Tag Archives: wired magazine

Wired.com: ‘Why WikiLeaks is good for America’

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Wired magazine has had a somewhat fractious relationship with whistleblowers’ website WikiLeaks since the latter rose to prominence.

Speaking at the beginning of October at City University London, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange hit out at the magazine for allegations it made about infighting at the organisation.

Later in the month he made further criticisms of two particular blogs on Wired.com:

We condemned Wired magazine for that conduct and the magazine has been oppositional ever since. The two blogs concerned, “Threat Level” and “Danger Room”, while having produced some good journalism over the years, mostly now ship puff pieces about the latest “cool weapons system” and other “war tech toys” as befits their names – “Threat Level” and “Danger Room”.

But Wired.com editor-in-chief Evan Hansen, writing yesterday on the Threat Level blog, clearly thinks the organisation is a force for good in the world, or in the US at least:

WikiLeaks is not perfect, and we have highlighted many of its shortcomings on this website. Nevertheless, it’s time to make a clear statement about the value of the site and take sides:

WikiLeaks stands to improve our democracy, not weaken it.

See the full post – Why WikiLeaks is good for America – at this link…

iPad news: would you pay more?

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The Wall Street Journal have announced that they will charge $17.99 for their iPad edition. As reported by FishbowlNY, a subscription to both the online and print version of the Journal costs $2.69 a week, or roughly $10.76 a month. And yet, the paper wants to hike that cost up 67 per cent for a subscription to the iPad edition alone.

The move raises questions about the comparable value of print and digital editions. More specifically, of print, online, and what we might call enhanced digital editions, like those being designed for the iPad format.

Given that online news content is largely free (although the Journal’s is not), but print news content is largely charged for, we might automatically value digital editions less, and assume that they will cost less. In announcing that its much-publicised iPad edition will probably be cheaper than its print magazine, Wired magazine has followed this way of thinking.

But does the potential of the iPad to offer an enhanced experience of multimedia content, interactivity and social sharing, not to mention the device’s status as a groundbreaking way of delivering news, in turn offer publishers an opportunity to value it higher than the print product? Or, in the case of the Journal, a subscription to both print and online?



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