While the magazine is going away, the website, PCMag.com, is not. The editors and columnists are staying on, and will be writing for the website. You can read their full announcement here: PC Magazine Goes 100% Digital.

I’ve enjoyed reading PC Magazine for several years now, though I have never subscribed. The local library has a subscription, and I’ve checked out nearly every issue for…I’m not sure how long. It’s a little sad to see it go. Though I like the web format, where I get new content delivered to my RSS reader every day, it’s still nice to read a print magazine once in awhile. I still have PC World and Macworld, but they have a bit of a different style than PC Mag.

Well, best of luck to the transition to all of you at PC Mag. However, one word of advice: Consider a redesign of your website. It’s looking a little dated and could stand some improvement, especially since it will be your sole content vehicle.

Their articles are very blog-like, in writing style, and in the way they grab your attention. The articles open with a couple introductory paragraphs that immediately grab your interest, and convince you to keep reading, much like the way bloggers do. There are also a lot of pictures, that, again, help to grab your attention, and to break-up the blocks of text. Surely you’ve seen blog posts that kick-off with a big attention-grabbing image? Yes, there definitely are a few similarities between blog posts and NG’s articles. Luckily, though, the articles are not full of bulleted lists and “bolded” text!

The Letter’s page in the magazine reminds me of comments on a blog, albeit comments that sit in a moderation queue for a month. A lot of magazines have a section like this, but the way NG shows so many letters of opposing viewpoints, going back and forth, I almost thought I was scrolling through the comments on a blog.

Also, the short recurring features in National Geographic, like Photo Journal, remind me of the sorts of posts bloggers do on a regular basis, such as The Blog Herald’s WordPress Wednesday News.

It’s not just National Geographic. Computer magazines, especially, are really learning from the internet, and trying to integrate it into their business. Pick-up a copy of PC World. Their website, PCWorld.com, has plenty of content found only there, and referenced in the magazine occasionally. They put shortened URLs in their magazine, a la TinyURL, using them as a print equivalent of hyperlinks. They collect comments from their forum, besides email. Sister publication Macworld even runs polls online, and publishes the results in the magazine.

I suppose you could say that blogs and magazines influence each other. Blogs are on the cutting edge now, pioneering techniques that will eventually be used by print media (which won’t be going away any time soon), and magazines and newspapers have done their share of influencing blogs. The aforementioned recurring features, were originally a “magazine thing,” taking the form of Departments, like in National Geographic, or of columns in newspapers.

Blogs have learned a bit from print publications, and now it’s the magazines’ turn to do the learning. So far, there have been pretty good results.

My major complaints are:

• No comments. I often disagree with articles (or find errors), and I like to leave a note. “Dead-tree” publications rarely allow you to post comments on their sites, and in the rare cases when they do they tend to be heavily moderated.
• Bad design. The web is not paper. You can’t treat a website like a newspaper/magazine. That means no “between-page” ads, and no newspaper-style front pages. Print design is not the same as web design; so if your publication is going online, hire someone who knows how to design for the web.
• Subscription content. You’re not going to get very far online if you make people pay a subscription to view your content.
• Lack of links. When “traditional” publications sites mention websites, they pretty much never link to the actual sites. Often they don’t even list the URL. Hoarding PageRank is just stupid.