Print Journalism has been dying for decades. So why isn’t it dead?

Print magazine culture has certainly seen a decline since its cultural peak in the 20th century. 

Source: Canta.   

Very few things are immortal. Optimists say love, pessimists say taxes. And I say, print journalism isn’t going anywhere yet. 

It’s 1984, and Ghostbusters is playing in theatres. Newly hired secretary Janice idly flips through the pages of a magazine. Dr Egon Spengler, with the most quotable line of 80’s cinema, delivers a brusque dismissal. “Print is dead”. So says Egon, so says the world. 

But print media has stubbornly refused to die, although Egon’s words seem prescient. The media landscape is changing, and print journalism is an iceberg threatening climate change with a raised fist. The prevailing assumption of the past few decades is that print media is being slowly throttled, by the rise of digital news. Print magazines, in particular, are often perceived as a medium under threat. 

But, while not nearly as popular as they once were, magazines haven’t died. New mags have circulated since the dire predictions began, and others continue to attract loyal and passionate readerships.  

“There’s something powerful about media you can actually interact with. You can write in it, do the puzzles, put the centrefold on your wall. You can tear pages out if you want to. You can interact, and that’s so important,” said Canta Managing Editor Hariklia Nicola.  

Thomas Mead, a 1News reporter based in Christchurch, started out at Canta 12 years ago, and as a young student he tore out the magazine art, and pinned the Canta covers to his wall. Mead said student media, and especially physical student media, is something absolutely essential, and told Canta, he still remembers being 21 years old, and “filled with enthusiasm and passion.” 

“I kept them all for 12 years,” Mead said. He told Canta there is something so unique and valuable about seeing your name in print for the first time.  

Samantha Mythen, social media journalist at RNZ and long-time freelance journalist, told Canta, “we still desperately need long form journalism.” Source: Unsplash.  

Print magazine culture has certainly seen a decline since its cultural peak in the 20th century. Gone are the days of printing presses and newspaper boys yelling on street corners, or rows of typewriters at the daily times. Once-popular print magazines have moved entirely online, or else are largely sustained by digital subscriptions and website publications of the news. 

Elsewhere, internet media, the type pioneered by Buzzfeed and Shit You Should Care About, increasingly fulfil our constant need for current, diverse, short-form writing. But only so much of our content can be bite sized, and digestible, and easy-to-read, before the buzzfeed-ification of news simply isn’t enough. 

Samantha Mythen, social media journalist at RNZ and long-time freelance journalist, told Canta, “we still desperately need long form journalism.”  

Mythen was the Canta managing editor in 2018, and when she was a student at Victoria University, she also wrote for Salient. Five years ago, Mythen led the campaign for Canta’s editorial independence, a motion that is in-and-of itself an investment in the future, an investment in the 21st century need for unencumbered print journalism. 

Mythen told Canta, although the media landscape is certainly changing, “the move to digital has been quite dangerous. So much content is lost in short form editing. We still desperately need long form, we still desperately cling to print”. 

Online audiences have come to expect new content daily, hourly, or live by the minute. Everything fits in the slim few inches of a phone screen, and casual readers are less willing to wait for a weekly, or even monthly, edition of a print magazine to arrive in the post, or appear on a newsstand. According to Mead, journalism will follow its’ audience, and right now, readers want the news in their pockets.  

Yet print magazines refuse to die. Established periodicals, like the New Yorker, or Vogue, stubbornly cling to a global readership in both print and digital formats. And according to Mythen, the stubborn retention of print is no accident.  

In Australia, according to The Conversation, print magazines sales rose 4.1% in 2023, and previously axed publications are now receiving one-off, nostalgic returns to print. The market for print magazines might not be thriving. But they certainly haven’t vanished, and they seem to be settling into a new niche, in a fluid media landscape. 

The enduring appeal of print magazines is attributed by Nicola to the physical experience of reading, and the ability to hold a mag in your own two hands. We absorb information differently from the page, than we do from the screen, perhaps in a less frantic, less distractable way. 

As the authors of The Conversation have noted, here is also something so uniquely appealing about the aesthetics of print magazines. The care taken with layout, images, and copy, can’t always be replicated on screen. Centrefold images can’t be readily turned into posters, puzzles can’t be badly filled out in ballpoint pen. The ability to hold physical media, to fold back the pages, is an essential part of engaging with media itself. 

Print magazines cannot compete with digital media in providing constantly up-to-date content, to a global mass audience. But they can maintain a dedicated readership, “with a meaningful and aesthetically pleasing publication”, according to The Conversation. 

What made magazines so appealing in 1720, is the same thing that made them appealing in 1920 and in 2020, the creativity and social engagement.  

Mead told Canta, “digital is the future,” and said though the media landscape is definitely changing, there is still room for print, and long form content.  

“All journalism has the same goal,” Mead said. To protect the vulnerable, to hold the powerful to account.  

According to Mead, journalism has always been democratising. Print journalism was always a democratising force, printed in paper and ink during recession, protest movements, wars, and he told Canta, “digital media as the next stop on the journey.”  

While the circulation and influence of print magazines may have reduced, they are certainly not dead, or even dying. They are simply changing, moving into a smaller, but sustainable, place in the media landscape.  

“We need all the journalism we can get,” Mead said.