Surviving and Thriving

Print is on its way out, they told us. The future is in Kindles, tablets, screens, phones. That’s how people read these days, that’s how they’ll all be thinking tomorrow.

And they were right. Today we feel the effects of that trend in our insulated world of Torah and chesed. Shiurim fill airwaves and earbuds across the world. Meal trains for new mothers are coordinated in cyberspace. Levayah notices and minyan updates are sent digitally. Yom Tov menus and accompanying shopping lists are sourced, planned, and tweaked on screens.

During the last few years, our editorial and creative teams have devoted considerable brainspace and entire planning sessions to this trend. How does a print magazine engage readers who spend most of the week looking at screens? What does screen-reading do to your brain? To your attention span? To your interests and tastes?

We know that social media influencers plot their posts by envisioning their audience and their medium. They tailor the colors, dimensions, and style of their offerings to the devices and attention spans of screen readers.