In the newspaper/magazine world everybody and his/her mother is launching a tablet (at the moment iPad) version of their publication. At the same time Richard Branson dives into this game with his iPad magazine Project.

Now we have seen what all these companies are doing, and it’s not impressive. I doubt that Rupert Murdochs project will change things much. Do I sound pessimistic? Well that’s because they are all doing exactly the same thing: glorified PDFs. Some of them have buttons (wow!) or embedded videos (amazing, moving images!). You can pinch to zoom and swipe you fingers to change page, big frickin’ deal.

This reminds me (even though I wasn’t born then) how the first TV shows were just theatre plays recorded with a camera and then broadcasted on TV. Same content, new platform. But I would expect more from media companies today. Don’t they have any idea about how young people use the Internet or mobile devices what so ever?

Their offer today sucks. MacUser sucks. Project (looks beautiful but) sucks. All Swedish newspapers iPad editions suck and I can imagine that this is an international fact as well.

Could the problem be that it’s middle aged men that are trying to create the future of digital media? Well in that case give them the boot and start over the product development process with young people leading the innovation because they are the future and only they know what will work.

I guess it’s just a fact. A middle aged man will not save the (analog and/or digital) print industry.

Smarten up or become extinct!

Image: Rupert Murdoch by andrianakis