Reflection

The concept of this reflective journal has actually led me to reflecting back on what I have learned in the field of Issues in Publication and Design within 14 weeks. Before the start of the assignment, I never know there are some critical process and steps to produce a functional document. With the guidance and unconditional support from Ms. Jenny Heng, I have brought myself to explore several different technique, methodology and theory to produce a well-designed document. Even small tiny details are considered in effort to produce my first blog. In the occurrence of blogging, the particular of ethical writing, appropriate graphic, the originality of expressing my idea are taken into consideration. In addition, I maximize the used of graphic-aid and heading to help the reader to understand each of the key point. Besides applying what I’ve learned in IPD such as the image angle, placement, size, shading, alignment, and color, I want to ensure that the graphic used are relevant to the information. Graphic hold an important role and function to enhance my blog thus to attract people to spare some time to read my idea. This blog also act as a platform for me to deliver my understanding and share the knowledge to people worldwide. As a future career woman in Marketing field, this new skill earned is helpful for me to present and convey such business-idea to the client.

Turning a Page: Newsweek Ends Print Run

Concepts: new media ecosystem; business of the media; audience preferences; multimodal 

Lasted for almost 80 years in publication Industry, on 31th December 2012, Newsweek magazine finally announce to end their print publication to go ‘all-digital’ (Daniel & Hagey 2012). After a significant drop in their main source of revenue, print-sales and the advertising about 1.5 million and 80 percent respectively, Newsweek cumulative loss are approximately reach up $40 million a year. Daniel & Hagey (2012) also add that the magazine is now part of the news and commentary site of The Daily Beast. Last year, The Daily Beast revenue has grown as high as 36 percent with five million unique visitors monthly, thus, position itself as a good marketing platform for Newsweek. According to the former editor of the New Yorker and Vanity Fair, Ms. Brown, argues that, "the cover will play the same role it has as a wonderful marketplace of ideas." eventhough the Newsweek has are now available online. This idea was earlier supported by the famous PR practitioner Kres (2006), where he said “Newspaper, magazine and many other kind of texts are no longer just written but ‘designed’ and multimodality articulated”.

Form my perspectives, clearly the changes in the figure is due to the advancement in technology, where the capability of the Internet providers to transmit fast connection, allows people maximize the used of their electronic devices such as smartphone, computers and tablet to ‘deliver’ most of their work with only ‘one click’ or ‘one tap’. In my opinion, the step taken by the Newsweek is a brilliant move. Besides position itself as most widely-read magazine online, Newsweek also are now  free from compete with its former rival, The Times. Keeping pace with the current trend and social contemporary, the styles of marketing are more to reaching the customer instead of hoping for customer to come. Hence, to go online is the best vehicle for a company to stay in the Industry. Besides preserving the earth by reducing the use of papers and chemical ink, the company also may able targets for new readers.

References

Daniel, R & Hagey, K 2012, ‘Turning a Page: Newsweek Ends Print Run’, The Wall Street Journal, viewed 9 June 2013, <http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324660404578201432812202750.html>.

Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T 2006, Reading images.

Lister, M 2009, New media: A critical introduction, Taylor & Francis US.

Naughton, J 2006, ‘Blogging and the emerging media ecosystem’, University of Oxford, vol. 8

Are the French preparing an e-book revolution? E-Book Revolusion

Concepts: E-book Publishing; new business model & new media ecosystem; readers’ preference/ expectation; multimodal 

Nowadays, technology advancement has change human lifestyle in many angle includes the way people interact with each other, the fashion style, the businesses, even there’s a new trend of reading books. In France, the e-book has become a revolution due to several mechanisms such as the Publishers' attitude, Neutrality of media as well as the Innovation (Neuman, F 2013). Despite of having the feeling to touch the printed books, feel the pages in hand, flipping the papers, the smell of the books, or other ‘personal nostalgia experience’, e-book has its own magnetism to appeal bookworms. According to Fabrice Neuman (2013), the acceptance of the E-book among societies is viewed as positive. E-book or Digital Book is book-length publication in ‘soft-copy’ form, which people can read the content on computer or other electronic devices. Besides easy to obtain and cheaper compared to the printed version (some e-books are even free to be download), e-book are user-friendly, with the features of lighted screen, readers are able to read the e-books in the dark, zooming, plus the screen brightness, font size and font color can be adjust at the setting preference. While most of e-books are written in English language, the digital dictionary and translate features, are available for users. The best part of owning an E-book, it is like a shelf of books in a single tablet, which are convenient for you to carry anywhere you want. Moreover, the apps allow you to update the book version, rating the book, leave comments about the books, recommend and send the e-book to friends as a gift. As for little readers who are still struggle for ‘ABC’, there are thousands of e-books that available with audio functionality to help them to read. 

Oxfordowl is one of the web that offer free e-books for the kids (available at www.oxfordowl.co.uk). According to Valerie Chernek (2013), reading e-books with audio are potential to enhance the children learning experience by engaging them in the content in multisensory ways. Thus, with such edges, there are no question mark to doubt why e-book revolution has occur worldwide.

References

Chernek, V 2013, Can Audio and/or Digital Books Improve Your Child’s Learning Outcomes?, Available at <http://www.ncld.org/students-disabilities/assistive-technology-education/audio-digital-books-improve-childs-learning-outcomes> Accessed at 13th June 2013.

Neuman, F 2013, Are the French Preparing an E-Book Revolution? Mais Oui!. Available at <http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2013/03/are-the-french-preparing-an-e-book-revolution-mais-oui084> Accessed at 14th June 2013.

Google Library v Publisher – Digitization Google reaches Library Project settlement in court case with publishers

Concepts: Ethical publishing principles-piracy & file sharing sites; copyright regulations & fair use 

After 7 years of battling on the formation of web-based library project, Google and a group of American publishers finally has reached a settlement. The court has decide to grant the company of the most popular search engine a permission to continue their primary project to digitize the libraries system of 7 major universities. However, publishers have the right to refuse permitting their written product to be digitized or remove from the digital library, while Google also assured that only about 20% of particular books are browsable whilst whole book are sellable online. According to Scott Carlson and Jeffrey R. Young (2005), the project involves libraries of Harvard University, University of Oxford, New York University, Stanford University as well as University of Michigan. The plaintiffs, includes John Wiley & Sons, Pearson Education Incorporated, Simon and Schuster, Penguin Group (USA), and McGraw Hill, filed the suit regarding the issue of copyright infringement. With the changing in lifestyle, due to the technology advancement, the trend to stick with communication devices are increasing. People start to prefer to use technology instead of old tradition. Thus, this group of publisher afraid that Google library project would affect their business, as most of the users would prefer reading it online instead of buy the printed version (Harris 2012). In my opinion, the Google intention to digitize the University Library system is a good effort to help students obtaining information and knowledge for education purposes and the most important thing, the information comes from the right source. I am very confident that Google is aware about the student learning patterns of using the Internet since they have the data of each of their ‘customer’. Most of the students want to get direct answers quickly without having to read the particular chapter of the book. Here Google, concern that some students take a shortcut by taking information from a source that is not recognized from e.g. Wikipedia and blogs. Therefore, this project not only helps the students, but also generates income to the publisher where the purchase of printed books or e-books can be made via ​​online. In addition, according Copyright Amendment Act 2006 (Cth) “with the aim of providing a 'flexible exception to enable copyright material to be used for socially beneficial purposes”. Clearly, the project is beneficial to both sides. As an undergraduate student at Taylor's University, I fully support the program inspired by Google.

References

Carlson, S., & Young, J. (2005). Google will digitize and search millions of books from 5 top research libraries. Chronicle of Higher Education, 51(18), A37.

Australian Digital Alliance. (2011). Section 200AB Flexible Dealing Handbook Online. Available: http://digital.org.au/reform-goal/flexible-copyright-exceptions. Last accessed 13th June 2013.