Monthly Magazines vs Real-Time Information

I’m a bit of a magazine collector. I’ve been told that I’m single handedly keeping the magazine industry alive with my ridiculous number of subscriptions. Although the mailman might have been exaggerating with that one, I am a print magazine loyalist and rarely read the online versions of those magazines. I wait anxiously each month for my copy of InStyle, Glamour, Wired, Fast Company and a few other favorites and am still mourning the first casualty of my subscription list, Jane Magazine (folded back in 2007).

A few days ago, the latest issue of Wired arrived so I threw it in my handbag and went to a nearby coffee shop to read a little before getting my hair cut and colored. This is something I love to do but don’t always carve out the time to get done. Coffee in hand, I sat at one of the outside tables, open up the magazine and soak up the wonderful San Francisco weather (surprisingly warm for October).

I read my magazines starting from the back so I quickly arrive at page 146 and start reading a story about Twitter and it starts to feel oddly familiar. The article, although it dives into other topics related to the company, opens with a discussion about “Project ReTweet” which was announced back in mid-August. Obviously no longer breaking news in the November issue of this publication, my 140 character attention span moved on to another article that felt a little fresher.

This quickly brought me back to a subject I’ve been talking about quite a bit lately, are we really looking at the death of print publications or is that just a side effect of the death of the attention span? I believe that it’s the later mixed with the need for instant gratification. Twitter provides a remedy; quick news before it’s even classified as news while monthly magazines provide more thorough and developed stories that arrive long after the topic has moved from breaking news to the archives. Is one better than the other? No, I think we need both. This means that every now and again we all need to step away from the computer or mobile device and get a cup of coffee (or other beverage of choice) and enjoy a magazine or newspaper. It’s good for the industry and it’s good for the attention span.
Note: This is not the cover of the issue I was reading, just a personal favorite when it comes to Wired covers