The first copy of Slam magazine was printed in 1994 featuring Larry Johnson on the cover.
Slam magazine used to be one of my favorite magazines
growing up. My grandma used to buy me a copy every time I went to the grocery
store with her. I don’t get them anymore, but once in a while my grandma will randomly
buy me a copy. Luckily, she bought me a copy recently so I had a magazine to
look through for this blog post. This blog post will compare and contrast my
printed Slam magazine to the slamonline.com website. The slamonline.com website
consists of the same kind of stories and ads that Slam magazine does, but the
two are definitely very different. Copied digital versions of Slam magazine are
available on the Amazon Kindle, Apple Newsstand, Zinio, and Barnes & Noble
Nook only and have to be paid for.
Describe: The primary focus of Slam magazine is basketball
news. Anything that has to do basketball can be found in Slam magazine.
Although the NBA takes priority, there’s plenty of news on college basketball
and other up and coming talent. Examples of content you might see in Slam
include basketball related previews, hype, discussions and of course plenty of
ads. Like most magazines, Slam has an outline with page numbers for most of the
magazines content a few pages in. Flipping through the magazine, I see an ad
about every couple pages. The magazine is known for always having players on
the cover. Inside the magazine there are always tons of photos. The text is
very colorful and there’s a wide variety of fonts and font sizes used. The
majority of the stories are in small text beside photos, and in columns a few
inches wide. One specific article titled “KD Never Stops” features Kevin Durant
of the Oklahoma City Thunder, and includes an interview and also discusses the 2012
NBA playoffs. Some of the ads in the magazine are for Nike, Adidas, Under
Armour, and Gatorade. There are also a couple ads for a shoe that increases your
vertical jumping capability. I remember the same ad from the earlier issues I used to have like 10 years ago.
Ads for these "Jumpsoles" have been in Slam magazine since I can remember.
Analyze: One thing that sets Slam apart from other
competition such as ESPN The Magazine is its target audience. Compared to ESPN The
Magazine, Slam targets a younger crowd and also incorporates popular slang. It
also is known for its abundance of shoe ads. The shoes advertised are always
the newest and most anticipated ones for the month, and are sometimes advertised
months before their release date.
One major difference between the Slam magazine website and the
printed copy is in the organization. Online, there are multiple tabs leading
you directly to what you want to view or read about. For example, if you wanted
to look at shoes, you would click on “kicks” and then whatever you are looking for.
In the magazine, you have to flip though a couple pages to get to the outline page
that shows page numbers for each story. If you wanted to look at kicks in the
magazine, you would basically just flip through the pages. In the copy I have
of Slam, the shoes are scattered throughout.
The second difference is in variety. There is an enormous
difference in variety. The Slam magazine I have has about 80 pages and ads take
up a portion of them. Due to the limited number of pages, the printed copy has
fewer things to read/view. On the Slam website, there are tabs for news, rumors,
NBA, college, high school, and kicks. Under the “blogs” tab there are tons of
blogs with responses. There is also a tab that leads to a dictionary of slang
terms used in Slam. One of the words I saw as I was scrolling down was “Brycophant,”
which meant “Irrational supporter of Kobe Bryant.”
Check out the slamonline.com dictionary here http://www.slamonline.com/online/nba/2009/09/slam-dictionary/
The last difference is in relativity. The printed copy of
Slam magazine is monthly, so the material becomes outdated shortly after the
issue is printed. They could have an article on how well a player is suspected
to do, and a couple days after the printed release the athlete could get
injured and become irrelevant. The website is updated daily. It currently has yesterday’s
news for the NBA playoffs along with brand new photos and video clips.
Interpret: The broader target audience for Slam magazine is
basketball fans because basketball is the #1 interest of the magazine. However,
the magazine uses slang terms, has stylish shoes, and also includes references
tied to hip-hop culture. On one page of the magazine there is an interview with
the rapper “Big Sean” that discusses the days when he used to play basketball.
Since hip-hop culture wasn’t around until the early 80s, anyone over 30
probably wouldn’t understand some of the slang and they probably wouldn’t
prefer Slam over other basketball magazines. The advertisement for the special shoes
that are supposed to increase your vertical jump also indicates that the suspected
readers are young and play basketball. The ads fit perfect in my opinion to
appeal to the target audience. On
slamonline.com, one ad for Champs Sports is set as the background. Other
smaller ads seem randomly placed on the page. When I looked through the different pages of slamonline.com, the average was about eight ads per page. The background always stayed the same
when clicking through different tabs. In the printed magazine, there was
usually only one ad per page and sometimes none at all. The Slam webpage
definitely exposes a person to more ads per page. The only stereotyping that I
see in the magazine is their target audience. Slam probably hopes that a ton of
basketball fans still like to play, are young, and are a part of hip-hop
culture.
Evaluate: One of the strengths in the magazine is the large
size pictures, which frequently take up an entire page. There’s also a big
poster that is designed to be torn out put on the wall in every printed
magazine. Another advantage in the magazine is that it is artsy. They have more
colorful and unique text and designs. For example, in the magazine there’s one entire
page dedicated to a very colorful drawing of the title to the article on the
following page. Weaknesses of the magazine include out of date content to
include predictions of matchups from the playoffs that have already happened
(Lakers vs. Nuggets), and it has a smaller amount of content than the website does.
Strengths of the online content include how recent it is. There are pictures
and stats from yesterday’s Laker vs. Thunder NBA playoff game. The website’s capability
to use videos and links is also a big advantage. On the slamonline.com home
page there is a video of Kevin Durant’s game winning shot from last night. I
think the Slam website serves the audience better because of the up to date and
large variety of content mostly.
Engage: The website doesn’t have any direct connections with
Facebook or Twitter, but you can comment on blogs, articles, videos, and
pictures if you feel the need to interact. There is a Facebook Slam page, but cannot be liked from the slamonline.com home page.
Check Slam out on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/SLAMMagazine
I realized in writing this blog post that websites are better for news because they are constantly being updated as things happen, I also came to the conclusion that magazines don't really have much of anything that a website can't and probably does feature. Websites are also much more efficient in their organization.. You’re
probably not going to be getting lost or forgetting what page you were on when
browsing a website. Writing this blog basically reinforced my view on
newspapers and magazines, and helped me discover even more evidence supporting
my preference for the internet over printed news.
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