Print is still alive and kicking

Humorist Mark Twain, when he heard rumors that he had passed away, reportedly replied, “Reports of my death are grossly exaggerated.”

The same might be said of print publications.

In fact, there has been somewhat of a resurgence of print.

Axios, a major online journal, headlined an April 9 story, “Print revival: Magazines make surprise comeback as marketing tool.”

The story notes that Nylon, a 25-year-old fashion outlet, will release its first physical magazine this month since stopping print editions and becoming a digital-only publication in 2017.

“The move is part of a larger revival of print as a marketing tool and potential advertising opportunity amid an otherwise grim digital ad outlook for publishers,” says Axios.

It seems that with all the competition for advertising and readership dollars, print is becoming relevant again. There are too many websites chasing a diminishing number of ads as businesses are finding out that online marketing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. It was cheap to begin with, but giants like Google, Facebook and Amazon have pushed a lot of the smaller players out and are squeezing businesses for more money to promote products on their platforms.

Two big online ventures, X (known as Twitter until a year ago) and Truth Social, Donald Trump’s competitor to Twitter/X (after Trump was kicked off Twitter), are examples of how fragmented the online universe has become.

Twitter never made money despite it being used by 500 million people worldwide. Entrepreneur Elon Musk bought it in July 2023 for $44 billion, and changes he made caused the company to spiral downward. Now its value is estimated at just $11 billion, but when you’re the world’s richest man I guess you can afford to take a $33 billion hit.

Likewise Truth Social. It went public two weeks ago with an initial value of $7 billion, and now it has sunk to less than $2 billion and continues downward daily. Trump is a pretty wealthy guy too, but he needs all the money he can get his hands on right now, and Truth Social ain’t doing it for him. Truth Social had a $58 million loss last year after bringing in only $4 million in revenue.

Broadcast is fragmented too, as network television is attracting smaller audiences while viewers switch to ad-free streaming. Traditional radio has to fight harder to make a buck too as more people tune in to satellite radio, stream music on their phones and listen to podcasts and amuse themselves with TikTok.

Meanwhile, old reliable newspapers and magazines are still around to help spread the marketing messages to people who are being bombarded by other media.

Axios reports other print revival stories. Sherwood Media is a new company that plans to launch a print magazine later this year after finding a lot of advertiser interest in print. “Advertising sales in our first print issue greatly exceeded our goal and puts us in a great position for the next edition,” said Sherwood Media’s CEO.

Other magazine revivals include Complex, Swimming World, Sports Illustrated, Saveur, and Ebony.

“A tactile, large-format and high-quality magazine is the ideal way to experience exclusive celebrity photo shoots, cutting-edge fashion, and beauty, party scenes and profiles of the coolest musicians and DJs,” said a Nylon executive.

Our print product is still the foundation of our business, now and into the future. A lot of people still prefer print, with its tactile sense and easy-on-the-eyes readability. Photos can be displayed large on the page and stories can be arranged in a reader-friendly format.

Nevertheless, the Times Pilot has been expanding into digital media over the past few years, and more online improvements are set to come in the next few months. As we’ve said before, more than a thousand readers now take the Times Pilot online and that number grows monthly. We’re working to satisfy all of our readers with a news product that is attractive to all readers of all generations across all platforms. We’ll go where our readers take us.