JPG Magazine Says Goodbye | Hacker News Reader

JPG Magazine Says Goodbye

jpgmag.com

17 pointssmoody12 comments

"The Real Story of JPG Magazine"

I guess we knew this day would come. I'm surprised they didn't just decide to sell it back. Perhaps Derek would want to keep running it? They were pioneers in identifying the Flickr/dSLR aesthetic, and there remains a void there in the coming HD dSLR video revolution...

Some very good advice in the bullet points, there. I can confirm most of them from personal experience (unfortunately).

This reminds me a lot of the power struggle behind GovWorks if anyone has ever seen the documentary Startup.com. One founder wanted to keep things true, transparent, and stick to the roots while the other wanted to go big, change the way things worked and in the end the more passive ended up walking away. It's kind of depressing how these stories all end the same: the company goes bottom up

I paste from http://del.icio.us/kragen/jpg. I'm as happy to see these guys fail as I am to see Bernie Madoff.

2007-06-03

http://www.flickr.com/groups/jpgmag/discuss/7215760022357183...

Clarifications in The Unofficial JPG Magazine Group on Flickr, thread started by Paul Cloutier 2007-05-17

730 words from Paul Cloutier about what happened with the JPG blowup. Still doesn't explain why the first 6 issues are still missing from the issues page, why the official 8020 blog is still full of lies, etc.

tagged: paul-cloutier fraud jpg

2007-05-19

http://www.flickr.com/groups/jpgmag/discuss/7215760022221027...

"context is everything", a discussion thread in The Unofficial JPG Magazine Group, started 2007-05-16

1200 words from Alana, the wife of Paul Cloutier, adding no new information to the scandal over Paul deleting the old JPG issues and rewriting history, but calling Derek Powazek a liar. Derek responds in 650 more words.

tagged fraud paul-cloutier 8020 jpg

2007-05-18

http://www.8020publishing.com/blog/2007/05/dereks_departur.h...

Derek's Departure, from Paul Cloutier, via 8020 Publishing Blog

200 words subtly announcing his decision to back off on rewriting JPG Magazine's history, without acknowledging that it was his dishonesty that led to Derek's departure or providing an alternate explanation.

tagged decentralization-stories 8020 fraud paul-cloutier jpg

http://powazek.com/posts/534

The Real Story of JPG Magazine, from Derek Powazek, 2007-05-14

1500 words on JPG Magazine/8020/Paul Cloutier's new campaign of lying and rewriting history. "People are too smart and well-connected to believe a lie anymore." JPG published nice photos from Flickr etc. on paper.

tagged decentralization-stories communication 8020 fraud paul-cloutier jpg

Newsweek feature asked: "Their magazines are full of user-generated content, but will people pay for it?"

http://www.newsweek.com/id/120355

I guess not?

I'm also kind of bummed out by this news. These guys were paying ZERO for their content and they still couldn't make it work.

Also, I agree that there's something odd about them not just going web-only + a pay fee for super users. How many people do you need to run that site? 3?

> These guys were paying ZERO for their content and they still couldn't make it work.

Not true. They offered a bounty of $100 and a free subscription for photos and stories selected to be run in the print edition.

I did not post this to celebrate another failure (as an entrepreneur, I would never do that). I'm mostly just sad that they're not able to break even and continue. And I wonder why they couldn't drop the print magazine and have their loyal members pay to be part of the community. I have to imagine they would if given the chance.

Pingmag ( http://pingmag.jp/ ), a very popular Japanese design magazine (possibly only online, unsure, but it had a stagg), also stopped publishing just now under similar circumstances.

I think a lot of this is unnecessary. Publications, people, heck everything needs to transition in times like these. Everyone needs to become more agile, more efficient and businesses need to cut things down to the bone. Unfortunately a lot of magazines, professional blogs, whatever, are still paying crazy rates and aren't cutting back.. so more will be going to the wall in 3.. 2.. 1..

Ooh, I just wanted to add to this that my last paragraph is not directed at JPG Magazine. Their content sourcing was pretty innovative.

This is really bad news for me.

I'm working on starting up a magazine, so I guess I'll be able to learn from everything that went down at JPG magazine. Maybe refine my business model a bit.

I wonder what their costs are to keep the site running.

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