Are print magazines dying?
 

Every Black Friday and Cyber Monday I watch for magazine deals. I usually only care about Popular Science and Popular Mechanics, although the latter seems easier to find than the former, and one year I enjoyed receiving National Geographic. I often do not get around to reading them, I am just so busy looking at cat pictures and arguing with strangers.

Discount Mags normally wants $10 for a year of Popular Science, which is more than I usually pay, and give you the option of paying for up to three years in advance. When I started signing up they asked if I wanted a second year for a slight additional discount (and then if I wanted to lock in those prices), but if you just click on the Black Friday banner on top, it is now $4, but don't get excited.

There are only four issues a year.

That is why I ask if they are dying. I am pretty sure that I used to get twelve issues a year. At least ten for sure.

I guess the cover price is $6 each. I doubt that I would ever pay that, but I feel that a dollar is good.

Popular Mechanics is normally $12 for a year, but that is only 9 issues ($4.66 each), you can order up to four years in advance, and the Black Friday brings that down to $5.75 (63.8¢ each).

I would rather just read them on-line, which you can do for free, but I skimmed the front page, and I am surprised the grammar is correct. It looks like a site thrown together just to show ads, with articles generated by word mills (or dang foreigners from other countries).

However, this looks far more popular and less scientific, and by popular I mean high school popular:

"Three tricks to make your fresh herbs last year-round"
"Skincare 101: The science behind your favorite moisturizers, serums, actives, and more"
What?
"Eight ways to make your Twitter feed less toxic"
"This once-a-month birth control pill unfurls like a star in your stomach"
Not my stomach!
"Gifts for people with a lot of hair"
"Inflatable hot tubs that will make you instantly popular"
"Revamp your home office for $20"
More like feminize your home office for $25.
"Turn your photography skills into a side hustle"
"Purrfect presents for the playful cat in your life"

Is PopSci now a women's magazine? I did not include the science-related articles that I did find, but I did not read them, either.

Total sales of printing and writing paper in the US has decreased significantly in the last ten years: https://www.statista.com/statistics/...-paper-supply/.

A local paper mill just went bankrupt last month. About 300 people lost their jobs in a city of 2200 people.

It's sad, but print is losing out to digital. Sort of like buggy whip manufacturers.

My concern would be newspapers. I prefer to read the news, not see/hear it.

With Popular Science I wonder what is the cause and which is the effect, or is there just a downward spiral? Did they lose talent and leadership because print is decreasingly popular and it just got worse from there?

I've wanted newspapers to die forever. Can't stand that they write columns in 3" wide strips, and span the stories over multiple pages leading you on a hunt, then by the time you find where you left off, you forgot the previous sentence that got cut off. That, and local news is always dumb.

What's a print magazine?

Over the last 20 years readership has been going down, journalism/typesetter pay has gone down and the whole industry has shrunk.

While the popularity of paid opinion, ad placement, ghost writing, bots has taken its place.

People only want to see what they imagine to be true from bots that appear to be a peer and media is profiling everyone to deliver just that.

Finding scholarly writing is difficult since it’s behind higher paywalls or simply for internal use and no longer public.

We have put ourselves into this predicament by devaluing the worth of having most unbiased information, hence flat earthers and other Luddites taking hold.
The internet of free information is anything but.

Sad state of affairs

As long as there are waiting rooms, there'll be a market for print magazines.

If by 'The internet' you mean Internet, it's the battleground between Good and Evil.

Monetizing Internet is the problem, not Internet itself. Free and Open Source software is liberating, but not mandatory. Even the spooks have gone open source (Always sort by New. :))
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After decades of not discarding magazines I had banker boxes of sort-by-date and title magazines. I saw asking prices on eBay of $5 for single copies, but nobody wanted to pay more than pennies per each in bulk. I found a sucker friend to take them all for free.

Yes, and very quickly. TEN Publishing just killed 19 of their 23 car magazines. The dead include:

4-Wheel & Off-Road
Automobile
Car Craft
Chevy High Performance
Classic Trucks 
Diesel Power
Hot Rod Deluxe 
Jp
Lowrider
Mopar Muscle
Muscle Car Review
Muscle Mustangs & Fast Fords
Mustang Monthly
Street Rodder
Super Chevy 
Super Street
Truck Trend 
Truckin’
Vette

The surviving (for now) titles are Motor Trend, Hot Hod, and Four Wheeler

On the motorcycle front Bonnier just killed Motorcyclist and Cycle World is only 4 issues per year. Last year they killed Hot Bike, Sport Rider, Street Chopper, Bagger, Dirt Rider, ATV Rider, and UTV Rider


EDIT: Personally I've move to digital. The only magazine I subscribe to is the digital edition of the UK magazine BIKE. I also read 3-4 magazines per month using Amazon Prime.

I have no use for paper magazines, papers, or books anymore. It is way more convenient to read on a tablet.

The last time I was in a waiting room everyone (young to old) was looking at their phones.