Tag Archives: journalism

MagCloud Offers Free Magazines for iPad Users

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Print on demand goes digital for free.

MagCloud Logo

I’ve been using MagCloud for some time now to create marketing material and, for a while, a monthly newsletter about flying around Arizona in a helicopter. It was suggested to me by a reader of my blog and once I saw what it was all about, I ran with it. I’m not the only one. Hundreds of people are releasing monthly or quarterly magazines using MagCloud’s print-on-demand features. Of those, a bunch are also taking advantage of a new feature that makes it possible to automatically publish magazines in an iPad-compatible digital format.

This is a great thing for iPad owners looking for interesting new reading material. There are dozens of beautiful, full-color magazines that you can download for free onto your iPad. All you need is the MagCloud iPad app, which is also free from the iPad App Store.

MagCloud Magazine StoreHere’s how it works.

  1. Download the app and install it on your iPad.
  2. Open the app and use it to visit MacCloud’s Magazine Store.
  3. Browse by topic or search for a specific title.
  4. Tap a magazine you want. It’s downloaded to your iPad.
  5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 as desired to download multiple magazines. They’ll appear in the My Magazines screen.
  6. Landscape ViewTap a downloaded magazine to read it. In portrait mode, it appears as a single page. In landscape mode, it appears as a spread. You can pinch and drag to magnify and scroll.

MagCloud is an excellent print-on-demand publisher for magazine-style publications. I highly recommend it. And if you’re an iPad user, I hope you’ll check out MagCloud’s app and the free magazines you can download.

Be sure to do a search for “helicopter” and take a look at some of mine.

Yes, Most Helicopter Operations ARE VFR

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And I always assumed most helicopter magazine editors-in-chief were helicopter pilots.

Batten down the hatches and prepare for another rant. Not a big one, but one that needs to be shared with my fellow helicopter pilots.

Rotor & WingYesterday, I got around to reading the February 2010 issue of Rotor & Wing. Rotor & Wing used to be the premier helicopter industry magazine. Somewhere along the way, it turned into a monthly collection of press releases, advertisements, and columns about narrow segments of the helicopter population: North Sea, Military, etc. It improved a bit under the editorial guidance of Ernie Stephens, who added a Helicopter Training column and made some design changes. Now there’s some information of interest to mere mortal commercial operators like me who have absolutely no interest in the politics of the North Sea or unmanned reconnoissance aircraft.

When I read a magazine, I always start with the editor’s page up front. This one, by Editor-in-Chief Joy Finnegan, really stuck in my craw. Titled “Stay Proficient,” it wasn’t about practicing emergency procedures, flying with a CFI, or even staying current with night flight. Instead, it zeroed in on an accident that had been caused by a pilot’s attempt to fly VFR at night into IMC conditions. In other words, a stupid pilot trick.

That didn’t bother me. It’s always good to analyze the mistakes of other pilots and use their situations and decisions as learning tools to avoid the same mistakes in the future. I have done so on several occasions in this blog. (For examples, read “Not Ready for Solo?,” “What if You Crashed a Helicopter and Didn’t Tell Anyone?,” and “Chasing Race Cars Isn’t For Every Pilot.”)

What bothered me were the few revealing statements about her own experience that Ms. Finnegan made, starting with:

I was shocked to learn that many helicopter pilots not only rarely fly IFR, they don’t even bother to keep current.

Hello? Ms. Finnegan? I’d venture to guess that half the helicopter pilots out there — many of which are flying tour, charter, air-taxi, survey, and utility work — don’t even have instrument ratings. I can think of at least a dozen helicopter pilots I know personally who don’t — including me.

She goes on to relate how every flight she did as a commercial airplane pilot was flown IFR, regardless of the weather. She then goes on to make what I consider an insulting statement:

VFR was for amateurs, weekend puddle-jumper jockeys who were out for their $100 hamburger flight.

Nice attitude about your fellow pilots, Ms. Finnegan.

But here’s the paragraph that made me wonder why this woman is Editor-in-Chief of what may still be the best known and most widely read helicopter industry magazine:

But I understand that it’s just the opposite for helicopter operators and that the vast majority of flights conducted in helicopters are VFR. I have also heard that some operators even discourage operations under IFR (again I’m talking flight rules not IMC). This is so very contrary to the way the fixed-wing world works that I had to call around and make sure I understood the situation correctly. After many calls and e-mails, I’m still having difficulty with the concept.

Then why the hell are you editing a helicopter magazine?

I don’t know about the rest of the helicopter pilots out there, but when I turn to a magazine about helicopters and helicopter flight, I want the person responsible for the magazine’s content to be a helicopter pilot. I want that person to know at least what I know about flying helicopters, but preferably more.

And taking two paragraphs to share her own stupid airplane pilot trick — perhaps to show off her ability to follow the instructions of ATC or brag about her coolness in a tough situation — really doesn’t make me feel any better about her experience, capabilities, or connection to the helicopter world.

Instead, I’m left angry by being fed advice by someone who obviously doesn’t have a clue about what helicopter operations are all about.

Always Link to the Source

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The author deserves it.

The other day, I read an excellent post by journalist Dan Tynan titled “My Job and welcome to it.” If you are a journalist, blogger, or other type of writer — or have dreams of becoming any of these things — I highly recommend that you read this. It might open up your eyes about how a professional writer works and how the decline in print journalism is affecting them. Many thanks to @estherschindler on Twitter for including this link among the dozens she tweets each day.

In it, he laments about the way his work is echoed on the Web:

And, of course, the blogosphere may pick it up. Kind-hearted conscientious bloggers will write a one paragraph summary and link to the story, citing the source where they found it (though not necessarily the original source). Some will add their own commentary or expertise, though this is pretty rare. Others will lift the story wholesale, but retain my byline and some notion of where they originally found the story. And some evil bloggers will lift the content and claim it as their own, the bastards.

From all of this I get exactly bupkis. Oh, there’s added exposure I suppose. I do always put a link to my own blog (Tynan on Tech) in the bio, and sometimes I see a small traffic spike. But really, the benefit to me personally is next to nil.

I added the emphasis in the first paragraph. It’s the point of this post: that too many bloggers and online content creators are linking back to their sources — but not necessarily the original source.

I see this on Twitter all the time. The Huffington Post, which apparently regurgitates top news and opinion items with a blurb and a quote — sometimes quite lengthy, going beyond what’s considered “fair use” — is frequently linked to from Twitter, Digg, and other sites. The only organization that benefits from this is the one that echoes the content — in this case, The Huffington Post — not the author of the original work or the organization that paid for the work to be written. The result of this is a potential loss of credit and advertising revenue for the true source. People read the meat of the content on the aggregating site, and don’t bother to dig deeper at the source. This not only contributes to the problems we’re having in the world of journalism, but it feeds the “think for me” attitude of so many people who are trying to consume the information that’s out there. After all, why should I read an entire article and form my own opinion when an organization like The Huffington Post can deliver the highlights and opinion for me?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not bashing The Huffington Post. It does serve a purpose. What I am criticizing, however, is the inability of people to recognize the source of someone’s hard work and to share a link to that source rather than to the regurgitated version on another site.

Oddly enough, another link shared on Twitter soon after the link referenced (and properly linked to) above rammed this point home — at least in my mind. It was a link to an article by Mack Collier titled “Five reasons you have a crappy blog.” I read the article, which I found interesting, and was surprised to find a statement buried at the bottom of it that said:

Mack Collier blogs at The Viral Garden. His original post ran here.

I clicked the link on the word “here” and wound up at Mack’s blog, where the exact same post appeared, but with the title “Five reasons why your company blog sucks.” (I guess the word “sucks” was too outrageous for the other site.)

This worried me. Had the other site, the one my Twitter friend linked to, stolen the content from Mack? I went so far as to fire off an e-mail message to him, apologizing for my snoopiness and asking whether he’d given the other site permission. He wrote back promptly, assuring me that he had.

Whew.

Content theft is a major concern of all writers and bloggers. I’ve seen other sites steal content from newspapers and other bloggers and I’m always aware of when it may be happening again.

My point is this: if you’re going to share a link to content with someone, share a link to the original source. (Yes, “original source” is redundant, but I think redundancy is required here.) The same article — or a good portion of its content — might appear multiple times on the Web. The original author deserves to have his work written where it appeared first. This helps him gauge the popularity of a post or topic. It helps concentrate all comments related to the post in one place. If he’s been paid by the source site to write the content, it helps earn him points with the publisher that’ll get him more work in the future or increase his level of compensation. It could also help with advertising revenues if you click an ad on the site.

And you can bet that when I tweeted the link, I used Mack’s site as the source.