A Passionate Defence of Magazines

It’s often said that print is dead, the web is king, and long live the masses.

While I totally agree with the last point, I have a bone to pick with the first two. Namely, print’s not dead, it’s just in need of an overhaul; and that the web is king for certain things. Like anything, context plays a greater role in determining the viability of a media over anything else, and I firmly believe that print can find its niche in the evolving digital landscape.

Print is dead, to my mind, when it comes to straight-up, news-centric newspapers: why would I spend money to read yesterday’s news when I can get today’s for free, as it happens? I’m a lightweight news junkie, and I check several different news sites several times a day to keep tabs on the world. Hence, my complete disinterest in newspapers as a source of news.

Instead, when I pick up a newspaper, I turn to the Sports section, or the City section, or the Opinions section, because the use I derive in newspapers is in strong editorial which is relevant to timely, newsworthy items. If newspapers are going to continue to be relevant, they need to focus more on editorial which is relevant to its readership, i.e. in-depth exploration and local issues. This is why I prefer the New York Times to the New York Post, and the Globe and Mail to the Toronto Sun: I find the editorial to be of a higher quality and the news stories to have more meat to them.

In essence, the future newspaper’s strength lays in relevant, timely, issue-focused editorial. While I’m not sure readership numbers will ever match newspaper’s heyday, they don’t need to, as a smaller newspaper staffed by fewer reporters with smaller print runs — supported by local and national advertising — will be cheaper to run. As an example, radio may not have the number of listeners it did during its heyday, but that hasn’t stopped it from staying alive (though it has its own batch of relevancy issues to address; more on that on a later article).

Magazines, on the other hand, can pick up the “big issue” slack, which is largely what they’ve always done. When I read a magazine, I don’t look for hardcore news, I look for something different: incisive reportage, deep discussions and insights on relevant large-scale topics and more of an in-depth experience. In magazines, I look for quality, both in terms of its production (quality paper stock with high-quality photography, a sensitivity to typography and layout and not a distracting amount of advertising) and its content.

In short, reading a magazine is an experience, and there’s a certain emotion of quality tied to it which has always been the medium’s strength.

It’s the same reason that books will never completely die, at least not in the vastly foreseeable future: it’s still an experience to crack open a new hardback, flip through a paperback, and revel in the crafted design and typography of a well-designed book. Kindles, Nooks and other readers may have their day in the sun, but I don’t see them being a completely game-changing device, at least not when a quality product is concerned. I’m as excited as anyone about the potential of an Apple Tablet — especially as optimistically demoed by Sports Illustrated — but I would safely imagine that at least for the next 40-50 years as the generation that grew up with print products continues to drive the economy, print products will remain in demand.

So if print’s not dead, but merely changing, then where’s the relevance to us, the consumers?

A quote jumped out at me from an article on A Photo Editor the other day: “All magazine categories are simply too crowded for the number of readers and advertisers available.” This is the crux of the issue: the quality is there, but it’s overshadowed by an over-saturated market with too many offerings in too few categories. As time goes on, the quality will find its way to the top, and the rest will slowly (or quickly) disappear.

I think that there will be an industry-wide shift towards putting out a quality print product which people will reward now with the few dollars they choose to part with, now more than ever. While so much regular, everyday content will be available online free of charge, there will remain a willingness to pony up for a real-world product which adds quality contextual value.

It will also force distributors, whether they’re news organizations, magazines, book publishers, etc to diversify somewhat, with their online aspects likely becoming the daily bread and butter of hardcore facts, supplemented with selectively chosen “quality” work, while their print aspects remain as the more in-depth, slower-paced, experiential side.

Of course, there will be many different players who will put out a quality product online and become quite popular doing it, and there will always, to some degree, by the National Enquirers and People Magazine’s of the world who put out trashy print work on a regular basis.

But on the whole, I firmly believe that, given the options, there’s a healthy appetite for a quality print product out there. We just need to let the ill-suited behemoths caught in between fail in order to let the quality shine through.