Linux Magazine is dead, long live Linux Magazine!

Davey Winder
Tuesday, 24 June 2008 16:32

Business IT - Networking

Linux New Media publishes more than 30 magazines and websites and organizes industry events, including CeBIT Open Source and Brazil's LinuxPark conference series. Linux Pro itself continues to grow, with an expanding subscriber base partly fuelled by the influx of Linux Magazine readers.

So Linux New Media is not abandoning print in any shape or form, but InfoStrada has done. But does this mean print is dead?

That's the question being asked by a Linux Magazine contributor on hearing the news of the closure. Ken Hess is a well known Linux evangelist and columnist at Linux Magazine with a reputation for telling it straight.

In his blog he admits that "As the "On the Desktop" columnist for Linux Magazine I was both shocked and excited by the announcement to cease the print version in favor of a web-only zine." Hess adds that "When I first heard the news, it left me a bit cold I admit. After some consideration, I feel that the right decision was made for Linux Magazine."

For a start it will now be a much more accessible magazine, easily readable by Linux fanboys anywhere on the planet. For a finish it should be far more profitable as a result.

For Hess the answer to his question seems clear cut, an emphatic yes: print is dead. He admits that as far as he is concerned all his writing outlets are now online.

However, Hess does not represent every freelance journalist. I have also been a member of this profession for nearly 20 years now, and do not agree that print is dead. Far from it. Sure, the number of online publications I contribute to now outnumbers my print commissions. But it does not dominate them, it does not own them, it has not killed them. Yet.