James Tuckerman, Editor-In-Chief, Anthill Magazine

To celebrate the Atlantic’s current issue with the thought provoking cover story, “Is Google Making Us Stoopid?”, the publishers of Australian current affairs periodical The Monthly are sending their friends from across the pond an online gift subscription.

This ‘gift’ includes access to the Monthly archive and Gideon Haigh’s award-winning essay published in February 2006, “How Google is Making Us Stupid.”

Yes, it’s another fracas between magazine publishers.

At Anthill, we haven’t been so outraged since SmartCompany.com.au decided to run an article titled ‘30 hot entrepreneurs aged 30 and under’ just 10 days before the long-publicised release of Anthill’s inaugural 30under30 awards.

Or since Dynamic Business ran its ‘Disaster Strikes’ cover two months after Anthill’s highly successful and trend-breaking ‘Disaster Edition.’

Or since Fast Thinking decided to launch in Australia because Australia didn’t have a magazine dedicated to innovation (What the!?).

Actually, I’m not outraged at all. I’m not outraged about the Atlantic article or my spurious accusations above (although I did gain personal pleasure from airing them).

No. Personally, I’m just proud that an Australian organisation is creating debate around the world. And I’m flattered that our ideas are entering the ‘zeitgeist’ and finding traction elsewhere.

Fortunately, the list of examples and controversial claims above also serve my purpose, by not-so serendipitously leading me back to the opening question.

If new technologies are making it easier for anyone to uncover and apply the ideas of others from around the globe, if Google is providing us with the answer to almost any question we can ask, if technology is overcoming the need to think cognitively or make personal deductions… is Google making us dumb?

The debate is obviously more complex than that.

Atlantic contributor Nicholas Carr makes the observation that, because media are not just passive channels of information, because they supply the stuff of thought, they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away at our capacity for concentration and contemplation.

“My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski,” he says.

At least, I think that was his main bone. I was too busy checking out a link on sea-turtles.

The Monthly’s Haig seems to be more upset at the effectiveness of Google as a tool for plagiarism and its ability to effectively convey misinformation.

Ultimately, a good angle is a memorable angle, just as surely as a good idea is infectious. And it’s impossible to prevent a good angle/idea from turning viral.

Personally, I doubt that any concept, cover story or angle that has appeared in any magazine, including Anthill, has ever been truly original, untouched by outside forces, and Google is not to blame. Quite simply, an idea can’t percolate in a vacuum (and all publishers rely on cultural mores, means and schemas to connect with our readers).

This statement includes the examples given above (from Google’s effect to business disasters and apple motifs). Yes, it might shock and amaze, but Anthill was not the first to focus on disasters, use apples on our cover or write about innovation.

The challenge is making sure that new thinkers understand the distinction between plagiarism and the proper means of sharing ideas - giving credit where credit’s due.

Is Google making us dumb? I suspect that Carr is right in one sense. It is changing the way we think and analyse information, but possibly it’s doing so in a way that’s no different to the effect the mass production of books had on the way we reason and communicate.

In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates bemoaned the development of writing. He feared that, as people came to rely on the written word as a substitute for the knowledge they used to carry inside their heads, they would, in the words of one of the dialogue’s characters, “cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful.”

Fortunately, I don’t need to be scholar in Greek history to know this tid bit of information. I just applied an example provided by Carr, verbatim (I plagiarised with credit, or is that an oxymoron?).

Like writing, books and libraries, Google and other search engines (and the web) are opening us up to perspectives and experiences, many of which were previously inaccessible and impossible to share cheaply .

So, to mashup an old quote with a new setting (searched and found using Google, edited and manipulated using my wee, human brain)…

If we can all see further from the shoulders of giants, I’m just grateful for the comfy perch, steering system and dashboard that search engines have provided.

And I, for one, feel smarter for it.

*UPDATE: It seems that the battle of “similar” ideas is not confined to print publications, with Channel Seven now being accused of ripping off an Apple iPod TVC with its new TiVo promotions. Seven’s riposte? “There’s no copyright in an idea.”

James Tuckerman, Editor-In-Chief, Anthill Magazine

The inevitable has occurred.

Some smart publisher has bought The Bulletin. Sadly, it wasn’t me.

Sydney Funds Manager Peter Hall is the new owner. He also reportedly has a stake in international current affairs periodical Monocle and UK political science journal Prospect.

In Saturday’s Age he makes the comment that he would like the new editorial culture to be “spiky, irreverent and fun, not stodgy.”

Hmmm… It sounds eerily like the Anthill Media Kit. But we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt (simply because we look forward to seeing the new look Bulletin, in its next incarnation).

We’ll be watching with interest.

James Tuckerman, Editor-In-Chief, Anthill Magazine

If you haven’t guessed already, we love to write about cheeky and provocative companies. But we rarely get the opportunity to talk about our own corporate shenanigans, successful or otherwise.

Today is one of those rare, self-indulgent occasions.

In early February, with news that Australia’s oldest circulating business magazine would be closing after 127 years, we released an email with the eyeball-grabbing title, ‘Who wants to help Anthill buy The Bulletin?’

And wowee! Did we get people talking.

The flood of emails, blog comments and phone calls generated by our rally-to-arms not only opened our eyes to the hidden popularity of The Bulletin (gotta love the loyalty of magazine readers). But it only showed us the faith you, our readers, have in Anthill. To check out the blog comments, click here (bless you all).

So, was it really our intention to buy The Bulletin?

Not in our wildest dreams. (Although, our ‘play’ did give rise to some pretty vivid dreams in the months following.)

The purpose of the email was to grab the collective collar of the Australian magazine industry, give it a good, hardy shake and make known the obvious: We are here and we are here to stay (cue Eye of the Tiger on your cassette tape now).

And what were the outcomes of this chest-beating exercise?

Firstly, the story was picked up by the daily papers and then the industry rags. To read our favourite (’tongue-in-cheek’) item of media coverage, click here. The story was circulated through various blogs and electronic channels, including the prestigious Walkley Awards membership newsletter. It also generated record traffic levels on our website (always good for our number crunchers).

But did all the kerfuffle motivate the powers that be at ACP, owners of this now defunct magazine institution, to pick up the blower and give us a call?

At this point, I’ll defer to my circumspect response when approached by Australia’s leading source of political gossip and corporate skulduggery, Crikey.com.

“No comment.”

Am I averting a dangerous breach of some carefully crafted non-disclosure agreement or am I simply adding fuel to the fire of controversy? (Heh heh.) Only time will tell.

In the short-term, we hope our subscribers got a giggle (at least a surprise) when they received our current edition and that we didn’t confuse too many news agency proprietors with our own little attempt to ‘revive The Bulletin’.

The image below is currently available as the reverse cover of our Apr/May edition…

…The Bullantin (Australia’s leading source of Ant-related news).

Click here (or the image) to read the headlines.

Posted by James Tuckerman, Publisher, Founder & Editor-In-Chief

Last week, ACP Magazines made an announcement that, to my mind, simply didn’t make sense.

The Bulletin, Australia’s oldest continuing weekly magazine, would be closing after 128 years on Australian shelves.

According to ACP chief executive Scott Lorson, the magazine’s demise could be blamed on “the impact of the internet”. Circulation figures of 57,039 were approximately half of what the magazine enjoyed in the mid 1990s.

In a statement, Lorson said: “We have invested heavily in the title with top editorial, photographic and design staff who have been devoted to making The Bulletin the best of its genre. However, despite our best efforts, the magazine has simply not been commercially viable for some time.”

Indeed. A bit too ‘heavily’, me thinks. Let’s do the maths.

Firstly, with a retail cost of $5.95 per copy and sales of over 57,039, The Bulletin should be attracting weekly revenues of around $339,382. Of course, subscriptions make up part of this circulation figure and subscriptions are usually sold at around 30 percent less than retail. So, let’s be conservative and subtract 30 percent from the entire weekly sales figure estimated above, giving us weekly sales of $237,567.

Most Australian magazine publishers would agree, that’s a hefty chunk of change.

And, of course, that brief analysis fails to consider advertising revenue.

If memory serves me correctly, a full page advertisement in The Bulletin was around $14,000. You’d expect 20 full pages per edition. But, to err on the side of caution, let’s assume the ailing magazine has been attracting 10 full pages per edition. That’s $140,000 in advertising revenue per week. Factor in web advertising and you can safely project an even larger figure.

Add these two sums together and it seems reasonable to assume that the magazine was attracting approximately $375,000 in revenue per week.

That’s $1,562,500 per month.

Or… $18,750,000 per year!

Am I mad? Is this right?

How can an Australian magazine generating $18m a year in revenue be considered not ‘commercially viable’?

For those people who know a little bit about Anthill Magazine and its origins as a $15k start-up, you’ll appreciate my incredulity.

So here’s the thing: contrary to all the headlines, print media isn’t dying – it’s just changing out of necessity. Sure, it’s evolving away from an archaic model formed centuries ago during the Guttenberg era.

But that’s a good thing.

The reality is, for the vast majority of people in developed countries, print media is no longer their primary source of hard news (and that’s hardly news to anyone). Television and the internet are far too instantaneous, pervasive, cheap and easy to distribute and consume for print to remain competitive.

However, print can not only survive but thrive if it focuses on its strengths relative to these rival mediums: its ability to engage and inspire readers – alone in their armchairs, on the train, in their office.

The way The Bulletin did in its heyday.

So, here is my succinct message to private equity company CVC Capital Partners, which paid $4.5 billion to Packer’s Publishing and Broadcasting for 50 percent of PBL in October last year, owner of ACP Magazines:

For one shiny dollar, I offer to purchase 51 percent of The Bulletin. If the new entity does not turn a profit in the first year, you can have it back. I might want to make some changes. But heck, change would be better than a permanent holiday for this Aussie icon.

This blog post might sound like chest beating. But sometimes that’s the only way to wake an 800 pound gorilla.

Come on. Who wants to help me buy The Bulletin?