My recent experience in digital publishing, in my roles – two of my many roles – as editor of Cinema Journal and as scriptwriter of My So-Called Secret Identity, suggests how far online content has come and how far it has to go; what it can do differently from traditional media, and where its perceived limitations lie.

Expanding CJ’s online reach and content was a key aspect of my application for the editorship, and it’s been warmly supported by the SCMS executive – and, I’m glad to say, welcomed by the journal’s readership, which has in turn been expanded by our online initiatives. I work with Chris Becker, in the newly-created role of CJ Online Editor, to implement the strategy I outlined in my application, and already we are starting to take it further, building on the success of this initial phase. So far we partner with Antenna for conference reports and In Media Res for ‘In Focus’, with our ‘Afterthoughts and Postscripts’ feature (inviting author reflections on their own articles) hosted on the CJ page, and the innovative podcast Aca-Media, run by Chris with Michael Kackman, on its own site. The underlying idea was to increase the opportunities for dynamic interaction with the journal, allowing it to ‘overflow’ from the core text (the print version) and enter scholarly conversation in a range of different ways.

So with both projects, I’ve been very much involved with digital publishing during 2013, and it’s proved very successful. However, it’s striking, in the context of these multiple online initiatives, how important the printed page remains to so many people. One of the most frequently-asked-questions about MSCSI is ‘when’s it coming out as a printed comic’ – the artists, too, were very keen to hold a copy in their hands – and many people responded to my digital CJ plans with ‘what’s going to happen to the actual journal?’ In the latter case, my online strategy is always backed up with a reassurance that the journal remains the core text, with the digital platforms circulating like satellites around it. In the former, we’ve made a deal to publish the first two issues with Geeked magazine in November 2013, and the response has been ecstatic – almost as if the comic is becoming ‘real’, for many readers, for the first time. Despite the enthusiasm for digital innovation, I’ve found that old habits, old tastes, and old preferences die hard.