| News Section Proposal |
By Doc Searls
Chris DiBona of VA Linux Systems says there is a fundamental problem with "all this talk about the need for an enterprise Linux magazine." The problem is, he says, "There is no enterprise Linux story yet. It's too early. There is an ISP story. There is a Web server story. There are other stories here and there. But we're really over-reaching if we think there is an enterprise story. It's just not here yet."
But the perception is here. So is the projection. To everyone who wants a good fight (especially the press), Linux is perfectly cast as Microsoft's worthy opponent. And every CIO and system administrator in the business world has a powerful demand right now for what Microsoft alone — just like IBM alone a generation earlier — cannot provide: competition; choices; opportunities for new software (and new kinds of software) to flourish.
Meeting that demand is Linux Journal's job. By default.
Linux Journal has no competition among print magazines. Linux Magazine was a one-shot prototype. It's dead. Enterprise Linux won't appear until October at the earliest, and the publisher is so deadly-dull and unplugged from the Net (and therefore from the Linux community) that there's no was it'll do much more than further discorage the majors from jumping in.
So Linux Journal has two challenges: 1) meet demand by the business world for good, hard, interesting, useful Linux information; and 2) meet demand by the existing readership for good and useful technical information.
To start meeting the first of those two demands, I have spent the last two weeks studying five things:
Linux Journal is "The Premier Linux Magazine" and "The Monthly Magazine of the Linux Community." LJ has a devoted following in the real Linux community: the developers who write the code and the system administrators who make things work. The magazine's subjects are, with few exceptions (to borrow from Slashdot), "stuff that matters." DejaNews, which catalogs Usenet postings (among other things) finds nearly nine thousand posts that contain the phrase "Linux Journal." With few exceptions, LJ is regarded with respect, granted authority, and understood as a central feature of the Linux community.
In the words of network guru Craig Burton, Linux Journal also "makes Doctor Dobbs look like Martha Stewart Living." Nothing wrong with that; but there is no reason that Linux Journal can't be both Doctor Dobbs and Red Herring. Val Landi (for decades the number two guy at IDG) thinks it should be both, and modeled on Byte in its best years.
"Byte was for two populations: power users and developers. Linux Journal can own the same space for two reasons:
Sam Whitmore, a former top Ziff-Davis editor, agrees, but with some exceptions:
"There has been only one successful magazine to bridge the techie and business markets, and that was Byte," Sam says. "And Byte failed because there are two different business agendas going on, and it couldn't sustain a single sensibility around them both. A similar thing killed PC Tech Journal, which was a great magazine that got caught in a political war between PC Week and PC Magazine, both of which thought they could cover the same territory. Neither one of them did, but PC Tech Journal got killed anyway."
Sam thinks Linux Journal has a terrific incumbent position. Here is a condensation of what he says:
Both Val and Sam are adamant about taking advantage of Linux' native Web involvement. Linux already has what every business covets. LJ should host conversations with Linux folks, get their participation, and use the Web to feed print into the magazine, which in turn will feed more LJ-related activity onto the Web. In other words, make the Web side of the house as active and involved as possible. Look at Forbes, ZD and some of the other business books. They all expose their contents on the Web, each article with a unique and permanent URL. There is no risk of losing subscribers by doing this, and these guys prove it. What matters is reader involvement, and exposing content fosters that in a huge way.
Val Landi:
for a lot more box office, especially as the Linux Community grows to include much more of the enterprise computing business.
So there is a challenge to exand the magazine in ways that
Add an exciting and appealing new section
There are three criteria for model magazines today:
Who:
All magazines have sections. At the very least they have these three:
These might go by a variety of names: features may be "articles," letters may be "feedback" and editorials may be "opinions." But it's a rare magazine that doesn't have all three.
Here is a list of other sections, common to most if not all magazines:
Examples:
Note that these are sections, and not elements. Here are a few elements:
Have fun
Source code stuff
Easily-discovered numbers
We said/they said
Quotes versus reality
Chris DiBona
Differences in the curb weight of different distributions
Index: number of lines of code
A harper's index.
Threads and topics
yellow pages Cant' get to every site you want to get to. An arial view. What talk soup does for talk shows. most ludicrous statements. worst attitude. some editorial judgement about what';s happening there. Heavioly voiced approach to the content. news or upfront. Someone even making 30 k, template the thing. hard to present it both ways. what's the media kit. what will investors embrace. what's the usp. it needs to be a single approach.
linux moderate, honest, distanced from the cult . rthe cult stuff makes the ip people nevrous.
The pc business didn't exist when byte had that cachet.
A directory of everything. What the mining company does. Interview them once in a while. talk to the sysops. An ongoing directory for this stuff. LInux guide.
Section Breakdown for September or Octover: