Take-away from Tour d’Argent

Printing was invented five and a half centuries ago by Germans. Internet in its present form of World Wide Web - by Americans less than 20 years ago. Some think the younger brother of a printed magazine, an on-line publication, is what matters today and definitely is all that will matter tomorrow. I cannot agree with this, and not because I am a newbie in Internet matters, because I’m not. None of us in EISA is. We all use the Web in the most intensive way, while our principal occupation and our passion are based upon 550 years old technology, somehow improved by computers, lately. I think I can explain why. Why Internet is so popular as a source of information? It is fast and it is cheap. Two keywords in a single phrase. Fast and cheap like in McDonald’s and about equally widespread. Why not treat your friends with a Big Mac to celebrate your promotion? Because you want something of much better quality. More expensive, right. More time consuming, right again. Tour d’Argent sounds better…

Much the same happens with printed and electronic special interest publications. Even when (almost always “when”, not “if”) an issue of a printed magazine ends up as a web page, it is always a much higher quality source of information than the best of dedicated electronic services. Because with Internet magazine the one who runs it knows: any misprint, word, figure, phrase or statement can be rectified, changed or deleted at any moment. Fast and cheap. You cannot do it with a printed magazine. A great Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov wrote: “Manuscripts don’t burn…” That’s why with a printed magazine you have to do everything right at a first attempt. None of your misprints, mistakes, misjudgments of mere mediocrities will ever burn. You have to check everything, to think about what you might have missed and about what you can improve before a huge printing machine starts exporting the fruits of your work to eternity. Practical hint? There is one: if you hunt for high quality special interest publication in the Internet, make sure that before getting there it was printed on glossy paper with a heavy machine based on the invention of Johannes Gutenberg. Up to now it is the only way to guarantee that it is not a Big Mac. Fast and cheap…

Andrei Elutin, Editor-in-chief AvtoZvuk magazine, Russia

Published on September 7th 2009