Print Will Endure
After sharing a photo of my monthly magazine subscription I'd stack hauled up to the third floor, a friend suggested I was single-handedly keeping the print industry alive.
Perhaps not financially, as my contributions remain humble, but in terms of advocacy, I am certainly proud to do my part.
I was born in the 90s, so I’m old enough to remember the buzzing, beeping sound of dial-up internet but not old enough to know a world before digitalization and one-click convenience. I grew up in the transition. But even having grown up surrounded by screens, I’ll advocate for the merit of print until I’m blue in the face.?
There’s a certain joy to holding a printed book, magazine, or periodical in your hands or tucked under your arm. Nostalgia aside, there's staying power in print.
In print, communication endures. It’s a simple pleasure yet a tremendous beauty, bringing something from the author’s mind into the tangible world.?
Earlier this month, National Geographic announced the final print run of non-subscriber issues adoring store shelves. Readers will no longer be able to pick up a copy of the magazine at will, citing the sales from newsstands as being too insignificant a portion of overall revenue for the company. How unsurprising, considering that unless you’re in a Barnes & Noble or a select Target, you’re unlikely to come by any newsstand in the US. An effortless part of the charm and daily lives of Europeans, the classic sidewalk newsstand model just doesn’t really exist out here. (I’ll resist a tangent about the aggravating lack of walkability in our cities and the general devaluation of such pleasures.)
National Geographic’s parent company, the Walt Disney Corporation, announced a plan to scale back $5.5 billion in spending, bringing the knife down upon the magazine amidst cuts across the entire company. NatGeo laid off all remaining staff writers—a mere 19 people among its staff of over 1,500. I don’t see how that elimination will provide a dent of relief in the parent company’s financial goal, nor do I understand how eliminating all employees with “writer” in their title is any sort of strategy for a magazine.?
The fear of the financial future, a growing consumer preference for digital media, and the looming unknowns surrounding AI technology have led publications to recoil. But scaling down a valuable product like National Geographic is a short-sighted misstep.
It saddens me because this isn’t what good writing is all about at all. Good writing doesn't seek to cheaply generate revenue or gather user data. Good writing is bold; it's considered and innovative and fearless and that is what makes it valuable. And good content demands good deliverability. You lose that; you lose everything.?
Sharing my sentiment with the tagline, “Print Ain’t Dead,” is Mountain Gazette, an indie, outdoors-focused, bi-annual magazine that’s seen a resurgence and tremendous growth in readership. Producing well-written, passion-driven stories weaving between high-color pages of stunning imagery, the magazine is a high-quality product for readers who desire as much. Sponsorships feel relevant, and promotion is authentic, personalized, and community-building.?
Perhaps NatGeo just needed to rethink how it was connecting with its audience.
Print is an art form—one more nuanced than it used to be. Print used to be a source of dependable communication. As consumer culture evolved to foster shallow hits of gratification and breed new levels of attention deficits, our media compromised quality, setting its own precedent for devaluation. Pages got so chock full of lame headlines, boring listicles, and endless, endless advertising that soon, products like magazines became no more than delivery vehicles for sponsors, swallowed up by the need for more revenue and ultimately dismissed by consumers.?
But print shouldn't be just a medium for ads. It should not be cheap, thin pages lined with cheap, thin content. For print to be valuable, it must believe in itself as valuable. It must actually be valuable.
Writing in print is a vessel for the stories, interviews, and reporting that expand curiosity, search for meaning, and encourage dialogue. It's about the human communication worth enduring.
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To restore the value of printed works, let’s stop wasting ink on pages where ads outnumber the stories. Let’s stop generating poorly crafted, worthless content that contributes nothing and only serves to turn the consumer into a commodity. Let's stop creating work that reinforces the narrative that print isn't convenient.
Instead, let’s provide a product of quality worth paying for, marketed towards an audience that, in its own right, becomes a community. Let's write stories worth reading again, worth holding in our hands, and worth earmarking to share with someone. Let's restore the appreciation for texture and tangibility. And for crying out loud, let's give our eyes a break from all the screen time.
Rather than mindlessly generating more content, let's instead craft better content.
To those whom it matters, print will endure, perhaps even at an elevated form. I feel confident in such a suggestion, seeing the return of value in vinyl records and film cameras.?
Print will never be for everyone, but it will always be for those who understand its value. And that, I believe, is worth investing in.
What I’m Reading This Week
Excerpts, Notes & Highlights
“...we are no longer looking for truth but only a kind of amazement.”