Jim Gaines on Digital Delivery

OurBlook interview with Jim Gaines, founder and editor-in-chief of StoryRiver Media

What are the benefits of digital delivery for newspapers, magazines, books and other publications?

JG: Benefits include saving the cost of paper, ink and distribution, instant revisability, multimedia capability, collaborative functionality ... make a story into a conversation ... ubiquity (no carrying it around; it's as close as your device), etc. The real question for me is why a lot of printed material is still being printed when most communications are more powerful, less expensive and more functional in digital rather than printed form.

What are the drawbacks?

JG: For most communications, there are no drawbacks to the effective use of digital publishing and digital devices.

What are the benefits of digital delivery for readers?

JG: The primary benefits of digital delivery for the consumer is that the product is weightless, ubiquitous, always up to date (if the creator wishes it so), cheaper to produce (therefore, presumably, to buy) and enriched with dynamic media.

What are the drawbacks?

JG: Where physical existence is necessary, the communication must be printed out. There is also the DRM issue ... that Amazon, for example, has its own proprietary software, without which their products can't be read. I think this will soon go away as an issue because consumers won't put up with it when there is a common alternative.

What are the various modes of digital delivery and are there significant differences among them? Is there one particular type of device you think is best?

JG: I love my Kindle, but I think the DRM problem makes it problematic in the long term. E-ink is limiting in any case. I think the iPad, the other tablets and their descendants will be the devices of choice because they will incorporate other media into the reading experience.

Is this nation at the starting point of digital delivery, in the middle of it or at a sophisticated stage? Is there something important that has to be developed technologically for digital delivery to advance?

JG: I think it's going to be the third or fourth generation of iPad and its cohort that will make digital "readers" a standard device, and by then, I think "reading" will be a fundamentally different activity, engaging multiple senses and using multiple media at the same time.

Is there anything else you'd like to say about digital delivery?

JG: It is the future, but right now, I think we're overly focused on the devices rather than the crafts and arts of deploying them usefully. I look forward to the day when we will no longer be talking about the delivery mechanism and will be, instead, having a vivid and thoughtful discussion about what's being delivered on those devices in qualitative terms. If we're going to be a good society, digital delivery will bring us beautifully composed content about important things. Right now, the business model for doing that work is uncertain at best, but I'm confident that will emerge in time. We're still in the early phase of a revolution.

(Jim tells us, "My new digital publishing business ... StoryRiver Media ... is attempting to reinvent the process of Web and digital publishing and what consumers and the media industry think of as digital content." Before this, he was the editor-in-chief at FLYP, an online multimedia publication. "This position came after a 30-year career in print, during which I was the managing editor of Time, Life and People magazines.")