Magazines Fight To Keep Themselves Alive

Earlier this year we looked at how small culture-based magazines like Theme seemed to be thriving while established magazines and newspapers were struggling to maintain readership levels. A recent article in Urb Magazine by Raymond Roker picks up on this theme and wonders why everyone says that print is dead.

I really love magazines. I mean I know the industry is hurting right now. Hell, URB surely isn’t immune to the bruising. Advertising revenues for 99% of the magazines out there have declined (some, dramatically) and newsstand sales have dropped too. This year alone saw FHM, Stuff, Scratch, and a bunch of others you’ve never heard of, all shut down. Web 2.0 is the new, new media, and people are spending more time with texting than reading text…

But I can’t be bothered with all of this conventional wisdom and unimaginative doom and gloom. And like the cooler edges of the music industry, independent magazine publishers are creatively staving off their demise with innovation, perseverance and gravitas…

From Journal (a soft spoken chance find picked up at a bodega in the East Village) to Good (a sharp, fast-rising noble effort by a trust fund kid), to Color (doing for Skate culture what Wax Poetics does for music), to Metropolis (big, bold, beautiful manmade objects), and numerous others titles I devour, I’ve been inspired on each recent trip to the newsstand and mailbox. And if I’m drinking ink-colored Kool-Aid at the table of the industry’s Final Supper, pass me another glass.

Read more here.

Is the Web Really Print’s Friend?