THE EXTREMITIES OF PUBLISHING TECHNOLOGY STORIES

It can sometimes be hard to reconcile a thematic plan when preparing a fixed-format, time-sensitive product like a magazine. Take hardwarezone.com for example. As a website, it can be continuously updated with everything that’s tech related, be it news, reviews, features, or opinions. The topics can range as wide as the net can be thrown as well. You can read about the latest Disney+ releases one minute, and the next click into a research study about cybersecurity. And it will all seem perfectly natural in that environment. To be completely honest, even I never really gave much thought to it.

Planning a magazine however, even a digital one like HWM, is a completely different mindset as the process is bound by the concepts of pagination, design, layout, sections and readability. I have broached the subject of themes before in a previous note, where I am sometimes surprised at how content falls in to form a thematic jigsaw I never originally intended; happy surprises.

This month’s issue on the other hand, is an example of the polar opposite. I could have tried to throw a smokescreen in your direction and call it the fringes of gaming, as we have a range of “non-standard” gaming gear reviewed such as a gaming projector, a chunky MMO-oriented mouse, and a videogame that plays more like a book.

Instead, I leave you with a raw representation of what it’s really like as a tech journalist; reviewing cool gadgets and making silly videos one day, and another, trying to conjure up a profile piece on the impact of digital banking for small medium businesses.