The Print Magazine Revival of 2024

I’d love to tell you that reports of print media’s death have been greatly exaggerated, but the truth is a little more complicated. Many of the publications that crowded newsstands and mailboxes 20 years ago have indeed closed entirely, and almost all the rest have changed their business models as readers and advertising dollars have moved online, usually by reducing their publication frequency or going fully digital. Condé Nast, once the most powerful magazine publisher in the world and home to more than two dozen print publications at its peak, is “no longer a magazine company,” according to a 2022 declaration by its chief executive officer, Roger Lynch; it now prints only 13 titles worldwide. Changes have, of course, come to the magazine you’re currently reading as well: Bloomberg Businessweek publishes every day online, and in July, we relaunched with a monthly print edition after 94 years as a weekly.

The old model of print is certainly gone, along with the massive circulation numbers and cultural ubiquity that the format enjoyed before the internet upended media and left us with supermarket-checkout-line gossip rags and “bookazines” of low-carb recipes. But an opportunity remains for magazines, business models be damned, and some publishers and brands seem to be figuring it out. Several titles across genres, including Field & Stream, Nylon, Saveur, Sports Illustrated and Vice, have committed to restarting their previously abandoned physical products in 2024. Small, print-forward indie publications, such as Apartamento, Bitter Southerner, the Drift and HommeGirls, continue to eke out space in their respective niches, and they’ve been joined by dozens of print upstarts every year since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.