Tina Brown, the editor of
Newsweek/DailyBeast says print is dead, and as proof she points to the
closure of a magazine that she drove into the ground using a succession of
bullshit linkbait-y barely-Business Insider-worthy covers
which succeeded only in turning a troubled print brand into a doomed one.
Editors of dozens of local
newspapers say print is dead because they are unable to find an audience hungry
for their daily bowl of rehashed AP Newswire copy, unfunny comic strips,
dumb-as-a-rock “humor” columnists, and some nonsense about an escaped dog.Media experts say print is dead because, well, that’s the kind of forward thinking insight you have to offer to succeed in media punditry. Writing off an analog format is far more likely to get you a book deal, and far less likely to come back and bite you in the ass than “betting against the future” might.
The consensus that print is dead is clear. And the continuing print success of the Economist (where the same number of subscribers choose a print-only subscription as a digital-only one) is annoying and confusing. As is the continuing print success of the New Yorker and The Week.
They’re easily dismissed though: Those magazines are special. Or they’re institutions that have been around forever (apart from The Week). Or they’re for stuffy old people (apart from The Week). Or, I dunno, the people who buy them are elves, or goblins — or some kind of creatures that eat paper. Perhaps they’re the same elves or goblins or creatures who buy a combined 6,005,090 print copies every day of the top-ten newspapers in the US.
