Shift Calls it Quits

MCS writes "Shift Magazine announced that it is closing down after 10 years. Biggest reason is that within this 10 year period they only turned profit on one issue. I remember at one point that they even had their own TV show -- the magazine was different then it competitors (Wired) as it focused more on the impact of technology and the social generation of those who lived in it. This can be seen in such issues as 'The Simpson Generation' and 'Seven Days without Tech'. Many of these articles are available online at their website Shift.com "

Comments

Reminds me of Suck.com

[djcdplaya]

Why is it that all of the really well written indie mags (both online and on paper) are slowly dying off?

Re:Reminds me of Suck.com

[dirkdidit]

Because they don't appeal to the large amount of people. Most people now want to see magazines with beautiful women and the latest war that the US has gotten into. They don't care about how high-speed internet changed Joe Blow's life or about funny geeky cartoons. It sucks but its the way things go I guess.

A Damn Shame

[CrazyLegs]

This has been a pretty fine magazine; albeit a bit hit-and-miss at times. Where Wired and its ilk focused on being the People magazine for a tech generation, Shift found a voice in showing the practical effects of technology on how most of us live. It's a damn shame....

No Wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never even heard of them...

Re:No Wonder

[someguyintoronto]

This is because it's a Canadian publication, and unfortunately our publishing industry faces far too intense competition from our southern neighbour.

Canadian magazines, books, etc not only have difficulty breaking into the states, but they can barely maintain recognition in Canada.

The competition comes from southern cultural import (infestation) into Canada. Additionally, our population is too small and cannot support special interest magazines.

Any Canadian publication, book, film, band, musician, actor, etc that makes it in the states generally succeeds, but unfortunately there is great talent just buried away and hidden in our igloos;)

BTW, Shift was a well put together magazine (that threw good schmooze parties to boot;), that with American backing probably would have done very well. It's a shame to seem them go. Go look at their web site to see what they were all about.

Shift?

[Mononoke]

If I'd ever heard of it, I might have bought a copy.

No, this isn't a troll. I can't say that I've ever seen this mag. I've never seen it referenced anywhere. I've just plain never heard of it.

Sorry to hear they couldn't make it.

Re:Shift?

[tmark]

You haven't heard of it because it's a Canadian magazine, which I doubt had much if any American circulation. I only know about it because I'm Canadian and would occasionally find a copy in a doctor's lobby or something. Even in Canada, the magazine was never as important or well-read as Wired, or Business 2.0, so why the closing of this magazine rates a story on Slashdot is beyond me.

Re:Shift?

[nfotxn]

That's right, we're only supposed to read about America on slashdot! Nothing important ever came out of Canada. How self-loathing is that?!

Ouch, that hurts

[Iesu]

Boy, I bet they love being Slashdotted, now that they're out of operating budget...

NOT the economy...

[MosesJones]

Before anyone bleats that this is "the economy" just think for a second.

10 YEARS and only ONE ISSUE turned a profit. This was a cash sink before .coms became standard, it failed to make a profit during the boom, it lost money in the dive, and it lost money at the bottom.

Maybe the "sad" reason is really simple....

Do you know anyone who _ever_ paid money for it ?

Re:NOT the economy...

[jfpoole]

Do you know anyone who _ever_ paid money for it ?

I did, every month or so. While Shift wasn't as popular as Wired, I always thought it was a better magazine (less hype, more meat). Plus the fact that it was Canadian was an added bonus (at least to a Canuck like me).

That said, I'm not surprised they decided to call it quits. This has happened before (it disappeared from newsstands for a few months back in 2000, for example), and even lately it's been hard to find it at local bookstores.

part of the challenge

[Anonymous Coward]

Could have been it's Canadian heritage. While Candian's are inundated with American media, it's a river that tends to flow only one way.

While I was a huge fan of Shift from its inception, when it tried to branch off into the American market (1997?) I knew it was heading for hard times. It never took off in the States, and had too much investment to make it feasible in the smaller Canadian market. I for one think it's a terrible shame to see this thoughtful magazine lifted from shelves.

Can you dig it?

[slothdog]

Who's the magazine that's smooth with the ladies? I'm only talkin' about...

uh, what? Oh, sorry.

Right on the money ;)

[mekkab]

Mononoke's post combined with this one brings it all together-

I've never even heard of this magazine...
so no, I don't know anyone who paid for it. And without any recognition, how do they expect to sell?

Seriously, I find it amazing that this magazine is being compared to wired- simply because even when I didn't want to I was constantly having wired shoved down my throat- a friend had it on his coffee table, some one sent me a link to one of their stories, I google William Gibson and I get his articles for wired.

Shift.....?
Good lord, how did they last 10 years!?

Defining Moments in Digital Culture

[KiahZero]

Doesn't it make you feel all warm and fuzzy?

3. The Slashdot Effect: Everyday netizens revolutionize newsgathering "Happens anytime Slashdot links to your site - "It's like getting hit with a tsunami," as a sysadmin once told us. When geek-news website Slashdot puts up a link to an interesting news item online, the rush of visitors can savage even the most heavily fortified servers -- producing millions of hits in a few hours. Stephen Adler's "The Slashdot Effect" paper, released in February 1999, found it caused ten-fold surges in traffic -- producing temporary, floating audiences that could rival CNN in size.

Which is precisely the point. Slashdot's arrival in 1997 wasn't just another high-tech community; it was the future of newsgathering. With thousands of techies scouring the net for stories, Slashdot's volunteer base is bigger than any major media outlet-helping them regularly break news, such as Transmeta's super-secret Crusoe chip or Microsoft's anti-Linux memos. "

Too bad they couldn't forsee their immienent doom.

No more Shift????

[LordYUK]

But then how the fsck are we supposed to get to the '@' symbol?? The future of email is doomed!!!

oh, wait, you meant the magazine that hardly anyone read because most of us didnt know it existed.

In other news that doesnt change your life, Borka-Morka.com shut down 7 years ago and I spilt some milk this morning.

the magazine was different THEN it competitors

[Alan Partridge]

...glad to see that the Slashdot tradition of incredibly poor grammar and spelling is being upheld!

So from the description...

[jht]

Shift was apparently a Canadian version of Wired. I couldn't tell from their website, of course, because it was already slashdotted, but the article about the failure and the comments so far seem to point in that direction.

Of course, Wired's been a huge money sink for most of it's existence - and that's with the much larger US market to work with and bigger circulation numbers. Shift never seems to have made any real run south of the border, never was profitable, and appealed to a small segment of a small market in a small country.

I think it's amazing they survived this long, quite frankly. It's been tough enough for media companies to thrive anyway, especially one as limited as they seem to have been. There's a number of Canadian magazines that I'm aware of - some I even read occasionally. I never heard of Shift, though. That may say a little something about what their chances were right there. But at 10 years, they predated the dotcom boom and bust alike. Not many other media properties would have been allowed to lose money that long.

It was a piece of Shift

[Apostata]

Sorry, but I'm dancing on Shift magazine's grave. It stood for all of the bullshit artifice, me-too ass-kissing, and vacuous intellect that has plagued the technology/culture mag niche.

Shift magazine never had a shining moment, save for the plastic wrapping.

Re:It was a piece of Shift

[tony_ratboy]

As a former freelance contributor to Shift (the Sims "Big Mac Attacked" author), I am horribly pained by your comments :)

As much as you think Shift was ass, it was the only decent mass-media outlet in Canada for exploration of digital culture issues. Shift had a long and rocky history, having nearly died at least once before, but the writers, editors, and artists behind it were dedicated, enthusiastic, and (debatably) insightful.

The big question for me at this point is who will fill the void for a uniquely Canadian view on the intersection of culture and technology? We don't have half as many mags up here as in the U.S., and there really aren't any alternatives at this point. I'm not sold on dead-tree publications, so if there are some outstanding Canadian web-based mags out there, I'm all ears.

Re:It was a piece of Shift

[Apostata]

Firstly, allow me to take the foot off the pedal and say that I'm not taking pleasure in other people's unemployment (read: evil).

Secondly, (re: "The big question for me at this point is who will fill the void for a uniquely Canadian view on the intersection of culture and technology?"), if there's a need, it will be filled. That's the nature of the marketplace (and no, I'm not one of those Ayn Rand-toting uber capitalists). One of the problems with Shift (imho) was that it actually wasn't very much of anything: not very deep, not convincingly stupid, not particularly Canadian. The good news (if you're still reading this, and I apologize if my opinion is a bit acidic...I've had too much coffee) is that society always gets what it wants. Dreams do come true; the problem is that the reality of our day-to-day wishes is less profound and exhalted than we'd like to think.

shameful but i have to say it

[thedbp]

print is dead. and not in the irrelevant way; its just not as viable anymore, especially with delivery mediums like the, ahem, internet cropping up everywhere.

i am a print designer. i own TONS (if stacked and weighed) of LPs. I love the feel of magazines and books and the album jackets and small stapled indie mags ... there is a realness to it, an ingrained sense of accomplishment. something that humans have not yet developed for a sterile medium such as the internet. although we can recognize accomplishments in these new digital mediums, it has not yet garnered that "coziness" that makes people sit under reading lamps, excitedly turning pages in a worn out copy of The Dharma Bumbs. nobody who curls up next to a fireplace with an e-Book on your Palm can deny that it is a wholly different experience even though the text is identical.

so there's the dilema. print has been made unreasonable in terms of cost vs. distribution capability - it is now a luxury, one supported by twice the contents' length in advertisements. but we just don't want to let print, in all its kinky and enticing forms, go.

if you don't believe me, ask joe somebody whether they want a printed computer manual or a manual stored in the OS via Help, etc. Even though the digitized version would be easier to update, with audio and video descriptions or tutorials, a highly integrated/linked system, etc. - most average people will tell you they want a nice big indexed print copy.

its going to be a while before this is bred out of us :)

Re:shameful but i have to say it

[Deacon Jones]

While getting your main point, I think the "print is dead" just doesn't apply everywhere yet.

Perhaps to tech news, which tends to update faster than the medium its on. But for me, and I'm 32, so take that as what you will, print will always be actually preferable for "longer" reads because of the fact that paper is easier on the eyes than a monitor.

I don't care what your resolution is, how pretty your fonts are, and what theme(s) you are using, a monitor will tire your eyes out much quicker than reading a book.

I'm sure this has to do with the fact that monitors project as opposed to reflect, but it makes a big difference to me.

So I'm one of those guys who still prints out the "HOW-To's" not b/c I dont' know how to find or read the digital copy, but b/c my optical senses prefer the printed one.

This is why we still have books, NYT bestsellers lists, and online booksellers.

Re:Still no micropayment solution around

[malraid]

This is not an online-only magazine, this is a real paper magazine

Re:I'm sorry - it may be my fault

[jimand]

Can you get a Microsoft developer subscription? There's probably alot of /.ers who will pitch in.

Silent F

[thatguywhoiam]

I've read Shift on and off for its whole lifetime, an you know what? It just wasn't all that good.

Plus... they frequently hired Jon Katz. I'm just putting that on the table. ;)

Bye bye, Silent F. Hope the slashdot-spanking doesn't melt that last server.

Wired commenced to suck when Conde Nast bought it.

[VT_hawkeye]

I always thought of Wired as a "digital culture" magazine, but its credibility was based on having at least some intelligent technology coverage (more application- than tech-centric), and by employing good writers (and influential people from the industry who could also write).

When Conde Nast bought them, CN turned Wired into pure culture -- a pretty-pictures magazine like Conde Nast Traveler and all their other publications. They slimmed it down, changed to cheaper paper, and quit carrying intelligent commentary in favor of "this is the new cool thing, it costs $n,000 and can be bought at x." When Nicholas Negroponte quit writing his back-page column, I stopped buying Wired, and I've barely looked at it since.

No great loss (sorry)

[Ineffable 27]

Not ahead-of-the-curve enough to be groundbreaking, too trend-spotting for Joe Average. Articles about web sites/pop culture trends everyone in their target demographic had already known about for six months previously. Writers that were too fascinated with their own opinions. Not a lot of depth/analysis. Pretentious layout and cover design. Its death was inevitable, and long overdue. I hope the folks responsible are able to find success doing something more worthwhile, and that actually serves a purpose.

(And I cant believe this warrants a Slashdot article, since I didn't think anyone outside of Canada had ever heard of the magazine!)

There goes my plan for shitf.com

[lamz]

I have been a Shift subscriber for around 8 years -- almost since the very beginning. I have also hated the magazine all along. Why keep renewing and reading it? I guess the attraction was similar to other people's fascination with camp. I was continually fascinated by how bad the magazine was, and how adored it was by the left.

If anyone has a pile of Shift magazines, flip through them and find how many times they complained about the fact that the Atari 2600 version of PacMan sucked. Seriously -- it's been covered more than once. The writing seemed to be stuck in some kind of time-loop, like they were always looking back to the 1980s from around 1994. And smug? Don't get me started.

Anyway, I often mused about creating a parody publication called "Shitf", but now I guess I'll just let it go.

They actually profiled my software, it's a bummer!

[turnstyle]

Shift did a story on my MP3 software Andromeda>. Derek Martin, the reporter, spent a huge amount of time back-and-forthing with me via email. Nice guys, too bad...