Had to say how sorry I am. Heard the story on NPR last night. Sitting here listening to "Gather" from The Slaughter Rule, with tears coming to my eyes.

I discovered No Depression in a tire shop in SW Virginia five years quite, quite by accident. Truly changed my life. Thank you

“What to leave in and what to leave out” - That Inspirational verse from Bob Seger’s 1980 commercial blockbuster but critically panned, “Against the Wind” keeps running through my head after reading your latest rant, Grant. I was greatly saddened to read that the print version of “No Depression” will cease to exist after issue #75 May-June 2008, but admit it you guys have had a pretty good run, eh? Everything’s relative and The Beatles' prolific recording career only spanned a mere seven years, don’t you know. So the print version of “No Depression” has lasted longer than the Beatles recording career by six years! You have much to be proud of. Your magazine has turned me, and I’m sure thousands of other music lovers, on to bands and musicians that we never would have heard of (no thanks to radio) but for us reading about them in “No Depression”. So thank all of you “No Depression” folks for a job well done!

Grant, you raise an interesting question about how the online version of “No Depression” will look or what will entice Internet surfers to scan the printed word on your web page for more than just ten seconds. I am an information professional or what used to be called a librarian. One of the courses I took at Syracuse University School of Information Studies was on User Behavior or more precisely how do Internet users interpret what they see when they click onto a page of Web content? As early as Spring 2000 one conclusion reached by us in that class was that viewing digital text, regardless of its’ font or style as it appears on a web page is experienced differently than viewing text as it appears on a piece of paper. Contrary to what you mused, most people don’t want to be read to. Basically, users of the Internet want to find the information that they are looking for as quickly and efficiently as possible. So if I can read a record review on the same page where I can click to buy that record say like on Amazon.com or on the Rhino Records web site for instance, then I as a user, will keep coming back to that Web site because I know that I can stop, read a value judgment on a product and then buy the product in a quick and fairly easy way. Then ideally, I can spend more time enjoying the product. The other thing I learned in that user behavior course is that concise language is the key to getting and keeping a “users'” attention. If I know that the average user is going to spend at most 10 to 15 seconds looking at my online record review or blog about some new musician, then I had better say something important in the first sentence or in the first 10 to 20 words. A model for such precision in description and pithiness is Robert Christgau’s capsule reviews of records that he has been writing for the past 40 odd years. That Bob Christgau fairly seamlessly made the transition from print to an online delivery of his “Consumer Guide” gives me hope that you guys can do it to. Christgau’s web site is a pretty decent model for quickly accessing a wealth of musical information fairly effortlessly.

Frankly, a ten thousand word article is too long anyway. I do take the train to and from work so a Podcast may be interesting...or it might just put me to sleep! I am more specifically a legal information professional and when I search legal databases for the best legal information, I generally will avoid sending a patron a ten thousand word article unless the patron specifically requests it. If I can send a patron an article that is two thousand to five thousand words long, which after I evaluate it, says essentially the same things as the longer article guess which one I’m going to give to my patron? Yes, it’s nice to be nostalgic for the slower paced life style, but we word-smiths can still say what needs to be said in a lot fewer words, in a digital format and if one does it well enough, one will get and keep a loyal audience. It’s not just that people don’t want to read although that is a problem with a few folks, it’s just that most people simply do not have the time to languish over rambling and sprawling articles on a musician. There are simply too many musicians and too much music for that luxury. Editing and filtering is the key to what we do. In the library, I frequently do what we call “quick and dirty” searches when I need basic facts about a topic or a person, because I’ve got a patron who is waiting for the information and I don’t have all day to compile a huge bibliography on the topic and because I have other patrons who have similar requests. Things move very fast in this information overloaded society that we live in. We can argue about whether that’s a good or bad thing, but that is the reality of life, and oddly in my humble opinion, it makes many information quests more exciting because one gets to the essence of a topic or of a person that one did not know anything about before, and isn't that learning? So do people want to be read to? Yes, some people do like the total package plus all the amenities, but I’ve found that many people, and I sense that a large part of your print audience would be included in this group, are willing to make the effort to read something about this cool thing called Americana music regardless of whether it’s only accessible in a digital format. The bottom line is that we can still get the information we’re looking for, if you the content provider make the experience of accessing that information interesting and entertaining...much like you did in the print version of “No Depression” then you will retain and maybe expand your readership.

Again, I see the glass as presently being more than half full for “No Depression”. Here is a tremendous opportunity to share the good word about the music you and I like and quite possibly you just might reach a much larger audience on the Web than you ever did or could have in print. The future is now. So get writing, and if you need some help with creating content you know where to email me! Peace!

grant
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today is the first day i have heard of you or your publication. i am a subscriber to goldmine and saw an article on the demise of your magazine just today. the reason i am writing to you is to say how interesting you are to read. whenever i hear a good record, have a good experience with customer service or read a good writer, i don't want to take that for granted. i also will pray for you that you can survive this transition and maybe grow from it. once again you were very interesting to read and i hope to hear from you again. godspeed

I happen to think that there's something more artful about the written word than what might be said in a podcast. I also love the idea of sitting down with a magazine or to my feed of favorite blogs and just reading through them all in an afternoon. Then again, that probably means I feet the exact target for print media.

I also don't understand pod-casts, really. Talk radio can work, because you don't have to concentrate primarily on the spoken words in order to get a gist of what's being said. However, with podcasts, the subject is generally something I really want to digest, and I can't bring myself to focus on words being said to me unless I'm participating in the conversation.

I definitely prefer the written word.

Many of the things you say make sense, others maybe not so much, but here's my 2 cents: I read lots of stuff on the internet, even past the first page (if it's interesting). While I enjoyed No Depression there were many articles I started to read only to abandon mid story, for one reason or another, this too happens on the net. I find myself reading more on my computer mainly because it's where I am a lot of the time. I still enjoy books but sometime having the time to sit down (with no distractions) with a real book just doesn't seem to materialize in this 21st century world. Am I afraid the internet will replace books and magazines? A little, will it stop me from reading? NO. It just changes the way I do it. I used to listen to vinyl LP's when I was young, first side one and then side 2, now I listen to music for the most part in my car or while I'm at the computer. Do I miss LP's? yes, have I stopped listening to music? NO!
Also BTW you actually do write the way you speak, I know this cause we seem to speak to each other often, and also as to not having control of your "fonts" well I work like a dog sequencing my albums only to have people burn then in the order they like anyway but I'll continue to sequence them in my order till I die.....cause that's how I roll! Change sucks Grant, but sometimes it's easier to just to deal with it than to fight it, then again one of the reasons I like you is cause you're willing to fight, so what the f#$k do I know :-)
Cheers
Tom Gillam

Podcasts may not be the way to go for No Depression.

But if technophobia is the only thing keeping ND from continuing on, even as an online-only publication, then ... please get past it.

We'll help you make the transition, we really will - promise!

(And we can all save a few trees in the process)

End of print media? Bah! Neophilia!

But that's not what I wanted to comment on. As someone who writes (wrote, perhaps, the way things are going) for print media and who also has been writing for radio for over 20 years, I remember the horrible fights I used to have with my producer when I first started the radio gig. Very simply, prose that's listened to has to be written with a subtle difference from what's going to be read on the page, which is what I was writing at first. You can't go back and check a name or date or fact in a radio piece, because, like music, it exists in time.

I'd also like to challenge this "10,000 words is too long" meme before it gets out of hand. 10,000 words is *usually* too long, sure. Just like 78-minute CDs usually run out of ideas because the artist doesn't have that much to say this time around. And yeah, I've started articles in ND about some critter everyone is crazy about and abandoned it because frankly I don't think that person is worth that much space. Conversely, if it's 10,000 on someone I like, well, that's a pleasant indulgence. And, of course, your pleasant indulgence can be my not-worth-it.

Furthermore, on the NPR broadcast, you zeroed in on the very article that proves the point: Barry Mazor's Little Miss Cornshucks article. The further I got in that, the more involved I was: who knew that story was out there? And, how could you tell that story with any fewer words and still tell it as fully as it needed to be told?

Another thing, and one that's important but doesn't necessarily touch on ND: when you're dealing with ideas, quick and dirty just don't get it. In fact, were I ever to get the motivation and time to actually write the "neophilia" essay I want to write, it would be long, because the idea and the various ramifications of the idea, and the arguments supporting the ideas I'd need to present in order to make my point would take up a lot of space. I flatter myself that I'm a good enough writer that I'd hold most people's attention through all of this, but in order to fully lay out my argument, I'd need room.

The web is an awful good idea, and there's an awful lot of potential yet to be realized -- including how in the hell you can make any money with it. In the meanwhile, we're being starved for intellectual stimulation. I'm happy that I can still afford to subscribe to the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books at the same time I'm sorry that there aren't four more publications, maybe serving a different demographic, definitely dealing with culture, that I could read to supplement and enlarge on what I pick up from those publications. (I was involved a couple of years ago with an eccentric guy who liked the idea of a "New York Review of Rock," with "rock" being very, very broadly defined, but he flipped out and disappeared). We need ideas and discussion of ideas and playing with ideas so as not to become boring, dead inside. Or I do, anyway.

You've argued a lot of these points, and I hope you can keep hammering on them. And not just because I'm going to turn 60 this year and have no idea in hell how I'm going to make a living for the rest of my life if the medium I've spent working in since I was 16 up and disappears because someone decides we'd all rather stare at screens.

As someone who did not subscribe, but occasionally purchased, issues of No Depression I am sorry to hear that you are no longer going to be publishing a print edition. That said, perhaps the web version will find a way to thrive in this new, interconnected, multi media, world.

In terms of the length of articles that those online "eyeballs' will be willing to read, I am someone who, when I encounter a written piece online longer than I might wish or be able to read at that time, will "cut & paste" the piece into a text document so that I can return to it later or print it out to read at my leisure. As a person who likes to hold in my hands what I read, and who appreciates a well-chosen typeface, I am surprised that no one has yet suggested downloadable PDF files for long form articles. I can easily imagine discovering a short form piece on the web version of No Depression about, for example, Levon Helm's new album that might have links to his own web site, links to purchase it, sound clips and a downloadable PDF of a long form piece. Not only can typefaces and other design attributes be handled on the downloadable articles, they can include various photos and other graphic design elements near and dear to print enthusiasts.

In any case, good luck and keep up the good work.

Grant, just on this whole length business: Your post on this subject clocked in at 1,453 words.

That's under the average length of a No Depression feature, but not by much. The 10,000 word figure was the exception at ND; never the rule.

With the comments, this whole entry clocks in at over 4,000 words. I read every one, and I'm not alone in that.

In other words, length and online attention span are not barriers to publishing on the web. In fact, the success of the blogosphere proves the opposite is the case.

If you write well, about subjects that matter, people will read you.

Now paying writers to write at such length online is another matter. But hardly an insurmountable one.

That's all to say that I hope ND will continue online--and not just continue, but flourish.

If you and Peter and Kyla draw on the collective talents and ideas of your Senior and Contributing Editors (I'm the latter), and your best regular contributors (and even the voices on this thread), and others who have more web-skills than you or I, but who care about No Depression and care about the music the magazine covered so well, I have no doubt you can make it happen--if you want it to.

I can't believe it. I stumbled upon my first issue of this excellent magazine last month. Our relationship in print was great while it lasted; I look forward to continuing it on-line
PS. "This American Life" is the best thing on radio.

This blog-entry is too long. Can you make a podcast of it for me, please?

Grant -- I've been noodling hard about this question ever since I heard you and Peter interviewed on NPR. Your comment about people online not reading past the fold, as it were, has stuck in me like a nuisance of a cholla thorn. It's no doubt true, as far as it goes, but honestly, who would've thought anyone would read 10,000 (or 6,000, as in Dolly Parton) in a music *magazine*? That sort of thing is unprecedented in my experience outside the New Yorker. So, my question is, why wouldn't No Depression readers just go on ahead and read a piece worth 10,000 words on the website? Many of us spend hours looking at the screen, if not reading, then watching movies, playing videogames. . .or writing the thousands of words. When we write, we read, sometimes over and over. And, in the end, we print it out ourselves if we want, especially if we want to save it.
With respect to your argument in this post, as I understand it, that, given the option, advertisers would prefer sponsoring short articles to long ones--I don't buy it. The game is to keep them on your page. A long article keeps them there longer.
I understand that we need to let go of the paper and ink thing. But you can learn how to spec type in html (maybe not on the blog, but on the page; it's not that hard), and keep the dream alive, for you, and Peter and the rest of us, and for all the musicians who are keeping this music alive, whatever it is, until it becomes the next big thing again.

I will miss ND and hope you can continue online well into the future. It is easy for us "old timers" to opt out when confronted with technology, but the writing has always been the reason to pick ND off the newsstand and haul to the diner or beach. Long form articles are never a barrier when the words are worth the trouble.

The question is not whether SOME people will read long articles online (clearly at last two of my contributing editors will), but whether enough will do so for the pieces to be financially viable. That, I think, is an open question that none of us who are this close to the writing can answer. Convention wisdom in print is that anything more than a four-page article is too long; we beg to differ, and it's part of what we've been proud to do with ND. But it's not clear to me that the comparatively small number of people who care about this music, and the subset of those people who WOULD read a 5,000-word piece (more toward our average) online constitute a viable market for web revenues. I'm not saying they don't; I'm just saying I don't know.

I've got to say that this is one of the most interesting blogs I've read in quite some time because it grapples with issues that both professional writers and information professionals have to deal with every day like learning how to use this rampant new technology, the encroaching digitalization of ideas, and how one can make and sustain an economically viable, let alone profitable, Web site that conveys the news and ideas that appeal to a hitherto loyal print readership or or loyal bunch of library patrons.

Just a few additional suggestions Grant. You could go the total saturation advertising route and create an online version of No Depression like the online versions of other print magazines such as Paste, Blender, Rolling Stone, Billboard, or New Musical Express. It's a strong likelihood that such a model will generate enough advertising revenue to enable you and your contributing writers to continue to post short or long articles on the music that interests us "No Depression" readers. I have been a music news editor at the official Blue Rodeo web site for the past six months and I frequently link newsworthy stories from the aforementioned Web sites in a blog-type format to Blue Rodeo's site, so that fans of the Canadian alt.country rockers, Blue Rodeo can, if they choose, read in a nice package, other and related music news without having to actually surf the Web and pull such stories up. I provide this service on a voluntary basis because I enjoy keeping people informed and because I'm a big fan of Blue Rodeo. What bothers me about the online versions of Blender, NME, CMT, Rolling Stone and Village Voice, is that the pages with relevant and interesting music news stories are so saturated with Web ads that even with high speed Internet connections, it sometimes takes up to thirty seconds to download the page to read. I'm sure these online music web sites are money makers but they are cluttered with lots of pop-ups and advertisements which is definitely something to consider.

Another model worth considering is to make a true Web-zine and require readers to pay a subscription if they want to access the articles by the fine writers on your staff. I'd pay a subscription fee, either per article, or for a bi-monthly "Zine" compilation of stories and record reviews much like I paid the newsstand price for each new issue of the print No Depression that I would buy at my local magazine shop. I think if you posited it to your present subscription readership, a majority would be willing to pay a subscription fee for a bi-monthly (or however frequent) online version of the old print version of "No Depression." This type of model has been in place for many of the academic journals that I frequently have to access and it works if you make the articles interesting enough to get a reader to pay a fee to download them. As a user/consumer, I find that free abstracts of the articles are tremendously helpful in my job of evaluating whether an article is worth paying for to read in its' entirety. That is free market capitalism in a nutshell. So again like other folks here have said, don't let technology deter you from keeping this great "No Depression" publication going. It will no doubt take alot of re-tooling and alot of work, but that is what keeps life interesting. Musicians have had to reinvent themselves and the delivery of their music in the wake of the new technology and music publications are now faced with doing the same. Good luck and keep the faith.

I'm not posting again to prove the point that this thread could get to 10,000 words and ND readers would still read it. Really, I'm not. :)

But let's be clear: Long features in ND were a *part* of the magazine. A very important part, but still just a part. And they would only be a *part* of an online version, and would hardly doom such a venture from the start. Those long features would be an important part of an online identity, possibly (pace all the conventional wisdom) even an attractive part, but only a part. Fans of the music ND covers would have a choice, obviously: They could read the long pieces or they could read shorter pieces. Or they could do what I think any reader on the web does: They'll read what engages them and won't count words along the way.

Let's take Salon.com--not as a parallel, but just as an example. That publication has regularly runs articles and interviews that stretch over the 3000 word mark (and they've been doing so since 1995). Do I read all of them? No. I read the ones that interest me.

Now whether running an online publication, regardless of the length of articles (since I think that's a chimerical concern), makes sense financially for ND, I can't say. But I can think of one way to find out.

Yeah, but is Salon making money?

No.

And they've been doing it since 1995.

Actually, Ed, the picture at Salon is just a little bit more complex than that:

http://www.prweekus.com/Saloncom-still-thriving-as-brand-evolves/article/58372/

Not that I believe every word of every sunny financial report--I'm under no illusion that the $7.7 million in reported revenues is sitting in Joan Walsh's pocketbook--and there's no guarantee Salon will be around for another 13 years or another after that (as if there's such guarantees with any publication), but the point is that it's not unheard of for online publications to generate revenue--or to pay writers.

And obviously Salon is not analogous to ND. But I think there's much to be learned from their strategies (and others, witness Pitchfork, and, I'm sorry, but Schreiber and his staff are making money, even if they don't pay their reviewers enough) if No Depression is going to make a go at it.

No, Roy, you're right. Salon isn't analogous to ND. And I'll admit to conflicting feelings about them based on personal stuff. (On the one hand, they paid for several years of high-tech cancer therapy for their art director, who was one of my best friends and who died in January. On the other, one of their editors was unnecessarily nasty to me in almost-public on the Well, which I belong to and they own.)

But please note this: Salon hardly ever uses freelancers, and when they do they don't pay them.

Further, I don't read P4k, but the very fact that they do pay their writers has people standing in line to write for them. And even if the new ND could match them, which I doubt they could at first, you and I would take a big hit in the pocketbook. I don't know about you, but this is 100% how I make my living, and that hurts.

Ed, I hear you. It does hurt.

I have often wished that subscribers could login to read No Depression. I don't subscribe to Harp, but I usually read their feature articles online. Someone mentioned earlier that they cut and paste articles into a word document. I often do that with Salon.com articles, Harp's articles, American Songwriter interviews, and Grant and Peter's blogs. Having them in Word makes it safer to read at work or easy to print out and read in the car or on the couch. I even once went so far as to scan a couple pages of No Depression to read for a slow day at the office before I resigned to reading another magazine online.
My point is that readers find a way to read quality content, even if it is not in their preferred format.
I would like to see you guys jump in the web game and dominate. You might be jumping in the game late, but you have the talent pool to thrive.

Howdy, I am one of the people that emailed and suggested podcasting after the NPR story ran. I myself did not get podcasting at all until about 8 months ago. My husband decided I needed an ipod for my birthday and I didn't know what to do with it. Then my boss started sending me emails with his favorite podcasts. And I was hooked. Now, I am someone who will argue with someone that has just listened to a book on tape and says they read the book. They did not read the book; but they still enjoyed it and might not otherwise have read it.

One point I will make is podcasting for many of us has nothing to do with not reading. I am working on my PhD and read constantly. Due to this I have stacks of "fun" books and magazines waiting for the day I can read for fun again. When I have school breaks, I carefully choose the books and magazines I will voraciously read during my free time. Podcasting has to do with trying to use other time to absorb interesting and worthwhile information. My favorite podcasts are good dirt radio, folkalley.com's Alleycast, Radio without borders, WGBH's Morning Stories, etc., and The Splendid Table. It's a way for me to meld all my favorite things like cooking, music, alternative energies, etc for my long drives through Wyoming. Have you ever been to WY? I often have 3 hour or more drives to meetings.

I can see how for a serious writer or journalist it is discouraging because someone isn't reading your printed word. But the reality of life right now is there is a glut of media and information. Many of us aren't giving up; we are just trying to continue to absorb the information in a variety of ways that fit our abilities. It doesn't diminsh the importance or interst of the information.