I love Magazines. Ever since I was a kid, borrowed/found magazines transported me all over the planet, they allowed me to surf, sail, ski, and dream of the cars I hoped to buy someday. In a funny twist of fate, I ended up working in media, building magazine publishing systems. The culture of the old news rooms is difficult to describe to anyone who wasn’t part of it. But there were lots of smart people, late nights, smoking and lots alcohol. I’ll leave it at that. It was truly the only environment where I could have worked.
As a result of COVID-19 millions of people are out of work. I touched on the closing of retail stores and malls yesterday. Today, I received an email notifying me that my issue of Popular Science will not be printed and will only be available in digital format.
Media companies have been struggling to stay afloat over the last decade, but COVID-19 might signal the end for many news organizations. It is estimated that 36,000 news/media workers have had laid off, furloughed or had their pay cut as a result of the pandemic. With advertising disappearing and live events cancelled, media companies have lost significant portions of their revenue streams.
Our New Normal may not include printed magazines. And that would be sad. Not sure if all of Hearst’s subscribers received notices like this for each of their respective publications.
Side note – I’m not anti-digital, just nostalgic – Jeff Bezos gave me a Kindle at the product launch (W Hotel, NYC), I knew this day was coming. It actually took longer and a pandemic to get to this point.