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(This is the second half of a conversation with Craig Mod. Part 1 is Episode #17: Everything in Moderation. In it we covered publishing and crowdfunding; in part 2, we talk about how to cope with the multi-platform disruptive future for publications.)
Craig Mod writes essays that have the power to change the way you look at everything around you. At regular but somewhat distant intervals, he posts a long bit of writing that retrains your mind to see the world as he does. But he doesn’t just talk, he creates projects that demonstrate his points as a designer and publisher of print and electronic work.
On Twitter, he is @craigmod.
Craig’s superb “Subcompact Publishing” essay explains so much about how to think about presentation in new media. His “Kickstartup” essay, discussed extensively in part 1 of our talk, remains completely relevant three years after publication. The New Yorker offered a video explanation of how to use its app that included Jon Hamm, Lena Dunham, and Alex Karpovsky.
Aldus Manutius
(the commonly used Latin form of his name, Aldo Manuzio) is a towering
presence in the history of printed books having invented pocket-sized,
inexpensive formats.
Rupert Murdoch’s The Daily cost a fortune to launch, but it did have 100,000 paying subscribers
by the time it was shut down. Reports are that it invested $30 million
to set it up, had 100 staffers when it shut down, and had a burn rate of
$500,000 per week.
Quartz is a born-digital news site from
the Atlantic. Andy Baio, the co-founder of the XOXO conference and
brain-altering experience I’ve talked about so much, indexed the public links of the Daily for a while. (Andy was threatened with a lawsuit
because of his transformation of a photographer’s famous picture of
Miles Davis. While a court might have found in Andy’s favor, the cost
was too high to litigate it.)