Friday, October 9, 2009

A digital magazine to Flyp over

This interview with Flyp editor Jim Gaines shows not everyone is asleep at the wheel in journalism circles. Here's the video description:

"FLYP is an independent media startup trying to reinvent the magazine online, not just by posting print/image/sound/video content to a website, but by rethinking what digital story-telling and the next-generation magazine might become. The presentation/design aesthetic is built into the architecture of the story, intended not just to make a story look pretty, but to pull a visitor deeper into the ideas or narratives. Text, image, sound and video are elements to be juggled based on their effectiveness in telling pieces of a story. No one element consistently dominates. Navigation through articles is meant to suggest a kind of digitally tactile sensibility.

Even though its physical form is ephemeral electrons, FLYPs origins are anchored in the physicality of the traditional magazine. Each story is a small multimedia production project in itself. Text is important on this site, but image, sound and video arent just supporting media; various media take turns in the lead, depending on the story or idea. FLYP tries to combine the high-design richness of a glossy print magazine with the dynamic potential of a media-rich website in ways that suggest that a general-culture publication can be a compelling window on culture. Editor-in-chief Jim Gaines was formerly managing editor of People, Life and Time magazines."