Digital Newsstand Consortium Gets a Name

The best and the brightest minds in media have put their heads together and come up with a name for their splashy new consortium to create a digital newsstand for magazines and newspapers.

The group, comprised on Time Inc., Condé Nast, Meredith, Hearst, and News Corp. and headed by Time Inc.'s John Squires must've spent countless hours brainstorming for just the right name for their venture, which was announced earlier this month after months of speculation. (It's worth noting, as always, Portfolio.com is owned by American City Business Journals, which shares a parent company with Condé Nast.)

Only the right name would do since what this group is creating isn't a piece of hardware (someone else—hopefully Apple—will come up with that) or any sort of content (the still employed editors and writers at the individual publications will take care of that), but rather a paradigm shift, a way to show the world that the magazine business will not be Napsterized like the music industry, will not wither away like newspapers. This thing will be like Hulu (but not free) or like iTunes (but not owned by Apple).

Only a precisely calibrated combination of words can convey how serious these old media organizations are about being not just contemporary, but futuristic: They can't just slap an "e-" or "cyber" and add a "2.0" at the end on this thing and think it'll embody their hopes for the future.

According to Folio's Bill Mickey, the future now has a name: Next Issue Media.

Did you get a chill?

No? Well, it's better than e-Magazines Cyberstand 2.0, that's for sure.