The Magazine Publishers of America (a.k.a. the MPA) is now no longer the MPA. For those who do not know, the Magazine Publishers of America is an industry association for magazine publishers.
Now the MPA no longer stands for “Magazine Publishers of America”, but “MPA – The Association of Magazine Media”. Note that they dropped the word “publishers” out of the name.
A press release from the MPA states that they are changing their name, tagline, and logo due to the statement they made below.
MPA is underscoring the fact that magazine media content engages consumers across multiple platforms, including websites, tablets, smartphones, books, live events and more. (Source)
You can read more on the press release here.
It is very interesting as when the author of the ReadWriteWeb article looked into the topic, he found that in dictionaries, an item which you publish does not include digital media such as a blog article. So I decided to look into several different definitions from several large dictionaries myself.
- (intransitive): To issue a medium (e.g. publication).
- (transitive): To issue something (usually printed work) for sale and distribution.
- (transitive): To announce to the public.
- transitive verb
- to make generally known
- to make public announcement of
- to disseminate to the public
- to produce or release for distribution; specifically : print
- to issue the work of (an author)
- intransitive verb
- to put out an edition
- to have one’s work accepted for publication
- to issue (printed or otherwise reproduced textual or graphic material, computer software, etc.) for sale or distribution to the public.
- to issue newspapers, books, computer software, etc.; engage in publishing: The new house will start to publish next month.
Interesting to notice how many include the digital works and how many do not.
I think it is not right to cut out digital content from the idea of publishing work. Why should the digital creators be cut out? It is nice of the MPA to think to include digital creators, but I do not think that the word “publish” should exclude digital creators. It does not make sense to me.
To me, publishing something involves releasing something to the public. Writing blog posts on this blog of mine is publishing. Creating a video and releasing it to YouTube is publishing. Writing a book or any other form of hard literature is also included as a published work. Showing something to my friends is not publishing to me. For me when I publish something, it means that I release to a group of people wherein the size of the group is larger than five or so people. It does not matter what I am releasing. I am sharing a work of mine to others. That is it.
What do you think? What is publishing? Is it right that the MPA changed their name? How so?
Source: ReadWriteWeb
Edit: Spelling error caught by jvano.