Following suggested by Ganesh Puranik:
DECEMBER 7, 2015
PRINT IS BEAUTIFUL.
It can’t notify you when a work email
arrives, can’t be tweeted mid-sentence, and won’t die without a charger. Even
better, it’s finite.
It’s also supposed to be dead. For years,
the new media vanguard has preached “digital first” and the death knell has
sounded again and again for print, as legendary magazines moved online or
ceased publication altogether. Now, 20 years into the digital revolution, print
is making something of a comeback. Tablet, Politico,
and The Pitchfork
Review are among the successful digital publications that
have ventured into print. Nautilus,Kinfolk, and California Sunday
Magazine have launched in print in the last few years, and
their audiences are passionate and growing.
Tablet, a digital magazine for curious
Jews (and their friends) that has been around since 2009, issued its first
print edition in November. Editor in chief Alana Newhouse says certain stories,
including fiction and “deeper” news and culture pieces, work better on paper.
“I don’t think the internet metabolizes certain kinds of stories properly,” she
says.
Tablet’s
print edition is substantial, in size and quality: The pages are artful, the
text is generously spaced. The first issue contains three hefty features,
including a story on a Japanese manga-style comic about Anne Frank, plus a
photography spread, a work of fiction, and a meditation on a Saltine. Tablet’s
website receives around 1.5 million readers a month, and the first edition had
a print run of 15,000.
“Some of our best content deserves to be
on the newsstand or on someone’s coffee table for a while,” says Mark
Oppenheimer, Tablet’s editor at large. You can reach more people online, he
says, but at what cost? He points to a feature in the magazine by Brett Ratner
about the role of Miami Beach Jews in the birth of “modern American cool” after
World War II, introduced by a memorable full-color double-page photo of
beachgoers.“A perspective-altering piece is worth more for 10,000 in print than
as a brief distraction for 100,000 online,” says Oppenheimer.
Samir
Husni predicted print’s recovery, if that’s indeed what this is. A University
of Mississippi professor known online as Mr. Magazine, he rattles off websites
turned print magazines, including CNET, Catster, Dogster, Allrecipes, WebMD,
and Net-a-Porter, three of which launched this year. They are among 204 new
print magazines to launch in 2015, by Husni’s count, which he maintains on his website and
updates monthly. Those who abandoned print, lured by the elusive promise of
digital, are beginning to repent, says Husni. “Print is the faithful spouse.
Ninety-five percent of the money is in print.”
Ruth Jamieson, a UK-based journalist and
author of Print is Dead. Long Live Print,
says there’s a symbiosis between the melee of the Web and the contained space
of a print magazine. “Far from digital being the grim reaper for print,” she
says, “it’s actually made it easier to start a magazine.” The Web enables
publishers to find and connect with their audiences, and most editorial
operations related to running a magazine can be done online.
An
advantage of print over the Web, says Newhouse, of Tablet, is that it doesn’t
have to appeal to everybody. In fact, it’s better when it doesn’t. “This
magazine might not be for you,” she writes in her letter from the editor in the
first print edition. People want to be part of a tribe, and magazines with
tailored content for an ardent readership reinforce a strong sense of
community. “We launched to a loyal and excited audience,” says Tablet’s
Oppenheimer. “We don’t have a stereotype of who they are, but we think they’re
willing to be the tribe for this magazine.”
Husni
agrees that magazines foster community. “It’s like a membership card you
receive once a week, or month.” Costly membership cards are one way to build a
tribe, and the fact that they’re tangible and collectible is important. “It’s
primal,” says Jamieson. “You can replicate the content online and people will
still want the physical object.”
A
magazine is now a brand: It’s a podcast, a social media embed, an article, a
homepage, an app. Why not printed pages? One thing is clear: A resurgence in
luxe print magazines won’t save the newspaper industry, which must compete with
the immediacy of the Web.
While
some new print magazines have demonstrated success, many, like Tablet, are too
new to have a track record. Some experiment with funding models, or they begin
their lives as startups with enough funding to last one or two issues before
finding a more permanent solution.
This summer, Josh
Kinney, a Philadelphian and former print journalist, revived the Philadelphia Evening Post, a century-old newspaper, with a Kickstarter campaign
and an unpaid two-person team. He’s on the third issue now, and says the paper
has been well-received by readers. “Old people like it because they’re
nostalgic,” says Kinney, and hipsters “swarm all over it like they just found
this new, trendy, nostalgic thing.” But it’s not close to financially
sustainable yet. Kinney distributes the Postfor
free, and says that covering the $5,000 printing cost per issue through ads is
tough.
Sure, say the cynics,
there will always be enthusiasts, and the Web will help hopeful publishers find
enough of them to fund a Kickstarter or two, but the whims of Williamsburg
hipsters won’t pay your mortgage. (A Williamsburg favorite, Modern Farmer, died briefly due to financial trouble, but has since returned,
saved by a loyal reader, according to the New York Times.) Jamieson doesn’t think print’s only
appeal is nostalgia. She says that fledgling print-after-digital publishers are
still finding their footing, but will soon become truly profitable.
“You don’t have to be an
artisanal Luddite” to like print magazines, says Mike Miller, deputy managing
editor at the Wall
Street Journal. The legacy stalwart launched a glossy
fashion magazine 7 years ago in what Miller described as “a gamble.” A year
later, in light of its success, the paper is considering launching a second
magazine, says Miller, and will distribute a one-off edition with this week’s
Friday’s newspaper. “What we learned is that readers love holding on to glossy
mags and curling up with them.”
It seems print and
digital can co-exist after all. The new won’t replace the old. The new will
hammer the old, deform it, reform it, reconceive, reconfigure, but the old
won’t disappear.
In an ironic reversal,
it’s the old guard that thinks the move to print is crazy. “They think it’s
retrograde,” says Newhouse, “I think it’s innovative.”
Chava Gourarie is a CJR Delacorte Fellow.
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