Magazines on or off line?

Aarna Hanley

A magazine?- a bound printed form of media containing print and text? Magazine, the term, is one we are all familiar with but when one begins to try to define it we run into difficulty as it represents a media form that has more differences than similarities.
To complicate the matter of defining it, a recent magazine trend has been to develop an online presence. Magazine titles are no longer confined to their printed form but now coexist within the digital realm.

 The purpose of this paper is to analyse the relationship between the print form of a magazine title and it’s website. In addition the paper will consider how the identity of the magazine is changing due to the presence of its online counterpart. This paper is concerned with a genre of magazines publications known as independent magazines. The Independents as defined by Megan Le Masurier have an editorial focus of “under-represented manifestations of popular culture and creative work for independent producers of fashion, design, the visual arts, photography, music and film although a few are overtly political.” (2010: 4) The paper will discuss the continual importance of the printed form to a magazine’s indentity in particular refernce to the Independents. The goal of this paper is to offer a more appropriate definition of a magazine within this changing digital climate.

Within the theoretical framework of media studies the paper will assess magazines digital presence through comparative textual analysis of both the print and online forms of three independent magazines AnOther, Interview and COLORS.