Absurdly, many publishers ended up producing six different versions of their editorial product: a print publication, a conventional digital replica for Web browsers and proprietary software, a digital replica for landscape viewing on tablets, something that was not quite a digital replica for portrait viewing on tablets, a kind of hack for smart phones, and ordinary HTML pages for their websites.

But the real problem with apps was more profound. When people read news and features on electronic media, they expect stories to possess the linky-ness of the Web, but stories in apps didn't really link. The apps were, in the jargon of information technology, "walled gardens," and although sometimes beautiful, they were small, stifling gardens. For readers, none of that beauty overcame the weirdness and frustration of reading digital media closed off from other digital media.

Dangerously, we sometimes forget that helping [clients] through that process is an integral part of our job. We complain that they’re giving us stupid feedback, they’re evaluating the work wrong, that they’re breaking our process. We get irritated that they just don’t get it. As an industry, we’ve come a long way in embracing empathy for the users of our products, but we’ve a long way to go in developing that same empathy towards our clients. The very people who hire us, who trust us with our budgets, their futures, and whose success is ultimately intertwined with our own are often treated as an irritation.

Our clients are working with us as people, not us as an organisation comprising interchangeable resources. We can identify and solve problems quickly and directly. Each individual can have a huge impact on how we function as a company. —Erika Hall