Summary
My idea is to publish an offline magazines containing selected blog posts from Arabic blogs.
Description
Idea
The idea behind the Arabic Blogs magazine is to select each week a group of blog posts from Arabic blogs, take the permission of their authors, and publish them in a weekly Arabic magazine. This magazine will also give bloggers writing in Arabic a stronger voice and may encourage more people to start blogging and bloggers to write even better and more often in an attempt to get their posts published in the printed magazine.
Issue
The main issue with this magazine is that once it is successful, it can be easily copied and probably many printed blog magazines would sprout out. Anyway, that could nevertheless be a good sign and would encourage the blogging scene even more.
Political Blogs
In order to be on the safe side, avoiding political blog posts would be best. Even blog posts that have a sideline political slant to them. Also strong opinionated blogs about religion, football or any strong controversial subjects.
Idea Defense
The reason why such magazine never existed and why the idea of such a magazine would be rejected right away by almost anyone is that people would argue saying “Why would anyone spend money buying a printed version of blog posts when he can just easily read all the posts online which is less costly, more convenient and easy and the posts would be fresher online?” To answer such argument I can say the following: First of all, there is a large part of the community that do not have access to the Internet and a large part that do not know how to use it and many who do not know how to use it well. In addition, reading a printed version on paper is more friendly to the eye, more convenient to the body and can be easily done at any place without the need for a computer and Internet access. Finally, the printed posts in the magazine would be a selection from a huge changing sea of Arabic blog posts; the selection process itself would take a lot of effort from a talented and multi0-skilled team and would not be done with the same level of efficiency by a single person trying to find his way along a sea of Arabic blog posts on the web. Think of the magazine as printed version of a blogs digest. If we add to all the above reasons the positive effect the magazine can have in galvanizing and strengthening the Arabic blogs voice, then we have a winner idea for a printed magazine.
Website
The magazine can also have an online web site. Whether the web site would also include a (free) copy of the content found in the printed magazine is yet to be decided. The web site can also be a hub for Arabic blogs providing the following: 1) a list of links to a growing number of Arabic blogs 2) a search engine enabling search within all Arabic blogs (using Google’s custom search engine) 3) ability for visitors to create their own blogs on the site (same as with blogger and maktoob blogs) (perhaps using a solution such as Drupal or the like).
Sections
Topics and posts selected can be a variety of interesting non-political and non-heat-lifted once. The magazine can be divided into sections with each section having a specific class of topics. For instance, one section could be for posts that narrate a personal experience, another about thoughts, another about opinions, a section for teens, one for college stuff, on for school bloggers … etc. posts can be edited first for length, typos, language and perhaps also for censoring reasons.
Paying Bloggers
Blog publishers who get their posts selected may (optionally?) get paid for getting their posts printed. (This is yet to be decided.)
Journalists
We will need some journalists in the team and we can start taking the legal steps for starting such a magazine. We may also start modestly with a folded one-paper 4-pages small newsletter like publication first and try circulating it on a weekly basis then go on expanding it into a full fledged magazine later upon finding it successful.
Ads
Ads in the magazine can be a good source of revenue when the circulation of the magazine starts reaching large numbers.
Business Today (Egypt) started as a small few-pages publication, and had ads (though cheep) even then. Now it is a killer English magazine in Egypt.
Starting Point
We can contact the owner of The Employer Magazine (now the Training Magazine I think) and get to know if she gets interested in the idea and would like to join in making such a magazine. Here experience in publishing her first two magazines would be of benefit.
Marketing
We can use the idea of “I am reading the Blogs Magazine therefore I am a cool modern guy connected with latest trends.” That could be the image we play on when presenting and marketing the magazine. It can make it spread like wild fire from top to bottom of society and perhaps with a strong readership base among youth. The magazine should be priced right and not be cheep.
Translation from select English blog posts can also be included.
Implementation
Obstacles
- Getting legal permission for publishing the magazine.
First Step
- Discuss with a publisher.
Progress
- Contacted a magazine publisher and explained the idea to her. She liked the idea.