• by Phyllis Fine , Staff Writer, March 9, 2022

After last week’s column by Tony Silber on print’s inevitable decline into a future of mostly niche publications,  I wanted to add a reader’s point of view. 

That is, a reader of a certain age (gulp, 50-plus) who grew up loving glossy magazine pages, especially those in masterfully art-directed fashion pubs. And one who edited and wrote for Magazine Rack, a MediaPost column that appeared between 2004-2011 and consisted of, believe it or not, reviews of print magazines! How outdated that seems now.

Writing for Mag Rack gave me a good look at how print publishing was changing. For example, I watched as weekly news magazines became more and more irrelevant in the face of up-to-the-minute web coverage.

Then there’s this very-dated paragraph I wrote in 2008: “It's late August, time when the mail guy needs a forklift to deliver the September issues of women's fashion mags. InStyle and Lucky, the two nontraditional young babes in this category, are no exception. Both sport a seasonally chubby look, along with their sisters on the newsstand.”

Now, even September issues of Vogue are significantly slimmer, InStyle just announced its move to all-digital publication, and Lucky, of course, is long-dead. Sigh.

In 2009, I also reported on the shuttering of several shelter pubs, noting “how silly it is for publishers to shut down magazines whose actual physical presence is so well-suited to reader service. After all, one of the first tips for do-it-yourself/designer-aided decorating is always the same: Tear out pages and start a file of ideas. When the economy comes back and home sales get hot again [this was 2009, remember], what magazines will be left to tear pages out of?”

What other benefits have been exclusive to print pubs?

Well, the look of print pages -- photographs that show up more clearly on paper, clever art direction, illustrations -- is certainly more attractive than anything on the web (or mobile). 

Comparing the magazines I now read in both print and web editions -- New York and Hollywood Reporter -- it seems easier to browse articles in portable form, one story following another, with a table of contents clearly marking where everything can be found.  It’s also more convenient to flip pages than to navigate with a cursor and scroll up and down -- the same reason that reading an Ebook can be trickier than reading a paper book.

Conversely, I am addicted to the digital version of New York’s crossword puzzles, which in “error check mode” allow you to instantly see when you’re putting in the wrong letter.

So I’m willing to accept a hybrid digital/print universe, perhaps like the hybrid WFH/in-office system that’s been evolving because of the pandemic.

Of course profit is essential to publishers. But consider what a publisher who’s no slouch at business, billionaire Oprah Winfrey, wrote in the last monthly issue of O magazine, which has since gone quarterly: “What I know for sure is that the chance to be in your ear and be held in your hands -- to offer you stories we thought would mean something to you -- has meant everything to me.”

Note her mention of a magazine being "held in your hands," a physical connection you can’t get from the web.

Oprah, too, had memories about particular print pubs, calling Seventeen her “teenage manual for living”: “I always managed to have 50 cents the day the new issue arrived at the corner store, and I always knew what day that was. I would devour every article and every picture before adding it to the stack under my bed.”

If print Is Jurassic, just call me Dino.