The MSM is dead, but someone forgot…

…to tell Wired magazine and the UK newspaper The Guardian.

It is Friday night and I’m at home preparing for my kid’s birthday party on the weekend and sneaking in time between stuffing loot bags to play with my iPad.

My two latest apps… The Guardian Eyewitness and the new Wired magazine. Both are innovative for different reasons and both give me hope that there are plenty of smart cookies in the MSM who can clearly lead industry’s evolution into the digital age.

The quick summary, the Guardian Eyewitness is a free app that lets you explore the world through the paper’s photojournalists. The images are stunning and if you’re a picture-taker (which I’m not), there are also “pro tips” that explain what settings and techniques are used for each image. For me, the value is in perusing the photography and getting a unique view into the world, its people and its environment. The whole thing is presented by Canon, which is a brilliant little piece of sponsorship.

Wired has put out an iPad version of its magazine that takes advantage of the platform’s navigation, video and audio capabilities. The challenge here is that there is too much to do and navigating  through the app/publication takes some time and patience.

But the point here isn’t to review the apps, it is to offer praise to those media outlets that are finding ways to leverage their content on new platforms. As mentioned in an earlier post about the Roku, what is interesting about new platforms like the Roku or iPad, isn’t what they can enable now, but the potential they provide for new ways of creating, distributing and consuming content.

Wired completely rethought its magazine and while I think there is still some work to be done on streamlining, it is a brilliant first pass and shows some real creativity. And for the Guardian, well what can I say, it the app is absolutely brilliant. They’ve taken a subset of their existing content, photography, and built a whole new package around it. The app plays to the iPads’ strength of easy navigation and super amazing graphics.

Writing this I’m reminded but that classic Buggles tune…video may have killed the radio star, but new technology platforms will create new media stars.