Let's discuss if print magazines are dead or not. I come from a gaming background, one molded by print publications from the 1980s up to the late 1990s but I understand there are other print publications available. My question is simple. Do you think print publications are dead?
Personally, I think it depends on the category they fit in. Such as gaming publications. For the most part, yes, these are dead. The main reason Game Informer is still around and kicking is because of the fact that Gamestop owns it (not sure why no one has asked the question of "journalistic integrity" yet but they haven't). Game Informer is one of only a couple of publications left from what used to be a huge business. The Internet is mostly blamed for this, as it is often blamed for other things where people running them failed to understand/adapt to new markets and changing tastes in their fan base.
I used to be involved with two magazine preservation projects. The first being Retromags. Retromags ownership and myself had a difference in opinion over "legit" releases of the publications. Retromags ownership, and members, were fine operating as an illegal magazine repository while myself and a couple of others were working diligently to bring official, legal, releases to the site. After butting heads over poor quality releases by various members and the fact that "going legit" simply would not work for Retromags under the ownership managing it, I broke off and formed another preservation site with two friends.
Out of Print Archive was formed with the basis of only offering legal versions of the publications we released. While the number of publications is much smaller, each and every one of them is a legal release. OoPA holds permissions from several United Kingdom publishers to archive their magazines and it is done with the utmost care. Meppi, the main archiver of the content presented, has spent upwards of 40 hours on most of the issues, some have received over 100 hours of dedicated editing work. OoPA can focus on issues like this because there is no concern of them being removed or the site being sued. Retromags does not operate with this certainty so issues are thrown up, often with very little editing work done to the pages.
Those are two locations that fans can get gaming publications (illegal and legal respectively). But what about other publications?
Who remembers reading stuff like Game Pro, Game Informer, EGM, Gamefan, Game Player's (then the three or four themed issues per month they released), PC Gamer, PC Player, PC Accelerator, CGW and Video Games & Computer Entertainment? Those were all in print at one time in the 1990's. There were more in the 1980's. I remember these, still have most of them in a closet and revisit them often.
I have even been th publisher of a couple mags myself.
Consolidation, one publisher buying out another, is often why we see mags disappear and it is sad. The other is simply readers are not there and without readers, advertisers don't show up either. That leads to a dead magazine.
What were your favorite magazines that are not around anymore?