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Thursday, March 22, 2012

I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore.

The following is text from the Garden Writers Association's media release about a new digital magazine ostensibly about gardening. Call me curmudgeon, call me communist, but I find this offensive.


"Lovers of the gardening lifestyle can now enjoy a marvelous new digital publication designed just for them. GIE Media has launched its first-ever consumer magazine, A Garden Life, as a free app for iPad and Android tablet platforms. The premiere issue is available for download now on iTunes/Apple Store  or get it on the Android Market.

Each issue of A Garden Life will explore and celebrate the concept of "life as a garden." GIE Media Chairman, Richard Foster, describes the magazine's mission: "To create a community of consumers with shared values and interests in lifestyle subject areas such as healthy living, that includes growing and preparing clean food, contributing to community, exploring travel and adventure, art and literature, as well as having a passion for diverse aspects of nature and gardening." GIE will publish six issues of A Garden Life in 2012 (March, May, June, July/August, September/October, November/December).

A Garden Life will also utilize the latest social media tools to stimulate active reader engagement with its editors and contributors, as well as with one another, be it across town or around the world. "Tablet mobile technology - and the social media it facilitates - can stimulate sharing of ideas through direct one-to-one connections by email and messaging, and simple tools for sharing imagery, audio and video," says Foster.

A Garden Life has a companion website (www.agardenlife.com) that will offer the magazine app content to consumers who do not yet use tablet technology. The website will include deep databases of horticultural products such as perennials, annuals, succulents, grasses, trees, ornamentals and lawn and garden hard-goods items. GIE will also offer consumer readers a regular electronic newsletter of garden center product insights at no charge."


This is not my idea of a desirable gardening publication. It's intended, as they say, for the 'lovers of the gardening lifestyle' and the 'consumer readers' out there. Everything you love is now a commodity.

16 comments:

  1. What works for me is to carry a dumb phone - one that makes and receives calls and nothing else. I never have to worry about "apps" or "iPhones" or "Androids" or other such nomenclature.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Allan, I have a smart phone and find it dominates my life. It's like a drug. Maybe I should take your example and "just say no." (Even though I have a smart phone and an iPad and a computer, I don't think this publication is calling to me.)

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  2. That sounds repellant. On a purely practical level, you would think they'd be more careful about overtly calling their readers "consumers". I love the "garden center product insights"--what a waste of time!

    Emily

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    Replies
    1. Emily, aren't "garden center product insights" advertising? Good to hear from you.

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    2. Yup. "Advertorials." Aaarrgh. Good to be here.
      Emily

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    3. but you get the advertorials at no charge. Whatever are you complaining about!! Just pay up, and be quiet ;~))

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    4. Amazing. Whoever wrote that copy can't really understand what the words mean.

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  3. I hear you. Everything we cherish has been reduced to an app. Why garden when you can simply inhabit a gardening lifestyle within the confines of your smart phone. What is a "gardening lifestyle" anyway? You either garden or you don't. I don't see a "lifestyle" about it. What's next? "Subway lifestyle"? "Starbucks Lifestyle"? "Dog walking Lifestyle?".

    I'm certainly not a Luddite when it comes to the use of technology, but I do find it offensive when a smartphone lifestlye is hailed as a glorious substitute to actually living a life.

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    Replies
    1. Michael, people accuse me of having too many apocalyptic fantasies, but this makes me think perhaps we deserve ... I'd better not go there.

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  4. Well "life style" is what you have when you don't have a "life." oops. Just noted the same comment above from Michael
    Or like the tourists who don't see the country. Because there is a camera always between it and them.

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    Replies
    1. Perhaps the pub will be better than it's billing. Not holding my breath.

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  5. PS your embedded link, goes around and comes back to your own post?

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  6. Sorry. I copied and pasted the text. The first two links work. The third takes you to my own post. Unfortunately, I'm not familiar enough with html code to fix the problem. But you can just type the url in your browser if you really want to get there.

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  7. I saw that press release, too, Allen. When I got to the "community of consumers" line I just laughed and stopped reading. But I just re-read the whole thing in your post and the other line that gets me is: "deep database of horticultural products"

    This is the sort of product I would love to satirize on my blog, but it's like they've already done it for me!

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    Replies
    1. You're so good at satire, I'd like to see you try to better their unintentional self-satirization.

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  8. Methinks perhaps all of us who have blogs etc are 'apps' to some degree or another!

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