marketplace. Will what happened to blogs (extreme proliferation to the point of triviality) happen to subcompact publishing when almost anyone can start a publication and charge for content?

In sum, is journalism a viable business in an era of extreme audience fragmentation and dilution of advertising dollars? Or will it have to be subsidized by governments and other institutions to be viable in this new digital world? And will journalism be less or more independent if it has to be backed by patrons in order to sustain itself?

Here’s another twist: In the current gold rush to creating and disseminating content, major brands have an opportunity to become publishers, now that some traditional media outlets are on the wane and leaving gaps to be exploited. Here, the question of objectivity pops up again. But if brands are up front about the provenance of their content, offer accurate and valuable information, and tell engaging stories that capture the attention of their audiences, then their publishing efforts could end up significantly enriching our culture.

(al, il)

© Jose Martinez Salmeron for Smashing Magazine, 2013.