When we at New Voices, the national magazine for Jewish college students, indefinitely suspended our print edition on Feb. 4, it caused some minor buzz that dissipated quickly over the weekend. Not so with Heeb, the Brooklyn magazine for irreverent Jewish hipsters, which went online-only this past Thursday to significant fanfare across the Jewish blogosphere that shows up on my Google Reader. In a post entitled “So Much for Controlling the Jewish Media,” founder Josh Neumann announced the move and noted that
During the eight years we’ve printed the magazine, we’ve managed to endure the death of irony, the death of independent publishing and the death of print advertising (not to mention a barrage of ongoing attacks from Holocaust deniers, white power groups and perhaps most frighteningly, Abe Foxman).
The general death of print media is a shame, and Heeb’s move is particularly unfortunate because of the beauty of their print edition, which focused on photography, design and illustration as much as it did on print. Regardless of the quality of their content (and I liked a lot of it), they put out a magtazine that always looked good. Visual attractiveness was always a hallmark of the magazine industry, and one of the business’s many new challenges with the rise of the interweb is figuring out how to do such design online to the extent that we used to do it in print. It seems like Heeb is taking that charge seriously: their site’s redesign is simple, straightforward and easy on the eyes.
Heeb’s self-conscious irreverence has always generated a lot of controversy around the Jewish world, and sometimes they’re obnoxious for no reason, and many times they seem obsessed with snark to a fault, but they’ve also been pioneers in the world of young Jewish magazines. I hope that they will help us, Tablet, Jewschool and others continue paving a way for online Jewish media during the next couple of years. I know I’ll keep reading them.
Heeb’s demise has also been on the collective mind of the Jewish media for some months. Here’s some premature analysis of Heeb’s print success, some more premature death-knells for their print edition, a few immediate reactions to the announcement amd some ominous analysis of the state of the magazine industry. Enjoy, and have a good Sunday.
“Why is Heeb’s print edition succeeding against all odds?” asks the Times in 2007. [NYT]
“Is Heeb going to die??” asks Gawker in December, 2009. Tablet subsequently analyzes the magazine’s chances of kicking the can. [Gawker] [Tablet]
Heeb announces the suspension of its print edition–and the relaunch of its site–on Aug. 26, 2010. [Heeb]
Some snap reactions from online MOT’s, including us. [New Voices] [The Fundermentalist]
And here’s a prophetic analysis, three weeks earlier, of the Jewish effect on the death of print magazines. [Tablet]
