No ink on paper for a week

The Week magazine is going green… for one week only. It is not the first magazine to publish a green issue, many others have done that before (Fortune, Vanity Fair, Creative Review, etc.). However it is the first magazine to really practice what it will be preaching on April 20, well at least for one week. The Week is not skipping a printed issue and publishing it only on the web in digital format, but rather adding a digital only issue to the subscribers. “This digital green issue will be an extra bonus issue for THE WEEK’s subscribers during a week when they are not printing a print issue, ” says the press release for the magazine. It adds, “By publishing its first-ever digital issue, THE WEEK is adding an extra issue for its readers but delivering it in a format that has a reduced impact on the environment. The digital issue will include all of THE WEEK’s regular editorial features with selected ones focusing on the environment or related issues.” Well, I have two questions about the wisdom of doing such a noble thing, the first is what about the newsstand buyers, no matter how small the numbers are; and two if we really believe that we are in the “dead trees” business as my friend Bob Sacks often refers to the magazine industry, why not publish digital all the time? Is it enough to save the environment one week a year and forget about the rest of the year…that is if our business is really the business of “dead trees?”