New magazine turns the 'best of the Internet' into print

LONDON -- A new, free magazine called Swipe wants to appeal to millennials by bringing the Internet world into a print format.

Billing itself as "The best of the Internet in print," Swipe curates articles and photos from online media partners and prints them as a news and lifestyle magazine.

Launching a print publication is certainly an interesting choice as it's tough times for print media in the UK at the moment. Trinity Mirror's New Day newspaper folded after just nine weeks due to poor sales. The Independent published its last print issue at the end of March and moved to online only.

London has a fair few free print publications that are distributed to commuters, including newspapers Metro, City A.M. and The Evening Standard. Both Time Out and NME have switched from pay models to free distribution over the last few years.

The young team at Swipe (everyone in the office team is under 30, according to Editor-in-Chief Barney Guiton) thinks that they can bring something different to the medium.

“Print is far from dead ­but it has failed to innovate in the face of online publishing. We offer the quality and variety of the web but in print, which is still the most popular medium to read in," publisher Tom Rendell said in a news release.

Swipe has over 70 partner sites and is also always on the lookout for new sites or blogs, Guiton told Mashable. Swipe pays the sites about 10-15 U.S. cents per published word and displays the sites' logo and Twitter handle along with articles.

"With user-generated sites like Medium, we speak to the author of the article to get their permission and arrange payment," Guiton said.

Swipe will initially be published fortnightly with a circulation of 20,000, distributed at Tube stations and certain offices and cafes that target a startup audience.

Mashable picked up a copy of the magazine's first issue from Oxford Circus on Thursday. There's a "Trending" section, which prints tweets and memes like Dat Boi and the Chewbacca mask video. Articles include a story from Business Insider on "Austria's Donald Trump," an explainer from The Malcontent on a mural of Trump kissing Vladimir Putin and a feature from Vocativ on sexual fetishes about size.

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There's sponsored content from Uber and Makers Academy and ads for craft beer delivery and cold-pressed juice drinks. 

Swipe isn't hosting content on their website but has a social media presence.

Initial reception has been positive, Guiton said, with people saying they hadn't seen many of the articles and the content was more long-form than other free magazines. 

It's an interesting experiment and it remains to see how it will work out.

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