More likely, they had this issue prepared ahead of time. They, like most observers, knew it was coming. No ads simplifies the logistics of swapping out the issue.
Without a doubt prepared in advance - you'd be incompetent as a news org not to do so. It's still however a fantastically put together thing and to have no ads in there whatsoever is quite a dedication.
There's a story circulating about Time literally stopping the presses and creating a new issue in 3 hours. Wouldn't surprise me to learn this was done in similar fashion.
It's hard to appreciate the drama of deciding to stop that enormous thing, pulp the hundreds of thousands of papers already printed, and re-print everything from scratch, without understanding the scale of the operation.
All news organisations prepare obituaries and related content for famous figures in advance.
There's a classic piece of BBC lore about this, the story goes that the reason BBC staff are now no longer allowed to browse the library of preprepared obituary pieces is because Margaret Thatcher's tape was getting worn out from being watched and re-watched too many times.
There are certainly cases of obituaries that were published where the actual author of the obituary had themselves died several years earlier. I've also heard of journalists who update their own obituary every couple of years.
The Ipad issue which is gorgeous as well, actually has a video where they do confirm that they had a lot of the content already done before and they pulled in all-nighters as soon as they heard about his death to put it all together.
Absolutely. This is one of those cases where you grab a young aspiring designer, and show them what an exceptional example of design and typeography looks like.
Exactly! For those who doesn't yet know, Richard Turley, creative director of Businessweek has a tumblr page where he puts magazine's covers from time to time. Worth to follow. Url: http://richardturley.tumblr.com/
If you'd just like to read the content, most of the writing is on businessweek.com - look in the upper-right-hand corner and you'll see a grey section devoted to it.
well if they were generous enough to not give any ads and make is a Steve-only issue, they should also have made it publicly available for free. It makes no sense to charge for a tribute issue IMO :O
In fact, I'd pay to have something like this for some of my family members once they pass. Sure, everyone wouldn't have 60+ pages, but having a coffee table tribute mag that tells their life story with beautiful pictures and typography would be a fitting tribute to anyone.
Anyone do something like this? Great weekend project for someone to hack together.
Yes. B&N allows single issue purchase of BusinessWeek viewable on the nook and nook apps. Amazon only allows you to view it on the Kindle (and not the Kindle app either). $1.50 for a single issue, no subscription....it's a no brainer.
For those marveling at how quickly Businessweek, Time and others have turned around tributes to Jobs, this is exactly where print journalists earn their stripes. Newsweeklies have to respond quickly to breaking stories, if they are going to be seen as relevant by readers.
For those who are prematurely predicting the death of print media, collections like this show how journalism professionals can still run rings around all but the best online news outlets.
See the Twitter links posted elsewhere in this thread, but for the most part it looks like they didn't. I'm sure that they had some advance reportage on-hand to draw from, but that's the case for almost any major story.
Given the perceived importance of the iPad (and digital publishing) to the future of the magazine industry, one might say this is a canny strategic move on Newsweek's part.
As I've said several times here, Jobs and Apple have made contributions across sufficiently many sectors of society that I do not attribute strictly self-interested motives, but given 1) all the cultural and historical significance of his passing and 2) the value of a bit of kow-towing, the action on Newsweek's part doesn't entirely surprise me.
On the night of Steve Jobs's death I stopped by the Fifth Avenue cube just to see what the mood was like (it was pretty much normal with a small crowd outside and some flowers) and I ran into a former colleague who now is a reporter at Businessweek. She told me that this week's issue was literally ready to go to press and then the news of Jobs's death broke, so they threw it out and she was there at 11PM getting customer comment on the event, and everyone else was putting in another 12 hour shift to re-create the issue (of course, some of the content had already been assembled in the event of Jobs's passing).
Great to see that their hustle and hardwork paid off. It's an entirely different thing to redo a weekly magazine the night of publication than it is a newspaper or website.
Not to discount Businessweek's release, but the reality is that media organizations devote enormous amounts of time to prepare for the imminent death of a popular/famous figure. I'd bet that weeks of effort were put into what consists of Businessweek's release on Jobs' death while Steve was alive. What they produced doesn't come together in a couple days.
Remember the Bloomberg accidental 17 page obituary release for Steve Jobs in 2007?
Don't discount the media's efforts when being the first with the "extensive article" on the death and past history of someone important puts you first out of the gate.
It’s perfectly alright to believe that they assembled this in the last minute. It’s a bit naive to believe that they created all the content in the last minute. (Some of the content, however, most certainly had to be created in the last minute.)
I didn't say they hadn't prepared. Every major news publication has had an obit prepared. But Businessweek had to tear out their current cover article and others, and do layout and pagination among other traditional publishing tasks unrelated to content gathering. The fact that my former colleague was out gathering reaction also shows that some work has to be done to make the content up to date
...and why couldn't all of that have been prepared in advance? I find it somewhat disturbing to have already prepared an obituary, but how do we know that there isn't a pile of similarly, very well produced and finished magazines waiting to go the press of other famous business figures?
I just downloaded the issue on my iPad. Download the businessapp, and you'll need to subscribe (but you can cancel later) to download the current issue of Steve Jobs.
63 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 120 ms ] threadSource: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/10/06/apple_rivals_p...
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/06/many-la-times-...
It's hard to appreciate the drama of deciding to stop that enormous thing, pulp the hundreds of thousands of papers already printed, and re-print everything from scratch, without understanding the scale of the operation.
There's a classic piece of BBC lore about this, the story goes that the reason BBC staff are now no longer allowed to browse the library of preprepared obituary pieces is because Margaret Thatcher's tape was getting worn out from being watched and re-watched too many times.
There are certainly cases of obituaries that were published where the actual author of the obituary had themselves died several years earlier. I've also heard of journalists who update their own obituary every couple of years.
This is for sure a collectors item.
Some of my favourites:
Khadafi: http://richardturley.tumblr.com/post/9373871854/now-about-th...
Bezos: http://richardturley.tumblr.com/post/10807034868/amazon-the-...
9/11: http://richardturley.tumblr.com/post/8470431158/been-a-bit-q...
Moynihan: http://richardturley.tumblr.com/post/9957165968/can-moynihan...
http://vimeo.com/22746195
I'd be shocked if they hadn't already seen the compliments, but I'll pass them on just in case :)
I couldn't find a way to buy the PDF unfortunately. It's always a shame when pirating something is the only way to get access to it.
http://www.zinio.com/browse/publications/index.jsp?productId...
In fact, I'd pay to have something like this for some of my family members once they pass. Sure, everyone wouldn't have 60+ pages, but having a coffee table tribute mag that tells their life story with beautiful pictures and typography would be a fitting tribute to anyone.
Anyone do something like this? Great weekend project for someone to hack together.
- I upload pics and timeline
- Choose most important events or quotes
- The site pushes out a preview that uses a professionally designed layout
- If I like it I can purchase it
- Nice tribute mag personalized for my loved one arrives in the mail
You can do this manually via book creation services like picaboo.com; that's what my family did for my grandma after she died last year.
It doesn't include any of the photos though. There's a link to all the content including images in the article.
update: removed links, they're in the article.
For those who are prematurely predicting the death of print media, collections like this show how journalism professionals can still run rings around all but the best online news outlets.
I would say it's the other way around.
As I've said several times here, Jobs and Apple have made contributions across sufficiently many sectors of society that I do not attribute strictly self-interested motives, but given 1) all the cultural and historical significance of his passing and 2) the value of a bit of kow-towing, the action on Newsweek's part doesn't entirely surprise me.
Great to see that their hustle and hardwork paid off. It's an entirely different thing to redo a weekly magazine the night of publication than it is a newspaper or website.
Remember the Bloomberg accidental 17 page obituary release for Steve Jobs in 2007?
Don't discount the media's efforts when being the first with the "extensive article" on the death and past history of someone important puts you first out of the gate.
With that said, having a whole issue dedicated to someone in this manner (photos, quotes, no ads) is still pretty awesome.