JPG 2.0 | Customer-made magazine relaunched

JPG Magazine, a photography magazine that our sister-site trendwatching.com covered as an example of user-generated content, recently relaunched. In its previous incarnation, the magazine allowed photographers to submit photos based on one theme per issue. While anyone could submit, JPG’s founders (Derek Powazek and Heather Champ) decided which photos made it into print. Now, for a publication that’s even more customer-made, JPG has made some significant changes. Members can upload photos for a variety of themes – three for the mag’s 8th issue: Tourist, Intimate and Embrace the Blur – as well as for themes that aren’t yet scheduled for an issue. Member participation in these groups helps JPG decide which themes to choose for future issues. While a first selection is performed by contributors themselves, as they’re only allowed to submit one photo to each theme, the other major change is that members can now vote for other members’ submissions. JPG’s editors will continue to make the final selection, but member votes play an important role. If their photo is picked, contributors get USD 100 and a year’s subscription to the magazine. Besides becoming more user-generated, JPG has also taken two steps towards ‘serious’ publishing. While the first 6 issues were printed on demand using Lulu, JPG is now switching to traditional offset printing, mainly to lower the magazine’s sale price. The publication will also start featuring full-page ads and offers advertisers the opportunity to sponsor a theme. ‘Embrace the Blur’, for example, is sponsored by Lensbabies, and contributors whose pictures are selected for this theme are given a Lensbaby in addition to the regular rewards. All in all, the new version of the publication seems like a great inspiration for publishers. While many magazines are shifting from offline to online (following streams of advertising income), JPG’s parent company, 8020 Publishing, is moving in the opposite direction, acknowledging that paper has advantages over the web. As Powzaek puts it: “Print is difficult. It’s cumbersome and expensive. Highly impractical. But it’s also archival, beautiful, and emotive. Print can be intimate in a way the web never can. […] Now, with an internet brimming with data, magazines are free to skip the data and focus on what they do best: communicate, entertain, and inspire.” Combining the two worlds — using the internet to open up to readers and recognize them as valuable contributors, magazines can only get better.