Print magazines aren’t dead — in 2024, they’ve just gone premium

Generation after generation have experienced the shifting sands of media. We’ve seen video kill radio; CDs kill cassettes; DVDs kill VCR, before streaming killed DVDs — and, for the last decade, we’ve watched (often from behind a screen) the digital-media boom size itself up against long-declining print publications.

According to Magna data cited by Bloomberg, at its peak in 2007, annual advertising revenues from print publications were as high as $19.5 billion in the US. Since then, the industry has turned a new page, with almost every ensuing year bringing in less advertising revenue than the one before.

Perhaps, though, as Amanda Mull argued in an insightful Bloomberg article published last Thursday, this year has not seen print die at the hands of digital as one might have anticipated. Instead, just like film cameras, bookstores, and vinyl records, print media is seeing something of a revival, with established magazines rebranding from ubiquitous digests to more specialized luxury “leisure products.”

While the golden age of print is well behind us — the same Bloomberg piece reported that even mega-publisher Condé Nast is “no longer a magazine company,” per its CEO — an increasing number of legacy media outlets announced plans to revamp previously ditched physical print offerings in 2024, including NME, Nylon, Vice, Life, and The Onion. Moreover, some digital-born publications are now also giving print a chance, with Vox Media’s The Cut launching its first-ever Fall Fashion print issue this September.

However, keeping widespread attention isn’t the primary objective of print magazines anymore. As outlined by Mull, the success of enduring print publications (The New Yorker, Vogue, Architectural Digest, etc.) relies on their readers’ distinct interests, tastes, and intellects to sustain sales. Indeed, the rise in the number of small-scale indie publications going to print offers some proof that the value of a readership now lies in quality rather than quantity — a virtue that appeals to advertisers, who’ve grown conscious that the often more affluent, tuned-in readership of some print publications are harder to engage with online.

In fact, the print medium is now increasingly used as a marketing tool itself: according to the report, the Costco Connection is one of America’s most successful magazines today, with a monthly circulation of more than 15 million.