Web Sites Ride the Back of the Print ‘Dinosaur’

The billboard ads fairly drip with irony.

“Print is a dinosaur,” a man proclaims.

“Which magazine did you read that in?” asks a colleague.

Words to that effect appear in the new magazine Inside, which--some might say ironically--is the product of the Web site Inside.com and the sponsor of those ads. The site, which tracks entertainment and media news, was launched amid hullabaloo just a few months ago by high-powered journalists, including author and editor Kurt Andersen, who seemed to be heading into a new frontier, leaving behind the world of ink and paper.

Not quite. And they are joining a trend that some may watch with amazement or perhaps satisfaction: Web sites are increasingly spawning all manner of print publications, from glossy magazines to books both modest and flashy, on topics from space exploration to insouciant nudes.

“The magazine has a different theme,” said Richard Siklos, the editor of Inside, which initially is being mailed to selected entertainment, media and technology professionals but will be available on newsstands with the next biweekly issue. “It’s about how technology is changing the entertainment and media industries,” while the site covers television, film, books and other media “vertically.”

The founders of Inside.com say they always intended to start a magazine, though some observers express skepticism. “I know when I came, I didn’t believe it,” said Siklos, though he saw it in the business plan. “I can understand why other people say that.”

Though the site is not in financial trouble, as so many others are these days, said Siklos, the magazine will bring benefits. It generates revenues through advertising--50 ad pages out of 112 in the premiere issue--and it should draw more viewers to the site, which charges fees for some of its content and displays ads. Within four years, the magazine is expected to have a paid subscription base of 350,000. It also makes the writers happy, said Siklos, to have “another platform to strut their stuff.”

Symbiotic Web-print links, from cyberspace to rack space, have gained popularity in these days of dot-com collapses, but the shift was building already, participants say.

“The idea is that it’s a kind of brand,” said Laura Miller, New York editorial director of the online magazine Salon.com and editor of a 455-page tome, “The Salon.com Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Authors,” recently published by Penguin Books. Using the brand name on the book “can’t hurt, and we’re able to promote it on our Web site with 2 million page views per day,” which means hundreds of thousands of readers. Going to print is a way to “monetize” the content produced on the Web, a way to sell extra ads and “diversify sources of income.”

Space.com, a site founded by former CNN financial journalist Lou Dobbs and dedicated to outer space, launched Space Illustrated magazine (in partnership with Hearst Magazines) in September, then acquired a trade publication, Space Business International, and just inked a deal for a trade paper. It doesn’t intend to stop expanding, said Fred Abatemarco, senior vice president and editor in chief for Space.com media offerings. Television and four books are next.

“The Web is the most immediate way to launch” a concept, he said, “but why ignore others? . . . Our strategy focuses on Space.com being the premier brand, the premier source of information on all matters that are space-related.”

On a more intimate scale, Nerve.com is also taking a multimedia approach. Its subject matter is sex, though with such a highbrow angle that the quality of its writing has been compared to The New Yorker’s.

“It’s a lot of fun to write for something where you’re pushing the envelope,” said co-founder Genevieve Field. “I think we were the first literary magazine from the Web to go to print,” she said. “We’ve always been big fans of paper. When we launched [in 1997], it was unhip to admit we might want to take our magazine offline. Everyone was sort of purist. Now it’s starting to change, maybe in the last six months.”

But Nerve started to issue books almost right away, and launched its glossy bimonthly this April. “We really see distinct markets,” she said. “A lot of people want to relish the photography, to see it big and bold on the page, so it’s really worthwhile to go to a magazine.” A hardcover, “Nerve/The New Nude,” just published by Chronicle Books, continues the boldness, while “Full Frontal Fiction: The Best of Nerve.com” (Three Rivers Press) doesn’t sport a single photo. As with Space, TV is not far behind in the search for cross-media audiences: “We’re developing a a TV show for HBO . . . based on the Nerve brand and sensibility,” though the subject matter of the half-hour series scheduled for next fall still hasn’t been set.

A book is also “a classy promotional tool,” said Heather Byer, executive editor of Contentville, which sells electronic and print publications over the Web (and also does a lot of print advertising for its site). “The Contentville Reader: Voices at Launch,” a giveaway featuring excerpts from the site that started in July, has been “a way to lure people to the site . . . . We certainly saw the irony of launching a Web site and using the book to promote it.”

In several cases, a well-known Web site name is used by a print magazine, with the site having no editorial input. That’s true for the 4-year-old and highly successful magazine Yahoo! Internet Life and the newer Expedia Travels.

When editor-in-chief Barry Golson came to magazine publisher Ziff Davis in 1995, it had published two issues of a modest quarterly called ZD Internet Life. “It was my feeling we could launch a real magazine if we had a connection to a brand name, something more distinctive.”

Ziff Davis had been thinking so, too. Other than the logo of the popular search engine--which also sells subscriptions to the magazine and keeps a portion as its pay for the licensing--the print publication has tried to be “universal, friendly, helpful and a little cheeky,” like the Yahoo! attitude, said Golson. But there’s no editorial influence, he said. “We’ve had the use of the best-known brand in the Internet universe.”

Ziff Davis is trying the same model again with the magazine Expedia Travels, which is also editorially independent of the commercial site from which it derives its title, said executive editor Rosemary Ellis. This makes for better journalism and reflects well on both enterprises, she said. “It’s smart from a business standpoint. People aren’t naive about the Web anymore. They want a brand they can trust.”

The agreement between Travelocity the magazine, which started in September, and Travelocity.com, the Web booking site, is a “partnership,” said publisher Randy Kazmierski. American Airlines is the magazine’s publisher, he said, though it doesn’t say so on any page. “We rely on them [the Web site] for a lot of their research and understanding of the online travel booker. . . . The site is for purchasing, the magazine is for entertainment.”

There may be yet another trend brewing: the simultaneous debut of Web sites and print magazines. One, a glossy design magazine, launched this week with an elaborate companion Web site, Onemedia.com. The magazine staff independently picks the fashion, home furnishings or cars it wants, said Stacy Morrison. The Web staff then finds links where people can buy those products or similar ones. The Web site, which also has its own animated features, is largely about “service,” she said, while the magazine allows a reader “to lose oneself in the world of images and words.” No one, it seems, is looking at print as a dinosaur.