Tam Harbert

Fortune magazine’s March 1 cover story, “The Future of Reading,”  is an interesting and well-written piece reviewing the quandary that magazine publishers have been in since the birth of the Internet. Author Josh Quittner argues that the new tablet computer from Apple could be the launch, uh, pad that magazines can use to save themselves from extinction.

He tells how his 12-year-old fashionista daughter scours issues of Vogue, then saves and categorizes photos and information she finds there. She’s frustrated, however, by all the work and manual cross-referencing it takes when she wants to, for example, match the right shoes with the right dress.

The tablet and its web browser, he implies, lets publishers solve that problem and offers promise for a new breed of digital magazine.

“Raised to expect instant, sortable, searchable, savable, portable access to all the information in the world, these digital natives — tomorrow’s magazine subscribers, God and Steve Jobs willing — could well become the generation that saves the publishing industry,” Quittner writes.

Maybe. Although it opens on a hopeful note, the article delivers few concrete reasons to believe its premise. What Quittner seems to have in mind sounds more like a mini-Google, focused on a narrow interest like fashion for pre-teens, than the magazine form that I still love and hope somehow survives. I relish the long, creatively written feature article that comes nicely packaged with beautiful photos, artful illustrations and enlightening sidebars. While print newspapers have lost their appeal for me, I still subscribe to several magazines. I skim through them quickly when they arrive and note the articles that I look forward to reading later, in my leisure time. These are the type of deep-dive information packages for which print magazines used to have more space and readers longer attention spans.

Quittner pines for that, too, saying that many people still “crave deep reading experiences.” They do, indeed. But I haven’t seen a computer nor a web publisher that can create those deep reading experiences. I want a hinged e-reader that would open like a book or magazine to two 8-by-11-inch screens. It would be light enough to carry on the subway or take to bed and rest on my lap. I could use it to browse the websites of my favorite magazines (to which I would gladly subscribe) and download the articles I want to read. These stories would be displayed in beautiful layouts with photos and illustrations. There would be the traditional sidebars, but also interactive, multimedia boxes that provide video or audio clips.

Quittner’s point – that the size and shape of the device is a  key to enabling profitable publishing of digital magazines – is right on. The iPad may be a start in the right direction, but it’s not there yet. A slate that retains the attributes readers love about their “dead tree” magazines while using the web to make them even better. That’s what might save the magazine business.

For the first couple of years I was freelancing, I just signed on the dotted line when it came to contracts. I didn’t want to read the fine print because, frankly, I needed the money. It was depressing enough that virtually every contract granted copyrights to my work in any and all forms in existence now or ever to be invented in the future, throughout the universe.

But curiosity and concern finally won out, so now I’m reading the contracts more carefully. I’m alarmed at what I find in some of them:

The writer pays for the lawyers: This clause specifies that I agree to indemnify the publisher from damages, costs and expenses that the publisher incurs because of copyright infringement or even the claim of copyright infringement. Some contracts specifically state that I am to protect and defend the publisher against such lawsuits at my own expense. I have never been accused of infringement in 25 years as a journalist and will gladly promise that my work does not infringe. But editors change wording, sometimes in major ways. It’s not fair to hold me responsible for a mistake an editor introduced into the article. And what if some kook out there falsely accuses me and the publisher of infringement?

The writer sells her soul: A contract I recently declined not only asked me to indemnify the company – a multi-billion-dollar corporation that is a household name – against any claim of infringement, it also wanted rights to use my name, voice, likeness and biography to promote its website in whatever way it wanted. This was for an initial story paying $400.

The writer stops freelancing: Last year I was presented with a contract to work with a custom publishing firm to produce a corporate magazine, again for a Fortune 500 client. It was no surprise that the contract had a section covering confidential information. Routinely, the contractor promises not to divulge or use any confidential information from the client for any other purpose other than that expressed in the agreement. But this contract stipulated that I could not, ever, disclose or use any information not only about this particular client but any client of the custom publisher. It wasn’t limited to trade secrets or even to information obtained during the course of producing the magazine. It was any information, forever, about any client. And I didn’t even know who the other clients were.

Most publishers are reasonable when I call their attention to these inequitable clauses. They are willing to work with me to make changes that satisfy both our needs, even though they sometimes say I’m the only writer who’s ever raised such questions. Although I have lost some business from a couple of inflexible publishers, so far I’ve been able to afford to do that. I hope that luxury lasts.