Not content to be a purely online player, Microsoft's Seattle Sidewalk plans to produce an old-fashioned wood pulp magazine this winter. Dubbed City Lights, the publication will be developed by Seattle Magazine but will feature content from both the magazine's staff and Sidewalk writers. Nearly 100,000 copies of City Lights, a guide to holiday shopping and entertainment, will be distributed just after Thanksgiving at newsstands, shopping malls, hotels, and on the Microsoft campus in Redmond.
Seattle Sidewalk general manager Kevin Eagan was careful to emphasize that the goal isn't to transform the arts and entertainment site into an ink-on-paper juggernaut. "Our primary focus is to deliver information over the Web," he said. "This doesn't in any way signify a shift in priority."
But others said that they wouldn't be surprised to see Microsoft publications rolling off the presses in other Sidewalk cities. "They may not do this in every market," said Adam Schoenfeld, an analyst with Jupiter Communications. "But I suspect they'll do it where they can get a good print partner."
Art Jahnke, a former editor at Boston Magazine and a new-media instructor at Emerson College, said he too could envision other Sidewalk locales seeking print partners, "but it makes sense for them to start with their own territory." Microsoft's Eagan said decisions about partnerships in the other six Sidewalk markets would be left to his counterparts there.
Across town at the Seattle Times, the city's dominant daily paper, new-media director Nancy Bruner chalked up Sidewalk's print project to desperation. "I think their initial business models aren't working, and I don't think they see a light at the end of the tunnel," she said. "What they're probably realizing is that they'll have to get good at distributing content across all media."
Forrester Research analyst Bill Bass elaborated on Bruner's point, observing, "The economics of running a pure online operation are difficult. [Sidewalk] pays people a fair amount of money to write the content, and so they might as well leverage it in as many places as they can."
The 28-page City Lights will be included in the December issue of Seattle Magazine, which has a circulation of 65,000. Additionally, 30,000 copies will be distributed as stand-alones. Both Sidewalk's and Seattle Magazine's logos will be splashed on the cover, and Seattle Magazine marketing director Rachel Hart said that Sidewalk's URL would also appear throughout the glossy pages.
Hart described City Lights in Microsoftian terms as "a user-friendly guide to getting the most out of the holidays," and said that Sidewalk staffers would contribute stories on topics like "where to find an upscale traditional holiday meal at a restaurant, for people who don't want to cook." While neither Hart nor Eagan would discuss the financial arrangement between Seattle Magazine and Sidewalk, Hart did explain that City Lights will adhere to a "custom publishing model," in which a sponsor (in this case, Sidewalk) typically covers most of the production costs.
That kind of confusion about whether Sidewalk's stories are advertising, editorial, or a cloudy mixture of the two concerns some. "Some magazines might question the authority and reputation of content that comes from an online source with marketing in mind," said Jahnke. "Is it advertorial? I don't know. Everything has become so vague now."
City Lights won't be Microsoft's first foray into print products. Earlier this year, Sasquatch Books released a paperback entitled The Seattle Sidewalk Offline Restaurant Guide, with plans to release similar guides to the culinary landmarks of San Francisco and San Diego. And previously, another Microsoft media property, Michael Kinsley's Slate, distributed printed copies through the Starbucks chain of latte parlors.
Though Slate on paper is still available by mail to subscribers, Microsoft stopped retailing through Starbucks earlier this year. "Starbucks was just not set up to distribute a printed magazine," said Microsoft spokeswoman Paige Prill.
Despite those three experiments with offline media, Laura Ames, another Microsoft spokesperson, was careful to explain that City Lights "is just a marketing vehicle - it's not Microsoft getting into any kind of publication, and it's not going to be published regularly." But Hart at Seattle Magazine said, "If it works out well for both of us, I can see it being a return event." And Eagan said the print partnership with Seattle Magazine was "not a one-shot deal."
"Sidewalk users are heavy users of other media," Eagan said. "[City Lights] is a natural extension of our partnership with Seattle Magazine, and it will be an opportunity for their readers to see some of the benefit of getting more information about a topic or an article by coming to Sidewalk."
Jupiter's Schoenfeld says that grabbing the attention of Seattle readers is central to Microsoft's foray into print. "They've built very good online properties, and the silence is sort of deafening," he said. So Microsoft, the wannabe media mogul, has pinned its hopes on a 28-page magazine to create some excitement around the holidays. "You need to create excitement, and you can't do that only online," said Schoenfeld.
