Green

There. I’ve said it. Now that I have an iPad (and love it as a device for media consumption), I really don’t ever want to see a print magazine again. If I could, I’d happily convert all my remaining print magazine subscriptions to iPad subscriptions, and be a happy guy. (And yes, I’m willing to pay, of course.)

For now, I still have a handful of print-magazine subscriptions, though most of my reading is done online on my laptop, on the iPad, or on my iPhone. What’s left of print for me: Wired, Columbia Journalism Review, and some cycling magazines (Bike, Bicycling, Mountain Biking). I also receive a few unasked-for print magazine subscriptions. That’s it. I receive no print newspapers and haven’t for some time.

Wired for the iPad: For now, that’ll be $3.99 per iPad edition, or else go to print

My reasoning is simple enough:

1. I dislike the waste of trees and energy for physical delivery of my magazines; a digital edition delivered to my iPad is preferable environmentally.
2. Print magazines pile up in various places around my house and office, and often don’t get read. Having them all in my iPad would be so much more convenient, and I’m pretty sure that they’d get read more (vs. now, when many of them get tossed in piles for later reading, and then I find them again when they’re months old, at which point they often get tossed in the recycling bin unread).
3. Many digital editions are better, since they can include video, multimedia, interactive forms, etc.

Alas, the current state of iPad magazines is maddening. Apple, as has been reported recently, isn’t letting magazine publishers use iPad apps to sell subscriptions. Instead, we have the situation where Wired in print is $8 for an annual subscription (I just got my renewal notice). The Wired app on my iPad (free download) allows me to buy individual issues at $3.99; no subscription discount, courtesy of Apple’s resistance to permitting publishers to offer subscriptions. No thanks.

Ditto for Newsweek, but it’s even worse. The weekly per-digital-issue price on the iPad is $2.99 (no subscription offered), while a print subscription can be had for as little as $21 a year (54 issues) via magazine-subscription discounters.

Zinio offers a digital, save-trees alternative for many magazines. Via the Zinio app on my iPad, I can buy digital subscriptions for many magazines. Alas, the only one from my list of remaining print subscriptions is Bike, for $9. For the rest of my list: no option other than print. Wired, Newsweek? Not offered on Zinio.

I hope this is a temporary situation. It’s absurd for digital editions to cost more than print, considering the high costs of delivering print magazines to subscribers: printing, trucking, postage, direct-mail renewal reminders, etc. I’ll settle for the same price I pay now for iPad editions.

Here’s a tip for magazine publishers, once Apple relents on permitting subscriptions from within iPad apps:

• Low-cost digital magazine subscription for what is essentially a replica edition of the print magazine.
• Higher subscription rate for enhanced iPad edition with video and multimedia bells and whistles.

Oh, and those unasked-for magazines that show up in my mailbox? Sometimes they are publications that I’m interested in (such as our local city magazine), but please, offer me a free iPad or Zinio subscription; I don’t want print!

When is this going to get fixed?

I like this video argument about climate change/global warming and whether or not we should accept the costs of doing something about it:

This is basically Pascal’s wager as applied to climate change/global warming. (Pascal suggested that it’s a better “bet” to believe that God exists than to not believe, because even if you believe and are wrong, there’s no penalty at the end, whereas if you don’t believe and are wrong, there is a penalty at the end.) Frankly, I don’t buy it when it comes to belief in “God,” but I’m not willing to bet that climate change isn’t real and risk a very bad future by not acting.

What strikes me as curious is that some (many?) skeptics of humans’ role in climate change are conservative and religious — apparently adherents to Pascal’s logic. Pascal’s wager as applied to religion puts the penalty on an individual; applied to climate change, the penalty is on humanity as a whole. Global warming skeptics’ logic escapes me.

(And just so I don’t go completely off topic — since my blog is normally about new media — I’ll note that this is an interesting way to get a message out. The video’s narrator asks that if you like the message, share the video with your friends, post it on your social networks, put it on your blog, etc. I’ll be interested to see if this goes viral in a big way.)

I’ve been trying to think of ways that digital technology can influence people’s behavior — ride their bike instead of drive, combine errands to drive less, recycle more, etc. The “social” nature of today’s digital media and the popularity of social networks could be leveraged to influence people more. I can’t say I’ve got my head wrapped around how yet, but it’s something I’m really interested in.

Today a friend pointed me toward an initiative that I think is amazing: Freiker. The kids in the animated photo here are using Freiker, by riding their bikes under a scanning unit that tracks how often they ride their bikes to school.

The concept behind Freiker is brilliant. Schoolkids get an RFID tag for their helmets, then ride under a Freiker scanner when they arrive at school to get counted. At the end of the school year, they can get prizes based on how many times they rode to school on a bike.

The program was started in March 2005 and now operates at 5 schools in the Boulder Valley (Colorado) School District. Developer Rob Nagler is hoping to get the program installed at more schools, but he’s lacking enough prizes to give to kids to expand the program further. Prizes currently include iPod Nanos for those who bike to school 90% of the year, and a bunch of bike-related goodies for lesser commitment.

Nagler says that at one Boulder elementary school, the program has doubled the number of bike trips by kids to school.

This is an ideal green initiative for local media outlets to get behind. Freiker is a non-profit, and it’s looking for donations so that it can expand the program. If you publish a local newspaper, get behind this program!

I wrote a column a while back imploring news organizations to use their power to influence to do something about climate change and influence the behavior of their readers and viewers. (I got a lot of flack for suggesting such “heresy” as to cease giving shrill climate-change skeptics equal voice in coverage of the issue.) Freiker looks to be exactly the kind of program that a local news organization can get behind to make a difference.