What Isn't a Magazine?

If you're a content-based Web site (an online zine, a blog, whatever) and you want to sell ads, you pretty much just click your mouse. You don't have to convince any governing body that you are, in fact, a Web site, fill out paperwork in triplicate, or categorize yourself into someone else's taxonomy.

Not so in the world of printed media, where some very old audit and circulation rules still apply.

Here's an interesting story about a custom publication call MK Bruce/Lee that is so innovative in packaging and design that the Audit Bureau of Circulation -- the Olympian Bureau of Weights and Measures of printed matter -- refuses to classify it as a "magazine." The result: a major ad sales headache.

It seems obvious that magazines -- in order to compete with the Web, the iPhone, Kindle, and content-delivery devices we haven't even dreamed of yet -- are going to have to showcase their tangible packaging and design properties in innovative ways. A magazine, unlike a white plastic Kindle, can surprise you and affect multiple senses, creating a completely different experience every time you pick it up.

So what do you think makes a magazine a magazine?