I don’t believe that there’s a single fashion journalist that envies a store manager and we’re still waiting to see a single columnist from The New York Review of Books start a bookstore. But wounded by declining interest in their product from both advertisers and audiences, the traditional magazines envies the e-commercers. The e-commerce business model is working; they’ve lowered costs, multiplied audiences and – drumroll – people pay for their products.

While working within a traditional publisher I experimented with everything from white-label stores within the magazine websites to affiliate links in editorial text. Nothing worked. Not enough to support the office cat, anyway. When I read Kai Brach‘s blog post “Magazine publishers: Please fix your websites” a while ago, I realised it may not be about technology nor business models but attitude. People paying for your product – whatever product that may be – is not optional. Your website is your storefront and whatever you create needs to be sold.

E-commerce of some kind, whether it be subscriptions, t-shirts or content is not a nice-to-have add-on; it’s the core feature.

Benjamin Franklin

Patty Huntington’s profile is in perfect alignment with what we want to accomplish at Sydney Stockholm; the most professional individuals in the most professional of environments.

From the official media release:

“I am thrilled to be partnering with Sydney Stockholm, says Patty Huntington. An exciting, highly pro‐active digital startup, Sydney Stockholm has made its mark on the Australian fashion blogosphere in a very short space of time, securing some unprecedented opportunities for its stable of bloggers as well as a number of highly prestigious advertising clients such as Chanel, Net­‐A­‐Porter and Gucci – campaigns that would normally be considered the exclusive domain of far bigger and better­‐established media outlets.”

Read the entire media release from Sydney Stockholm.

Robert Cottrell is the brilliant editor of The Browser; his own website focusing on “finding all the writing worth reading on the internet”. He’s an archive digger. In The Financial Times he writes:

“I suspect that the wisest new hire for any long-established newspaper or magazine would be a smart, disruptive archive editor. Why just sit on a mountain of classic content, when you could be digging into it and finding buried treasure?”

Precisely. In the hunt for clicks we all came to overvalue new writing, almost absurdly so, and we undervalue older writing. Every piece of content is an investment and should be treated accordingly. Organise, prioritise and monetise your archive. Re-link and re-package your content over and over again – do whatever you can do for us to find it again.

Chris Coyier

Host Glenn Fleishman (also editor of The Magazine) is “discussing the profound changes in the economy of making things”. Amongst the already aired shows you’ll find:

No Kind of Work for a Grown Man (episode 14)
Daring Fireball’s John Gruber on how his blog became his career.

No-Host Bar Dot Net (episode 13)
App.net, one of the most buzzing (sorry) startups of last year, boss Dalton Caldwell on how they’re going to kill Twitter (they’re not going to kill Twitter, they’re nothing like Twitter but rather very interesting).

Any Color But Purple
 (episode 7)
Jim Coudal from Coudal Partners (owns and runs notebook cult company Field Notes, online ad network The Deck and more).

Now go find a quiet spot.

What anyone rarely foresees, however, is the fact that you’ll be scared more often than you’ll be working on the beach with the sun on your face and a Corona in your hand. Scared shitless. You are alone, you will be under attack, your personal finances depend on what you achieve. Moments of self-doubt turn into monsters.

While building Sydney Stockholm I’ve experienced some of the worst fears of my life. What will happen next? How will this affect that? Is it possible? What will people say if I fail? Our fears make us twist and turn but most importantly: our fears make us think about the future. In some cases they even predict it.

How we choose to read our fears can have a profound impact on our lives and businesses. Instead of dismissing your fear and hiding it under your bed and turning it into a monster – you should bring it closer, study it and shift that insight into preparation and action. That way, if your worst fears come true, you and your business are ready.

George Lois

Editor-in-chief Tina Brown ended up being both saviour and executioner. In the last editor’s letter she writes: “Newsweek has been many things in its storied history, but timid is not one of them.” Yet timid is exactly what it became. During its last years Newsweek produced scoops and a fair share of controversy. But it’s not very courageous, nor effective, to talk loudly in an empty room.

Time was always Time, Businessweek was sold and then received a creative injection enough to bring it back (to some degree), however, this kind of in-depth news commentary has countless free and qualitative competitors online. Newsweek lost its relevance.

Newsweek and The Dish are not the same product but it says something that these two journalistic phenomenons, both owned by the same publisher, now part from that publisher in separate directions. The Dish raised $333K in 24 hours from readers when Andrew Sullivan revealed he was leaving The Daily Beast to relaunch his blog on an ad free and subscription based platform.

Newsweek took the other way; ending up on my shelf.

Today such a story would (quite correctly) be laughed at but I came to think about it the other week when we had a minor out of office gathering before people left for Christmas holidays. The digital age and its companies have not only changed the landscape outside of office doors but inside them as well. Wether we all chose to embrace free food and coloured couches (or free beer on tap and unlimited vacation days) – or not – corporate culture is forever changed for the better.

This particular day we spent a couple of hours at Mackenzies Point (close to Bondi Beach) in Sydney and was again reminded of the fact that out of office hours sometimes are the best working hours. Sitting in crystal clear water with a drink in your hand – you can get a lot of work done.