In an Effort to Prove That America Has an Insatiable Hunger for My Morning Jacket Features…
Harp magazine is back. Kinda. The Silver Spring-based music magazine, which ended its run in March, has relaunched as an online-only publication, Blurt, that includes a "digizine"—a digital magazine that includes all the contents of a typical music magazine. Accessing new content is easy! If you want to read EIC Scott Crawford's editor's note about the mag's new direction, here's all you have to do:
1. Go to www.blurt-online.com.
2. Click on the magazine cover at top right.
3. Click on the "next" button.
4. Again.
5. Again. Hurry, there's an ad for an Amy Ray solo album!
6. Read pull quote: "The question on a lot of bloggers' lips—laptop screens–right now is, is print really dead?"
7. Realize that you can't copy and paste said pull quote. Or e-mail the article. Or provide a direct link to it.
8. Note that, while print may be having a death rattle, ungainly Web-print hybrids are dead from the start.
11:29 am
How about saying something about the content of the site? For instance, they have some Black Keys videos that are awesome. So you don't like the digi mag, so what. There's a lot more cool stuff there to talk about....why such a narrow minded view?
I was a big fan of Harp, thought it was one of the best mags out there. Personally, I'm really glad they're back!!
2:34 pm
Sorry Samantha, the content is king but the distribution and format matter. THere are lots of good things in Blurt but if the casual search engine jockey/blogger/interweb user has to drill down into your web page to find it ... it s life span will be short. Blurt is trying to drive content to a digital version of a paper music magazine. instead of reimagining what music publishing on the web can be. The old magazine format failed and this appears doomed to failure as well. They created a niche magazine for people of my generation who waited patiently for Rolling Stone or Cream or Billboard or even Spin and Vibe to tell them what was happening. Those days are gone and they are not coming back.
8:57 pm
hey Mr.TJeff,
I suspect there is some sour grapes and jealousy as it relates to your critique of Blurt. It is to bad the city paper doesn't have the balls to say that their destination is to be a strictly on line paper--and slowly but surely they are moving in that direction. I would point out to you that your criticisms of Blurt were made when the web site was about 2 weeks old and they are still tweeking the problem areas. Furthermore if you did any research into why Harp went under you would find a whole can of worms concerning Jazz times and their organization-the long and short of it -was Harp was the fall guy for the failure of the Jazz times organziation-but thats a story left for your investigative journalism team if they have the gonads to pursue it(I suspect not). Concerning Blurt--I would like to point out to you the hiqh quality calibre of the writers who are writing for them. Sorry to say this but they are a hell of a lot better than the music writers you have at the Washington City Paper. But of course in your infinite wisdom you fired the one of the best if not the best music write in the tri-state area--Mark Jenkins. A little bit of humility respect/sense of humor would do you some good. The arrogant posturing of putting down Blurt speaks more to your insecurity than to your credentials as a new media guru But hey I know deep down your a nice guy-now if only you had the guts to show it.